Top 11 SEO Tools for Auditing

If your website isn’t properly optimized for search results, you’re losing a lot of traffic from search engines, as well as prospective consumers. To preserve the long-term success of your site’s performance and keep your SEO strategy up to date, you must do SEO audits regularly. If you use SEO tools for auditing, it will make things smoother and more efficient.

What is an SEO Audit?

A search engine optimization (SEO) audit is a process where you analyze different aspects of a site/page that influence its organic search performance. This helps you to understand how your website’s visibility aligns with recommended internet practices. An SEO audit can check many aspects, some may choose to check over a hundred issues. 

However, the issues are often broadly categorized into three types, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. You should try to cover all three categories during an audit. Once the problems reveal, you can try to fix them and start ranking where you belong.

How to SEO Audit a Website:

You can do an SEO audit in two ways:

• You can do it manually by following a checklist step by step.
• You can choose a good SEO auditing tool where you can simply enter your URL and wait for the results.

We would recommend that you make use of SEO tools for auditing. It is not mandatory for you to use a tool but doing it manually will be a very time-consuming job and you would likely miss out on identifying many of the problems.

How to Choose the Right SEO Tools for Auditing for You:

Selecting the correct tool might be tough as so many different services, firms, and SEO tools for auditing are available today. In the end, the instrument you pick will be determined by your expertise and experience, as well as your budget and intended application. 

However, your SEO tools for auditing have some critical characteristics and capabilities. So you should take a few minutes to read our article on picking the best SEO tools for auditing your website.

1. Detailed Reports

The best SEO tools for auditing would analyze your website thoroughly and offer you clear results and practical recommendations for improving your online visibility and search engine ranking outcomes. It would be a plus if the site audit report includes the site score as well as a downloadable PDF. I usually favor the one that explains the topics in simple terms and provides specific descriptions.

2. Mobile-friendliness

Google search has no exception to the growing use of mobile devices practically everywhere. When we look at the amount of Google searches per device, for example, mobile devices accounted for 63% of Google’s US organic search traffic (Merkleinc, 2019). Detecting embedded items that aren’t compatible across all devices is an important thing to verify. All mobile devices should be able to see your website. It’s also a good idea to improve speed and touchscreen responsiveness.

3. Site Crawl

Crawling, indexing, and duplicate content identification issues can all slow down your site’s performance. As a result, selecting SEO tools for auditing that can discover duplicate content, broken pages and links, HTTP and HTTPS issues, and non-indexable sites is critical.

4. Syncing with Google Analytics

When it comes to reporting, being able to sync SEO tools for auditing with Google Analytics (GA) is quite beneficial. Switching between numerous social media accounts, social media analytics tools, Google Analytics, and SEO tools for auditing should always be a part of your report-writing process. If you come across a tool that helps you to sync all of these, take advantage of it!

Most auditing tools are unlikely to be as comprehensive as google analytics when it comes to probing data and monitoring conversions. But being able to see at a glance the traffic growth, new visitors, behaviors, geography, page views, and source domains are all crucial indicators from an SEO standpoint.

Also Read: Simplified SEO for Successful Digital Marketing

5. Keyword Tracking and Analysis

Because keyword rankings have a direct impact on your site’s overall search optimization, one of the finest things an ideal tool can do is watch your website’s keywords and search phrases. When selecting an SEO auditing tool for your website, it is a must-have function.

Some technologies can only detect a small number of keywords on your website. These are ineffective and give a misleading impression. You’ll need a platform that can track your progress over time, compare your keyword efforts to those of other websites, and provide you with a daily report on keyword performance.

A decent program should be able to track at least 250 keywords to be effective. Other factors to consider include keyword position, positioning over time, ranking list, competition research, keyword movement, and keyword suggestions depending on your website.

6. Usability

Although personal choice will play a big role in usability, certain programs can be scary owing to their sophisticated layout. Choose a tool with a user-friendly, clean, and straightforward interface that has been created with the user in mind. Look for assistance buttons that are located on-site and are easily accessible. Are the tool’s functionality and features well-explained? 

Avoid gadgets that need you to seek assistance through an online chat service. Pick a tool that makes it simple to see what needs to be done and what the top priorities are. Remember that the goal of SEO tools for auditing is to assist you with your SEO efforts, so you should be able to quickly and easily identify jobs, difficulties, and progress.

7. Pricing

Different tools will have different pricing for various features. Some tools will be less expensive but will not have enough of the features that you need.  Other tools will have the features that you need and a lot more and they will be very expensive. Some tools will have different pricing options depending on how many websites and pages you need to crawl and how often you need to do it. You need to choose a tool that provides the right balance between cost and the features that you need.

Must Check: SEO Skills for Different Types of Content

SEO Tools for Auditing

1. Google Search Console

Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, this tool provides a variety of search performance information straight from the source. So much so that you can even go back in time and detect SEO concerns from data spanning more than 16 months.

