SEO report for www.nih.gov
https://www.nih.gov/ · checked Sun, 01 Nov 2026 17:41 GMT
Fix these first
- H1 headingcritical
No H1 heading.
Fix: Use one H1 that states the page topic with its main keyword.
- 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
3 blocking script(s) and 29 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- Word countmedium
174 words of main content (inside <main>).
Fix: Add genuinely useful content: key service pages usually need 400+ words to answer what customers ask.
- Readabilitymedium
Flesch reading ease 23 (difficult), about 16 words per sentence.
Fix: Use shorter sentences and everyday words – aim for a score of 50+ for customer-facing 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.
- Freshness signalsmedium
No published/updated date found.
Fix: Show a 'last updated' date and add dateModified to your structured data.
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 nih.gov…
Indexing & crawling 94%
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 found at https://www.nih.gov/sitemap.xml with 2,702 URLs.
Not declared in robots.txt.
This page is listed in it.
Most recent lastmod: 2026-10-30T15:25Z.
Fix: Add a 'Sitemap:' line to robots.txt, list every indexable page and include accurate lastmod dates.
- ✓
Canonical URLhigh
Canonical: https://www.nih.gov/
Points to this page (self-referencing).
- ✓
Redirectshigh
1 redirect before the page loaded.
https://nih.gov/ → https://www.nih.gov/
A single redirect to your preferred address is normal; just make sure your own links use the final address.
- ✓
www / non-wwwmedium
nih.gov redirects to www.nih.gov.
Search snippet & sharing 79%
How the page looks in Google results and when shared.
- ✓
Title tagcritical
“National Institutes of Health (NIH) |”
About 309px of Google's ~580px desktop width.
- !
Meta descriptionhigh
379 characters, ~2318px of ~990px.
Long – Google will probably truncate it.
Google sometimes rewrites descriptions to match the search; a good one is still used most often.
Fix: Write a 140–155 character description that answers the searcher's question and invites the click.
- ✓
Faviconlow
Favicon linked (Google shows it next to results).
- ✓
Languagelow
lang="en"
Content quality 37%
Is there enough clear, useful text that matches what the page targets?
- ✗
Word countmedium
174 words of main content (inside <main>).
Google has no minimum word count – this is a rough guide to whether the page answers the question in full.
Fix: Add genuinely useful content: key service pages usually need 400+ words to answer what customers ask.
- ✗
Readabilitymedium
Flesch reading ease 23 (difficult), about 16 words per sentence.
Fix: Use shorter sentences and everyday words – aim for a score of 50+ for customer-facing pages.
- ✓
Topic focushigh
3 of 3 title keywords appear in the main content.
- ✗
H1 headingcritical
No H1 heading.
Fix: Use one H1 that states the page topic with its main keyword.
- ✓
Heading structuremedium
7 headings for 174 words.
Levels are in order.
- !
Text-to-code ratiolow
6% of the HTML is visible text.
Fix: Trim unused markup, inline scripts and builder bloat.
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
67 internal and 32 external links.
- !
Anchor text qualitymedium
Same text used for different pages: “the nih director”, “impact of nih research”.
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.
1 link(s) point to a redirect – link to the final address instead.
Performance 56%
Speed signals from the HTML and server. Real-user Core Web Vitals load below.
- ✓
Server response (TTFB)high
149 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
62 kB of HTML.
- ✓
Compressionmedium
Compressed with gzip.
- ✗
Render-blocking resourceshigh
3 blocking script(s) and 29 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- ✗
Scripts & third partiesmedium
32 script tag(s); files loaded from 4 other domain(s): script.crazyegg.com, googletagmanager.com, assets.pinterest.com, static.cloudflareinsights.com.
Fix: Remove unused tracking and widget scripts; every third party adds connection time.
- ✗
Imagesmedium
18 image(s).
13 without width/height – can cause layout shift (CLS).
15 image(s) after the first three aren't lazy-loaded.
5 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=900, public
- ✓
HTTP/3low
Server advertises HTTP/3 (faster on mobile networks).
Security 100%
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; preload
- ✓
Security headerslow
Present: CSP, nosniff, Referrer-Policy, clickjacking protection.
- ✓
Server fingerprintlow
No X-Powered-By header (server: cloudflare).
Mobile & accessibility 83%
Usable on phones and by everyone – Google indexes the mobile version.
- ✓
Mobile viewportcritical
viewport: width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0
- ✓
Image alt textmedium
All 18 images have alt text.
- ✓
Form labelsmedium
All 1 form fields are labelled.
- ✓
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.