Technical SEO is one of the most important aspects of organic search. If your site doesn’t function properly, users will bounce and search engines may experience difficulty when attempting to crawl and index your content.
That’s why site audits are so crucial. They reveal technical deficiencies on your website, enabling you to fix errors before they negatively impact the user search experience and compromise your site’s search visibility.
To help you choose a site audit tool that best suits your organization’s needs, we’ve provided insight into features, capabilities, and costs of what we consider the best SEO website crawler and audit tools on the market.
In this post, we’ll cover the following:
- seoClarity (hi, there!)
- Ahrefs
- Botify
- BrightEdge
- Conductor
- DeepCrawl (rebranded as Lumar)
- Google Search Console (GSC)
- Moz Pro
- OnCrawl
- Screaming Frog
- Searchmetrics
- SEMrush
- WooRank
To compare even more SEO software, we recommend our SEO tools comparison page.
What to Look for in Site Audit and Crawler Tools
Not all SEO site crawlers are equal — different tools have different capabilities of what they can crawl and how often.
There are two main categories of website crawlers to choose from:
- Desktop crawlers: crawlers that users install on their desktop and are limited by the memory and space of that device.
- Cloud-based crawlers: crawlers that use cloud computing and don’t need to be installed or hosted on a device. While they typically come at a higher price, they offer more flexibility, collaboration, and scalability.
Before choosing a crawler, make sure it has the capabilities that you need for your site. For example, does it only crawl HTML, or does it include the ability to crawl JavaScript?
Of course, price is also a consideration.
All the enterprise website audit tools listed here will have a monthly cost, with the exception of Google Search Console and a free version of Screaming Frog.
While there are many other free site audit tools on the market, you can’t use them to scale. So for the purpose of this post, we focus on the most advanced tools on the market for enterprise sites.
Why Is Conducting a Site Audit Important?
As we highlight in our Search Experience Optimization framework, your site needs to be optimized for usability before other SEO efforts are implemented – but it can be difficult to do this.
After all, the world of SEO is constantly changing. At any given time, Google can release an algorithm update, and what used to be considered best practices can instantly become something of the past.
To stay on top of the latest SEO trends, it’s important to perform regular SEO audits on your website.
Our site audit checklist guides you through every step of a top-down site audit. Download today to check up on your site health.
The Best Site Audit Tools
The site audit tools listed below are the ones we deem most capable of helping enterprise organizations achichieve technical optimization on thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of pages.
Note: We do not list all features and capabilities of the following companies’ site audit tools, only what we thought to be most important. A full list of features can be found on each company’s respective website.
1. seoClarity
For each crawl, you’re in control of the depth — from comprehensive site audits to specialized ad hoc audits. Complete customization also lets you set the crawl speed, time, and other factors.
Check for broken links and duplicate content, confirm indexation, and make quick SEO upgrades with simple on-page SEO fixes (i.e. add titles, meta descriptions, and tags) – even for JavaScript sites. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Customized reporting and a complete overview of technical errors make it easy to prioritize SEO issues. To really see your site like Google sees it, utilize our advanced server log-file analyzer.
Besides uncovering errors, you can optimize your crawl budget, improve indexation, monitor mobile site crawls, and more. These insights are simplified and actionable and all crawl data is stored so you can track progress between crawls.
Plus, website size is no issue – our SEO crawler is capable of analyzing sites of over 48 million pages with a speed of 100 pages per second.
Cost
Our platform, for all-inclusive capabilities, starts at $3,000 per month, and we also offer a free SEO site audit.
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs can identify 100+ pre-defined SEO issues, including performance, incoming links, content quality, and more.
You’ll also get an overall SEO health score, complete with color-coded, printable charts for clear SEO reporting. Plus, they provide recommendations on how to address any issues identified.
Ahrefs’ Data Explorer allows you to segment out the data with custom filters and URL parameters. The crawl can occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and mobile crawls are also possible.
Cost
Ahrefs’ Lite plan is $99 per month, which allows you to crawl 10,000 internal pages per month. The data from these crawls is stored for three months.
However, if you want to crawl more pages, increase the data retention period, or allow for JavaScript rendering, other monthly price packages are available.
For example, their Agency package ($999 per month) allows you to crawl 2.5 million pages and retain crawl data for 12 months, plus JavaScript rendering.
