I like to think of SEO audits as a “health checkup” for your website. They’re not necessarily fun, but they’re essential to keeping your website in tip-top shape and knowing how to get it ranking higher on Google. And the only way to audit is through SEO audit tools that give you stats on your site’s health and quality and even recommend the best keywords to get it ranking. Below are my best SEO audit tools for small businesses and their use cases.
- Semrush: Overall best SEO audit tool
- SE Ranking: Best for checking your website’s keywords
- Similarweb: Best for researching your website’s audience
- HubSpot Website Grader: Best for quick website speed and performance checks
- SpyFu: Best for analyzing competitors’ keywords
- Screaming Frog: Best for advanced technical SEO audits
- Moz: Best for checking backlinks to your website
Best SEO audit tools at a glance
Free plan | Starting cost | On-page & off-page SEO audit | Technical SEO audit | My score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | âś“ | $117.33/month | âś“ | âś“ | 4.98/5 |
 | âś• | $52/month | âś“ | âś“ | 4.70/5 |
 | âś“ | $125/month | âś“ | âś“ | 4.39/5 |
 | âś“ | N/A (free forever) | âś“ | âś“ | 4.34/5 |
 | âś“ | $33/month | âś“ | âś• | 3.75/5 |
 | âś“ | $259/year | âś• | âś“ | 3.62/5 |
 | âś“ | $39/month | âś“ | âś• | 3.56/5 |
What is an SEO audit? An SEO audit is a comprehensive checkup of your website’s health, from its technical aspects to its content. It’s a necessary part of maintaining your small business website so it appears on search engines like Google. An SEO audit checks things like your website speed, broken links, missing keywords, and site structure and gives recommendations on how to improve them.
There are two parts involved in an SEO audit:
- On-page and off-page SEO: This involves everything about your site’s content, including its keywords, title tags, metadata, and backlinks (links from other websites).
- Technical SEO: The technical part of your website, including its loading speed, links, site structure, and sitemaps.
Both are important to your digital marketing strategy for promoting your website and building your brand presence online.
Semrush: Overall best SEO audit tool
Pros
- Audits your website’s content and technical elements
- Free plan lets you use all its auditing tools (for one website)
- Can research keywords to add to your website to help it rank on Google search results
Cons
- Website audit can take up to several minutes
- Interface can be overwhelming with so many tools
- Can only analyze one website on the free plan
Semrush covers all SEO aspects — on-page, off-page, and technical — meaning it audits your website’s content and technical aspects. It checks everything from your content’s missing keywords to broken links. It also helps you research keywords you can add to your site to help it appear on Google more easily.
For instance, say you own an artisan cafe. Semrush can give you the best keywords or key phrases, like “What is artisan coffee” or “Best artisan coffee shops,” to add to your website or blogs to help them rank higher in Google search results.
Because Semrush has a free-forever plan, I find it the best website audit tool for any small business with one site. It’s free to use all its auditing tools, as long as you just have one website to manage (plans only increase if you have multiple websites). There’s a bit of a learning curve, but after spending some time exploring its tools, it should be easy enough to navigate.
Free | Pro | Guru | Business | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Monthly cost (annual billing) | $0 | $117.33 | $208.33 | $416.66 |
Websites | 1 | 5 | 15 | 40 |
On-page & technical website audit | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Website traffic analytics | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Keyword research | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Competitor analysis | âś• | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Audience research | âś• | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Content marketing platform | âś• | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
SE Ranking: Best for checking your website keywords
Pros
- Tracks the effectiveness of your website’s primary keywords over time
- Gives you a comprehensive brief of the best keywords to add to your blogs
- Does a technical audit of your website’s links, loading speed, and structure
Cons
- Interface can get complicated with so many tools
- Doesn’t give specific recommendations on how to improve your site, just insights for you to analyze
- No free plan
SE Ranking is the best SEO audit tool for checking your website keywords. Upon onboarding, you’ll be prompted to enter up to 750 keywords you want to track on your website, and it’ll show you their search volume and average ranking positions.
From there, you can use your insights to see which keywords are helping your site rank on Google and which ones you need to trim. It’s the most detailed tool for analyzing your site’s keywords.
You can even analyze certain blog topics you want to write about, and it’ll give you a comprehensive brief of the best keywords to include in your blog to help it rank on Google, as well as your site’s biggest competitors. Overall, it has the most comprehensive keyword analysis tools, so it’s the best SEO audit software if you write blogs and want to focus specifically on growing your content’s reach online.
