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How to Use Screaming Frog for SEO (+ Key Features)

Jan 11, 2024 | Blog | 0 comments

Technical SEO involves many moving pieces that may feel complex at first. However, having a solid understanding of web development topped with SEO will make the task less daunting. Getting everything just right will have significant results on your search engine rankings. Luckily, some tools simplify identifying and fixing issues; one such tool is Screaming Frog, which offers fast analysis of websites.

Though SEOs typically know they should focus on links from external websites, fewer realize how useful Screaming Frog can be in finding internal links. You can use its page titles, meta descriptions, and H1 tags to quickly identify any duplicate content on your site. Screaming Frog SEO spider feature will begin spidering your chosen URL immediately, enabling you to view its results live as they happen – which can help identify and prioritize technical SEO fixes for your site.

What is Screaming Frog?

Screaming Frog for SEO is an extremely powerful tool used by SEO agencies to analyze and optimize websites. With its variety of features, from website crawls to creating XML sitemaps, Screaming Frog makes website optimization straightforward – yet there are a few things you should keep in mind before getting started with the software.

Screaming Frog can also help you identify and address pagination issues. For instance, if your page includes parameters. In contrast, another similar page without them exists on Google search results pages, set up a canonical to indicate which version should be considered the original. Use SERP mode to review page title and description lengths against pixel limits – an excellent way to optimize pages for search engines!

Screaming Frog allows you to see all subdomains by ticking Crawl All Subdomains in its configuration settings, giving you access to their page titles, meta descriptions, redirected pages, images without alt text, and more. Furthermore, memory allocation can be increased or split crawls to analyze subdirectories or specific domains.

Read Along to Learn How To Use Screaming Frog for SEO with Key Features:

Crawling a Website

Utilizing the Screaming Frog SEO spider to crawl your website can help identify various SEO issues, including URLs that redirect to other pages, duplicate content, and meta refreshes that require attention.

Once your website has been scanned, its results can be exported into a spreadsheet for further examination and prioritization of any problems found. With this data at hand, prioritizing and fixing them becomes much easier.

Screaming Frog SEO tools have recently adopted database storage to enhance crawls, making data recovery much simpler if your machine crashes or your crawl is interrupted – an improvement over previous versions, which frequently froze or crashed during large site crawls, saving both time and energy in the process. This feature has improved the overall performance of this remarkable tool.

Finding Broken Links

Screaming Frog can help identify these broken links by analyzing your website’s linking structure.

Screaming Frog allows you to perform website crawls, producing a list of pages with broken links filtered by Response Codes and Client Error (4XX) Inlinks to quickly and efficiently locate specific broken links across your site. Get in touch with one of the SEO experts at CRM Digital to learn more about what is screaming frog SEO spider and how to use Screaming Frog for your business website.

Screaming Frog also allows you to identify other technical issues affecting your SEO, including duplicate content, bad redirects, and meta refreshes that could hinder its effectiveness. Screaming Frog offers another crucial function by searching internal links on any page, providing an effective means of discovering broken links that could have an adverse impact on search engine rankings.  Get the best-suited SEO strategies for your business only with CRM Digital, a leading SEO marketing agency in Texas.

Creating an XML Sitemap

Screaming Frog sitemap feature can help website owners identify issues affecting SEO by analyzing page titles, meta descriptions, duplicate content detection, redirect identification, and understanding site architecture by taking action to improve search engine rankings and user experience on their websites.

Structured data markup is a popular way of increasing website visibility in search engine results pages. Still, sometimes, this code contains errors that prevent search engines from correctly understanding its information.

Regular monitoring and analysis are critical to maintaining SEO performance and promptly addressing technical issues that emerge on a website. Using Screaming Frog, SEO consultants and professional experts can identify problems that impact search engine rankings and provide users with a smooth browsing experience.

Checking for Crawlability Issues

Identification and resolution of technical SEO issues leads to improved website visibility, performance, and user experience. This process involves optimizing URL structure and on-page elements such as page titles and meta descriptions, inspecting header tags, inspecting image alt text, and detecting broken links. Utilizing Screaming Frog’s include and exclude functionality helps narrow crawls to analyze only the content you desire. This is especially helpful when faced with directories with too many pages for your computer to handle. By doing this, you avoid unnecessary resource consumption by your system.

Screaming Frog offers you the ability to specify which types of URLs (such as dynamic pages ) it should ignore, such as dynamic CMS pages generated automatically by auto-generating CMS websites. Regular expressions allow you to easily define these URIs that must be avoided. Contact CRM Digital, a well-experienced SEO Consultant in Texas offering the best-in-class SEO services.

Performing Keyword Research

Screaming Frog can assist your small business site identify popular keywords and using that data to build a more solid digital marketing strategy. The SEO Spider can also show you which URIs did not return any response code, making this tool useful if search engines are missing a large portion of your site. This is in order to ensure all pages are indexed properly.

Screaming Frog has another valuable feature – its ability to identify and prioritize pages that need optimization for search engine visibility. You can filter results based on missing, duplicate, or too-long titles/meta descriptions in the Page Titles and Meta Descriptions tab. Additionally, you can determine which URLs link back from each page by choosing Inlinks and Outlinks tabs. To know more about the Screaming Frog SEO tool, sign up for the Screaming Frog free version or use the paid version of this amazing tool; you will not regret it.

Conclusion

Screaming Frog offers many other useful SEO tools, including speed analysis. You can check HTTP requests per page as well as for duplicate meta titles and descriptions. At the same time, its Link Rewrite feature rewrites internal links – especially useful for improving internal linking structures and increasing authority within an organization’s domain.

Download Screaming Frog from its official website; be aware that its large file may take some time to download. After the installer has finished installing itself on your computer, simply follow its instructions to install Screaming Frog and launch it by pressing the green “Start” button or selecting from its menu.

Screaming Frog can also detect duplicate content, which can be an enormous hindrance for websites. It makes the task simpler by finding exact and near duplicates on each page and flagging it for review so you can make any necessary updates or changes. To learn more about the Screaming Frog SEO tool, get in touch with CRM Digital, one of the best SEO marketing agencies in Texas now!