3. Botify
Botify can crawl up to 50 million URLs at the rate of 250 URLs per second. You can crawl your entire site, or set up personalized crawls, which allows you to engage in case-specific analyses, with unlimited exports.
Its ability to analyze JavaScript pages with multi-device evaluation allows it to view and assess your site like a search engine does. Botify also offers the Botify XML Sitemap Generator, which automatically creates sitemaps for you.
In addition to standard site audit capabilities, Botify offers the Botify Log Analyzer, which they say analyzes 100 million search engine requests per day.
See when your pages have been crawled, and get alerts if Google stops their crawls on important pages, or conversely, starts crawls on pages that should be off limits.
Cost
Botify does not offer pricing information on its website. You must fill out a form and request a demo to discuss pricing and features with a Botify representative.
4. BrightEdge
As an SEO platform, BrightEdge’s site audit tool is just one of the many capabilities offered.
BrightEdge’s ContentIQ is able to crawl hundreds of millions of pages at a custom crawl rate. It also crawls JavaScript, progressive web applications, single-page applications, and more.
Since all businesses and websites have different purposes and needs, ContentIQ is customizable, which lets you configure rules for your site audits. As a result, you’re only shown the information relevant to you.
Visualize the data with clear SEO reports, and get an overall understanding of your website’s performance with a ContentIQ score.
Cost
BrightEdge does not list its platform price on their website – but you may request a demo to learn more.
5. Conductor
Another SEO platform, Conductor offers a site audit tool as one of its many SEO offerings.
Note: Conductor relies on a third-party for technical SEO capabilities.
With Conductor, you can initiate site crawls whenever you need, eliminating the wait for scheduled crawl cycles. This on-demand feature gives you immediate insights into your site’s health and performance.
If a search engine penalizes your site, Conductor tracks the changes and helps you understand the reasons behind it to try to get that lost traffic back.
Speaking of challenges that can result in lost traffic, site migrations can be one of the most daunting tasks in SEO. Conductor’s site audit tool helps ensure everything transitions appropriately by allowing you to compare the new site with the old one.
For sites that deal with international SEO and serve a global audience, Conductor also allows you to ensure that content is appropriately tagged for its correct location.
Cost
No price information is offered on their website. You will need to schedule a demo to learn more.
6. Lumar (formerly Deepcrawl)
Deepcrawl, now known as Lumar, is a technical SEO point solution.
All packages come with JavaScript rendering, but other features such as API access and partner integrations are dependent upon the select package.
For example, the Light Plus package can integrate with Google Analytics and Search Console, where the Light package cannot.
While only the Custom package comes with a Customer Success Manager, the Light and Light Plus packages come with in-app onboarding to make the beginning process easier.
Additionally, Lumar is capable of log file analysis, which allows you to see which pages search engines miss or view, which lets you optimize your crawl budget.
Also detect faulty pages that cause search experience issues for users and bots, and test XML sitemaps to see if all important pages are listed.
Lumar is suited for ecommerce, publishers, agencies, and enterprise brands.
Cost
The Light package, which is tailored to individuals who are working on one project with a maximum 10,000 URLs, begins at $14 per month.
Move up to the Light Plus package ($62 per month) or request a quote for a Custom package.
7. Google Search Console (Free)
One of the two free SEO tools on this list, Google Search Console alerts users to website errors, and allows SEOs to communicate back to Google when the issues have been fixed.
Another upside of GSC is that you can see your site how Google sees it since information comes straight from the Google index.
In addition to site issues, GSC lets you confirm that Googlebot is able to find and crawl your website.
Tailored to “anyone with a website,” GSC can do more than reveal site errors, it also shows you a page speed report using real usage data to show you how fast your pages load.
Keep in mind, the slower a page loads, the higher its bounce rate will be.
GSC also offers rich results tests, status reports, and an unparsable structured data report to help you understand the rich results and structured data on your site as well as any potential errors.
Lastly, it allows you to troubleshoot for AMP and mobile usability.
Cost
Free!
8. Moz Pro
Moz Pro presents site audit data in charts that segment out the information to reveal patterns, opportunities, and overall SEO health.
The crawler also provides explanations for the different page errors it finds, the potential effects of that issue, and how to fix it.
Crawling occurs automatically every week and alerts you of any new developments.
