Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ongoing, dynamic process as the internet is also dynamic and ever-changing.
You’ll need to assess and analyze the current state and progress of your SEO efforts as you progress through your SEO journey – audit tools enable you to do this.
SEO audit tools automatically check and audit your website and its pages, analyzing numerous technical and on-page variables to create actionable reports that you can follow to enhance SEO.
The great thing about an SEO audit is that it can be carried out on existing websites to instantly guide you towards problematic pages that need immediate attention.
Audits can also be scheduled to track changes in site errors and technical SEO performance over time.
There are two main types of SEO audit:
1) Technical SEO Audit
A technical SEO audit checks your site and pages for technical SEO errors and insights. Technical SEO audits check all typical errors such as redirects, canonical tags, HTTPS certificates, schema, page and content crawlability, and mobile optimization.
Technical SEO audit tools will also check page speed so you can tune and optimize your content for quicker load times.
A technical SEO audit will instantly highlight and guide you towards elements of your page that can be fixed right now for SEO gains.
2) On-Page/Content Audit
Audit tools can also check your site content and on-page SEO, including keywords, page structure, meta tags, and user experience (UX). These audit tools can suggest new keywords for existing content, generate content ideas, and highlight content gaps.
Content audit tools can even suggest new headings for existing content and highlight content that can be extended and improved to yield a better ranking.
In essence, SEO audit tools focus on both the technical and content aspects of your site.
They act as a critical eye cast over your site, its design, structure, back-end, and front-end with regard to content and UX.
Why Run an SEO Audit?
SEO audits paint a complete page-by-page picture of your site’s SEO characteristics and qualities.
They’re excellent to execute after a major content creation drive, after making changes to your website, migrating your content management system, or practically any other major site change.
But also, they’re useful to run periodically to check for existing and newly developing errors.
Another reason you might want to perform an SEO audit is following a Google algorithm change.
You might have effectively tweaked every page of your website and bam! Google comes through with an algorithm change.
Think this isn’t frequent?! On the contrary!
According to SearchEngineLand, Google changes their search and indexing algorithms some 500 to 600 times a year!
Most algorithm changes are negligible, but sometimes, they will impact your site and an SEO audit is the best way to track down potential issues.
Reasons Why You Should Run an SEO Audit
- Check existing pages for missing SEO components like meta descriptions and tags
- Audit page load speed and uncover suggestions for speeding load times
- Find technical errors on your site
- Work out the impact of Google algorithm changes on your pages and ranking
- Discover content gaps that should be filled
- Find new content ideas and keywords to incorporate into existing content
- Analyze the tone of your content
- Locate quick wins for your SEO
SEO Audit Tools
The standards of SEO audit tools are very high, but there are some big differences between the chief protagonists.
So, without further ado, let’s check out the 11 best SEO audit software tools!
Semrush
Semrush is one of SEO’s premier sets of tools. The entire suite contains a fantastic 40+ interlinked tools that cover everything from market and keyword research to technical SEO, backlinking, and SERP analysis.
Semrush is a fully comprehensive toolbox for SEO and thousands of SEO pros and marketers around the world count on it.
There are a few tools in the Semrush arsenal that could fall under ‘SEO audit’. The first and most obvious one is the SEO Audit Tool itself, which is specifically designed for checking technical SEO.
It audits some 130+ potential errors spanning everything from HTTPS certificates to crawlability, page speed, and redirect errors.
The tool will check page HTTPS certificates for security and validity, crawl links to check for errors, highlight missing meta tags and image attributes and provide insight into how quickly each page loads.
This effectively allows you to track down and fix particularly problematic pages whilst checking the general health of your site for more common errors.
You’ll be able to receive weekly reports on your technical SEO so you can track errors as they develop and fix them as you encounter them.
The second SEO audit tool on Semrush is the On-Page SEO Checker. This is more content-oriented and is designed to check your site’s content to audit keyword usage, content ideas, and even UX performance.
The on-page checker is very action-oriented in that it guides you with specific ideas for making improvements. It’s really easy to use and provides many instant clues on how to whip your on-page SEO into shape.
As well as the website audit tools Semrush is of course also an excellent tool for keyword research and off-page SEO.
Features
- Two main tools for SEO auditing, the Semrush Audit Tool and Semrush On Page SEO Checker
- Page load speed checker
- Internal linking audits
- HTTPS checker
- JS and CSS errors
- AMP (accelerated mobile page) checker
- Content issues
- Meta tags and descriptions
- Content crawlability
- Discover redirect
- UX checker
- Content suggestions
- Connect to Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Prices
Semrush is an entire suite of top-notch SEO tools, so pricing is on the steeper side starting at $119.95/mo for the Pro level and extended to $449.95 for the Business level. You’ll get access to every tool, though, including these very well-designed SEO audit tools for technical and on-page SEO.
Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is purposefully built for on-page SEO so it’s perhaps unsurprising that this is where it excels. It boasts a very sophisticated set of tools for checking site content. Surfer SEO enables you to quickly check and audit your blog, landing pages, and other written content for optimization ideas.
The written content analysis tools are particularly powerful and use NLP – natural language processing – to semantically analyze written content and suggest ideas to bolster or optimize content.
You’ll also be able to analyze the sentiment of your content and the entities it relates to – this is pretty handy to check that Google is perceiving your content the way that you wish it to be perceived.
The audit tool will also check page structure, meta tags, backlinks, and page speed. You’ll also be able to compare your content to top-ranking content to discover improvements.
Surfer SEO will display page errors and warnings relating to broken links, page speed, and mobile optimization, but it’s best-suited for on-page audits and excels at analyzing content.
Features
- Content analyzer
- Content editor browser plugin
- NLP processing for sentiment analysis
- Displays some level of on-page and technical warnings and errors
- Backlink checker and analyser
- Page speed analysis
- Keyword and heading analysis
Prices
Prices are reasonable and start at $59 for the Basic package that allows you to launch 25 site queries a month for the content analyzer. It does not offer the NLP analyzer. The Pro package has all tools apart from white label tools and weighs in at $99. The Business plan with everything costs $199.
Screaming Frog
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a little different from other tools as it comes in the form of a downloadable client that can be run from your desktop. The SEO spider crawls your site, renders its content, and displays a wealth of technical and on-page data information.
It’s arguably one of the most comprehensive SEO analysis tools around and will check your site for technical errors ranging from titles and metadata to JavaScript issues, AMP analysis, load speed, and schema validation.
It can even check spelling and grammar, search for shorter or duplicate content, etc. You’ll be able to cycle through your site’s pages to gain instant insights into errors and page performance.
You can connect it to Google Analytics and Google Search Console via API to get the data from those tools too.
It’s pretty easy to use, even though it looks a little more complex than other SEO tools.
For me, this is one of the best SEO audit tools for crawling a site and doing a technical audit.
Features
- Redirect audit
- Link checker
- Meta tag analysis
- Generate XML Sitemaps
- Renders JavaScript
- Analyze hreflang attributes
- AMP crawling
- Integrates with Google Analytics and Search Console
Prices
The Screaming Frog SEO spider is cheap. In fact, it’s free for up to 500 URL crawls, but you won’t get access to more complex audit data. The Paid version is a very reasonable £149 a year for one license (for one site)
Sitebulb
Sitebulb is an advanced audit suite that crawls your website and suggests detailed yet actionable and easy-to-follow insights. It uses the Chromium rendering engine, which is what Google itself uses to render pages for SEO indexing purposes.
This ensures that Sitebulb provides a transparent audit of your site – it sees your pages in the same way that Google does.
Sitebulb provides accurate analysis and breakdown of page speed, allowing you to locate and optimize individual pages. It’s very fast and is particularly well-optimized for enterprises.
Compatibility with a number of JavaScript frameworks makes Sitebulb ideal for auditing sites with complex JavaScript content. It can accurately render AngularJS, React, Meteor, Vue, Ember and Backbone frameworks
Content and on-page analysis are also well-provided by the Sitebulb platform. You can locate thin content and Sitebulb will suggest improvements, new keywords, content ideas, etc. Sentiment analysis also breaks down the meaning of your content so you can check that Google and other search engines understand it in the way you intend.
Features
- Renders JavaScript frameworks
- Discover redirects
- Analyze HTTPS certificates
- Detailed page speed data
- Content analysis
- NLP and sentiment analysis
- Find missing metas and alt tags
Prices
Sitebulb is very reasonably priced at £10 + VAT a month for the Basic package and £25 + VAT monthly for Pro. Pro allows access to all of the on-page and content management tools whereas Basic is more oriented towards technical SEO.
Page Optimizer Pro
It’s in the name – Page Optimizer Pro is specifically designed for page optimization. It’s a pleasantly designed tool that is certainly easy to use and is angled more towards content optimization rather than technical SEO audits.
Page Optimizer Pro is excellent for the writing side of things and enables you to create SEO-driven blog and article content for your site. It works with Google Docs or most CMSs (e.g. WordPress), and will integrate with the editors themselves to provide instant insight into content.
