A wise person once stated, “We’re all in the same space—the space for improvement.” This rings especially true for websites. While we should always be exploring ways to enhance their effectiveness, it’s not always simple to identify problem areas or growth opportunities on our own.

Image source This is where website grader tools prove invaluable, as they conduct evaluations for you and generate actionable reports based on their findings. In this article, we’ll examine 11 free website graders that assess content, search engine optimization, accessibility, and other website aspects, including marketing.

SEO Website Graders

SEO is a multifaceted field. Reaching Google’s first page and maintaining that position demands considerable effort. For those who aren’t SEO experts, accurately gauging your performance can be challenging. And even for the seasoned professionals, having tools to validate your efforts and ensure you’ve covered all bases is beneficial.

1. Google PageSpeed Insights

Page speed plays a crucial role in technical SEO. Visitors are impatient; if your site is slow, they’ll simply leave and seek alternatives. This is where Google PageSpeed Insights comes into play. It’s a page speed grader that evaluates your mobile and desktop sites, assigning scores based on the quantity and severity of performance issues, including your Core Web Vitals—metrics introduced in spring 2021 with the page experience update.

The report highlights areas for Core Web Vitals improvement and suggests opportunities for optimization, such as:

• Compressing text
• Optimizing image sizes
• Minifying CSS
• Improving JavaScript execution time
• Ensuring text visibility during Webfont loading

Some page speed optimization techniques are beginner-friendly. However, for others, seeking expert assistance might yield optimal results.

2. LocaliQ Free Website Grader

While important, Core Web Vitals represent only a fraction of the numerous Google ranking factors, both technical and content-related, that demand optimization for increased traffic. Although comprehensive SEO and keyword research tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can aid in optimizing your SEO content, their reports are extensive and require more than just basic SEO knowledge to decipher. LocaliQ’s Free Website Grader conducts an immediate audit of your website, evaluating a combination of technical and content SEO elements, including but not limited to:

• Meta tags
• Word count
• Broken links
• Backlinks
• Code quality
• Image optimization
• Sitemap
• Site security (SSL certificate)
• Mobile-friendliness The report prioritizes findings, explains them in plain language, and provides clickable results with explanations and action items.

Moreover, this tool assesses your social media, local, and advertising performance, offering a comprehensive view of your online presence and enabling score comparisons with other business websites.

Try LocaliQ’s Free Website Grader and see how you compare to your competitors. LocaliQ also offers a free business listings grader to help you maintain consistent listings, which benefits SEO!

3. WebFX SEO Checker

WebFX’s SEO Checker evaluates your website based on a comparable set of factors, including:

• Site speed
• URL optimization
• Meta tags
• User and SEO-friendliness of your content
• Image optimization
• Website backend code
• Internal links
• Site security
• Mobile-friendliness
• Crawlability and indexation Based on these criteria, it assigns your site an SEO score ranging from zero to 100, with 70 to 100 being the target range.

The comprehensive report then offers actionable suggestions, many of which can be implemented immediately.

Website Content Graders

Next, we have website content graders. Instead of assessing your content against direct SEO ranking factors, these graders focus on the readability of your text. Readability affects user engagement, visit duration, and return rates—all of which influence your ranking.

4. VT Writer

VT Writer (formerly Clarity Grader) allows you to upload and analyze documents or text snippets. Even better, simply enter your domain for a complete page or website analysis. It helps you create clearer, more readable content by identifying:

• Lengthy sentences
• Passive voice usage
• Average sentence length
• Two types of readability scores (Flesch and LIX)
• Reading grade level For easier implementation, VT Writer highlights the specific content related to each recommendation, eliminating the need to search your text. Additionally, it often provides specific improvement suggestions.

While registration is required, the free account grants insights on up to 10,000 web pages or documents for 14 days.

5. Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor isn’t your typical website or marketing grader where you input a URL for an audit report. Designed for optimizing individual pages, it provides a readability rating based on your content’s reading grade level. More specifically, this rating considers:

• Adverb usage, often replaceable with more impactful alternatives.
• Opportunities to replace passive voice with active voice.
• The presence of complex phrases that can be simplified.
• The number of hard-to-read and very hard-to-read sentences, aiding in clarity optimization.

While the desktop version of Hemingway has a one-time fee, the web app is entirely free to use.

