Websites aren’t “set it and forget it” marketing tools. They need constant attention, ranging from technical function to the regular review of content. Speed, storage, SEO, and content relevancy are critical to ensuring that the right person sees your content at the right time — without becoming frustrated by endless loading delays.
In fact, a few short months ago, Google revealed their intention to start penalizing sites with slow speeds. That leaves you, the website owner or developer, in a perilous position; what if your message never makes it to your audience simply because your website’s performance suffers?
The best option for ensuring success is to partner with a professional consultant or marketing agency like Sachs Marketing Group. In the meantime, here’s 14 helpful tools to help you get started.
Google Search Console
This is a free tool offered within the Google Webmaster app. It’s easy-to-use, which makes it great for those who are new to website management and auditing. However, Search Console only offers very basic information about page-load speed, broken links, and general errors in your HTML markup. While Google Search Console is a great place to start, you must switch to something more advanced as your business grows.
Screaming Frog
Admit it — just the name alone is intriguing, right? Screaming Frog is a tool that emulates search engine crawlers. This tool looks for technical errors that will impact your SEO, including duplicate content pages, canonicalization errors, metadata issues, and more. The free version limits you to 500 pages, but that should be more than enough for smaller and newer sites.
SiteAnalyzer
This is another free tool, allowing for up to 20 website checks per month. (You must upgrade to the paid version for more.) SiteAnalyzer reviews 50 separate parameter settings, including SEO, content, design, performance, and accessibility. Each section will receive a score, and the dashboard will let you know which items need attention while flagging the critical items for immediate review. This is an excellent tool, but there is one major drawback — it does not work well for multi-language sites.
MySiteAuditor
This is a helpful tool for agencies as it can be integrated onto a website and used to generate leads. MySiteAuditor is based on Google’s algorithms. While its features offer deep checks, much like the other tools on this list, it also completes extra keyword reviews to further enhance your SEO strategies and efforts.
Moz Crawl Test
The Moz Crawl Test tool works brilliantly for combining website functionality and SEO into the same neat little package. It’s great for identifying redirect issues with your server, and for finding problems that are preventing the search engines from crawling your site on a regular basis. Like the others, though, it isn’t foolproof – you still need to interpret the results and apply the appropriate fixes.
SEOPTIMER
SEOPTIMER is a Chrome extension you can download, install, and use from your browser. It takes a few seconds for it to crawl your website; then it passes along handy suggestions for improved SEO. SEOPTIMER is unique in that it provides information on SEO, usability and performance while analyzing site security and social integrations. If you use this tool to analyze your site, you can also download white-label reports loaded with helpful information.
HubSpot’s Website Grader
This tool is amazing for analyzing website metrics. HubSpot’s Website Grader looks at all elements of performance, mobile readiness, SEO, and security. Missing your SSL certificate? The grader will let you know. You’ll receive a score between 1 and 100 along with a detailed report with suggested updates.
SEMrush Site Audit
One of the best features of the SEMrush Site Audit tool is the historical analysis function. This browser-based tool saves reporting information after each crawl. You can then track what changes you’ve made and run a comparative report to identify exactly which revisions helped and which hurt. Use this auditing tool to identify (or even reverse) negative SEO influences.
Woorank
The free version of Woorank is limited (you can only run a certain number of reports), but it’s still useful. It analyzes website data and provides you with several presentation, creation, and slide organization options. It’s best for entrepreneurs or agencies who need to present clients with statistics or monthly reports.
Alexa Site Audit
Yes, Alexa…the one and only Amazon audit platform. She can turn on your lights, play music, and even conduct a SEO audit for your website, if you’re so inclined. Alexa Site Audit lets you schedule audits and then prompts you to review them – so you never forget to take action on a negative evaluation or performance. Afterward, Alexa will issue a report highlighting opportunities to improve best practices, suggestions for solutions, and tips for prioritizing your updates.
BuzzStream
BuzzStream is a great tool for monitoring your site’s link building efforts. It lets you monitor whether links pointing to your site are active or not. It also tracks communication and customized emails sent out to site owners. Use it to create and issue custom emails from within the platform or use the search function to find industry-related sites to approach.
Benchmark Hero Solution
Running an e-commerce site? Benchmark Hero Solution works well for managing online stores. It reviews your product pages to make suggestions with helpful improvements for both traffic and conversions. You’ll receive a site audit, a report comparing your site to top competitors, and a list of action steps. Best of all? It’s free.
DeepCrawl
DeepCrawl’s performance reports contain a ton of detail. It can also crawl hundreds upon thousands of pages at a time. Your dashboard highlights your domain’s overall score, page-loading times, and a myriad of other useful details that can help you make informed decisions about how to move forward. Use DeepCrawl to manage your entire SEO team, creating, assigning, and managing tasks right from the dashboard.
Check My Links
Check My Links is a simple tool for web designers that crawls internal and external pages to make sure they’re working. It’s packaged with plenty of capability; use it to review link-rich pages or quickly find which links on a page work and which are broken. Make corrections as needed before you make new pages go live.
There are dozens of great tools you can use to analyze your site’s performance. These are just some of the most promising on the market right now. Take advantage of some of the free options and trials before committing to a tool for the long-haul. No matter which you choose, you’ll be pleased with how easy they are to use and how quickly you are able to improve your site’s performance.
Eric Sachs
SEO virtuoso, CEO @Sachs Marketing Group. Focused on being of service to business owners - helping to better position them in the eyes of their audiences.