Website Owner's Guide

Getting Started

Your first website health check takes less than 3 minutes. No account needed, no credit card, no installation — just enter a URL and go.

Running your first scan

1. Go to the scan page
2. Type in your website URL (e.g. example.com)
3. Click Scan Now
4. Watch the progress as each of the 8 categories completes
5. Review your health score and category grades

What does the scan check?

Healthy URL audits your website across 8 categories, each testing a different aspect of your site's health:

1. Performance & Lighthouse — Google Lighthouse scores for performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO on both mobile and desktop
2. Security Headers — SSL certificate, HTTPS redirects, and headers like CSP, HSTS, and X-Frame-Options
3. SEO & Meta Tags — Title, description, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, canonical URLs, and favicons
4. AI Bot Access — Whether AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot can access your site
5. Accessibility & Structure — JSON-LD schema, heading hierarchy, landmarks, plus accessibility checks for alt text, form labels, link text, language attributes, and more
6. Link Health — Broken links, redirect chains, and missing security attributes
7. DNS Health — DNS records, SPF, DMARC, and email authentication
8. AI Insights — An AI-generated executive summary with a prioritised action plan

Every category runs in parallel for speed. If one fails (for example, if your site is behind Cloudflare), you can retry just that category without starting a new scan — and retries don't count against any allowances.

Free Scans vs Verified Domain Scans

This is the most important concept to understand. Healthy URL has two levels of scan results:

Free scans — see how healthy your site is

Anyone can scan any website without an account. Guests get up to 10 free scans per session; with a free account, scans are unlimited. Free scan results show:

• Your overall health score (0-100)
• A letter grade for each category (A-F)
• A preview of what's been found

Detailed findings are redacted — blurred out with a prompt to verify your domain. Think of this as a quick health check: it tells you how healthy your site is.

Verified domain scans — see exactly what's wrong

Once you verify you own a domain, every scan against it shows full, unredacted results:

• Detailed findings for every category
• The full AI executive summary
• Fix recommendations per category
• Access to the Repair Log
• AI Fix Guides (Pro plan)

This is where the real value is. Verified scans tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it.

Understanding Your Scores

Every scan produces two key numbers: an overall health score and individual category scores.

Overall health score

Your overall score (0-100) is a weighted average of all category scores. Each category contributes based on its importance to your site's health. If a category errors or is blocked (e.g. by Cloudflare), it's excluded and the remaining weights re-normalise — so your score is never unfairly penalised by things outside your control.

Letter grades

Each category and your overall score get a letter grade:

Grade	Score	Meaning
A	90-100	Excellent — your site is in great shape
B	80-89	Good — minor improvements possible
C	70-79	Fair — some issues worth addressing
D	50-69	Needs attention — significant issues
F	0-49	Critical — fix these as soon as possible

Aim for 80+ overall (B grade or above). Focus on fixing any category below 70 first — those have the biggest impact.

Errored or blocked categories

Sometimes a category can't complete its scan. This usually happens when your site is behind Cloudflare or another WAF, the page took too long to respond, or a temporary network issue occurred. Errored categories are excluded from your overall score so you're not penalised. Use the Retry button to re-run just that category — retries don't count against any allowances.

Domain Verification

Domain verification proves you own a website. It's a one-time process per domain that unlocks full scan results, the Repair Log, and (on paid plans) AI fix guides and PDF reports.

How to verify your domain

After scanning your site, click Verify Domain Ownership on the results page. You'll get two options:

1. HTML Meta Tag (recommended) — Add a meta tag to your site's <head> section. We give you the exact tag to copy. This is the quickest method if you can edit your site's HTML.
2. DNS TXT Record — Add a TXT record to your domain's DNS settings. Better if you don't have direct access to the site's code, or if your developer manages the hosting.

Once added, click Check verification and we'll confirm it instantly.

Domain limits per plan

Plan	Verified domains
Free	1
Standard	3
Pro	10

Each domain can only be verified by one user (first-come, first-served). Once verified, you can run unlimited scans against it. If someone has already verified your domain and you believe it's yours, contact us at hello@healthyurl.co.uk.

The 8 Audit Categories

Each category tests a different aspect of your site's health. Here's what they check and how to improve your scores.

1. Performance & Lighthouse

Google Lighthouse tests your site on four metrics — performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO — on both mobile and desktop. These directly affect your search rankings and user experience. Google says 53% of mobile users leave if a page takes over 3 seconds to load.

2. Security Headers

Security headers protect your visitors from attacks like clickjacking, cross-site scripting (XSS), and data injection. They also signal to search engines that your site takes security seriously. We check for HTTPS, SSL certificate validity, and headers including Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security, X-Frame-Options, and more.

3. SEO & Meta Tags

Meta tags tell search engines and social media platforms what your page is about. A missing or poorly written title tag can mean the difference between appearing on page 1 or page 10 of Google. We check title length, meta descriptions, Open Graph tags (for Facebook/LinkedIn sharing), Twitter Cards, canonical URLs, and favicons.

4. AI Bot Access

AI crawlers like GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), and over a dozen others index your content for AI-powered search and assistants. If you're blocking them, your content won't appear in AI-generated answers — an increasingly important traffic source. We check your robots.txt, llms.txt, and noai meta tags.

5. Accessibility & Structure

This category combines structural checks with accessibility auditing, scored 50/50. On the structure side, we check JSON-LD schema markup (which powers rich results in Google like star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, and recipe cards), heading hierarchy (h1-h6), semantic HTML landmarks, ARIA attributes, and breadcrumb navigation. On the accessibility side, we check image alt text, form labels, link text quality, the lang attribute, viewport zoom settings, skip-to-content links, and autoplay media.

