9 of the best SEO audit tools (free & paid)

March 12, 2019
SEO

Before we get started, let’s recap what is a search engine optimisation audit tool and why you might need one (or several) for your website!

Often the first step to building any SEO strategy is to analyse the technical on-page details of your website. These details might include some (and more!) of the following:

Page titles
Meta descriptions
Header tags
Keyword focus/consistency
Duplicate content
Image alt tags
Backlink quality
URL structure
Mobile
Broken links
Click depth
Site speed

All these can have an impact on how well your website performs in Google. And, once you perform an SEO audit on your website you will then have a shopping list of items you can correct and start improving your on-page SEO.

Of course, this only tells half the story as you will also need to focus on your off-page SEO strategy (which includes things like link building, online reputation management and social media) if you want to make significant gains in Google. But, starting with your on-page technical SEO audit will help to lay some solid foundations to your SEO strategy.

Before you begin your audit you can often get a feel for how well optimised a website is simply by casting your eyes over it. But, there’s only so much manual work a person can do. SEO audit tools not only take a lot of the guesswork out of the game but also provide an analysis far quicker.

Bear in mind that some tools may just analyse the homepage which while limited, can still give you a rough idea of how well the rest of the site will perform. Whereas others will take a look at the whole site.

You’ll also need something to continuously monitor any errors that crop up particularly if you have a site with lot so pages or with a site that has new pages everyday.

One tool Vs a few?

My take is to have one go-to tool as well as two to three others for quick reference. If you’re looking to save some money unfortunately it’s most likely that your go-to tool will need to be paid for. Bear in mind that different tools can produce different results, so it’s good to use a few to cross-check your results.

In no particular order here are my favourite SEO audit tools…

Google webmaster (free)

+ Must-have
+ Alerts you of significant issues
+ If it’s in here it needs to be fixed!
– Doesn’t tell you enough

SEO Sitecheckup (Free and paid from £20 per month)

+ Great place to start
+ Good clear layout and reliable score
+ Quick PDF download for free version
+ Good recommendations
+ Paid version analyses whole site as well as a rank checker and domain comparison
– Cannot do multiple checks without signing up
– Free version analyses just one page

SEO Profiler (Paid, from £63 per month)

+ Personal favourite
+ Great user interface
+ Excellent breakdown of errors
+ Constantly updated
+ White label reporting
+ Other tools such as a great rank tracker, and uptime monitoring available
+ Weekly updates
– Reports on demand take a bit longer

Ahrefs (Paid, from £76 per month)

+ Ahrefs is known for being one of the best in SEO so you’ll be in good hands
+ Crawls on demand
+ Helpful visual charts
+ Provides overall health score
+ Flexible scheduling on whichever day and time you prefer and by daily, weekly or monthly
+ Other brilliant tools including the best backlink analysis ever
– Bit difficult to get PDF reports (not white labeled)
– Not as detailed breakdown as SEO Profiler

SEObility (Free and paid from £39 per month)

+ Personal favourite
+ Great interface and clear layout
+ In-depth analysis without being clunky
+ Paid version includes ranking & backlink tools
+ Clear overall score
+ Free for 1000 crawled pages
– Free version analyses just one page

Screaming Frog (Free and paid version £149 per year)

+ Personal favourite
+ Extensive and detailed
+ A manual overview of meta data
+ Great for large sites
+ A mainstay in SEO
– Manual work involved
– No overall score
– Doesn’t necessarily tell you what’s wrong – you’ll need to have prior SEO knowledge

SEOptimer (free)

+ Great place to start
+ Focus on page speed very useful
+ Clear overall score
+ Scores for different areas
+ Good layout
– Quite simple
– Analyses just one page

SEOmator (Paid from £15 per month or pay as you go at £4)

+ Dedicated audit checker
+ Gives detail as well as a graded score
+ Clear layout and instructions on how to fix
+ Cheap pay as you go as well as monthly option
+ Comparison with other domains
– URL crawl limit could be an issue if you have large sites