Page Optimizer Pro is pretty basic but it does provide you with ideas based on competitor content, which is excellent. It also allows you to discover what sort of schema you should be using to tag your content up for SEO purposes.
Overall, a brilliant on-page optimization tool that excels for bloggers and written content-heavy sites.
Features
- Content-oriented audit tool
- Checks metadata, tags, alt attributes, and schema
- Keyword recommender
- Chrome plugin
- Analyses LSI terms
Prices
Page Optimizer Pro basic costs just $20 a month and allows you to audit 12 pages for 12 reports. That’s fine for most, say if you want to check and optimize 12 pieces of blog content a month. $39 nets you the Unlimited plan with unlimited reports.
Link Assistant Website Auditor
Link Assistant is amongst the world leaders in SEO tools and their longstanding Website Auditor tool has been utilized by many top brands worldwide.
This is a dedicated tool designed specifically for auditing web pages and it does everything from in-depth technical crawling with JavaScript rendering to content analysis.
Link Assistant’s web auditor crawls your site to reveal all levels of errors ranging from HTML errors to missing HTTPS certificates, redirects, loading problems and broken links. It uses semantic analysis to analyse your keyword performance and suggest the increased/reduced use of certain keywords.
You can also reverse engineer the content of competitors so you can equal or better their strategies.
The tool can construct visual maps of your web pages so you can check content flow and UX. You’ll also be able to edit and tune content from within the app itself before saving your fully-tuned content to HTML for upload to your site.
All in all, Link Assistant’s Website Auditor is one of the more powerful tools out there for comprehensive on-page and technical SEO auditing.
Features
- HTML analysis
- Indexation and crawling analysis
- Analyze links
- Check metadata, alt attributes, and tags
- Discover thin or duplicate content
- Edit content for SEO using optimization insights
- Visualize site structure
- Compare on-page SEO to competitors
- Semantic analysis
Prices
The free version of this tool is pretty awesome and allows you to crawl 500 site URLs max. From there, the Pro version is £109 a year and the Enterprise £249 a year – both pretty reasonable.
Raven Tools Site Auditor
Raven Tools Site Auditor is a lesser-known but very well-regarded SEO audit tool that will analyze your entire site. Once analyzed, Raven Tools displays a breakdown of your site as categorized into 6 tabs; Visibility Issues, Meta Issues, Content Issues, Link Issues, Image Issues, and Semantic Issues.
Each one is suitably in-depth. For example, the Content tab looks at pages with low word count, missing metas, duplicate metas, missing tags, and broken links.
This system makes it extremely easy to flick through and check out what you’ll need to change. You can home in on pages with lots of errors or discover site-wide issues that will need to be tackled in bulk.
You’ll also find a checklist with easy-to-understand directions on how to make the amendments. Once you’ve changed your pages and added technical SEO elements, just re-run the audit – simple!
The Raven Tools Site Auditor is part of an excellent full suite of comprehensive tools and offers a serious alternative to SEO brand leaders.
Features
- Full on-page and technical SEO audit
- Check for missing or duplicate metas
- Discover redirects
- Check site crawlability
- Audit page loading speeds
- Find missing or broken links
- Easy-to-use interface
- Part of Raven Tool’s full all-in-one suite
Prices
Raven Tools is very reasonable, with the cheapest package (ideal for single businesses and individual sites) weighing in at just $39/mo. There are 4 other packages ranging up to Lead (enterprise-level), which costs $399. Even Start at $79 is great for budding SEOs and small agencies.
Deep Crawl
Deep Crawl is a sophisticated set of tools aimed at enterprise-level businesses with large, complex sites that are often custom-built using various APIs.
Deep Crawl is adept at providing real-time information on on-site issues and errors, identifying errors that hinder site UX and could therefore lead to sales or service reductions.
This is particularly important for eCommerce sites that require super-smooth UX to ensure sales conversions.
There are actually two tools here; Deep Crawl and Automator. Deep Crawl crawls a site to find technical SEO issues whereas Automator is designed to check potential SEO issues brought about by API deployment and new code releases.
Deep Crawl is probably unparalleled for enterprise-site technical SEO audits – it will work with unconventional sites to detect technical SEO issues for repair, management, and maintenance.
Perhaps one of the most unique elements of Deep Crawl is its Task Manager which lets you highlight and group errors under tasks that can be assigned to tech teams, etc.
Features
- Scalable site crawler for huge sites with potentially millions of links
- Site redevelopment auditor for when you migrate platforms
- Link auditor
- Competitor intelligence tools
- Website architecture automation
- Crawlability reports
- Landing page testing
- Audit site after making major changes
Prices
Deep Crawl is a tailored/managed service for enterprise-level business and thus, you have to request a demo and contact them directly for pricing.