A fast glance at the insights, in particular, should give you a clear understanding of your site’s indexation and accessibility concerns. Then there’s Google Search Console, which gives you information about your structured data, HTML, Accelerated Mobile Pages, broken links, and content quality.

• Monitoring, testing, and tracking your AMP sites are components of Google Search Console.
• Obtaining crawl information from Googlebot directly.
• Failed indexing efforts and 404 or 500 error pages are highlighted.
• Offering a keyword performance analysis tool for content.
• Assisting in determining the effectiveness of your keywords.
• All of Google’s indexed pages are revealed.
• Creating audit reports that are tailored to the needs of the client.
• Sending email warnings as soon as concerns on your site are discovered by Google.
• Examining the coverage of your indexes.
• Providing information on search terms that lead to your website’s traffic.
• Taking care of concerns with the user experience.

Pricing: Google Search Console is fully free for everyone.

2. WordCounter

You could choose to use the free WordCounter tool for content optimization. It’s very useful for determining the word count and keyword density on your web pages. In essence, WordCounter saves your time and effort of manually counting the words.

Simply input the URL of any web page, and the tool will instantly create data on the number of words, the most prevalent terms, and the keyword density associated with each. You can then quickly compare your site to the top-ranking pages and utilize the information gained to improve the quality of your content.

The Following are some of the Characteristics of WordCounter:

• Keeping track of a page’s keyword density.
• Creating a list of the most frequently used terms on a page.
• Counting the exact number of words on a page.
• Pricing: WordCounter is free for use.

3. Bing Webmaster

Bing is a search engine like Google but is commonly overlooked, yet it might be a valuable source of relevant traffic. Bing Webmaster Tools is a Microsoft platform that allows you to monitor and control the performance of your website in search engines. You can use the Site Scan tool at any moment to scan your site and check for common SEO issues.

The Bing Site Scan tool can be used to start scans from your Webmaster account. You have the option of having the program crawl your site or scan your sitemap. After you finish a scan, you may examine the findings on the comprehensive reports page. It gives you a rapid summary of important information including scan status, the number of pages scanned, faults, and warnings.

Following that, the report lists all of the faults, errors, and warnings found during the crawl. You can view the overall number of pages affected by each error, and you can see the exact pages affected by clicking on the issue. Bing Webmaster Tools doesn’t offer as much detail as other SEO tools for auditing, and you can’t plan or automate your audits.

Pricing: Bing Webmaster Tools is available for free. After you sign up, you can link your website and begin tracking the SEO health of your site right away.

4. GTmetrix

GTmetrix isn’t a website crawler in the traditional sense. It’s more of a testing tool that evaluates the performance of your web pages and provides you with rapid insights into the technical health of your site. After a brief test, you’ll be able to see your page loading speeds, page size, and performance aspects such as cache, image scaling, and scripting. GTmetrix covers roughly 25 SEO criteria in total. The suggestions might help you detect any issues that are influencing the performance of your web pages.

The Following are Some of the Characteristics of GTmetrix:

• In a real-time filmstrip view, you can see how long it takes for your website to load.
• To check loading difficulties, you can slow down playback up to four times the original pace.
• Over 20 different mobile devices and versions were used to simulate page performance.
• Web Vitals, Page Timings, Page Size & Requesting Counts, and Performance/Structure Scores are four graphs that display performance information.
• Metrics for user experience are being prioritized.
• Largest Contentful Paint, Total Blocking Time, and Cumulative Layout Shift are some of its performance milestones.
• Using Google Lighthouse to evaluate a website.

Pricing: They have four tiers, basic, solo, starter, and growth. The basic is free forever, and the solo package starts at $128 yearly.

Here is a Guide to SEO Marketing

5. SEO Site Checkup

SEO Site Checkup is a set of tools for evaluating backlinks, building sitemaps, spying on rivals, monitoring keywords, tracking regional performance, and assessing typical SEO errors that are used by over 5,000 webmasters. Problems with structured data, canonical tags, SPF records, mobile usability, robots.txt, meta descriptions, meta titles, page keywords, headers, JavaScript and CSS, website loading times, and more can be discovered.

• The SEO Site Checkup will provide an assessment of your site’s loading speeds and uptime, among other things. Taking into mind mobile usability, loading performance, and security criteria for your site.
• Detecting typical SEO problems.
• Providing information on the number and quality of backlinks leading to your website.
• Providing you with step-by-step instructions for correcting each SEO issue.
• Keeps track of weekly changes in over 30 SEO factors automatically.

Pricing: They have three tiers, basic, webmaster, and professional. The basic package starts at $26.95 per annum.

6. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Unlike the majority of SEO tools on the market, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is not a cloud-based application. It instead comes in the form of an installable application that crawls through your website, pulling on-site data, assessing SEO issues, and analyzing the findings in real-time.

