There are many free tools available for site auditing tests. These free SEO Site Auditing tools provide data that is complementary to paid site auditing tools. These SEO tools are well worth bookmarking regardless of whether you pay for a site auditing tools or not.
Free SEO Website Crawler
Xenu Link Sleuth is the top choice for a free site crawler. It’s billed as a broken link checker. However Xenu can also output a report that gives you an overview of page titles, orphaned pages, redirects and pages that are not found. Xenu also does what it’s supposed to do, which is to check for both internal and external broken links.
Free Website Security Audit
Many SEOs don’t consider security as part of an SEO audit. Security only becomes an issue after a site’s been hacked and the rankings dropped.
In my opinion, website security should be a component of an SEO audit. A secure website is a major part of how well it ranks and encourages sales. That’s why I include a thorough security audit with every site audit I perform.
Free Blacklist Checker
Ultra Tools Blacklist Checker
This tool checks if your website is listed on any blacklists. Being blacklisted can be an indication that your website is or was compromised. Being blacklisted can have a negative impact on the deliverability of your emails. That in turn impacts your email marketing and link building outreach.
If your site is no longer compromised, knowing that the site is blacklisted will help you contact the blacklist to have your site removed.
Free WordPress Vulnerability Scanner
WPScans WordPress Vulnerability Scanner
This free vulnerability scanner offers a quick but comprehensive scan of potential issues. Create the report then research whether or not your site has issues that need fixing. WPScans.com is a useful tool for beginning a security audit.
Free HTTPS Validator Tool
SSL Labs Security Checker
The SSL Labs Security tool will spot misconfigurations and security holes in your HTTPS certificate implementation. Adding a server security certificate is touted as being easy. But that’s not always the case. This useful tool will help you diagnose hidden issues.
Free Drupal Security Scanner
Hacker Target Drupal Security Scanner
This comprehensive security scanner will highlight common issues with a Drupal based website.
Free Website Performance Tools
Gzip Compression Checker
Check GZip Compression Tool
The GZip Compression tool checks if your site is using GZip compression. Using compression allows your server to download your web pages quick.
YSlow Performance Audit
The free YSlow Performance Audit tool is a comprehensive performance audit scanner. It creates a report of 23 performance rules.
Free Duplicate Content Checker
Siteliner Duplicate Content Checker
The free Siteliner duplicate content tool is a scanner provided by CopyScape, the anti-plagiarism too. Siteliner is a good tool that can catch thin pages. Because the scanner counts navigation and footer content, a thin page will be highlighted by the tool. If a thin page exists, Siteliner will find it for you.
The scanner is limited to 250 pages. Nevertheless, it is useful to alert you to a possible problem with thin pages.
Free Web Page Checker
The Worldwide Web Consortium is the organization concerned with creating HTML standards. The W3C Validator is a tool that checks whether the HTML is valid but it does so much more!
Tick the “Show Outline” option in order to see how your heading elements look to a search engine. The results can be eye opening and reveal issues with your website template.
The validator isn’t 100% reliable. It occasionally returns incomplete reports due to do perceived coding errors on the sites it is evaluating.
Free Web Page Speed Performance Tool
GTmetrix Speed and Performance Audit is another tool that will generate various benchmark scores. Use these scores to understand where your site can be improved.
Free Google Site Audit Tools
Google offers many SEO related tools. I wrote an article about the top Google SEO Tools. Here is a brief listing. The Google Search Console is very important and is worth mentioning. Here is a partial list of other useful tools provided by Google for auditing and inspecting web pages and websites.
Page Speed Insights
Offers web page speed feedback.
Structured Data Testing Tool
This tool helps diagnose issues with your structured data. However, just because the structured data validates does not mean it is absolutely correct. Make sure you are following Google’s Structured Data Guidelines.
The structured data validator does not verify if your structured data conforms with Google’s guidelines. Making a mistake with structured data could result in a manual penalty.
Web.Dev/Lighthouse
This is the online version of Chrome Lighthouse. Lighthouse is Google’s Chrome Extension. The extension allows you to take advantage of Google’s site auditing tool. Web.dev allows you to do most of the same from a web browser.
Web.dev checks performance, accessibility, best practices and indexing issues (labeled as SEO).
Performance relates to speed. Best practices relates to factors such as whether the site is using HTTPS, security issues with JavaScript, HTML Document Type. The SEO report is not really about SEO but more about how well the site can be indexed. Accessibility is self-explanatory.
Free SEO Tools Are Useful
There are many paid SEO tools that are useful. None of these tools are comparable to paid services and software. However, these free SEO Audit tools complement the paid options nicely and are every bit as useful. Complete your journey toward becoming an SEO rockstar with these free SEO tools.
Images by Shutterstock, Modified by Author
Screenshots by Author, Modified by Author
Subscribe to SEJ
Get our daily newsletter from SEJ’s Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry!
