Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop web crawler software tool used for auditing and analyzing websites for SEO purposes. It allows users to crawl websites in order to uncover on-page SEO issues, track website changes, find broken links, analyze redirects, audit technical SEO elements, and more.
With Screaming Frog, users can crawl up to 500 URLs for free or upgrade for unlimited website crawling. It provides in-depth crawl reports that outline issues to address to improve a site's visibility and performance. Key areas the tool audits include site speed, page titles and meta descriptions, duplicate content, structured data, accessibility, canonical tags, crawl errors like 404s, and more.
Some key features and benefits of Screaming Frog SEO Spider include:
- Site Audit: Complete SEO audit to uncover on-page optimization opportunities and technical issues to fix. Users can filter and export audit reports.
- Competitor Analysis: Analyze what competitors are doing with their on-page SEO and site performance to inform optimization strategies.
- Backlink Analysis: Uncover a site's backlink profile including referring domains, anchor text, linking pages, etc.
- Site Mapping: Visualize a site's structure and internal linking to identify optimization opportunities.
- Page Content Analysis: Audit page content like word count, headings tags, meta tags, alt text, etc. to improve pages.
- Redirect Manager: Identify and analyze redirect chains to fix issues with unnecessary or faulty redirects.
- Configuration Options: Customize crawls with options like crawl scope, user agents, crawl filters, regex inclusion/exclusion, etc.
- Integrations: Connect data to other platforms like Google Analytics, Search Console, Excel, and email reporting.
- Support and Training Resources: Detailed user guides, forum community, and SEO training videos for guidance.
Screaming Frog offers a free version for small site audits, as well as paid plans starting at around $150 per year for individuals up to $2,400+ per year for agencies. Pricing is cost effective compared to alternative SEO tools.
Overall, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an essential SEO tool for technically auditing websites, identifying optimization opportunities, analyzing competitors, managing large sites, and improving website visibility in search engines. With its depth of crawl data and customization options, it’s considered an invaluable tool for SEO professionals and web developers.