Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best tools for an initial website health check?
-
Hi,
I'd like to offer free website health checks (basic audits) and am wondering what tools other people use for this? It would be good to use something that presents the data well.Moz is great but it gets expensive if I want to offer these to many businesses in the hope of taking on just a few as clients and doing a full manual audit for them.
So far I've tried seositecheckup.com (just checks a single page though), metaforensics.io and mysiteauditor.
Thanks!
-
Sounds like a good idea. I'm just trying to provide basic data on a potential clients' site - traffic, rankings, main errors and things that are working for them. Some tools actually do a pretty good job of this, but only seem to do this for the homepage, rather than the entire site. I guess I'll have to use multiple tools and hope the effort is worth it as it's a free service.
Do you use SEO profiler?
-
Hi John,
Do you use SEMRush? I've been thinking of signing up. Can you run unlimited reports do you know? Screaming Frog is great and is what I'll use for thorough Audits but I'm just trying to generate lead generation/potential new client reports.
thanks
-
I like Ccreaming Frog and SEMRush as well. WebsiteGrader.com is good in a pinch too. SEO Profiler has a nice set of tools that have come a long way in the last 2 years. I think this is one of those tools where we all have a different opinion as to what works best, which would explain so many options!
I feel like I have tons of great data...I just can't find a good way to display it graphically so it is clear to the client and helps me use the research to convert prospects. Maybe we should come up with a killer report template we can all use?
-
James
For a free report I would start with website.grader.com - a couple of screen grabs, Rand backed it a few weeks ago. For a very low cost report I would use semrush.com.
Hope that assists.
-
Good point.
-
ScreamingFrog gives all the data you want. Tools for the purpose of a creating a sleek report usually don't give the full picture. It's those issues you draw out yourself that makes a difference.
-
Really it's best to use S. Frog then and to extract that info for a website review instead of trying to find software that gives the overall 'health' of a site and produces a report?
thanks for your answer by the way!
-
I second ScreamingFrog. Nothing else comes close.
-
Hi James,
For page load, network, speed test I have used Pingdom.com in the past. They recently went more pay to use but it is a nice set of tools for basic test. There is still some free stuff you can use at tools.pingdom.com
For a quick SEO pass. Man I love ScreamingFrog! You can quickly identify header errors, long titles, descriptions, lack of h1 tags and so much more. When I do general quick audits for trouble shooting problems posted on this board, its my go to.
Hope this helps,
Don
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
WEbsite cannot be crawled
I have received the following message from MOZ on a few of our websites now Our crawler was not able to access the robots.txt file on your site. This often occurs because of a server error from the robots.txt. Although this may have been caused by a temporary outage, we recommend making sure your robots.txt file is accessible and that your network and server are working correctly. Typically errors like this should be investigated and fixed by the site webmaster. I have spoken with our webmaster and they have advised the below: The Robots.txt file is definitely there on all pages and Google is able to crawl for these files. Moz however is having some difficulty with finding the files when there is a particular redirect in place. For example, the page currently redirects from threecounties.co.uk/ to https://www.threecounties.co.uk/ and when this happens, the Moz crawler cannot find the robots.txt on the first URL and this generates the reports you have been receiving. From what I understand, this is a flaw with the Moz software and not something that we could fix form our end. _Going forward, something we could do is remove these rewrite rules to www., but these are useful redirects and removing them would likely have SEO implications. _ Has anyone else had this issue and is there anything we can do to rectify, or should we leave as is?
Moz Pro | | threecounties0 -
Backlink Indexing Problem? Suggest any paid or free tool..!
My Forum backlinks and social share backlinks are not indexing plz suggest any free r paid tool that index such backlinks. Otherwise my ranking will drop. Plz help
Moz Pro | | AsifSeotools7770 -
SEO impact of redirecting high ranking mirror site to the main website
During SEO audit for a client I noticed that they had over a dozen duplicate websites that are carbon copies of the main website. This was done via CMS platform and DNS. One of the mirror sites has about 400 indexed pages and has Moz DA of 42 and 137k External Equity-Passing Links. Full metrics comparison is attached. I originally planned on doing rel="canonical" on the mirror site but the CMS vendor never even heard of it and is refusing to implement it in the header. My only other option is doing one to one 301 redirects. Since the mirror site ranks well, even competes with main domain for some positions on the 1st page of SERP, what will be the impact after the redirects? Is doing 301's still the best option? Thanks! PrUpN3q
Moz Pro | | dasickle0 -
Automatically Check List of Sites For Links To Specific Domain
Hi all, Can anyone recommend a tool that will allow me to put in a list of about 200 domains that are then checked for a link back to a specific domain? I know I can do various link searches and use Google site: command on a site by site basis, but it would be much quicker if there was a tool that could take the list of domains I am expecting a link on and then find if that link exists and if so on what page etc. Hope this makes sense otherwise I have to spend a day doing it by hand - not fun! Thanks,
Moz Pro | | MrFrisbee
charles.0 -
Can increasing website pages decrease domain authority?
Hello Mozzers! Say there is a website with 100 pages and a domain authority of 25. If the number of pages on this website increases to 10,000 can that decrease its domain authority or affect it in any way?
Moz Pro | | MozAddict0 -
How do you check the outbound links of a site?
There are great tools like http://www.opensiteexplorer.org that will tell you all about the inbound links. What about the more basic and easier question: What outgoing links does this site have?
Moz Pro | | SkinLaboratory2 -
Discrepancies in PA and LRDs reported in different SEOmoz tools
I've noticed a difference in the reported PA and LRD numbers for URLs depending on whether you use Open Site Explorer, or look at the same metrics from within the rankings history (in your campaign set up). I've checked this for a few URLs and what I'm seeing is the reported scores for PA and LRDs is different 9 times out of ten. The PA is sometiomes higher on one report, lower on another, or vice versa. Same for LRDs. I thought it might be because one report was lagging behind and using old data, but that would only make sense if I was seeing an increase in reported LRDs, but it just as often shows a decrease ! Is this just a bug in the campaign>rankings history report or is there a reason for the discrepancies?
Moz Pro | | Websensejim0