SEOPressor
SEOPressor is an SEO optimizer plugin for WordPress and it includes SEOPressor Connect which is a WordPress plug.
This is brilliant as it lets you find and tackle on-page issues directly from your WordPress site. The content analysis tool is very good – it’s similar to Yoast but offers more in terms of keywords suggestion. There’s also a tool to help you create schema markup. The plugin will also score your pages and suggest in-page tips on how to improve them.
It also has some superb SEO intelligence tools for measuring page error changes over time and overall site health. The link management tool lets you quickly scan your site for broken or missing links and you can even discover when pages are over-optimized, which is pretty unique.
You can also generate XML sitemaps and robots.txt files from within the plugin – very handy.
SEOPressor is an impressive tool that is adept for WordPress optimization so will naturally appeal to many single site owners.
It’s somewhat similar to Yoast Pro but has some marked improvements in terms of technical SEO at least.
Features
- WordPress plugin (SEOPressor connect)
- On-page optimization
- Link checker
- SEO health score
- Content checker with LSI keyword analysis
- Helps with schema markup
- Sitemap and robots.txt generators
- Local SEO tools
Prices
SEOPressor is a very reasonable $9 a month for one site.
SerpStat
Serpstat is yet another suite of SEO tools that contains a fantastic on-page optimization tool.
There are 11 tools here, at least two or three are relevant to SEO auditing.
The audit tool is the on-page optimization tool designed to check sites and their pages for on-site and off-site errors. All of your usual functions are covered; scan for missing or duplicate meta tags, find image issues, redirects, and other technical SEO problems.
Another relevant tool for site audits is the superb Content Marketing ideation tool that enables you to discover content that will benefit your site, identify content gaps and find new keywords to use, etc.
SerpStat is perhaps a lesser-known SEO suite than Semrush or Ahrefs, but it’s comprehensive and highly scalable. It also comes with a browser extension plugin for scraping web data and analyzing competitors.
Features
- Scan links and broken images
- Discover and measure site crawlability
- Create and correct sitemaps
- Find missing pages and redirects
- Check heading structure
- Find missing metas
- Research content ideas
- Find content gaps
Prices
SerpStat starts at $69/mo for SEO individuals. For agencies or larger, you’re looking at $149 to $499+. Considering it contains many of the same tools as other more expensive SEO suites, it’s reasonably priced.
Neil Patel Site Analyzer
If you’re looking for a quick, free SEO audit then Neil Patel’s Site Analyzer is a good place to start.
It’s a limited free test of one of the tools included in UberSuggest, which is Neil Patel’s full SEO suite.
For checking page loading times, critical errors, SEO page score, and other broad-brush on-page SEO factors, this tool will give you a pretty good rundown of your site. The free tool will only display a finite amount of tips and errors/warnings, so you’ll have to upgrade if you want more!
The awesome thing about UberSuggest is that it’s a little less taxing to use for inexperienced SEOs and each tip is broken down on why it matters for SEO and how to fix it – which is often exactly what you need.
The full UberSuggest tool is an SEO suite much like the big gun SEO brands, e.g. Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush, but it is generally cheaper – a more solid choice for single-site users.
Features
- The free tool lets you check your site health, highlighting pages with errors or warnings. It will only display a limited amount of data
- The full version of UberSuggest lets you check:
- Page load speed and tips
- Broken links
- Image issues
- Site crawlability
- Content errors and improvements
- Backlinks and on-page keyword analysis
- HTTPS certificates
Prices
The Site Analyzer is a limited but free tool that can be used 3 times a day. The full version of Ubersuggest starts at £29/mo and rises to £99/mo for enterprise-level – which is very competitive indeed!
Summary
SEO audits are a very simple but effective way of getting under the skin of your site and determining what you can do to improve your SEO right now.
The vast majority break down issues with tips and insights, so they’re good for SEO users of every level.
Of course, there’s a lot of selection here and it mainly depends on whether you’re in the market for a full SEO suite or a dedicated optimizer tool.
As far as SEO suites go, it’s so hard to beat Semrush and Ubersuggest, but SerpStat and Raven Tools both make superb alternatives.
Of the many other brilliant tools, Sitebulb, SEOPressor, Surfer SEO, and Page Optimizer all excel at on-page optimization.
Deep Crawl is the enterprise-level option and comes with some unique high-scale features for large sites.
Last but never least, Screaming Frog is a real SEO favorite and will always be worth another glance, no matter what your experience level is.
Good luck!