Since a lot of technical information can be presented at once, Moz Pro allows you to ignore certain aspects of the crawl, or flag important areas. Then, mark an issue as corrected so you can keep track of your work.
Cost
Moz Pro offers a handful of packages that range in price from $99 per month (100,000 pages crawled per week/20,000 per campaign) to $599 per month (2 million pages crawled per week/200,000 per campaign).
A free trial is available on Moz’s website.
9. OnCrawl
All OnCrawl plans include capabilities like custom dashboard reports, unlimited analyses, project sharing, crawl over crawl comparison, and more.
Additional options also include log-file analysis for crawl budget optimization, integrations (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Google Search Console, Majestic, and AT Internet), Javascript rendering, and API access.
OnCrawl does offer a package for agencies and enterprise websites, but you must book a demo to learn more. You’re able to upgrade or downgrade your package whenever you wish.
Cost
Crawl up to 100,000 URLs per month for €49 per month. This explorer package allows for one project (i.e. one domain) with unlimited subdomains.
You can move up to their Ultimate package, which allows for up to 2 million URLs per month and is priced at €399 euros per month (although priced annually).
A package can be customized for agencies and enterprises, but you must book a demo to learn more about this option.
A 14-day free trial is available.
10. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog’s SEO spider has a free and a paid version.
While the free version allows for seven capabilities (things like finding broken links, generating XML sitemaps, and site visualizations), the paid version gives an additional 16.
These paid features include things like scheduled crawls, with the ability to save and re-upload them. Screaming Frog is also capable of JavaScript rendering, as well as custom robot.txt and custom extraction.
Certain integrations – Google Analytics, Google Search Console – are also a possibility. Technical support is offered with the paid version as well, where users can email the support department or open a ticket.
Screaming Frog’s SEO spider will crawl 500 URLs for free. You can also choose to have an unlimited crawl limit – dependent upon memory and storage – and access to additional capabilities for £149 per year (per user).
Within the Searchmetrics Suit is the Site Experience – a way to monitor and improve website performance. With Site Experience, you can schedule site audits to check the crawlability and indexability of your sites. This also includes sites running on JavaScript.
Essentially, Site Experience presents you with a SWOT analysis, which allows you to figure out strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
If the site audit picks up an error on your site, you can follow the given priority action recommendations to fix the issues in an effective way.
No price is listed for Searchmetrics, but there is a 14-day free trial available for their Research Cloud and Content Experience, not Site Experience.
Semrush offers four plans – Pro, Guru, Business, and Custom.
All plans include site audits and log file analysis. The site audit tool allows you to find hreflang mistakes, AMP issues, check for HTTPS site security, and more.
The differences come in with the number of projects and crawl limit each plan allows for.
With Pro, you can create three projects and crawl 100,000 pages per month and 20,000 pages per project. With the more advanced plans you can crawl upward of 1 million pages.
Semrush’s Pro plan begins at $119.95 per month, Guru begins at $229.95 per month, and Business starts at $449.95 per month. You can also talk to one of their specialists to request a Custom plan.
WooRank helps users stay informed on redirects and potential security issues as well as find any indexing errors that arise. The site audit also helps avoid duplicate content – which can lead to penalties and confuse search engine crawlers.
WooRank allows for integration with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Facebook, and (plan dependent) API access to integrate CRM, ERP, Salesforce, and more.
The information gathered in WooRank’s site audit can be downloaded and shared (e.g. the development team can be informed and fix the issues).
WooRank has three plans: Pro ($59.99 monthly), Premium ($179.99 monthly), and Enterprise (no price listed). Crawl 2,500 pages on the Pro plan or 10,000 with the Premium plan.
A proper site audit shows you insights into your site’s overall health which allows you to fix any technical errors before they become a real problem for search visibility.
It’s also important to track progress as you make those changes so you can correlate the updates with improvements in ranking performance – which ultimately leads to increased traffic and conversions.
Selecting the right keyword rank tracking tool is just as important as selecting the right site audit and crawler tool.
With so many different site audit tools on the market, we can’t tell you which is the best – after all, different companies have different needs for their SEO strategy.
But remember, for enterprise companies, it’s crucial that you select a tool that will allow you to scale your efforts and grow.
<<Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2020 and has since been updated.>>
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