Essential | Pro | Business | |
|---|---|---|---|
Monthly cost (annual billing) | $52 | $95.20 | $207.20 |
Websites to track | 5 | 30 | Unlimited |
Keywords to track | 500/day | ||
On-page & technical website audit | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Keyword tracking & research | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Competitor keyword analysis | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Keyword recommendations for blogs | Add-on | âś“ | âś“ |
Content idea generator | Add-on | âś“ | âś“ |
Local marketing platform | Add-on | âś“ | âś“ |
Historical data | âś• | 3 months | All-time |
Similarweb: Best for researching your website’s audience
Pros
- Lets you know your website audience’s demographics and interests
- User-friendly and has a free plan
- Shows your website’s traffic vs competitors
Cons
- Website audit and keyword research are only available on paid plans from $125/month
- Doesn’t check your site’s mobile-friendliness
- No local marketing tools like Google Business Profile management
Similarweb isn’t so much for evaluating the technical side of your website (although it does a technical site audit on paid plans). But it’s one of the best SEO audit tools specifically for researching your audience and their interests. Its dashboard lets you see your website’s audience demographics, including age, gender, location, how long they spend on your site, and how many pages they visit.
More importantly, it also shows you their topic interests and other sites they visit, essential for publishing content that resonates with your target audience. It also lets you see your website’s total monthly visits on a graph compared to your competitors. It’s overall a handy, beginner-friendly tool for seeing your website’s performance over time and learning about your online audience.
Basic | Starter | Professional | |
|---|---|---|---|
Monthly cost | $0 | $125 | $333 |
Websites | 5 | 100 | 500 |
Website traffic performance | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Audience demographics & interests | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Website competitors list | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
On-page & technical website audit | âś• | âś“ | âś“ |
Keyword research | âś• | âś“ | âś“ |
Market analysis | âś• | âś“ | âś“ |
HubSpot Website Grader: Best for quick website speed & performance checks
Pros
- 100% free — no signup required
- Beginner-friendly — no complicated dashboards to navigate
- Checks your on-page and technical SEO and recommends the next steps
Cons
- Technical SEO audit doesn’t check broken links, site structure, or sitemaps
- No tools for researching keywords or planning content
- Doesn’t do competitor analysis or audience research
The HubSpot Website Grader is one of my favorite website auditing software because of its convenience, even if it isn’t as comprehensive as Semrush or SE Ranking. It’s completely free, with no signup required, and it gives an overview of your site’s on-page and technical SEO performance, including its security and mobile-friendliness. And it’s one of the easiest tools — there are no complicated dashboards to navigate.
It’s for these reasons that I find HubSpot Website Grader a great option for quick site speed and performance checks. It’s ideal for those who don’t need a deep dive into a website’s keywords and technical issues but just need a quick checkup to ensure everything’s working or see what needs immediate attention. It also offers recommendations on what to do next to improve your site.
HubSpot Website Grader is 100% free as part of HubSpot’s suite of free tools.
SpyFu: Best for analyzing competitors’ keywords
Pros
- Lets you see your website’s biggest competitors on Google
- Shows the keywords you share with competitors and the keywords you’re missing so you can fill your content gaps
- Competitor analysis is free (you only need to pay to see more comprehensive data)
- Also recommends keywords for Google Ads campaigns
Cons
- Doesn’t do technical website audits (like checking links and site structure)
- Doesn’t give recommendations for your content or keywords, just analyses
- Doesn’t offer any audience insights
SpyFu has some of the best SEO audit tools specifically for seeing who your website’s top competitors are and how your content can outrank theirs on Google. The dashboard shows all your top competitors for organic and paid clicks, the keywords you’re sharing, and the keywords unique to your website. Aside from your competitors, it also shows your website’s traffic over time and how many keywords it’s ranking for in Google search results.
However, SpyFu’s biggest drawback is that it doesn’t do any technical website audits, so I only recommend it as a competitor analysis tool. It doesn’t check your site’s links, website speed, or any of those technical details. Use it instead to find out who your website’s biggest competitors are and see all the content gaps you can fill to get ahead of them on Google.
Free | Basic | Professional | |
|---|---|---|---|
Monthly cost (annual billing) | $0 | $33 | $58 |
Competitor analysis | âś“ | âś“ | âś“ |
Website traffic analysis | 5 | 10,000 | Unlimited |
Competitor keywords | 5 | 10,000 | Unlimited |
Tracked keyword rankings | âś• | 5,000/week | 15,000/week |
Historical data | âś• | 6 months | 10-plus years |
Organic clicks are the clicks your website gets on its own when it appears on someone’s Google search results for specific keywords. For instance, let’s say someone searches “artisan cafe Nashville.” If your cafe’s website pops up, and they click on it, you’ve earned an organic click.
Meanwhile, paid clicks are what your website gets when you pay for a Google Search ad. Buying an ad incentivizes Google to place your website amid top search results for certain keywords. They’ll appear with a small “Sponsored” tag on search results.
Screaming Frog: Best for advanced technical SEO audits
Pros
- Free to check your site’s SEO performance for the first 500 URLs
- Super comprehensive technical SEO audit — from broken links to metadata to site architecture
- Crawls your site similar to how Google does for the most accurate results
Cons
- Not a beginner-friendly interface — you will need some technical SEO knowledge beforehand
- Requires installation into your computer
- Doesn’t check your SEO content, just the technical data
Screaming Frog has the most comprehensive technical SEO audits, so it’s definitely the best technical website audit software. It’s also free for the first 500 URLs — enough for most small business websites — and runs a comprehensive check on your site’s broken links, metadata, sitemaps, and website architecture. In other words, it checks all the essential stuff of your site’s technical SEO.
