This section lists the most complete selection of website crawling tools. This is probably the most important search engine optimization software for proper diagnosis of SEO performance issues.
What is a Website Crawler?
This type of tool, also known as SEO spider software, is a prerequisite to even the most basic search engine optimization done on any website. An SEO website crawler finds every page published under a given domain and allows you to see all parameters impacting SEO performance at a page level. Not only is it an On-Page SEO optimization tool, but – importantly – it also highlights inbound backlinks from other websites. This is counted among the Off-Page SEO category of website analysis tasks.
What is Website Crawling?
SEO spider software works by doing exactly what the Google crawler does, and a lot more. The terminology "SEO website crawler" is in fact more appropriate, because these SEO spiders actually crawl a website along every thread of the "spider webs" woven by the links on your website. These SEO tools also find "orphaned pages" and even any page which the search engine crawler cannot access, even though a link exists to that page.
Some of the SEO spider software available for many years now, like the Screaming Frog software, have almost become household names.
What is Screaming Frog used for?
This is a question every SEO practitioner will be able to answer if they know what is a website crawl. They will also understand why a comparison Screaming Frog vs Ahrefs really makes no sense.
While in many ways this is one of the best SEO software out there – as far as SEO spiders go – many have been seeking Screaming Frog alternatives, such as Sitebulb. However, in search of the optimum SEO website crawler, a Sitebulb alternative is often requested as well.
Alternatives to Screaming Frog are included below. Get the website crawling tool that works best for you and learn for yourself what is "crawling" in website analysis and why it is so important for doing proper SEO:
It makes economic sense and saves a quite a bit of time and resources to bundle various SEO software applications into one optimized package of search engine optimization tools. This is available on a SaaS basis, payable monthly, or yearly (usually at a discount).
A proper All-in-One SEO platform will include SEO tools for website analysis, create white-labeled SEO audit reports, and allow export of all kinds of data – including keyword research results – in different formats (e.g. .csv, Excel, PDF). Freelancers and SEO agencies find the included website SEO audit tools to be essential for onboarding and retaining their clients.
Available plans accommodate a different number of website project slots, each constantly keeping tabs on Google keyword search ranking, providing valuable SEO tools for website optimization – and actually also for building of new websites. Built-in keyword research repositories are an essential prerequisite for development of an effective content strategy, and SEO-driven website architecture.
Depending on the business approach to digital marketing and the needs and preferences of their already established customer base, SEO software providers include search engine marketing tools in their SEO toolkit. That way, keyword research can be performed distinctly for organic search vs. paid search.
Who offers the best SEO tools to check website performance? That is for you – the user – to decide. SEO tools suites come in all shapes and sizes, budget-friendly alternatives included:
WordPress has been with us since 2003, and the modern internet is unthinkable without this PHP-based content management system (CMS).
Originally conceived as a blogging platform, allowing rapid-fire publication of static "pages", and dynamically served "posts", the popularity of this CMS has been largely owed to 4 factors:
- WordPress core is free, and a website can be deployed at virtually no cost by anyone who knows how to install and edit WordPress core files, themes, and plugins.
- An ecosystem of theme (template) and plugin builders has evolved, providing a near-infinite selection of website functionalities which would otherwise consume huge budgets to build as a stand-alone or one-off project.
- The nature of this CMS with a plethora of easily accessible functionalities causes glorified WordPress administrators to be perceived as "developers" and "programmers" by their client base, and the general public.
- Until recently, the general requirement for constant "security updates" to fix "security loopholes" provided web designers with a welcome justification for monthly billing, therefore causing them to be regarded as indispensable by their clients.
Much of the above also make it rather easy for anyone to build their own website – without having to rely on any service providers. This with the caveat of being willing and able to master a rather steep learning curve, and invest oodles of time studying and implementing various features.
WordPress has become the open source CMS standard. The open source quality in turn makes it possible for clients of agencies and freelancers to "switch horses" rather quickly when they are no longer happy with their current web development agency or programmer.
This flexibility is in contrast to the many other CMS website platforms out there. These proprietary CMSs are actually designed to shackle the client in chains – because it is assumed that no one else knows how (or has a license) to run that particular CMS.
NOTE: The uninitiated remain unaware of those particular WordPress plugins which obfuscate the true origin of a site actually being a WordPress-based site. Due to WordPress being a naked-on-the-street hacking target, obfuscating the CMS origin is actually desirable. But this is abused by some web design agencies who pass off a de facto WordPress installation as their own proprietary CMS...
Because WordPress uses PHP, it reduces bandwidth usage by avoiding repeated server retrieval of identical HTML elements for every new page being called up. For this reason, WordPress has been said to be "SEO-friendly".
Whoever propagated such hearsay was obviously a newcomer to SEO, unaware that the basic WordPress core does not provide for inclusion of such SEO basics as a title tag – neither a meta SEO description – on a per-page level.
Experienced programmers, if using an Apache server, might make do by editing the root .htaccess file to provide these data bits to the search engine. The only other alternative for inclusion of SEO elements – short of using plugins for SEO in Wordpress – would be messing with the WordPress code … only to have to reinstall such changes after one of the constantly required WordPress updates has completed.
What are the best SEO plugins for WordPress?
Page title and meta SEO description are critical for SEO. And you will need a proper On-Page SEO plugin for WordPress to make the corresponding entry fields appear on your back end dashboard. But WordPress plugins for SEO optimization can do so many other things: various WordPress-specific SEO issues require proper real-time diagnosis so they can be attended to, so that already achieved rankings will not suffer.
Very early on, a real need for SEO plugins for WordPress had become apparent. Both the WordPress and the SEO communities owe much gratitude to Yoast SEO. They were the first to provide every WordPress website owner with a viable search engine optimization software solution to tackle the SEO challenges specific to WordPress.
There are now quite a few top WordPress SEO plugins available. The installation of a WordPress SEO plugin makes search engine optimization viable for this popular website platform. But on top of that, plugins for SEO in WordPress generally allow a more organized diagnosis and resolution of website optimization issues overall.
So installation of an On-Page SEO plugin for WordPress is the quintessential prerequisite for making WordPress indeed "SEO-friendly", while anyway enabling faster and properly guided progress on website optimization.
If you run more than one WordPress website, why not compare several options of the WordPress plugins for SEO optimization available? That way you can find out which one ultimately works best for you!
A browser extension implemented as an SEO toolbar is a very convenient way of evaluating a website, on both the domain and the page level.
Surprisingly, an official SEO Google toolbar never existed: the main pioneer of this category of SEO tools was the MOZ SEO toolbar for Chrome. Their SEO toolbar highlights MOZ’ proprietary website ranking score of "Domain Authority" and "Page Authority" for each and every website page visited – directly in the browser, and for every SERP position.
The MOZ toolbar is followed both in popularity, and in utility by the Ahrefs SEO toolbar Chrome extension. Recognized SEO software providers offer an SEO toolbar for Firefox – but one is rather hard-pressed to find an SEO toolbar for Safari in the same varieties.
Today, a multitude of search engine optimization tools offer an SEO toolbar – usually as a free download. Forming the conduit to an entire All-in-One SEO tools suite, they extend various functions directly into browser view:
SEO and Analytics are inseparable concepts. You cannot do SEO without using a trusted Analytics platform. Rather than relying on any declared rules or guidelines, it is critically important to access and evaluate real-time data about what is going on exactly on your unique website, over a given period of time.
Many SEOs have built their career using pretty much only the Googlebot Analytics suite – in combination with Webmaster Tools available at "Search Central". That was in the olden days, when things were still straightforward and simple: when hearing the words "Panda" and "Penguin" you generally thought about your most recent visit to the zoo – not Google updates that turned the world on its head.
How times have changed! Fortunately, it has been a while since the days of SEO leathernecks having to track 'Possum … just to be able to afford leaving the village again …
NOTE: The Possum Google update focused specifically on mitigating perceived 'Local SEO' manipulation.
What is Analytics?
It was generally understood that SEO and Google Analytics go hand-in-hand: there was no other trusted Analytics platform to accurately reflect website traffic sources and statistics: Google Analytics showed you all traffic from all sources.
However, the absolute nature of this data crumbled with the introduction of GDPR regulations, even more so as cookies evolved from "Opt-out" to "Opt-in" regimes.
Important to understand: Google Analytics shows traffic from all sources. How and from where a website visitor came from is clearly identified – be it from social media, from a search engine (including Google), by referral from another website, or by manually typing in the website address.
The significant distinction to Google Search Console (formerly called Google Webmaster Tools) is that the latter provides only data obtained within Google Search (the SERP) itself. Google Analytics pulls its data from your own website, while Google Search Console pulls its data from Google’s own website: the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). And that is how they can tell you which keywords were typed in the search bar in order to then click on your page! This data can only be read via Google’s systems on the SERP – not through the Analytics tracking clicks on your website’s pages.
But in Google Analytics ... organic search keywords: not provided! It used to be possible to see organic search keywords inside Google Analytics, but only after linking both tools to the same verified property (website), and then to each other. Due to privacy concerns, keyword data has no longer been transmitted between these Google tools for a number of years now: when accessing your website, the user accepts your GDPR rules to allow Google Analytics tracking. However, when accessing Google Search, users accept Google’s own privacy policy, allowing Google to track which keywords they enter.
In recent years, other analytics tools for websites have gained in popularity. This is owed in no small part to a major revision of the venerable Googlebot Analytics, which did not go over well in the SEO community. Many practitioners and website owners started looking for a Google Analytics substitute. They used the requested manual transfer of their website property to the new Google Analytics 4 platform as an opportunity to jump ship, signing up with 3rd party platforms like Matomo or Clicky Analytics instead.
Then of course there is the daring kind of SEO renegades who have always preferred using Yandex Metrica as their trusted Analytics platform – in combination with the Yandex Webmaster tools console.
Find out about the various SEO website analytics platforms available today: