Performing a Technical SEO Audit with Screaming Frog

Introduction

Technical SEO ensures that search engines can easily crawl and index your website without encountering roadblocks. Screaming Frog is the industry standard crawler that mimics Googlebot to instantly reveal these errors.

Step 1: Initializing the Crawl

Open the application and paste your website's homepage URL into the search bar at the top, then press "Start." For smaller websites (under 500 pages), this process will only take a few seconds.

Step 2: Identifying Client Errors (4xx)

The most immediate wins come from fixing broken links. Navigate to the "Response Codes" tab and filter by "Client Error (4xx)". These are URLs on your site that no longer exist but are still being linked to. Click on a broken link, then look at the "Inlinks" tab at the bottom to see exactly which pages contain the broken link. Fix them or set up 301 redirects.

Step 3: Analyzing Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Switch to the "Page Titles" tab. Here you can sort by length. Ensure all title tags are under 60 characters to avoid being truncated in search results. Ensure there are no duplicate titles across multiple pages.

Combine these technical insights with data from Google Search Console to perfectly optimize your domain.