Website Health: a beginner's guide

A website health check is a comprehensive automated audit that scores a single website across every dimension that matters — performance, security, accessibility, SEO, content quality, infrastructure, and uptime — and rolls the result up into a structured report a non-technical stakeholder can read. The closest familiar analogy is the multi-point inspection a mechanic does on a used car: a hundred small tests, each producing a pass-or-fail signal, all combined into a single report card with the most important issues highlighted at the top. The point of doing it as one check rather than seven is that consistency matters — running each piece on its own schedule produces a series of reports that nobody can compare against each other.

You should care because the work of "is our website healthy?" is the kind of work that gets postponed until something visibly breaks, by which point you are no longer doing prevention — you are doing emergency response. A scheduled health check on a recurring cadence (weekly, monthly) catches issues while they are still small. The trend over time also tells you whether the team's investments are actually paying off, which is the hardest question to answer in any technical discipline.

The seven dimensions every website health check rolls up:

• Performance. Core Web Vitals, response time, page weight, compression, caching.

• Security. TLS configuration, certificate hygiene, security headers, HSTS, DNSSEC.

• SEO. Title tags, meta descriptions, structured data, sitemap, robots.txt, indexability.

• Accessibility. WCAG conformance: color contrast, alt text, keyboard navigation, heading hierarchy.

• Privacy and compliance. Cookie banner, third-party trackers, privacy policy, GDPR/CCPA hygiene.

• Content hygiene. Broken links, redirect chains, image optimization, content freshness.

• Uptime and infrastructure. Is the site actually up right now, and from how many global vantage points?

Three questions a website health check answers:

• At a glance, is the website in good shape across every dimension that matters?

• Which of the dimensions is the biggest problem right now, so I know where to focus engineering effort?

• Over the last quarter, are things getting better, worse, or staying the same?

The cost of not running scheduled health checks is the slow accumulation of small problems that compound into a big problem. The fix is to schedule the check on a recurring cadence, share the report with the leadership team, and track the headline numbers on a dashboard. This is the closest thing to "preventive maintenance" the web has, and it is dramatically cheaper than the alternative.

In one sentence: Combined SEO (Search Engine Optimization), accessibility, and privacy audit

Runs SEO (Search Engine Optimization), accessibility, and privacy audits in parallel and returns a unified website health score with individual component grades. The SEO component uses on-page analysis only (title, meta, headings, content, canonical, structured data, hreflang) — for comprehensive SEO scoring including Core Web Vitals (Google Core Web Vitals), technical SEO, and content quality, use the dedicated /v1/scores/SEO endpoint. Accessibility checks are aligned with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.2 Level AA criteria, the standard referenced by the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and Section 508. Privacy analysis covers cookie compliance, consent management detection (TCF, granular consent, Google Consent Mode v2), tracker identification, CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) Do Not Sell link detection, cookie wall detection, and GDPR/CCPA readiness indicators. Handles partial failures gracefully — if one audit component or even the initial HTML (HyperText Markup Language) fetch is unreachable, available results are still returned with the overall score recalculated from successful components.

Don't worry if some of the words above are still unfamiliar — there's a plain-language glossary at the bottom of this page, and most of the terms link to their own beginner guides if you want to learn more.

Here's what's actually happening behind the scenes when you call this endpoint:

Fetches the target domain's HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and runs three parallel audits: (1) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) audit covering title tags, meta descriptions, heading hierarchy, image alt text (alternative text), link analysis, content depth, Open Graph (Open Graph protocol), and Twitter Card (Twitter (X) sharing metadata) completeness; (2) Accessibility audit checking 23 WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) criteria including ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) landmarks, meaningful HTML tags (like <button> instead of a generic <div>), form labels, heading order, skip navigation, viewport zoom, autoplay media, and focus management; (3) Privacy audit analyzing cookies (first/third-party, Secure/HttpOnly/SameSite flags), consent banner detection, privacy policy presence, and third-party tracker identification. Returns individual scores and grades per component, an overall weighted health score, and the top 5 highest-impact recommendations across all dimensions.

If you're using an AI assistant through MCP, you don't need to understand any of the technical details — the assistant calls the tool and translates the result for you.

Let's skip the marketing fluff and answer the only question that actually matters: why should you, a real human with a real to-do list, care about the Website Health tool? Here's the plain-English version, written the way you'd hear it from a friend who happens to do this for a living.

Modern website quality is measured across three pillars: search visibility (SEO (Search Engine Optimization)), legal compliance (accessibility under WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.2 / EAA / ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)), and user trust (privacy and data protection under GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) / CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act)). This endpoint provides a holistic quality assessment in a single API (Application Programming Interface) call — essential for automated deployment workflows quality gates, executive dashboards, and regulatory compliance monitoring.

Picture this in real life. Imagine a compliance officer. Here's the situation they're walking into: Monitor website accessibility compliance against WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.2 Level AA standards required by the European Accessibility Act (effective June 2025) and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). Track SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and privacy as secondary quality indicators. Without the right tool, that person would be stuck copy-pasting between five browser tabs, reading documentation written for engineers, and crossing their fingers that the answer they cobble together is correct. With the Website Health tool, the same person gets a clear answer in seconds — no spreadsheets, no guessing, no waiting for someone on the infrastructure team to free up.

Three questions this tool answers in plain English. If any of these have ever crossed your mind, the Website Health tool is built for you:

• Can I get the entire story about a domain in a single report instead of running ten checks?

• What is the single document I would share with my team, my client, or my board?

• Where should I focus my next hour of work to make the biggest difference?

