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.
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
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.
B (80–89): 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.
C (70–79): There are real gaps affecting your search visibility. You're likely missing several meta descriptions, have some performance bottlenecks, or lack security headers. A focused sprint can move you to a B.
D (60–69): Significant problems are actively hurting your rankings and user experience. Expect missing SSL, slow page loads, and broken mobile layouts. This is where most agency prospects are — and why a D-grade audit is your best sales tool.
F (below 60): Critical issues that may be causing Google to suppress your site. Common F-grade causes: no HTTPS, 5+ second load times, and completely broken mobile experience.
The weights aren't equal, and that's deliberate. SEO carries the most weight (30%) because it directly determines whether anyone finds your site. Performance is second (25%) because Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal.
For agencies using Recon as a lead generation tool, this weighting creates natural talking points: "Your SEO score is pulling down your overall grade — and SEO is the single biggest factor."
Identify your lowest-scoring category — that's where you'll get the most improvement per hour of work
Look at the specific checks that failed — each check tells you exactly what's wrong
Prioritize by weight — fixing an SEO issue (30% weight) improves your overall score more than fixing an accessibility issue (10% weight) by the same amount
Re-run the audit after fixes — track your progress with a new score
The goal isn't perfection. It's moving from D to B — the range where you go from invisible to competitive.
Beyond the raw scores, Recon generates a plain-English AI summary of your audit findings. This translates technical metrics like "LCP: 4.2s" into actionable language: "Your main content takes over 4 seconds to appear — that's causing over half your mobile visitors to leave before seeing anything."
For agencies, the AI summary is what you share with clients. The scores tell the story; the summary tells them what to do about it.
Ready to see where your site stands? Run a free audit — results in 30 seconds, no signup required.
