7 Free SEO Audit Tools You Can Use to Rank Higher in SERPs

Auditing tools have become a vital component for all website owners post-pandemic. Many companies have been supplying accurate metrics and analyses that help business and SEO services keep on top of SEO campaigns.

This article will cover seven of the best tools to help with your SEO strategy and get you to the first page of the SERPs.

7 Free SEO Audit Tools to Rank Higher in the SERPs

Audit Tools #1: Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog has designed a gem with their SEO Spider. It is slightly different from others on this list as it isn't cloud-based. It is a tool you simply install, and then the tool crawls your website, pulling on-site data and giving SEO auditing problems and real-time analytical results.

The tool is ideal for website owners and digital marketers looking to analyse data from:

• Web Pages
• Analyse Metadata
• Page titles
• Find Bad URLs
• Broken Links
• Redirects

Screaming Frog Price Point

You can use Screaming Frog for free. Their free version will crawl 500 URLs. Their paid version enables you to crawl unlimited for a yearly fee of £149.00.

Audit tools #2: Ahrefs

Ahrefs are one of the industry's leading solution providers. Within Ahrefs, you have:

• Rank Tracker
• Keyword Explorer
• Website Auditing tool
• Content Explorer

The auditing tool is superb. Using Ahrefs, you will find solutions to the following problems with your external web pages:

• CSS and JavaScript
• Redirects
• Broken Pages
• Orphan Pages
• Nofollow Links
• Duplicate Pages
• Hreflang Tags
• Articles With Low Word Count
• Social Tags - Missing or Incomplete
• HTML Tags
• General Performance Issues

Ahrefs Price Point

Ahrefs offers a free solution with their Webmasters Tools. This is free with limited access to their Site Audit Tools and Explorer. Their premium options start around $82 per month and can go as far as $999 for large corporations or SEO companies needing heavy-duty analytics.

Audit Tools #3: Google Search Console

Formerly Google Webmaster Tools, Google offers a collection of performance metrics. The tool is far-reaching as you can go back 16 months to identify SEO problems through the data it collects.

One of the highlights is to look through their 'Insights'. Google will show you how your site is indexed and if you have any accessibility problems. Then through Google Search Console, you can obtain:

• Structure Data
• Accelerate Mobile Pages
• HTML
• Fix broken links
• Improve your content
• Plus much more…

Google Search Console Price Point

Google Search Console is free for all users.

Audit tools #4: GTMetrix

GTmetrix is a testing tool rather than a website crawler.

It reviews each of your web pages and analyses their performance, as a result of this giving you fast insights into the tech health of the site. Using it to test will only take a few seconds and will reveal:

• Load-up Speeds
• Page Size
• Image Scaling
• Caching
• Scripts
• Plus many more...

All-in-all, GTmetrix has around 25 parameters it covers and helps identify issues directly affecting your web page performance.

GTmetrix Price Point

GTmetrix offers 50 weekly tests on-demand that are 100 percent free. If you pay $10 monthly, the limit increases to 125, and at $20 a month, then rises to 175 searches, and so on.

Audit tools #5: SERPsim

As its title suggests, SERPsim is a simulator competent at generating ranking snippets on Google. It is unique in how it enables you to view each web page and how it appears on Google's SERP.

This information is invaluable to optimise page titles and all your metadata. You can also check your page headers to compare them with Google's pixel length limits. Once complete, it will allow you to save and share copies of each snippet.

SERPsim Price Point

SERPsim is a free snippet generator.

Best SEO audit tools #6: CopyScape

While we have mainly focused on SEO audit tools for the technical side of your web pages, Copyscape offers a different view.

As you know, plagiarism could harm your business in many ways. Copyscape is everything you need for content optimisation and checking. It is the internet's most potent anti-plagiarism tool. So for all the content on your web pages and every article and Blog you write, use Copyscape to verify its authenticity before you post it linking to your website.

If you have technical information on your site, you worry others may copy it; Copyscape's page banners are designed to warn plagiarists in real-time. If this does not daunt them, you can use Copyscape's Coventry to find them and also duplicate content within your website.

Copyscape Price Point

Although technically this isn't FREE, it's as close to it; Copyscape Premium starts at only $0.3c each search. Copysentry begins at $4.95 per month.

Audit tools #7: WordCounter

Another content optimisation tool. This also comes with a free WordCounter tool, which is ideal for someone at the content stage of their website to know how your density and word count is looking.

What this tool does is cut down time, you simply enter a URL, and the tool generates reports based upon:

• Number of Words
• Repeated Words and Phrases
• Keyword Density

This information enables you to compare best-ranking pages with your site and use the insights to assist you in creating keyword-rich, quality content.

WordCounter Price Point

WordCounter is another free-to-use solution.

SUMMARY

Free-to-use tools may not be the go-to for an SEO agency, as analytics and metrics are vital in ensuring you offer the best SEO services to your clients. But you should find a nugget or two of gold in those recommendations for a small business owner who is starting out and wants to learn about SEO while keeping your costs down. Good luck!

Another content optimisation tool. This also comes with a free WordCounter tool, which is ideal for someone at the content stage of their website to know how your density and word count is looking.