How accurate is the score?

Every check is based on what Google and the AI providers document publicly, and title widths are measured in pixels the way Google displays them. The score is a guide to how well-prepared a page is – no tool can guarantee rankings, because Google also weighs links, competition and many other signals.

Do you store my website's content?

No. We fetch the page like a search engine would, analyse it and keep only the finished report in a short-lived cache for an hour so repeat views are fast.

Is there a limit on how many sites I can check?

Not for normal use. The instant tools run in your browser and are unlimited. Full checks and audits only have a safety limit set far above what a person can use by hand (two checks a minute, every minute), plus a cap on how often any one website can be checked – that stops bots using XKey to flood other people's sites.

Do I need to give my email address?

No. XKey never asks for an email, an account or card details – not even for weekly monitoring, which gives you a private link instead.

Can I download my SEO report without signing up?

Yes. Use "Print or save as PDF" at the bottom of any report. The website audit also gives you a PDF and a CSV of every page, with no sign-up.

Can I check a competitor's website?

Yes – any public website. To see your site and up to two competitors side by side, use the competitor comparison.

Why is my score different from other SEO checkers?

Each tool weights different checks. XKey gives extra weight to things that stop a page appearing at all (indexing, titles, H1) and adds AI search readiness, which most checkers don't measure yet.

SEO report: programmingarehard.com scores 60/100

Fix these first

Indexablecritical
The page tells search engines not to index it (noindex).
Fix: Remove the noindex meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header if this page should be found.
Test your robots.txt rules with the free tester
Read the guide: why isn't my website on Google?
See the details
Canonical URLhigh
No canonical tag.
Fix: Add <link rel="canonical" href="(this page's full URL)"> – only point it elsewhere for true duplicates.
Read the guide: duplicate content
See the details
Meta descriptionhigh
No meta description – Google will pick text from the page.
Fix: Write a 140–155 character description that answers the searcher's question and invites the click.
Write one free with the AI title & description writer
Read the guide: how to write meta descriptions
See the details
Topic focushigh
0 of 2 title keywords appear in the main content (missing: home, mdash).
Fix: Use your main title phrases naturally in the opening paragraph and headings.
Find the phrases people search with the free keyword generator
Read the guide: how to write SEO content
See the details
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.
Make the code with the free local business schema generator
Read the guide: schema markup
See the details
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).
Make valid code with the free schema generator
Read the guide: schema markup
See the details
Title tagcritical
“Home — ProgrammingAreHard —”
Fix: Write a unique title of roughly 50–60 characters with the main search phrase first.
Preview and measure your title with the free title tag checker
Read the guide: how to write title tags
See the details
H1 headingcritical
3 H1 headings – one clear H1 is best practice.
Fix: Use one H1 that states the page topic with its main keyword.
See the details

Check the whole website

This report covers one page. The full-site audit crawls up to 250 pages to find broken links, duplicate titles, orphan pages and more.

Run a full-site audit

Monitor this site weekly

We'll re-check it every week and track the score, with a history graph and a list of anything that breaks.

Compare with competitors

See how this page scores against up to two competitors, side by side, and where they beat you.

Compare sites

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 programmingarehard.com…

Indexing & crawling 67%

Can search engines reach, read and index this page?

✓
Status codecritical
The page returned HTTP 200.
✗
Indexablecritical
The page tells search engines not to index it (noindex).
Fix: Remove the noindex meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header if this page should be found.
Test your robots.txt rules with the free tester
Read the guide: why isn't my website on Google?
✓
robots.txthigh
robots.txt found.
Googlebot is allowed to crawl this page.
✓
XML sitemaphigh
Sitemap found at https://programmingarehard.com/sitemap.xml with 39 URLs.
Declared in robots.txt.
This page is NOT listed in it.
Most recent lastmod: 2026-05-11.
✗
Canonical URLhigh
No canonical tag.
Fix: Add <link rel="canonical" href="(this page's full URL)"> – only point it elsewhere for true duplicates.
Read the guide: duplicate content
✓
Redirectshigh
Loads directly with no redirects.
✓
www / non-wwwmedium
www.programmingarehard.com isn't in use (HTTP 526).

Content quality 63%

Is there enough clear, useful text that matches what the page targets?

✓
Word countmedium
4,672 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.
✓
Readabilitymedium
Flesch reading ease 67 (plain English), about 12 words per sentence.
✗
Topic focushigh
0 of 2 title keywords appear in the main content (missing: home, mdash).
Fix: Use your main title phrases naturally in the opening paragraph and headings.
Find the phrases people search with the free keyword generator
Read the guide: how to write SEO content
!
H1 headingcritical
3 H1 headings – one clear H1 is best practice.
The H1 shares no keywords with the title.
Fix: Use one H1 that states the page topic with its main keyword.
✓
Heading structuremedium
29 headings for 4672 words.
Levels are in order.
✓
Text-to-code ratiolow
42% of the HTML is visible text.