You can either click the tool and get the answer yourself, or ask your AI assistant — connected through MCP (Model Context Protocol) — to ask the question for you and translate the answer into something you can paste into Slack.

Who gets the most out of this. Account executives prepping a sales call, agencies producing a monthly client deliverable, investors doing diligence, and founders building a board deck. If you see yourself in that list, this is one of the EdgeDNS tools you should bookmark today.

What happens if you skip this entirely. Skip it and you have to assemble the same snapshot by hand every time you need it — which means you stop bothering. That's why running this check — even once a month — is one of the cheapest forms of insurance you can give your domain.

If you're still on the fence about whether the Website Health tool belongs in your toolbox, this section is for you. Below you'll meet three real people — a compliance officer, a devops / QA engineer, and a digital agency — facing three real situations where this tool turns a stressful afternoon into a five-minute task. Read whichever story sounds closest to your week.

Story 1: EAA / ADA Compliance Monitoring

Imagine you're a compliance officer. Monitor website accessibility compliance against WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.2 Level AA standards required by the European Accessibility Act (effective June 2025) and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). Track SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and privacy as secondary quality indicators.

Why it matters: Automated compliance monitoring with scored results for audit documentation and regulatory reporting.

Story 2: CI/CD Quality Gate

Imagine you're a devops / QA engineer. Integrate website health checks into deployment pipelines to catch SEO (Search Engine Optimization) regressions, accessibility violations, and privacy compliance issues before they reach production.

Why it matters: Prevent deployments that degrade search rankings, break accessibility, or violate cookie consent requirements.

Story 3: Client Reporting Dashboard

Imagine you're a digital agency. Generate automated website health reports for clients showing SEO (Search Engine Optimization), accessibility, and privacy scores with actionable recommendations and grade trends over time.

Why it matters: Demonstrate measurable improvement across all quality dimensions with a single API (Application Programming Interface) integration.

Common situations across teams. Beyond the three stories above, here are the everyday workplace moments when people across the company reach for the Website Health tool — or one of the tools right next to it in this category. If any of these are on your calendar this month, that's your sign:

• Right before a sales call, to walk in already knowing the prospect.

• For a monthly client status update or executive summary.

• During M&A or investor diligence on a target domain.

• When you want to share "everything we know about this domain" in a single link.

If you can see yourself in even one of those bullets, the Website Health tool will pay for itself the first time you use it.

Still not sure? Here's the easiest test in the world. Open Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other AI assistant connected to the EdgeDNS MCP server and ask, in your own words: "Is the Website Health tool useful for my job?" The assistant will look at the tool, ask you a couple of follow-up questions about what you're trying to accomplish, and give you a straight answer in plain English. No commitment, no signup forms, no jargon.

If you've connected the EdgeDNS MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, or any other AI assistant, you don't need to write any code. Just ask in plain English:

"Use the Website Health tool to check example.com and explain anything that looks wrong in plain language."

The AI will figure out which tool to call, fill in the right parameters, run it, and then explain the result back to you. No copy-pasting between tabs. No reading raw JSON. No memorizing endpoint names.

If you're a developer and want to call the endpoint from a script or your own application, here's the simplest possible example. Replace the placeholder API key with the real one from your dashboard.

You need to provide 4 pieces of information when you call this tool. The table below lays them out side by side, with a real example for each one so you can see exactly what to send.

When you call this tool, you'll get back a JSON object with the fields below. If you're talking to it through an AI assistant, the assistant reads these for you and explains them in plain language — you don't need to memorize them.

These tools pair naturally with Website Health. If you're already running this check, the related ones often answer the next question that comes up:

• SEO Score — Composite SEO score from multiple audits

• Accessibility Audit — WCAG 2.1/2.2 accessibility analysis across 24 checks

• Privacy Audit — Cookies, trackers, and compliance analysis

If you're using an AI assistant through MCP (Model Context Protocol), you can ask it to run several of these in one go: "Check Website Health and the related tools for example.com and tell me what looks off."

If any words on this page felt like jargon, here's a plain-language version. Click any linked term to read a full beginner-friendly guide.

API (Application Programming Interface) — A way for one program to ask another program for something — like a waiter taking your order to the kitchen.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — Everything you do to help search engines like Google find, understand, and rank your website.

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) — The international standard for making websites usable by people with disabilities. Required by law in many countries.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) — Europe's privacy law. Requires websites to be transparent about what personal data they collect and how they use it.

CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) — California's privacy law. Gives California residents the right to know what personal data a company has collected about them.

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) — A set of HTML attributes that tell screen readers and other assistive technology how to interpret a web page. Important for making websites usable by people who can't see them.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) — The basic language web pages are written in. The tags you see in the source code (<h1>, <p>, <a>) are HTML.

Open Graph (Open Graph protocol) — A set of meta tags you put in your web pages so that when someone shares your link on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Slack, the right title, image, and description show up.

Twitter Card (Twitter (X) sharing metadata) — The Twitter/X equivalent of Open Graph — meta tags you add to your page so a nice card with a title, image, and description appears when someone tweets your link.

alt text (alternative text) — A short text description you add to every image on your website. Screen readers read it aloud to visitors who can't see the image, and it's also what shows up if the image fails to load.

Core Web Vitals (Google Core Web Vitals) — Google's official measurements of how fast and smooth your web pages feel — how quickly content appears, how long the page takes to become interactive, and how stable the layout is. Used as a search ranking signal.

ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) — A US civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. US courts have repeatedly ruled it applies to websites, which is why accessibility lawsuits exist.