SEO report for www.firstdirect.com
https://www.firstdirect.com/ · checked Sun, 01 Nov 2026 15:30 GMT
Fix these first
- Entity clarityhigh
No Organization / LocalBusiness structured data – search engines and AI have to guess who runs this site.
Fix: Add Organization or LocalBusiness JSON-LD with name, url, logo, contact details and sameAs links to your official profiles.
- JSON-LD present & validhigh
No JSON-LD structured data.
Fix: Add JSON-LD describing the business and the page (Organization/LocalBusiness, WebSite, WebPage or Article, BreadcrumbList).
- Render-blocking resourceshigh
2 blocking script(s) and 1 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- Open Graph & social cardsmedium
Open Graph title or image missing.
Fix: Add og:title, og:description, og:image (1200×630 PNG/JPG, absolute URL) and twitter:card=summary_large_image.
- Question-led contentmedium
No headings phrased as questions.
Fix: Add headings that match real questions ("How much does…?") followed by a direct one- or two-sentence answer – an easy format for search and AI answers to quote.
- Freshness signalsmedium
No published/updated date found.
Fix: Show a 'last updated' date and add dateModified to your structured data.
- Imagesmedium
7 image(s).
Fix: Give every image width and height, lazy-load images below the fold (but not the main image) and serve WebP/AVIF.
- Image alt textmedium
4 of 7 images have no alt attribute.
Fix: Describe each meaningful image in its alt attribute (use alt="" for decorative ones).
Real-world speed Google PageSpeed
Loading Core Web Vitals from Google… this can take up to 30 seconds.
Authority & backlinks
Looking up which websites link to firstdirect.com…
Indexing & crawling 100%
Can search engines reach, read and index this page?
- ✓
Status codecritical
The page returned HTTP 200.
- ✓
Indexablecritical
No noindex instruction – the page can appear in search.
- ✓
robots.txthigh
robots.txt found.
Googlebot is allowed to crawl this page.
- ✓
XML sitemaphigh
Sitemap index found at https://www.firstdirect.com/sitemaps.xml listing 1 sitemap.
Declared in robots.txt.
No lastmod dates – add accurate ones so search engines know what changed.
- ✓
Canonical URLhigh
Canonical: https://www.firstdirect.com/
Points to this page (self-referencing).
- ✓
Redirectshigh
1 redirect before the page loaded.
https://firstdirect.com/ → https://www.firstdirect.com/
A single redirect to your preferred address is normal; just make sure your own links use the final address.
- ✓
www / non-wwwmedium
firstdirect.com redirects to www.firstdirect.com.
Search snippet & sharing 75%
How the page looks in Google results and when shared.
- ✓
Title tagcritical
“Online and Personal Banking | first direct bank”
About 411px of Google's ~580px desktop width.
- ✓
Meta descriptionhigh
161 characters, ~975px of ~990px.
Good length.
Google sometimes rewrites descriptions to match the search; a good one is still used most often.
- ✓
Faviconlow
Favicon linked (Google shows it next to results).
- ✗
Languagelow
No lang attribute on <html>.
Fix: Add lang="en-GB" (or your language) to the <html> tag.
Content quality 93%
Is there enough clear, useful text that matches what the page targets?
- ✓
Word countmedium
482 words of main content (menus and footer excluded).
Google has no minimum word count – this is a rough guide to whether the page answers the question in full.
- ✓
Readabilitymedium
Flesch reading ease 58 (fairly easy), about 14 words per sentence.
- ✓
Topic focushigh
5 of 6 title keywords appear in the main content (missing: online).
- ✓
H1 headingcritical
“£210 for switching banks”
- !
Heading structuremedium
10 headings for 482 words.
1 skipped level(s), e.g. H2 → H4.
Fix: Use H2s for main sections and H3s inside them, without skipping levels.
- ✓
Text-to-code ratiolow
12% of the HTML is visible text.
AI search readiness 50%
Can ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews read, understand and cite this site?
- ✓
AI crawler accesshigh
Search and AI-search crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot…) can read this page.
- ✓
Snippet controlshigh
No snippet restrictions – search and AI answers can quote this page.
