petmd.com

Readiness by lane

Green: petmd.com. Thin bar: Pet Services peer median.

Priority fixes for petmd.com

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Enable

   XML sitemap discoverable

   Observed: No sitemap was listed in robots.txt or found at /sitemap.xml.

   Why it matters: A sitemap helps search engines find new and updated pages, especially on large or frequently updated sites.

   What to do: Generate an XML sitemap of canonical URLs, reference it in robots.txt and submit it in Google Search Console.

   On WordPress: WordPress has generated a basic sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml since 5.5; SEO plugins can replace it.

   81% of Pet Services peers do this. Limit: Only the standard location was requested, once, at the time of the check.

   Guide: XML Sitemap Guide: Include Only URLs You Stand Behind

2. Priority 2 · Accelerate

   Static files cached for 30 days or more

   Observed: A same-site stylesheet or script was cacheable for 4 days, short of the 30-day benchmark.

   What to do: Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.

   On WordPress: Caching plugins or your host can set long browser cache lifetimes for theme and plugin assets.

   54% of Pet Services peers do this.

   Guide: Browser Caching Guide for Website Owners

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 60 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   On WordPress: WordPress has supported WebP uploads since 5.8 and AVIF since 6.5; image plugins or the host can convert existing images.

   47% of Pet Services peers do this.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: Strict-Transport-Security was sent with a max-age of 1 days, below the one-year benchmark.

   What to do: Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.

   On Next.js: Add the header in the headers() option of next.config.js for all routes.

   30% of Pet Services peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

What petmd.com already does well

Practices fewer than half of Pet Services peers use.

• Nameservers spread across providersNameservers spread across Akamai Edge DNS and NS1.7.9% of peers
• CAA records limit who can issue certificatesCAA limits issuance to amazonaws.com, digicert.com.19% of peers
• No render-blocking scripts in <head>Head scripts load without blocking.31% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.petmd.com/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

DigiCert, 198-day validity, expiring 2027-04-15

CDN or edge

Akamai

Platform or framework

WordPress, Next.js

DNS operators

Akamai Edge DNS, NS1

HSTS

max-age 1 days, preload

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

137 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

60 (jpg 33, png 24, svg 12, gif 3)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Pet Services sites

• akc.org65
• freekibble.com68
• gooddog.com65
• kiwoko.com66
• zooplus.pl69

Pet Services readiness benchmark