AI search readiness 38%

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.
Make one with the free llms.txt generator
Read the guide: do you need llms.txt?
✗
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.
Read the guide: how to write SEO content
✗
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.
Make the code with the free local business schema generator
Read the guide: schema markup
✗
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 about; missing contact and privacy.
Fix: Link to About, Contact and Privacy pages from every page – they help visitors, Google and AI tools see who stands behind the content.

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).
Make valid code with the free schema generator
Read the guide: schema markup
i
Breadcrumbslow
Home page – breadcrumbs not needed.

Links 81%

Internal linking, anchor text and broken links.

✓
Internal linkinghigh
10 internal and 18 external links.
✓
Anchor text qualitymedium
No link text points to two different pages.
!
Broken links (sample)high
Checked 8 internal link(s).
Broken: /cdn-cgi/l/email-protection (404).
3 link(s) point to a redirect – link to the final address instead.
Fix: Fix or remove links that return errors, and update links that redirect.

Performance 65%

Speed signals from the HTML and server. Real-user Core Web Vitals load below.

✓
Server response (TTFB)high
333 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
81 kB of HTML.
i
Compressionmedium
Couldn't be measured from our server (our fetch decodes compressed pages before we see them). Check in your browser's developer tools that HTML is sent with br or gzip.
!
Render-blocking resourceshigh
0 blocking script(s) and 4 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
Read the guide: Core Web Vitals
✓
Scripts & third partiesmedium
8 script tag(s); files loaded from 3 other domain(s): cdnjs.cloudflare.com, fonts.googleapis.com, f.convertkit.com.
✗
Imagesmedium
10 image(s).
10 without width/height – can cause layout shift (CLS).
7 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.
Read the guide: image SEO
✗
Cachinglow
No Cache-Control header.
Fix: Set Cache-Control so browsers and CDNs can reuse the page.
i
HTTP/3low
Couldn't be confirmed from our server – the alt-svc header that advertises HTTP/3 isn't always visible to it. Your site is on Cloudflare, which offers HTTP/3 under Network settings.

Security 75%

Visitor safety signals that browsers and Google check.

✓
HTTPScritical
Secure HTTPS with no mixed content.
✓
HTTP → HTTPS redirecthigh
http:// redirects to https://.
✗
HSTSmedium
No Strict-Transport-Security header.
Fix: Add Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains.
Read the guide: the technical SEO checklist
✗
Security headerslow
Present: none.
Fix: Add X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy and X-Frame-Options (or a CSP).
Read the guide: the technical SEO checklist
✓
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, shrink-to-fit=no
✗
Image alt textmedium
9 of 10 images have no alt attribute.
Fix: Describe each meaningful image in its alt attribute (use alt="" for decorative ones).
Read the guide: image SEO
✓
Form labelsmedium
All 1 form fields are labelled.
✓
Link nameslow
Every link has a readable name.
✓
Tap-to-contactmedium
One-tap contact: email.

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.
✓
Contact details on pagemedium
No phone number found.
No postcode found (fine for service-area businesses).
An email link is shown.
i
Map & directionslow
No map or directions link.

This report checks one page. Scores are a guide, not a guarantee of rankings. Check another page · Print or save as PDF

SEO report for programmingarehard.com

Fix these first

Real-world speed Google PageSpeed

Authority & backlinks

Indexing & crawling 67%

Status codecritical

Indexablecritical

robots.txthigh

XML sitemaphigh

Canonical URLhigh

Redirectshigh

www / non-wwwmedium

Search snippet & sharing 21%

Title tagcritical

Meta descriptionhigh

Open Graph & social cardsmedium

Faviconlow

Languagelow

Content quality 63%

Word countmedium

Readabilitymedium

Topic focushigh

H1 headingcritical

Heading structuremedium

Text-to-code ratiolow

AI search readiness 38%

AI crawler accesshigh

Snippet controlshigh

llms.txtlow

Question-led contentmedium

Entity clarityhigh

Freshness signalsmedium

Trust pages (E-E-A-T)medium

Structured data 0%

JSON-LD present & validhigh

Breadcrumbslow

Links 81%

Internal linkinghigh

Anchor text qualitymedium

Broken links (sample)high

Performance 65%

Server response (TTFB)high

HTML sizemedium

Compressionmedium

Render-blocking resourceshigh

Scripts & third partiesmedium

Imagesmedium

Cachinglow

HTTP/3low

Security 75%

HTTPScritical

HTTP → HTTPS redirecthigh

HSTSmedium

Security headerslow

Server fingerprintlow

Mobile & accessibility 83%

Mobile viewportcritical

Image alt textmedium

Form labelsmedium

Link nameslow

Tap-to-contactmedium

Local SEO not scored

LocalBusiness markuphigh

Contact details on pagemedium

Map & directionslow