June 20, 2024

SEO can make or break a website. Screaming Frog SEO Web Audit tool can help make your website stand out from the rest.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, can be daunting and seem like a never-ending rabbit hole. Making sure all website pages have appealing page titles, meta descriptions of proper length, consistency among meta keywords, well-optimized content on your pages, etc.: All of these are things to consider when improving your website’s SEO. 

Luckily, Screaming Frog provides an SEO web audit tool called Screaming Frog SEO Spider that will take your SEO efforts to the next level.

Who is Screaming Frog?

Screaming Frog is a marketing agency that specializes in SEO. It offers an SEO web audit tool that can quickly crawl an entire website and produce detailed reports of your SEO. The tool is customizable and has various configurations to ensure you find the results you need to improve your website’s SEO.

Core components that Screaming Frog can target in its SEO web audit include, but are not limited to:

• HTTP Response Codes
• Page Titles
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• H1 and H2 Headings
• Content
• Sitemaps

Screaming Frog SEO Spider provides many features, from configuring an SEO web audit to exporting filtered reports, identifying SEO issues, and more. To learn more about setting up a web crawl, check out their video on custom crawl configuration.

I have my SEO web audit. What’s next?

Once you compile your Screaming Frog SEO web audit, you are left with a lengthy report and may not know where to go next. The first plan of action is to create a crawl overview and an issues overview.

Creating a Crawl Overview 

The crawl overview provides information about each core component listed above. This report can help narrow down the work needed for the site’s SEO.

Within the Screaming Frog SEO Spider software, navigate to Reports > Crawl Overview in the program’s toolbar. You can export this report in various formats, such as an Excel spreadsheet, .csv file, or a Google sheet. 

Creating an Issues Overview

To export the issues overview, follow the same steps for the crawl overview. Navigate to Reports > Issues Overview and export the report. 

The issues overview report identifies the exact issues to address on your site. This can be used as a straightforward guide to help you increase your SEO presence. 

The overview has the following details:

• Issue Name
• Issue Type
• Issue Priority Level
• Number of URLs affected by this issue
• Description of issue
• Screaming Frog suggestions on how to fix this issue

What else should I consider for my SEO web audit?

Outside of these overview reports, addressing the specific core components we listed above will strengthen your SEO. 

Here are some key concepts for each component:

HTTP Response Codes

Every time you click on a link, an HTTP request is sent to the server to access that web page. Response codes are an easy way to see if that request was successful or not. These codes can also provide more information if the response was unsuccessful. 

HTTP Response Codes in the 200s are ideal: They represent internal success. Codes in the 300s indicate redirects. Codes in the 400s and 500s are considered unsuccessful requests and should be addressed to improve the SEO of your website.

Within Screaming Frog SEO Spider, you can filter response codes by their code. You can also identify which links are either internal or external. 

Ensuring that you don’t reference any links with a response code in the 300s will improve the user’s experience and make navigating the site faster and easier.

Page Titles

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Of course, this is a mantra we should all subscribe to; but in the context of web pages, page titles are the first thing anyone will see when navigating your website. 

Page titles should catch the eye of the reader. They should be unique and not convoluted.. 

In Screaming Frog’s software, you can select the page title tab in your report and filter by missing page titles, duplicate titles, titles with over 60 characters, and other filters. 

Meta Descriptions and Keywords

Metadata, or data describing data, is important for search engines to quickly identify a web page and filter its results. Meta descriptions and keywords are some of the most important features of a web page when it comes to SEO. 

Meta descriptions should contain the meta keywords. Descriptions should briefly describe your page, ideally between 50–160 characters. Descriptions are almost like Tweets: something attention-grabbing that will lead the reader to the page. 

Meta keywords can help “categorize” your web page for search engines.They should be relevant to the page and should be used within the page. 

You can filter keywords and descriptions in your Screaming Frog SEO web audit by character length, missing and duplicate descriptions or keywords, and other criteria.

H1 and H2 Headings

Heading elements help break up sections of a web page into a logical order. H1 headings should represent the primary topic of the web page. H2 headings are subheadings and should always be labeled under H1 headings.

Search engines specifically look for H1 headings on pages, as they should be present and labeled on the top of the page. You should fix any web pages without H1 or H2 headings.

Content

Screaming Frog provides a variety of filters when sifting through the content of your website. You can identify pages with low content counts, near or exact duplicates of content, spelling and grammatical errors, lorem ipsum placeholder text, or a low readability score.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are effectively roadmaps to your site. They provide a list of pages for your website, usually in hierarchical order. Search engines use sitemaps to efficiently crawl a site. 

You can make a sitemap in Screaming Frog SEO Spider by navigating to Sitemap > XML Sitemap in the program’s top toolbar.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to improve your SEO. Screaming Frog provides an in-depth SEO web audit tool that is easy to navigate and can drastically help you level up your website’s SEO. 

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