SEO report for www.somerset.gov.uk
https://www.somerset.gov.uk/ · checked Sun, 01 Nov 2026 20:26 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
14 blocking script(s) and 14 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- Title tagcritical
“Somerset Council”
Fix: Write a unique title of roughly 50–60 characters with the main search phrase first.
On WordPress: Edit the page and scroll to the Yoast SEO or Rank Math box (install one of these free plugins if you have neither), then fill in the SEO title.
- H1 headingcritical
“Welcome to somerset.gov.uk”
Fix: Use one H1 that states the page topic with its main keyword.
On WordPress: Most themes show the page title as the H1. In the editor, make sure no other block uses Heading 1 – use Heading 2 for sections.
- 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.
On WordPress: Yoast SEO and Rank Math add these tags for you. Set a sharing image in the plugin's Social tab on each page.
- Heading structuremedium
35 headings for 459 words – a lot for the amount of text.
Fix: Use H2s for main sections and H3s inside them, without skipping levels.
- 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 somerset.gov.uk…
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 index found at https://www.somerset.gov.uk/wp-sitemap.xml listing 34 sitemaps.
Not declared in robots.txt.
No lastmod dates – add accurate ones so search engines know what changed.
Fix: Add a 'Sitemap:' line to robots.txt, list every indexable page and include accurate lastmod dates.
On WordPress: WordPress makes one at /wp-sitemap.xml, and Yoast or Rank Math make /sitemap_index.xml. Submit it in Google Search Console.
- ✓
Canonical URLhigh
Canonical: https://www.somerset.gov.uk/
Points to this page (self-referencing).
- ✓
Redirectshigh
1 redirect before the page loaded.
https://somerset.gov.uk/ → https://www.somerset.gov.uk/
A single redirect to your preferred address is normal; just make sure your own links use the final address.
- ✓
www / non-wwwmedium
somerset.gov.uk redirects to www.somerset.gov.uk.
Search snippet & sharing 50%
How the page looks in Google results and when shared.
- !
Title tagcritical
“Somerset Council”
About 158px of Google's ~580px desktop width – short; use the space.
Fix: Write a unique title of roughly 50–60 characters with the main search phrase first.
On WordPress: Edit the page and scroll to the Yoast SEO or Rank Math box (install one of these free plugins if you have neither), then fill in the SEO title.
- !
Meta descriptionhigh
37 characters, ~236px of ~990px.
Short – sell the click with a benefit and a call to action.
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.
On WordPress: Edit the page and scroll to the Yoast SEO or Rank Math box (install one of these free plugins if you have neither), then fill in the meta description.
- ✓
Faviconlow
Favicon linked (Google shows it next to results).
- ✓
Languagelow
lang="en-GB"
Content quality 63%
Is there enough clear, useful text that matches what the page targets?
- ✓
Word countmedium
459 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 38 (fairly difficult), about 14 words per sentence.
Fix: Use shorter sentences and everyday words – aim for a score of 50+ for customer-facing pages.
- ✓
Topic focushigh
1 of 1 title keywords appear in the main content.
- !
H1 headingcritical
“Welcome to somerset.gov.uk”
The H1 shares no keywords with the title.
Fix: Use one H1 that states the page topic with its main keyword.
On WordPress: Most themes show the page title as the H1. In the editor, make sure no other block uses Heading 1 – use Heading 2 for sections.
- ✗
Heading structuremedium
35 headings for 459 words – a lot for the amount of text.
Levels are in order.
Fix: Use H2s for main sections and H3s inside them, without skipping levels.
- ✓
Text-to-code ratiolow
10% of the HTML is visible text.
AI search readiness 56%
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
1 heading(s) phrased as questions, e.g. “Is this page useful?”.
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 100%
Internal linking, anchor text and broken links.
- ✓
Internal linkinghigh
65 internal and 8 external links.
- ✓
Anchor text qualitymedium
No link text points to two different pages.
- ✓
Broken links (sample)high
Checked 12 internal link(s).
No broken links found.
Performance 47%
Speed signals from the HTML and server. Real-user Core Web Vitals load below.
- ✓
Server response (TTFB)high
443 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
58 kB of HTML.
- ✓
Compressionmedium
Compressed with br.
- ✗
Render-blocking resourceshigh
14 blocking script(s) and 14 stylesheet(s) in <head>.
Fix: Add defer to scripts, inline critical CSS and load the rest asynchronously.
- ✗
Scripts & third partiesmedium
30 script tag(s); files loaded from 9 other domain(s): cdnjs.cloudflare.com, cdn.jsdelivr.net, unpkg.com, ol-ishare.services.astuntechnology.com, labs.os.uk, fonts.googleapis.com….
Fix: Remove unused tracking and widget scripts; every third party adds connection time.
- ✗
Imagesmedium
23 image(s).
23 without width/height – can cause layout shift (CLS).
20 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.
On WordPress: Install a free image optimiser plugin (such as EWWW Image Optimizer or Smush) to shrink images and serve WebP.
- ✗
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 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
- ✓
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 23 images have alt text.
- ✓
Form labelsmedium
All 2 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.