It can easily scrape data from websites’ HTML, detect server issues and broken links, evaluate meta descriptions and page titles, flag banned URLs, and discover temporary and permanent redirection for both digital marketers and website owners.

Pricing: The free version has a crawl limit of 500 URLs. For unlimited crawls, the paid version will cost you €185 per year.

7. Woorank

Woorank is a fantastic SEO auditing tool for examining websites, and it’s ideal for website owners, SEO firms, digital marketing firms, and B2B marketing firms. It does comprehensive testing of On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, broken links, backlinks, and faulty web pages, as well as making recommendations to improve the site’s visibility and ranking.

It also has both free and commercial versions, as well as the ability to obtain audit results in PDF format. The Woorank reports are simple to comprehend, and people working with SEO may quickly resolve any difficulties with the website.

Pricing: it starts at US$53.25 when billed yearly.

8. Moz

Moz offers a website crawler, which assists webmasters in identifying significant website flaws, HTTP status codes, and other SEO data for website auditing. This tool also assists you in identifying duplicate content on your website, title tag issues, server redirection, and other significant variables that influence your website’s crawlability and indexability.

In essence, you’ll have the tools and information you’ll need to identify SEO issues on your site, measure growth, optimize, and create reports. The Crawl Test tool will evaluate up to 3,000 links and send you an email report with detailed information for each page.

Moz describes each problem, its possible influence on your SEO, and how to resolve it. You may also disregard difficulties, mark them as repaired, and retrace your steps to see how far you’ve come.

Pricing: Moz Pro has 4 pricing editions, from $99 to $599. A free trial of Moz Pro is also available.

9. SEMrush

SEMrush’s Site Audit tool scans through your web pages to identify flaws with your AMP implementation, JavaScript and CSS, internal linking, HTTPS security protocols, meta tags, SEO content, website crawlability, and page loading times when it comes to SEO auditing.

Some of the Other Features of SEMrush Include:

• Scanning websites for over 130 technical and SEO issues is another capability of SEMrush.
• Thematic reports are being run.
• Using complex filters to sort pages and audit results.
• Errors, Warnings, and Notices are the three categories of SEO concerns, based on their severity.
• Examining the findings of several SEO audits by comparing crawls.
• Getting Google Analytics to work with you.
• Insights on the resolution that can be used.
• The findings of an SEO audit are displayed in easy-to-understand graphics.

Pricing: They have three tiers, pro, guru, and business. The pro version is $1199.4 if you choose to pay annually.

Recommended Read: SEO Courses in India

10. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another package that bills itself as an all-in-one SEO toolbox, including more than five items. The software includes a Site Explorer, a Keyword Explorer, a Rank Tracker, a Content Explorer, and a Site Audit tool. All of the SEO audit magic happens in the Site Audit Tool.

External page problems, JavaScript and CSS resources, broken pages and redirects, non-follow links and orphan pages, Hreflang tags, duplicate pages, low-word-count articles, incomplete or missing social tags, poorly-optimized HTML tags, and page performance concerns will all be discussed.

For their lite service, Ahrefs only refreshes your rank tracking reports once every seven days. For their normal plan, it’s once every five days.

Pricing: Ahrefs has four different plans, ranging from $99/month to $999/month.

11. GrowthBar

GrowthBar is a set of tools for bloggers, agencies, and content teams to boost their SEO. GrowthBar may be the tool for you if you’re a blogger or part of a marketing team implementing an SEO strategy. GrowthBar provides a lot of functionality, but content auditing is where it truly shines. Simply type in a question and your blog article will appear. 

All factors of the blog post that may be holding it back, such as word count, headline count, picture count, external links, internal links, readability, NLP keywords, and more, will be highlighted by GrowthBar. GrowthBar uses correlational SEO, which means it scrapes the top articles from Google’s search engine results page to discover which components are most crucial for ranking. 

GrowthBar’s clever algorithms take into account a variety of elements in the SERP and provide a user-friendly dashboard and roadmap for enhancing your blog content.

Pricing: You can try all of the tools for free for five days, then pay $29 a month for premium services including keyword research, backlink research, and other AI content generation functions.

FAQs

Q1. What are the three types of SEO?

SEO is often categorized into three types which are On-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO  

Q2. Which SEO tool is best?

There is no single tool that would be the best for everyone. You need to choose one per your needs, budget, and comfortability of use.

Q3. What is an SEO audit report?

SEO auditing tools can generate a report at the click of a button. This report will contain the SEO analysis of your site in an easy-to-understand format and may even be downloadable as a pdf. This is called an SEO audit report.

Conclusion

Because each of the tools we’ve discussed has its distinct twists, I highly suggest you use many at once. For example, you might run your site through three or four crawlers, evaluate your pages using on-page checkers, or use SEMrush, or WordCounter to improve the quality of your material. It’s all up to you. Finally, using various tools results in more precise SEO assessments. And, fortunately for you, many of the top SEO tools for auditing are available for free.