6. Link Health

Broken links frustrate visitors and hurt your SEO. Google sees broken links as a sign of a poorly maintained site. We check every link on your page — internal and external — and flag broken ones (404s), redirect chains, and missing security attributes like noopener on external links.

7. DNS Health

DNS is the foundation of your website. Misconfigured DNS can cause email delivery failures, security vulnerabilities, and even prevent your site from loading. We check A, AAAA, NS, MX, TXT, and CNAME records, plus SPF and DMARC for email authentication.

8. AI Insights

After scanning all 7 other categories, our AI analyses the results and generates a plain-English executive summary. It tells you what's going well, what needs attention, and provides a prioritised action plan — the most impactful fixes listed first. On verified domains, you see the full summary. On Pro plans, you also get detailed AI Fix Guides for individual issues.

The Repair Log

The Repair Log is your prioritised to-do list for website fixes. After every scan, we extract every issue found and add it to your Repair Log, organised by severity: high, medium, and low impact.

If you fix things yourself

Use the Repair Log as your checklist. Start with high-impact items and work down. Each item tells you what's wrong, which category it belongs to, and its severity. On Pro plans, click How to fix to get an AI-generated step-by-step guide. Mark items as done as you go.

If you work with a developer or agency

This is one of the most powerful features for website owners who pay someone to manage their site. Share your scan results or PDF report with your developer and say: "Here's what needs fixing."

The Repair Log gives you clear, objective evidence of what's wrong — prioritised by impact. You can track whether issues are actually being resolved by re-scanning and checking the log. It's accountability, backed by data.

AI Fix Guides

AI Fix Guides are detailed, step-by-step instructions generated for each issue found in your scan. They explain the problem, why it matters, and exactly how to fix it — often with code examples you can copy and paste.

They're designed for both audiences:

• DIY site owners — Follow the guide yourself. Instructions are written in plain English with code snippets where needed, so you don't need to be a developer.
• Working with a developer — Share the guide with them. It provides the exact fix without requiring them to diagnose the problem first, saving time and money.

AI Fix Guides are available on the Pro plan and above. Free and Standard plans show the issues but not the detailed fix instructions.

PDF Reports

Download a professional PDF report for any scan on a verified domain. The report includes your overall score, category scores and grades, Lighthouse gauges for mobile and desktop, detailed findings, the AI executive summary, action plan, and code examples.

How to use your PDF report

• Share with your developer — "Here's what needs fixing, with the evidence"
• Present to stakeholders — Show management the state of the company website
• Before/after comparison — Scan, fix issues, scan again, compare reports
• Keep for records — Document your site's health at a point in time

PDF reports are available on Standard plans and above.

Weekly Email Digest

Every Monday morning, you'll receive a summary email with the latest health scores for your verified domains. It highlights any score changes since your last scan so you can spot improvements or regressions at a glance — without logging in.

The weekly digest is available on Standard plans and above.

Google Search Console & Keywords

Connect your Google Search Console account to import real keyword ranking data. See which search terms bring visitors to your site, your average position in search results, click-through rates, and impressions — all within Healthy URL.

Connecting Google Search Console

1. Go to your Keywords page
2. Click Connect Google Search Console
3. Sign in with your Google account and grant read-only access (we never modify your data)
4. Click Import Top Keywords to pull in your ranking data

Google Search Console and keyword tracking are available on the Pro plan and above.

Site Crawler

When you verify a domain on a Pro plan, we automatically crawl your site to discover pages. We follow your sitemap.xml and homepage links, respecting your robots.txt, up to 200 pages per domain.

This data powers keyword analysis — showing you which of your pages is best optimised for each tracked keyword. You can manually trigger a re-crawl from the Domains page at any time, and you'll receive an email when it's complete.

The site crawler is available on the Pro plan and above.

Improving Your Score

Quick wins

These fixes have the biggest impact for the least effort:

1. Add an SSL certificate — If your site isn't on HTTPS, this is the single most impactful change. Many hosts offer free SSL via Let's Encrypt.
2. Fix your meta tags — Add a unique title and description to every page. Often just a CMS setting change.
3. Add security headers — A few lines in your server config can jump your security score from F to B.
4. Fix broken links — Update or remove any links returning 404 errors.
5. Add SPF and DMARC records — If your domain sends email, these DNS records take 5 minutes to add and dramatically improve your DNS health score.

How often should I scan?

At least once a month, or after significant changes (new pages, hosting changes, plugin updates). If you're actively fixing issues, scan weekly to track progress.

"I've fixed issues but my score hasn't changed"

Run a new scan — Healthy URL doesn't automatically re-check your site. Each scan is a fresh snapshot. Some changes (like DNS records) can take up to 48 hours to propagate before they'll be detected.

"My developer says the site is fine but the score is low"

Healthy URL checks objective, measurable criteria used by Google and security researchers. If your score is low, there are genuine improvements to be made. Share the detailed findings with your developer — they give them exactly what they need to address the issues, without ambiguity.

Plans & Pricing

Each plan builds on the previous one. Here's what you get at each level:

Free — see what's wrong

Unlimited scans (guests get 10 per session), 1 verified domain, full results on verified domains, Repair Log, AI executive summary. Everything you need for a basic health check.

Standard (£9/mo) — track what needs fixing

3 verified domains, PDF reports, weekly email digest. Share professional reports with your developer and get regular health updates in your inbox.

Pro (£29/mo) — know exactly how to fix it

10 verified domains, AI Fix Guides, Google Search Console integration, keyword tracking, site crawler. The complete toolkit for serious website owners.

Annual billing saves approximately 20%. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at any time. See the full comparison on the pricing page.

We also offer Agency plans from £79/month for web agencies managing multiple client sites, with white-label branding, monitoring, and more.