When evaluating a website's SEO performance, four core metrics provide a quick diagnostic picture: overall health score, domain authority, keyword rankings, and organic traffic composition. Asymmetric uses specific internal benchmarks for each, and any site falling below them is considered a candidate for remediation.
A site health score (as reported by tools like Ahrefs or Semrush) reflects technical SEO hygiene — crawl errors, broken links, duplicate content, plugin conflicts, and similar issues.
"For us, anything below 98 is unacceptable." — Mark Hope
Example: A3 Environmental scored 77/100. Asymmetric identified duplicate plugins and structural issues as likely contributors.
Domain authority (scale of 1–100) reflects the strength and quality of a site's backlink profile and overall web reputation. It is a lagging indicator — it builds slowly over years and is difficult to move quickly.
Example: A3 Environmental had a DA of 20 despite being a 10-year-old, 30-person firm. Asymmetric's own site sits at DA 55.
The number of keywords for which a site ranks in Google's top 10 is a direct proxy for organic search visibility. Sudden drops in this count often signal a Google algorithm penalty, crawl errors, or content quality issues.
Example: A3 Environmental dropped from 367 top-10 keywords in May to 130 — a 65% decline. Many of their remaining #1 rankings were for ultra-low-volume terms (e.g., "transaction screen assessment," 60 searches/month nationally).
Raw traffic numbers matter less than the intent behind that traffic. Asymmetric segments traffic into three categories:
| Intent Type | Definition | Lead Generation Value |
|---|---|---|
| Informational | Users seeking to learn (students, researchers) | Low |
| Commercial | Users comparing options before buying | High |
| Transactional | Users ready to purchase or contact | Highest |
Example: A3 Environmental had ~500 organic visits/month (down from ~1,000 in May), with 95% informational intent. This means nearly all of their organic visitors were unlikely to ever become leads.
As AI-powered search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) displaces traditional link-clicking behavior, a new metric is becoming relevant: AI citations — instances where an AI tool references your content in a response.
"We're seeing websites that used to get 1,000 visits a month getting 700. But of those 700, they're much better visits. And about 20% of them are coming from AI directly." — Mark Hope
This is a reason to invest in content quality during the AI transition, not to abandon SEO — the content that gets cited by AI is the same high-quality, question-answering content that ranks well in traditional search.
When auditing a new site, assess: