Using a site crawler tool is a fundamental step in conducting a comprehensive technical SEO audit. These tools simulate how a search engine bot, like Googlebot, crawls and interacts with your website, revealing potential technical issues that could hinder your site's visibility and performance in search results. Screaming Frog SEO Spider is one of the most popular desktop crawlers, but many other cloud-based or desktop alternatives exist.
What is a Site Crawler Tool?
A site crawler tool is software designed to systematically scan a website, following internal and external links to discover URLs and gather information about them. It acts much like a search engine bot, requesting pages and processing their content, but it provides you with structured data about everything it finds.
Why Use a Crawler for Technical SEO Audits?
Crawlers are essential for technical SEO audits because they allow you to:
Identify Technical Errors at Scale: Quickly uncover broken links (404 errors), redirect issues (chains, loops), server errors (5xx), and other HTTP status code problems across your entire site.
Analyze Site Structure and Internal Linking: Visualize your website's architecture, understand how pages are linked together internally, identify internal linking opportunities, and find orphaned pages (pages with no internal links).
Check On-Page SEO Elements: Extract and analyze on-page elements like page titles, meta descriptions, headings (H1s, H2s), and image alt text across thousands of pages, making it easy to spot missing or duplicate elements, or those that are too long or short.
Simulate Bot Crawl: See your website from the perspective of a search engine bot, understanding which pages are discoverable and how they are accessed.
Assess Indexability: Identify pages blocked by robots.txt, marked with noindex tags, or affected by canonicalization issues, helping you understand why certain pages might not be indexed.
Uncover Duplicate Content Issues: Detect pages with identical or near-identical content, page titles, or meta descriptions that could confuse search engines.
Gain Insights into Site Performance: While not a full performance test, crawlers can identify large page sizes or potentially highlight pages that were slow for the crawler to access.
Get a Comprehensive Overview: Gather a wealth of data on potentially millions of URLs in a single, exportable report format.
Key Features and Data Points from a Crawler
A crawler tool typically collects and reports on a wide range of data points relevant to technical SEO:
URLs: A complete list of all URLs found, their type (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Images, PDF, etc.), and their crawl depth.
Status Codes: The HTTP response code returned for each URL (200 OK, 301 Redirect, 404 Not Found, 500 Server Error, etc.).
Internal Links: Details on internal links, including the source page, destination URL, and anchor text.
External Links: A list of all links pointing to external websites and their status codes (helping find broken outbound links).
Page Titles: The text content of each page's <title> tag, including length and identification of duplicates or missing titles.
Meta Descriptions: The content of each page's <meta name="description"> tag, including length and identification of duplicates or missing descriptions.
Meta Robots & Directives: Identification of pages using <meta name="robots"> tags (noindex, nofollow) or X-Robots-Tag HTTP headers.
Canonical Tags: Information on rel="canonical" tags, including the canonical URL specified and identification of potential issues.
Headings: The text content of H1 and H2 headings on each page, allowing you to check for missing or duplicate headings.
Images: A list of all images, their size, and whether they have missing or empty alt text.
Page Size: The size of the page in bytes.
Word Count: The number of words on HTML pages.
How to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit Using a Crawler (Step-by-Step)
Install and Configure Your Crawler: Download and install your chosen desktop crawler (like Screaming Frog) or set up access to a cloud-based tool. Configure the settings based on your needs – this might include adjusting crawl speed, setting user agents (e.g., simulating Googlebot Smartphone), defining inclusion or exclusion rules for specific URL patterns, and connecting APIs for integration with tools like Google Search Console or Google Analytics if supported.
Enter the Starting URL: Input the starting URL for the crawl. This is usually your website's homepage, but it could be a specific subdirectory or page if you're auditing a smaller section.
Start the Crawl: Click the "Start" button and let the crawler explore your website. The time this takes will depend on the size and speed of your website, as well as your crawler's settings and your internet connection.
Analyze the Data: Once the crawl is 100% complete, the real work begins. Utilize the various tabs, filters, and reports within the crawler tool to analyze the collected data:
Overview Tabs: Start with high-level summaries, often found in dashboard or overview tabs, to quickly see the number of errors, redirects, blocked pages, etc.
URL Tab: Filter by status code to find 4xx (Client Error) and 5xx (Server Error) responses. Look at the "Indexability" column to find "Non-Indexable" pages and understand why.
Internal/External Tabs: Use the "Client Error (4xx)" and "Server Error (5xx)" filters in the "Internal" and "External" tabs to find broken links.
Response Codes Tab: Get a dedicated view of all status codes encountered.
Page Title & Meta Description Tabs: Use the built-in filters to find "Missing," "Duplicate," "Over 60 Characters," or "Below 30 Characters" (for titles) and "Missing," "Duplicate," "Over 155 Characters," or "Below 70 Characters" (for descriptions).
Directives Tab: Review pages marked with "noindex" to ensure they are intentionally excluded.
Canonicals Tab: Check for canonical errors or warnings.
Headings Tab: Audit H1 and H2 tags for missing or duplicate instances.
Images Tab: Filter by "Missing Alt Text" or "Alt Text Empty".
Links Tab (Inlinks/Outlinks): Select any URL and use the "Inlinks" and "Outlinks" tabs at the bottom to see which pages link to it and which pages it links to. This is crucial for internal linking analysis.
Export Data: Export relevant reports from the crawler (usually as CSV or Excel files) for easier sorting, filtering, sharing with team members, and creating audit reports.
Prioritize and Plan Fixes: Based on the severity and potential impact on SEO, prioritize the technical issues you found. Critical errors like 5xx and widespread 404s should usually be addressed first, followed by indexation issues, and then on-page elements.
Implement Changes: Work with your development team or website administrator to implement the necessary technical fixes (setting up redirects, fixing broken links, updating meta tags, modifying robots.txt).
Recrawl and Verify: After implementing fixes, run another crawl of your website to verify that the issues you addressed have been resolved and haven't created new problems.
Connecting Crawler Data with Other Sources
Crawler data is most powerful when combined with insights from other tools:
Google Search Console (GSC): Crawler data can help you diagnose the cause of errors reported in GSC's Pages or Crawl Stats reports. For instance, if GSC reports a spike in 404s, your crawler can quickly find where those broken links are coming from on your site.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Use GA4 to see user behavior metrics on pages identified by your crawler as having technical or on-page issues. This helps you understand the real-world impact of those issues on user experience and conversions.
Using a crawler tool is a foundational skill for any technical SEO. It provides a clear, data-driven snapshot of your website's technical health, enabling you to identify and fix issues that are critical for search engine discoverability, crawlability, and indexability.
After putting effort into optimizing your pages, tracking their performance is key. Stay informed about how your content ranks and what your competitors are doing with live updates. Get the advantage of real-time keyword and backlink tracking.
With seochatbot.ai, you can finally get the clarity you need from your SEO audits. Ask questions like “Why is my site slow?” or “How do I improve my headings?” and get step-by-step responses that are clear, helpful, and tailored to your site.
