Getting started with DeskSEO: first check, free account, reading the score

DeskSEO is built around a simple loop: check a site, see what is wrong and how to fix it, then let DeskSEO keep checking so you hear about new problems before they cost traffic. This guide covers the first steps: running a free check, reading the score, creating an account and adding your first domain.

Step 1: run a free check

Open the SEO checker and enter a domain (example.com) or a full page address (https://example.com/products/boots/). Press the button and wait up to about a minute. The checker fetches the live site the way a crawler would and measures 20 technical criteria:

Group	What is measured
Access and redirects	The page answers 200 over HTTPS, http redirects to https with a 301, www and non-www merge into one host, redirect chains stay at one hop
Speed and weight	Time to first byte from the checker, HTML compression, HTML size after compression
On-page tags	Title, meta description, H1, canonical, meta robots, viewport, lang attribute, image alt text, Open Graph tags and whether the share image loads
Can Google read it	robots.txt rules for Googlebot, sitemap validity and host, JSON-LD syntax, a sample of internal links

The weights and thresholds for every criterion are public on How scoring works. Nothing is hidden behind a proprietary formula, which means you can always see exactly why a site scored what it did.

The free checker has fair-use limits per visitor to keep it fast for everyone. Results are cached for a short time, so asking again within minutes returns the same check.

Step 2: read the result

The result page has three layers.

• The score out of 100 with a band: 90 and above is Good, 75 to 89 Fair, 50 to 74 Needs work, below 50 Poor. The score is the weighted sum of all criteria, so the biggest items (HTTPS access, indexability, canonical, sitemap) move it most.
• Issues by severity: critical, warnings and minor. Critical issues can stop pages from being found or indexed at all, such as a noindex on the home page or an HTTPS error. Warnings weaken performance. Minor issues are worth fixing when convenient.
• A fix for each issue, written for a site owner, with a link to the guide that explains the topic in depth. For example, a canonical problem links to the canonical tags guide, a sitemap problem to XML sitemaps that work.

Work from the top: critical issues first, then warnings. A site that fixes its critical issues often gains more than all the minor fixes put together. If the score is lower than you expected, the score dropped guide walks through reading the issue list in the right order.

An example first result

Suppose a hypothetical bakery's site scores 68, "Needs work", with one critical issue, three warnings and four minor issues. The critical issue says the www and non-www versions both return 200, so search engines see two copies of the site. The warnings are a missing meta description on the home page, a time to first byte of about 1.2 seconds, and no JSON-LD structured data. The minor issues include a title slightly over 65 characters and a few images without alt text.

The order of work is clear. The duplicate host is fixed first with a single redirect rule at the host or CDN; the redirects guide shows how. The meta description takes five minutes. Structured data for the bakery as a LocalBusiness takes perhaps half an hour. Response time may need a caching plugin or a conversation with the host. After the first two fixes and a re-check, the score typically jumps noticeably, because host consolidation carries a large weight.

Sharing the result

If someone else maintains the site, send them the checker address for the domain (they can run the same check themselves) together with the specific fix text for each issue; each fix is written to be actionable without SEO background. For agencies and freelancers, the result is a quick, neutral starting point for a conversation with a new client, before a full audit. Run the check again after the changes to confirm them.

Step 3: check your AI bot rules

While you are there, run the AI bot checker on the same domain. It reads your robots.txt and shows, crawler by crawler, whether AI search agents and AI training crawlers are allowed, and whether an llms.txt file exists. Many sites block AI search crawlers by accident through copied rule lists; the AI crawlers guide explains the difference between search and training agents.

Step 4: create a free account

Go to the sign-in page and enter your email. DeskSEO sends a one-time sign-in link; open it on the same device within 30 minutes and press the confirmation button. The same link creates the account if you are new. There is no password to remember, and clicking the link confirms your email address.

New accounts start on the Free plan:

• One domain, re-checked every week, with score history.
• Email alerts when the score drops or a new problem appears.
• A few on-demand checks per day.
• Search Console data for the last 28 days and top queries, once connected.
• AI visibility runs paid per question from a prepaid balance.

Paid plans add more domains, daily checks and fuller Search Console history; see pricing.

Step 5: add your first domain

Open Your sites, type the domain and press Add site. DeskSEO checks it immediately and schedules the next check. Domains are tracked without the www. prefix and without paths: www.example.com/shop becomes example.com, and the checks look at how the site handles both hosts.

The site page then shows the latest score, the number of critical issues, warnings and minor issues (each one clickable to the list), the next scheduled check, a chart of the score over time, and an alerts section. Every point on the chart opens that check's full result, so you can see what changed between two dates.

Step 6: optional next steps

• Verify the site and connect Search Console to see clicks, impressions and average position per query, day by day; see connecting Search Console.
• Measure AI visibility by asking an AI the questions your customers ask; see choosing questions.
• Check your alert settings in Account: alerts are on by default and can be switched off.

What happens to your data

The free checker does not need an account or an email. It keeps results for a short time so that repeated requests do not hit your server again, and it stores visitor IP addresses only in hashed form for fair-use limits. With an account, DeskSEO stores your domains, check history and alert settings, and, if you connect them, Search Console data and AI visibility answers for your sites. The checks only read public pages, robots.txt and sitemaps, exactly as a search engine crawler would; they never log in or submit forms. The about page describes who runs DeskSEO.

What DeskSEO does not do

It is worth being clear about scope. DeskSEO checks technical health at the domain and page level, pulls your own Search Console data, and measures AI mentions. It does not crawl every page of large sites, track rankings from third-party data, or report backlinks. For a full site crawl or backlink analysis, use dedicated tools alongside it; the audit checklist lists what a complete audit covers.

A ten-minute start

1. Run the SEO checker on your domain and note the score and critical issues.
2. Run the AI bot checker on the same domain.
3. Create a free account with your email link.
4. Add the domain under Your sites.
5. Fix the first critical issue, then press Check now to confirm.