Using the site SEO audit tool

If your website isn't ranking well on Google, the first step isn't to write new content or buy backlinks. You first need to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit to see where the problem lies. Many sites with good content remain hidden from Google's eyes due to simple technical errors—such as duplicate title tags, incorrect headings, or broken links. In this article, you'll learn how to generate an accurate report of your site's titles, metas, headings, and links using free tools and simple commands, and fix the issues one by one.

Title and Meta Report: Where Most Errors Are Hidden

The title tag (<title>) and meta description (meta description) are the most important elements for getting clicks in search results. Google considers the title as the primary relevance signal, and while meta descriptions don't directly change rankings, they have a serious impact on CTR. In an SEO audit, these two should be the first things you check.

How to Generate a Report with Screaming Frog

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool (free version up to 500 URLs) is the most popular choice for this task. After installation, enter your site's URL and hit the Start button. Once the crawl finishes, click Reports > Titles from the top menu. The columns you'll see include:

• Title 1: The page's title
• Title Length: Title length in pixels (not characters)
• Duplicate: Whether the title is duplicated on another page
• Missing: Whether the title exists at all

For meta descriptions, use Reports > Meta Description. The standard criteria for a good title are:

1. Length between 510 and 580 pixels (roughly 50 to 60 characters)
2. Primary keyword at the beginning of the title
3. No duplication with other pages
4. A unique value for each page

For meta descriptions, the ideal length is between 920 and 960 pixels (150 to 160 characters). If the meta is shorter than 70 pixels, Google displays it as incomplete, and if it's longer, it gets truncated in the results.

Fixing Common Title and Meta Issues

After generating the report, you'll typically see three common scenarios:

• Duplicate titles: If two pages have the same title, Google doesn't know which one to show. Solution: Write a unique title for each page that includes that page's keyword.
• Title too long: Google truncates titles at 600 pixels and adds an ellipsis. Solution: Move the keyword to the beginning of the title and shorten the rest.
• Duplicate meta descriptions: If all pages have the same meta (e.g., "Main site page"), Google will generate its own meta, which is usually worse. Solution: Write a 150-character description for each page that includes the keyword and a call to action.

Checking Headings: Organize Your Content Structure

Headings (H1 to H6) define the content structure not only for readers but also for Google's crawlers. In an SEO audit, you should ensure that each page has exactly one H1 and that the heading hierarchy is logical.

Heading Report with Free Tools

In Screaming Frog, use Reports > Headings. Key columns:

• H1-1: The page's first H1
• H1 Count: Number of H1s on the page
• H1 Missing: Whether the H1 is missing
• H1 Duplicate: Whether the H1 is the same as the title tag

If you don't want to install software, you can use the browser extension Web Developer. After installation, click the extension icon and select Information > View Document Outline. This shows the page's heading structure as a tree.

Golden Rules of Headings

1. Each page should have only one H1 that includes the primary keyword.
2. H2s should be the main subsections, and H3s should be sub-items of H2s.
3. Don't skip heading levels (e.g., don't jump from H1 directly to H3).
4. The H1 should not be identical to the title tag. The title is for Google, the H1 is for the reader. If both are the same, one of them becomes ineffective.

Internal and External Links: Map Out Your Site

Links are the circulatory system of a website. Internal links tell Google which pages are more important, and broken links destroy a site's credibility. In an SEO audit, you need to check both.

Finding Broken Links

In Screaming Frog, after the crawl, use Reports > Response Codes. Set the filter to Client Error 4xx. Any URL returning a 404 or 410 code is a broken link. To find out which page points to this link, click on the URL and check the Inlinks tab.

If you have a small site (under 100 pages), you can use the online tool W3C Link Checker. Enter your site's URL and wait. The output is a list of broken links with error codes.

Fixing Broken Links

You have three ways to solve this problem:

• If the destination page has been removed but similar content exists: Change the link to the new page (internal redirect).
• If the destination page is completely irrelevant: Remove the link.
• If the destination page is temporarily unavailable: Set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.

For a 301 redirect on an Apache server, add this line to the .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 /old-page.html https://example.com/new-page/

On an Nginx server, add this to the server block:

location = /old-page.html {
    return 301 https://example.com/new-page/;
}

Analyzing Internal Links

In Screaming Frog, use Reports > Internal Links. The Inlinks column shows the number of links pointing to each page. The general rule:

• The homepage should have the most internal links (usually 5 to 10 from the menu and footer).
• Each important page should have at least 2 to 3 internal links from other pages.
• If a page has no internal links, it's almost invisible to Google.

To improve, use the "contextual linking" technique. In the content of each post, naturally link to 2 to 3 other related posts. The anchor text should be descriptive, not "click here."

Supplementary Tools for SEO Auditing

In addition to Screaming Frog, there are several other free tools you can use during an SEO audit:

• Google Search Console: Open the "Coverage" report. You'll see any 404 or 500 errors Google has found here. Also, in the "Enhancements" section, you can see title and meta issues.
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: A free version that, after verifying site ownership, provides a complete report of broken links and SEO issues.
• Google PageSpeed Insights: For checking speed, although this is outside the scope of this article, it shouldn't be ignored in an SEO audit.

If your site is hosted on cloud infrastructure, note that server response speed directly affects Google's crawling. Professional hosting services like those offered by ServerNet typically include CDN and server-side caching, which can reduce load time by up to 50%.

Final Report and Prioritization

After collecting all the data, create a prioritized report. Not all issues are equally important. Here's a suggested order:

1. Critical technical errors: Broken links, 500 pages, missing robots.txt file—fix these the same day.
2. Title and meta issues: Correct duplicates and missing ones within a week.
3. Heading structure: Fix this during content rewriting, not separately.
4. Internal links: Set up a monthly plan to add contextual links to old posts.

A complete SEO audit shouldn't take more than 2 to 3 hours. If your site is large (over 1,000 pages), you can use the paid version of Screaming Frog, which has unlimited crawling. But for most small and medium-sized sites, the methods we've described are sufficient.

The most important point is that an SEO audit is not a one-time task. Repeat this process at least once a month. Google constantly changes its algorithms, and your site keeps publishing new content. With a regular checklist, you'll always stay ahead of technical issues, and your site's ranking will remain stable in the long run.