The site health score
Updated · First published
Site health is the first figure on every SEO tab: a number out of 100, described as "Technical checks across your audited pages."
What it measures
The structural checks the audit runs over the pages it read. Missing titles and descriptions, missing or duplicated headings, broken internal links, pages nothing links to, pages hidden from Google, thin pages, and the rest of the same family.
Two things follow from that.
It is about your own pages. It is not a measure of how much traffic you get, how much authority you carry, or how you rank. Those live on their own tabs, and a site can be at 90 with almost no traffic.
It only covers pages the audit actually read. Cap the audit with Limits and the score describes the part it looked at.
The change line
Under the number, the comparison with the previous audit, such as "Up 3 since the previous audit." <!-- example --> With no previous audit to compare against, the line is absent rather than showing a zero.
How the 86/100 is worked out on the overview opens the breakdown, so you can see which checks are costing you and by how much. <!-- example -->
There are no bands
The score has no named ranges. There is no threshold at which it turns from bad to good, and Rankbench does not draw one.
That is deliberate. A structural score is only useful against itself over time. Whether 74 is good depends entirely on what the other 26 points are, which is what the breakdown is for.
Authority is different: that number does carry named bands, because it is measured on a scale the whole web shares. See authority.
Where the number appears
On every SEO tab, in the row of figures. On your dashboard, with the same change line. And on the site's Website overview, in the Site health tile.
Moving it
Work the Fixes tab and re-audit. The list is already ordered by what each thing is likely costing you, so working from the top is the fastest route.
The cheapest points are usually the grouped rows: one missing-heading fix applied to fifteen pages moves the score more than a single clever change to one page.
Then run an audit and read Since your last audit, which reports the health move and how many findings are new. That line is the proof the work landed.
Where to go next
The Fixes tab is where the score is actually moved. Running the site audit explains what produced it.
Still stuck?
Open Rankbench and the page this article describes — most screens explain themselves as you go.