The Shark Tank

Tools are an essential part of any successful SEO strategy. Whether auditing after a site redesign or checking your technical optimization, tools give you important information that allows you to improve your website for the Google Bot and for users.

Another advantage to using tools is they allow a search marketer to compare their property with their competitors’. Technical audits should be performed regularly for site maintenance and whenever new designs or site structurers are pushed live.

Top Three Tools for Technical Audits

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a crawling tool that goes through your entire site’s URLs and returns key information necessary for technical analysis and onsite SEO. This tool provides important on page data to allow marketers to make informed decisions.

Some functions included in Screaming Frog are:

• Finding broken links
• Identifying redirects
• Flagging duplicate content
• Google Analytics integration
• Site architecture visualization

Google Tools

The PageSpeed Insights tool from Google provides users with recommendations for improving their website’s page speed across devices. The tool bridges the gap between Google and developers by providing helpful tips to improve website load times and any interface changes that may be helpful to your users.

Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool provides insights into your site’s structured data markup. This tool checks structured data and allows marketers to see if errors are present on the website. It is important to continually check your markup, especially after redesigns or restructures.

Google’s Search Console is one of the best tools for measuring how Google is inspecting your website. Search Console allows developers to submit sitemaps to see indexing or crawl errors as the bot would see them. It also allows webmasters to submit their sitemaps directly to Google, which is particularly helpful after site changes. This tool is extremely important for SEO, as failing to address indexing or mapping concerns will negatively impact your rankings.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a comparative analysis toolset that allows users to understand website health. This tool can provide great insights for researching specific keyword or website metrics, as well as keeping an eye on the competition.

SEMrush is one of the many tools on the market for understanding traffic discrepancies. Additionally, it allows users to conduct on-page audits of technical issues, gauge competitors, and keep marketers informed about certain website metrics or campaigns. Like many other SEO tools, SEMrush also provides backlink analysis and health data including anchors, domain comparisons, and reports.

On the surface, SEMrush is a Swiss army knife for the modern-day SEO practitioner. It’s just as powerful for the more advanced user, with a plethora of features that would takes days to cover.

Utilizing These Tools for SEO

A successful SEO strategy demands not only in-depth analysis of your property but also the ability to compare your site to others and constantly respond to the ever-changing environment of SEO. These tools help search marketers ensure the technical foundations of a website and digital strategy are in place.

If you’d like more information or insights into how these tools can be leveraged to give your property a digital edge on competitors, contact us today.