A tool that does SEO for you — sounds too good to be true, right?
The Screaming Frog SEO spider is a website crawler that helps you improve your site’s SEO.
WHAT on earth is a website crawling spider? There’s so much jargon in this sentence.
A spider = the name of a sophisticated tool that crawls websites.
Website crawlers = collect data, identify technical issues and give recommendations on how to improve the performance of your website.
A frog = an amphibious creature found in and around a pond.
Okay, we know you know what a frog is! But there is a real life story behind why this piece of clever software has been given the name screaming frog — and it’s worth a read.
How can the Screaming Frog tool help you?
Find broken links on your website so that you can fix them.
You want to get rid of broken links. When users click on a link that is broken they might be taken to a 404-error page or reach a dead end. They will get annoyed. Broken links stop the easy navigation of websites. They leave users frustrated and also don’t do well in search engines!
Discover errors on your site for you to mend and improve your users experience
Need we say more?
Analyse the titles of your page and the metadata behind your pages and help you to improve them
Metadata is the data that describes what is on your website. It’s the behind the scenes stuff that talks to search engines in techy-terms making sure that your content is legitimate, easy to use and every thing’s in the right place.
Find out more about the importance of titles in our blog on meta title best practices.
You can use Screaming Frog to visualise your site maps
Which means that you can see the layout of all the pages on your website, how they are prioritised and work out the best navigation for your users to move around easily on your site.
Find duplicated content on your site
Screaming Frog helps you to identify repeated content. Duplicated content can damage your rankings as search engines read the information twice, and won’t know which page to recommend to potential users.
The PROS of Screaming Frog
1. There’s a free version of the tool that lets you do everything in the list above. You can crawl up to 500 URLS - meaning, it’s a great tool for smaller organisations, charities and businesses.
2. It links up with other software like Google Analytics so you can automatically pull in other data sources and get a really well-rounded overview of your website.
3. It’s really simple to use - set up is easy and you don’t need to be a technical wizard to use it.
As you read this, and realise that Screaming Frog would be a beneficial tool for anyone who owns a website to use, you might be thinking… Why would an SEO agency be shouting about something that could do part of their job for them?
It’s an important question. And, honestly, the answer is:
When Charlotte (Wild SEO Agency’s founder) started this business, Screaming Frog was the first ever SEO product that she invested in. Wild SEO agency is committed to delivering the absolute best for our clients, and this tool is the bees knees. So, we recommend reading more about Screaming Frog to anyone who wants to listen and if you’re ready to, why not take the plunge and download the tool for yourself.