Digital marketers and SEO specialists know that technical audits are a critical part of the entire SEO process. It requires a particular type of expertise that is somewhat different from the SEO most people recognize because it works entirely “under the hood” to analyze technical issues.
However, conducting a technical audit manually can be tedious and time-consuming. The good news is that there are many technical SEO audit tools available to help make the task much simpler and quicker. The right tool can be a godsend to tech SEO specialists working on multiple websites, as it helps save time and allows for multi-tasking — while ensuring that all bases are covered.
What technical SEO audit tool should you use? We’ve created this list of the nine best tech SEO auditing tools you might want to consider. We’ll explain the key offerings of each one and how they can help structure websites to be more efficient and SEO-friendly.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is any activity that does not involve creating content on your website that can help optimize its performance, leading to better indexing, crawling, and search engine bot rendering performance. It is one of the key pillars of SEO that takes care of your website’s structure.
A properly executed tech SEO strategy enables search engines to find your website easier, understand what it’s about, establish trust, and, ultimately, lift your rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
While there are many critical elements needed to fulfill search engine requirements for ranking, technical SEO mostly focuses on load speed and performance. Technical errors related to these issues can include mixed content problems, canonical problems, hreflang errors, 301 redirects, broken links, and more.
Why Is Technical SEO Important?
The SEO landscape has changed drastically over the past few years. The days when you could get away with “black hat” SEO tactics, keyword stuffing, and other manipulations are long gone. Google’s algorithm has become much more sophisticated and can now easily identify these malpractices. Not only will these methods not help your website rank higher, but they can actually result in severe penalties that can hurt your traffic and reputation.
This is where technical SEO comes in. By ensuring that your website’s structure and code are clean, well-organized, and compliant with Google’s guidelines, you create a solid foundation that will help your website rank higher and perform better in search. In other words, technical SEO ensures that your website is “Google-friendly” and helps you avoid any penalties that can result from bad code or other technical problems.
9 Best Tech SEO Audit Tools For Business Owners
There are dozens of SEO auditing software, each claiming to be the ideal solution to tech SEO needs. We’ve whittled the list down to nine of the most popular and well-reviewed tech SEO software.
1. Markitors SEO Audit
Lucky for you, our team created an SEO audit tool for businesses to audit their sites for technical issues. Markitors aggregates 70+ of the top SEO audit and website review tools to evaluate critical components and deliver a prioritized action plan to your company to help you improve your SEO presence. Our SEO audit services provide companies with the necessary information to improve their websites and grow their businesses effectively.
2. Google Search Console
Arguably one of the most essential tools for any website owner, Google Search Console is a free platform provided by Google that gives you insights into how your website is performing in search. It’s essential for tech SEO specialists because it provides valuable data about your website’s technical health and can help you identify and fix errors that might be negatively impacting your website’s performance.
Google Search Console also allows you to submit your sitemap, which can help Google index your website more quickly and efficiently. It also gives you the ability to see what keywords your website is ranking for and how much traffic you’re getting from organic search. Overall, it’s an incredibly powerful tool that should be utilized by every website owner and is especially valuable for those in charge of technical SEO.
3. Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights is another free tool from Google that analyzes your website’s speed, load time, and performance. It provides valuable insights into how you can improve your website’s speed, both on mobile and desktop devices. Page speed is a known ranking factor for mobile searches, so it’s important to make sure your website is as fast as possible.
This tool will give you a comprehensive report of your website’s speed, along with specific recommendations on how to improve it. This can include anything from compressing images to minifying CSS and JavaScript files. Overall, Google PageSpeed Insights is a valuable tool that can help you improve your website’s speed and performance.
4. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop program that crawls websites and analyses on-page SEO. It’s helpful for tech SEO specialists because it can quickly identify technical errors, such as broken links, duplicate content, missing titles or meta descriptions, and more. It also provides valuable insights into things like website hierarchy, internal links, and redirects.
This tool is especially helpful for larger websites with thousands of pages. It’s important to note that the free version of Screaming Frog only allows you to crawl up to 500 pages, so if you have a larger website, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid version. However, even the free version of this tool can be incredibly helpful.
5. SEMrush Site Audit
SEMrush Site Audit is helpful for tech SEO specialists because it crawls your website and provides valuable insights into any technical errors that might be present. It also gives you the ability to track your website’s progress over time and compare your results to your competitors.
One unique feature of SEMrush Site Audit is its “Site Health” score, which gives you a quick overview of your website’s overall technical health. This can be helpful for quickly identifying any areas that need improvement. Overall, SEMrush Site Audit is a powerful tool that can be helpful for those in charge of technical SEO.
6. Ahrefs Site Audit Tool
Ahrefs is one of the most popular paid digital marketing tools that, like SEMrush, offers almost all SEO tools from all angles, including content research, rank progress tracking, and, of course, technical SEO audit.
Ahrefs’ auditing tool provides a top-to-bottom look at over 100 potential issues your website might be experiencing, including content quality, page performance, social tags, HTML tags, inbound links, outbound links, broken images, and more. One great thing about Ahrefs is that the issues are presented using full-color charts aggregated into types and themes. These are also downloadable, so you can generate easy-to-read reports for internal or client presentation use.
7. Spyfu Technical SEO Audit
Spyfu is a tool that allows you to research, track, and spy on your competitors. It also provides an in-depth website audit feature that can help you quickly identify any technical SEO issues your website might be experiencing.
SpyFu’s site audit feature is very competitive, and it also has unlimited research tools for SEO and PPC that provide easy solutions. For SpyFu’s SEO tools, it has competitor trackers for multiple sites as well as a keyword ranking history tool, competitor backlink checker, and quick SEO rankings and impressions report generator. Its SERP analysis and PPC ad test features are designed to help you create successful advertisements on your website.
8. Majestic Technical Website Audit
Majestic is perfect for digital marketing as it provides SEO audit tools that are easy to use and effective. This software contains different trust flows, referring elements like domains, IPs, and Subnets, keyword generators, bulk backlink checkers and history, site and search explorer, and fresh index, among other useful features. Majestic’s tools are definitely a must-have for anyone in the field of SEO.
9. CognitiveSEO
If you have any SEO concerns, one of the best features of CognitiveSEO is that it fixes them quickly. In addition to repairing and fixing website issues and errors, it also corrects site architecture concerns and provides efficient SEO data analysis to help improve your rankings. CognitiveSEO’s software constantly scans your website for new or old issues so you can be sure that your technical SEO is always up-to-date.
Other technical SEO audit tools you might also want to check out include GTMetrix, Moz’s SEO Audit & Crawl, Deepcrawl, OnCrawl, and SEOmator. These are all great options that can help you quickly identify and fix any technical SEO issues with your website.
Need Help With Your Technical SEO?
Markitors is a digital marketing agency that specializes in technical SEO. We are experts in helping businesses identify and fix any technical SEO issues that their websites might be experiencing. Markitors has helped small businesses and large enterprises alike improve their technical SEO and achieve their digital marketing goals.
If you need help with your technical SEO and overall digital marketing strategy, contact Markitors today. We would be happy to help you take your business to the next level.