How We Score Your Digital Presence
The overall visibility score is a weighted composite of 10 audit categories, each measuring a different dimension of your online presence. The model is designed to reflect what actually drives local visibility, trust, and lead generation — not vanity metrics.
Category Weights
| Category | Weight |
|---|---|
| Local SEO / GBP | 20% |
| Technical SEO | 15% |
| Content Strategy | 12% |
| Performance / UX | 10% |
| Citations / NAP | 10% |
| Reviews / Reputation | 10% |
| Schema / Entity | 8% |
| Social Presence | 5% |
| Brand Mentions | 5% |
| Competitor Benchmark | 5% |
Measures: Google Business Profile completeness, categories, reviews, photos, posts, compliance
Why: For local businesses, GBP is the single biggest visibility lever in search and maps
Measures: Crawlability, indexation, metadata, internal linking, site architecture
Why: The foundation layer — if search engines cannot crawl or index the site, nothing else matters
Measures: Service page coverage, location pages, blog depth, FAQ content, AEO readiness
Why: Drives organic rankings, topical authority, and answer-engine visibility
Measures: Page speed, Core Web Vitals, mobile responsiveness, conversion path friction
Why: Directly impacts whether visitors convert into leads or bounce
Measures: Name, address, phone consistency across directories and platforms
Why: Consistent citations reinforce local ranking signals and build trust with search engines
Measures: Review volume, rating, recency, velocity, sentiment, response quality
Why: Affects both local search rankings and whether prospects trust the business enough to make contact
Measures: Structured data markup, entity alignment across website, GBP, and citations
Why: Strengthens entity clarity for search engines and emerging answer engines
Measures: Profile completeness, branding consistency, posting activity across social platforms
Why: Supports brand trust signals and entity understanding, though lower direct ranking impact
Measures: Press coverage, association listings, unlinked mentions, authority signals
Why: Third-party validation that strengthens trust and entity recognition
Measures: Relative position vs top local competitors across all audit dimensions
Why: Contextualizes the score — shows where the business leads and where it trails
How the Overall Score Is Calculated
Each category receives a raw score from 0 to 100 based on audit findings. That raw score is then multiplied by the category's weight percentage and summed across all 10 categories to produce the overall visibility score.
Example Calculation
If Technical SEO scores 45/100 and its weight is 15%, it contributes 45 x 0.15 = 6.75 points to the overall score. Repeat for all 10 categories and sum for the final score.
Montana Athletic Club's Actual Calculation
What the Overall Score Means
How Scores Drive Recommendations
Categories with higher weights that score poorly are elevated into Priority 1 (fix-now) actions. For Montana Athletic Club, this means Technical SEO (28/100, 15% weight) and Local SEO/GBP (50/100, 20% weight) are the top priorities because they carry the most weight and have the largest gaps.
The recommended package is selected based on the overall maturity level, number of critical and high-severity issues, and the implementation scope required. With 37/100 and multiple critical issues across high-weight categories, the Growth AEO package provides the comprehensive support needed to address both urgent fixes and sustainable growth.
Prepared by GrizzledCMO | Lane Houk