How to Perform a Complete SEO Audit Using Screaming Frog

As an SEO professional, performing regular SEO audits is crucial to identify areas of improvement and optimize your website’s search engine rankings. In this article, we’ll guide you on how to perform a complete SEO audit using Screaming Frog, a popular SEO auditing tool.

Step 1: Install and Set Up Screaming Frog

To start with the audit, download and install Screaming Frog from their official website. Once installed, launch the application and set up your project by providing basic information such as:

• Project name
• Website URL
• Crawl settings (e.g., crawl depth, threads)

Step 2: Crawl Your Website

Now it’s time to crawl your website using Screaming Frog. This process involves scanning your website for links, content, and other relevant data. You can customize the crawl settings based on your website’s structure and size.

• For small websites, a shallow crawl (e.g., 2-3 levels) is sufficient.
• For large websites, you may need to perform a deeper crawl (e.g., 5-6 levels).
• Set the crawl threads according to the number of CPU cores available on your machine.

Step 3: Analyze Your Website’s Technical Issues

Once the crawl is complete, Screaming Frog will generate a report highlighting technical issues affecting your website’s SEO. These issues may include:

• Crawl errors: Broken links, redirects, or server errors that prevent the search engines from crawling your site.
• Canonicalization: Duplicate content issues due to canonical URLs not being properly set up.
• Meta tags: Missing or duplicate meta titles and descriptions.

Step 4: Identify On-Page Optimization Opportunities

In this step, you’ll analyze your website’s on-page elements to identify opportunities for improvement. Screaming Frog provides a detailed report on:

• Title tags: Incomplete or duplicated title tags that may affect search engine rankings.
• Meta descriptions: Short or irrelevant meta descriptions that fail to entice users to click through.
• Header tags: Missing or misused header tags (H1-H6) that fail to structure content effectively.

Step 5: Review Your Website’s Content and Structure

Screaming Frog provides insights into your website’s content and structure, including:

• Content length: Average word count of your website’s pages.
• Image optimization: Missing or poorly optimized image alt tags, descriptions, and file names.
• Internal linking: Broken or incomplete internal links that may affect user experience.

Step 6: Identify Off-Page Optimization Opportunities

In this step, you’ll analyze your website’s off-page factors to identify opportunities for improvement. Screaming Frog provides insights into:

• Backlinks: Missing or low-quality backlinks that can negatively impact your website’s authority.
• Social signals: Lack of social media engagement and sharing, which may limit your website’s reach.

Step 7: Prioritize and Implement Recommendations

Based on the insights gathered from Screaming Frog, prioritize the most critical issues affecting your website’s SEO. Implement the necessary changes, such as:

• Fixing crawl errors
• Improving canonicalization and meta tags
• Optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags
• Enhancing content length and image optimization
• Building high-quality backlinks

Conclusion

Performing a complete SEO audit using Screaming Frog is an essential step in improving your website’s search engine rankings. By following these steps, you’ll be able to identify and address technical, on-page, and off-page issues affecting your website’s SEO.

Remember to regularly perform SEO audits to ensure your website stays optimized and competitive in the ever-changing search landscape.