- ✗
llms.txtlow
No /llms.txt file. It's an optional, emerging convention – few AI tools are confirmed to read it yet, so this is low priority.
Fix: Optionally add /llms.txt: a short Markdown summary of who you are with links to your key pages.
- ✗
Question-led contentmedium
No headings phrased as questions.
Fix: Add headings that match real questions ("How much does…?") followed by a direct one- or two-sentence answer – an easy format for search and AI answers to quote.
- ✗
Entity clarityhigh
No Organization / LocalBusiness structured data – search engines and AI have to guess who runs this site.
Fix: Add Organization or LocalBusiness JSON-LD with name, url, logo, contact details and sameAs links to your official profiles.
- ✗
Freshness signalsmedium
No published/updated date found.
Fix: Show a 'last updated' date and add dateModified to your structured data.
- ✓
Trust pages (E-E-A-T)medium
Links found to all three: about, contact and privacy.
Structured data 0%
Machine-readable facts for rich results and AI.
- ✗
JSON-LD present & validhigh
No JSON-LD structured data.
Fix: Add JSON-LD describing the business and the page (Organization/LocalBusiness, WebSite, WebPage or Article, BreadcrumbList).
Links 88%
Internal linking, anchor text and broken links.
- ✓
Internal linkinghigh
189 internal and 11 external links.
- !
Anchor text qualitymedium
Same text used for different pages: “online banking”, “banking help”, “credit cards”, “existing customers”.
1 vague link(s) like “click here” or “read more”.
Fix: Make every link text describe its destination, e.g. “logo design prices” instead of “click here”.
- ✓
Broken links (sample)high
Checked 12 internal link(s).
No broken links found.
2 link(s) point to a redirect – link to the final address instead.
Performance 69%
Speed signals from the HTML and server. Real-user Core Web Vitals load below.
- ✓
Server response (TTFB)high
780 ms until the first response from our checker, including connection setup (Google rates TTFB good under 0.8 s, poor over 1.8 s).
- ✓
HTML sizemedium
60 kB of HTML.
- ✓
Compressionmedium
Compressed with gzip.
- ✗
Render-blocking resourceshigh
2 blocking script(s) and 1 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- ✓
Scripts & third partiesmedium
8 script tag(s); files loaded from 1 other domain(s): rum.hlx.page.
- ✗
Imagesmedium
7 image(s).
7 without width/height – can cause layout shift (CLS).
4 image(s) after the first three aren't lazy-loaded.
0 use WebP/AVIF or responsive srcset.
Fix: Give every image width and height, lazy-load images below the fold (but not the main image) and serve WebP/AVIF.
- ✓
Cachinglow
Cache-Control: max-age=60, s-maxage=60, stale-if-error=3600
- ✓
HTTP/3low
Server advertises HTTP/3 (faster on mobile networks).
Security 96%
Visitor safety signals that browsers and Google check.
- ✓
HTTPScritical
Secure HTTPS with no mixed content.
- ✓
HTTP → HTTPS redirecthigh
http:// redirects to https://.
- ✓
HSTSmedium
HSTS: max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains
- !
Security headerslow
Present: CSP, nosniff, clickjacking protection.
Fix: Add X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy and X-Frame-Options (or a CSP).
- ✓
Server fingerprintlow
No X-Powered-By header (server: cloudflare).
Mobile & accessibility 60%
Usable on phones and by everyone – Google indexes the mobile version.
- ✓
Mobile viewportcritical
viewport: width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0
- ✗
Image alt textmedium
4 of 7 images have no alt attribute.
Fix: Describe each meaningful image in its alt attribute (use alt="" for decorative ones).
- ✓
Link nameslow
Every link has a readable name.
- ✗
Tap-to-contactmedium
No tel: or mailto: links.
Fix: Add a tap-to-call or tap-to-email button so phone visitors can contact you instantly.
Local SEO not scored
This site doesn't look like a local business, so these checks are shown for information and not scored.
- i
LocalBusiness markuphigh
No LocalBusiness structured data.
- i
Contact details on pagemedium
No phone number found.
No postcode found (fine for service-area businesses).
- i
Map & directionslow
No map or directions link.