ARTICLE
What Your Website Audit Score Actually Means
Understand the five audit categories, how scores convert to grades, and what each grade means for your website's health and search visibility.
Mar 26, 20264 min readWEBSITE AUDITS
The grade on your audit report isn't arbitrary
When you run a website audit through Recon, you get a letter grade — A through F — alongside a numerical score from 0 to 100. That grade isn't a vague quality rating. It's a weighted composite of five distinct categories, each measuring a different dimension of your site's health.
Understanding what goes into that score is the difference between treating the audit as a curiosity and using it as a roadmap.
The five categories and their weights
Every audit evaluates your site across five categories. The weights reflect how much each category contributes to the overall score:
- SEO (30%) — Title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, alt text, canonical URLs, structured data, sitemap, and robots.txt
- Performance (25%) — Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Contentful Paint (FCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), Total Blocking Time (TBT), and Speed Index
- Security (20%) — SSL certificate validity, HTTP security headers (HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options), cookie flags, and mixed content
- Mobile (15%) — Viewport meta tag, responsive design signals, tap target sizing, font legibility, and mobile-specific performance
- Accessibility (10%) — Image alt text, form labels, color contrast, ARIA landmarks, and heading hierarchy
Each category scores 0–100 independently. The overall score is the weighted average.
How scores map to grades
The grade boundaries are straightforward:
| Score Range | Grade | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| 90–100 | A | Excellent — competitive advantage |
| 80–89 | B | Good — minor improvements possible |
| 70–79 | C | Fair — noticeable gaps affecting visibility |
| 60–69 | D | Poor — significant issues need attention |
| 0–59 | F | Failing — critical problems hurting your business |
Most small business websites score between C and D on their first audit. That's normal — and it's fixable.
What each grade actually tells you
A (90–100): Your site is technically sound. You're doing better than most competitors in search. Focus on content and link building rather than technical fixes.
You have a solid foundation with room for optimization. Common B-grade issues include slightly slow load times, a few missing alt tags, or incomplete structured data. These are quick wins.