Accessibility Website Graders

Regardless of who visits your site—including individuals with disabilities—everyone should have a positive, seamless experience. How can you ensure this? Accessibility graders are here to help!

6. Accessibility Test

Accessibility Test lets you test individual pages or entire websites. It analyzes and scores both using thousands of tests from four leading accessibility tools and resources. It identifies and provides recommendations for various issues, including:

• Missing alt text for images
• Empty headers
• Non-descriptive link text
• Missing form labels
• Low contrast between background and foreground colors

It even provides context examples to pinpoint these issues on your site or page for quick resolution.

7. SortSite

The free version of SortSite checks 10 pages and images, making it ideal for small business websites. While technically assessing browser compatibility, search engine issues, W3C standards compliance, and usability, its accessibility checker is exceptional. It identifies:

• Level A issues rendering a site unusable for some, like links without underlines.
• Level AA issues significantly hindering usability for some, such as low contrast between background and foreground colors.
• Level AAA issues impacting site usability, such as non-descriptive link text.

The report explains how to address issues and their locations on your site. Admittedly, some technical language, particularly regarding CSS, might be challenging for non-experts. However, the inclusion of plain English explanations proves beneficial.

Other Stellar Website Graders

Your website’s purpose extends beyond aesthetics; it’s a cornerstone of your business growth strategy. Here are some more website graders to help determine if your current site fulfills this crucial role.

8. Nibbler

Nibbler is a free website grader providing an overall user experience (UX) grade, along with 4 specialized grades focusing on:

• Accessibility: Mobile and disabled user accessibility.
• Experience: User-friendliness of your web experience.
• Marketing: Effectiveness of your site marketing and social media promotion.
• Technology: Website design and build quality based on factors like images, headings, internal links, etc. Each section expands to reveal more information, including individual test rankings based on specific metrics like Facebook activity, coding errors, site printability, and more.

Nibbler is a valuable website grader tool for identifying areas for improvement, offering a colorful, in-depth, and free report.

9. DareBoost

DareBoost is another robust grader tool providing one of the most comprehensive 100% free reports (no email or free trial needed). Offering an overall quality score alongside individual scores and data, it reveals how your site measures up against best practices for:

• Security
• Accessibility
• Compliance
• Quality
• SEO
• Various other factors, including browser rendering It then outlines key focus areas, prioritizing tasks and explaining best practice implementation.

Unlike other tools, DareBoost simulates your website’s performance across different geographical locations and devices, enabling a well-rounded, comprehensive optimization approach. This ensures a positive experience for all users, leading to a stronger web presence and a higher return on your marketing investments.

10. HubSpot Website Grader

HubSpot Website Grader assigns your website an overall score out of 100, accompanied by individual grades for:

• Performance: Page speed, page size, image size, redirects, etc.
• Search engine optimization: Permission to index, meta descriptions, description link text, etc.
• Mobile-friendliness: Font size and tap targets.
• Security: HTTPS and secure JavaScript libraries. The personalized report breaks down each category, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement, along with actionable advice. It even directs you to concise, free lessons on enhancing specific aspects of site performance, including ranking.

With its clear language and straightforward reports, HubSpot’s website grader is perfect for non-experts seeking easily understandable insights and recommendations.

11. W3C Validator

Lastly, we have a tool for the more technically inclined. The W3C Validator tool identifies errors and warnings in your HTML code, providing line-by-line breakdowns of issues like:

• Missing attributes
• Misuse of labels
• Unnecessary attributes
• Missing headings While not intended for non-coders to implement fixes themselves, it offers a starting point for scoping your project and hiring someone with the necessary coding expertise.

A Website Grader for Every Need

With free graders covering everything from content and SEO to accessibility and marketing, pinpointing areas for website improvement has never been easier. To recap, here are the top free website graders currently available:

1. Google PageSpeed Insights
2. LOCALiQ Website Grader
3. SEO Checker by WebFX
4. VT Writer
5. Hemingway Editor
6. Accessibility Test
7. SortSite
8. Nibbler
9. DareBoost
10. HubSpot Website Grader
11. W3C Validator Utilize these tools as guides to implement changes today that will elevate your website’s ranking, traffic, and conversions tomorrow. In fact, why not give LOCALiQ’s website grader a go right away? Within minutes, you’ll have a clearer understanding of how your site and online presence compare to competitors and how to gain or strengthen your competitive edge!