Paid plans, Starter and above
Website experience, accessibility and technical health
A brand can only be understood if it can be read. This category covers the mechanics: structure, metadata, hygiene and accessibility.
What we check
- Page structure, heading hierarchy and semantic markup
- Title and description metadata quality per page
- Broken links, redirects and orphaned pages
- Accessibility fundamentals: contrast, alt text, focus states, labels
- Mobile rendering and layout integrity
Why it matters commercially
Technical defects cap everything above them. Inaccessible pages exclude customers and create legal exposure; unreadable structure means crawlers and AI systems index the wrong parts of your message.
Example findings
- Six pages share an identical title tag, so search shows the same label for different intents.
- Primary CTA fails contrast requirements at the documented brand colour pairing.
The checklist we run
12 fixed checks. Each one is graded pass, needs attention, failed or not applicable, with the fact we observed printed beside the verdict. The category score is the weighted pass rate of these checks — nothing is invented.
Title tags present and sized
Every key page has a unique title of roughly 50-60 characters.
high impact · low effort
Meta descriptions present and sized
Every key page has a unique description of roughly 120-160 characters.
medium impact · low effort
Single meaningful H1 per page
One H1 per page that states the page's subject.
medium impact · low effort
Heading hierarchy is coherent
H2-H6 nest logically and describe the content beneath them.
medium impact · low effort
Images carry alt text
Meaningful images have descriptive alt attributes.
medium impact · low effort
HTTPS enforced
The site serves over HTTPS and redirects HTTP.
high impact · low effort
Canonical tags set
Key pages declare a canonical URL and avoid duplicate paths.
medium impact · low effort
Robots.txt and XML sitemap
Both exist, are reachable and do not block key pages.
high impact · low effort
Language declared
The html element declares a lang attribute.
low impact · low effort
Responsive viewport set
A viewport meta tag is present and the layout adapts.
high impact · low effort
Pages are not visibly bloated
No oversized uncompressed images or obvious render blockers.
medium impact · medium effort
No broken internal links found
Internal links resolve to live pages.
medium impact · low effort
Where the evidence comes from
Google PageSpeed Insights
Measured performance, accessibility, technical SEO and best-practice scores on mobile, plus Largest Contentful Paint, layout shift and blocking time.
Your live site, fetched directly
robots.txt directives per AI and search crawler, sitemap presence and size, llms.txt, structured data types, page titles, descriptions, headings and image alt text. No key required, so this source is always available.
A crawl of your actual pages
Up to fifteen real pages fetched live: response status, title tag and length, meta description, H1 count, canonical tag and duplicated titles, plus a sample of internal links checked for 404s and server errors.
If a source is unreachable we mark it unavailable and exclude it. A blocked source lowers data coverage, never your score.
What the deep dive adds
On any paid plan you can run this category on its own. The deep dive re-reads the pages we retrieved with only these 12 checks in front of it, returns a verdict page by page, prints the measured data behind each finding, and orders the fixes by impact and effort. It uses one audit from your monthly allowance.
What you need to provide
Nothing beyond your website address. This category is scored from public data we can retrieve ourselves.
Industry brand audits
See how this section is scored for your sector: mental health & therapy practices brand audit, professional services brand audit, accounting & bookkeeping firms brand audit, architecture & design studios brand audit. Browse all industries.
Read more on this
How Technical Crawl Barriers Suppress Brand Visibility
Technical crawl barriers, rendering bottlenecks, and orphaned pages suppress brand discovery. Learn how architectural crawl issues block indexation and AI visibility.
Supported Platforms and Technical Requirements for Your Audit
Learn the supported CMS platforms, firewall rules, SPA rendering requirements, and technical prerequisites needed to run a comprehensive Brand Health Audit.
Free vs Paid Brand Health Audit: What Each Tier Examines
Compare the free Brand Health Audit scan against paid tiers. Learn what each level evaluates across messaging, UX, technical SEO, AEO, and remediation outputs.
The other scored categories
Brand foundation
Reputation & social
Website experience
Paid media
Local presence
Editorial policy
Questions
Website experience & tech health: common questions
Is this the same as a technical SEO crawl?
It overlaps, but the lens is brand experience: measured page performance, accessibility, structured data and whether the site renders content crawlers and assistants can read. We report the measured numbers from Google's own tooling next to each verdict.
Where do the performance numbers come from?
Google PageSpeed Insights, measured on mobile at the time of your audit. If the measurement fails or is rate limited we mark it unavailable rather than estimating.
Do you install anything on our site?
No. Nothing is installed and no analytics access is needed.
Which plan includes this category?
It is scored on paid plans from Starter upward. On the free scan it is shown locked, with the number of checks behind it, rather than partially guessed at.
What does the deep dive add over the overview report?
The overview scores this category in one pass over your site. The deep dive re-reads the same pages against all 12 checks on their own, returns a page-by-page verdict, prints the measured data behind each finding, and orders the fixes by impact and effort. It uses one audit from your monthly allowance.
Want it done for you?
The audit tells you what to fix. If you'd rather not do the fixing, The Branded Agency can take it from here.
Audit-holder rate
Copywriting rewrite
We take the findings from your audit and rewrite the messaging across your site: one clear promise, consistent supporting messages, and copy that search and answer systems can quote correctly.
Start the rewrite
Work with us directly
Strategic brand engagement
A strategist-led engagement that fixes the brand underneath the copy: positioning, story, personality and the message architecture every channel runs on.
Book your strategy call
The report identifies the signals. We find the causes.
Diagnosis is free. Fixing the cause is what our brand strategy and marketing services are for — see the results across our client work.