The main disadvantages of Screaming Frog are that it requires installation on your computer, and the interface can be complicated to navigate. As such, the best way to use it is for regular maintenance checks on your website’s technicalities. However, it doesn’t give recommendations, so you’ll need more advanced technical SEO know-how to get the most out of it.
Screaming Frog comprehensively audits your website’s technical elements, although the interface can take time to learn. (Source: Screaming Frog)
Free | Paid | |
|---|---|---|
Annual cost | $0 | $259 |
Crawled URLs | 500 | Unlimited |
Find broken links | âś“ | âś“ |
Analyze page titles & metadata | âś“ | âś“ |
Analyze website structure | âś“ | âś“ |
Analyze duplicate pages | âś“ | âś“ |
Generate XML sitemaps | âś“ | âś“ |
Check mobile-friendliness | âś• | âś“ |
Scheduled crawls | âś• | âś“ |
Crawl with OpenAI & Gemini | âś• | âś“ |
Moz: Best for checking backlinks to your website
Pros
- Lists all the external websites that link back to your website (aka backlinks) and the pages they link to
- Shows the specific anchor text for your backlinks and the most common anchor text
- Conducts keyword and competitor research
Cons
- Doesn’t give recommendations on how to improve your backlinks, just a list of them
- No technical website audits, just content and link analyses
- Doesn’t give insights into your website’s audiences
Your backlinks play a role in your Google ranking, and Moz’s Inbound Links tool is a handy resource that shows you all of those links in a neat list. Plus, it shows the anchor text with those links, aka the text where those links appear. It’s a helpful way to understand how your site is being used as a resource across the web.
If you publish a lot of blogs as a way to get your website discovered, Moz’s Inbound Links tool is invaluable. It’s also free for 10 keyword queries per month and is an easy way to see your top-performing posts through traffic and external links — and build your content around those top-performing posts.
Free | Starter | Standard | Medium | Large | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Monthly cost (annual billing) | $0 | $39 | $79 | $143 | $239 |
Backlink queries per month | 10 | 75 | 5,000 | 20,000 | 70,000 |
Results per backlink query | 50 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 40,000 | 50,000 |
Keyword queries per month | 10 | 75 | 150 | 5,000 | 15,000 |
Competitive research | 10 | 20 | 50 | 75 | 100 |
Websites to track | 1 | 1 | 3 | 10 | 25 |
Users | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Link tracking lists | âś• | âś• | 1 | 30 | 60 |
Methodology: How I evaluated the best SEO audit tools
Not all SEO audit tools are built the same, as you may have noticed from the examples above. Some specialize in technical SEO, others in keywords. But the best offer some of both, plus some extra handy tools to improve your website even further. Below are the criteria I used to score the best SEO audit tools.
30% of Overall Score
Ideally, these tools should have free plans or be free to start. The more website pages the platform can audit, the higher your score. I also evaluated the starting costs of their paid plans, whether they offered monthly contracts, and whether costs increased after one term.
20% of Overall Score
Technical SEO is one-half of a website audit. This involves checking your website speed, broken links, site structure, mobile friendliness, sitemaps, and overall website performance.
20% of Overall Score
The other half of an SEO audit is on- and off-page SEO, aka the content side of your website. This involves auditing your site’s keywords, metadata, and backlinks and giving content ideas and recommendations to expand your website’s reach.
10% of Overall Score
Aside from auditing your website, I gave extra credit to platforms with extra tools, like audience research, competitor analysis, traffic insights, and security and online listings checkers.
20% of Overall Score
I also personally tested the tools above and graded them based on their features, ease of use, value for money, and customer support.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Some of the best SEO audit tools with free plans are Semrush for content and technical SEO, HubSpot Website Grader for quick site speed and performance checks, and Moz for checking your site’s backlinks and keywords. However, I recommend Semrush most of all because it does the most comprehensive audits by far, and it’s free forever for one website.
Yes. SEO audits are valuable if you want to grow your website’s reach and authority. An SEO audit can give you a list of your website’s content and technical issues that prevent it from appearing on search engines like Google, and some will give recommendations on how to fix them. For instance, some SEO audit tools let you do keyword research to let you know the best keywords that can help your site rank on the first page of Google.
A comprehensive SEO audit covering technical and on-page SEO usually takes several minutes. After the audit, you’ll be given a list of your site’s issues to fix to help it rank better on search engines like Google. Fixing those issues can take longer, depending on their complexity, and some require ongoing maintenance. For example, fixing your keyword rankings can take a months-long content marketing campaign.
Bottom line
If you want to grow your website’s reach, don’t neglect an SEO audit. An SEO audit is the best way to track your website’s health and keep it in tip-top shape for the long term. It might just be what you need to help customers and subscribers find your website, blog, or online store on Google. Start with the best SEO audit tools above.