If you are a digital marketer or involved in SEO, then you have probably heard of the tool called Screaming Frog. It’s one of the most popular and powerful SEO tools available in the market today. Screaming Frog is a website crawler that allows you to analyze your website for various aspects such as broken links, duplicate content, and other technical issues. This article will provide you with a comprehensive guide to using Screaming Frog and how it can benefit your website’s SEO efforts.
What is Screaming Frog?
Screaming Frog is a desktop-based website crawler developed by an England-based company called Screaming Frog Ltd. It was first launched in 2010 and has since then become a favorite tool among SEO professionals. The tool uses Google’s Chrome browser as its interface and crawls websites in the same way as search engine bots do. It collects information from all the pages on a website and provides a detailed report on various technical aspects affecting its performance.
Screaming Frog is a desktop application used for website crawling, developed by a company named Screaming Frog Ltd, based in England
The name ‘Screaming Frog’ may sound unusual, but it actually refers to the act of crawling and analyzing websites. Just like frogs use their long tongues to catch prey, this tool crawls through web pages and captures important data. It is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems and offers a free and paid version. The free version has some limitations, whereas the paid version offers more advanced features and unlimited crawl capability.
Now that we have an overview of what Screaming Frog is let’s dive into the details of how it works and how you can make the most out of this powerful tool.
How Does Screaming Frog Work?
Screaming Frog works by crawling through a website and collecting data from each page. It mimics the behavior of search engine bots and follows the links on a webpage to discover new pages to crawl. It starts with the homepage and then goes through every page on the same domain, unless instructed otherwise. It collects information such as meta titles, meta descriptions, headings, images, and more.
The data collected by Screaming Frog is then presented in a user-friendly interface, making it easy for users to analyze and understand. It can crawl both small and large websites, and you can adjust the crawl speed according to your preference. Once the crawl is completed, you can export the data to different formats such as CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets for further analysis.
Why Should You Use Screaming Frog?
Screaming Frog is an essential tool for SEO professionals, web developers, and website owners for several reasons. Let’s take a look at some of the key benefits of using this tool.
One of the main reasons for using Screaming Frog is to pinpoint technical issues that could be affecting your website’s performance
Find Technical Issues
One of the primary purposes of using Screaming Frog is to identify technical issues that may be hindering your website’s performance. The tool crawls through every page of your website and checks for broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, and other issues that may affect your site’s SEO. It provides a comprehensive report with all the issues found, making it easier for you to fix them and improve your website’s technical health.
Optimize On-Page Elements
The on-page elements of your website play a crucial role in its ranking on search engines. Screaming Frog allows you to analyze these elements and optimize them for better visibility. You can check if your meta titles and descriptions are within the recommended length, if there are any missing alt tags on images, and if your headings are properly structured. This ensures that your website is following best practices and has a higher chance of ranking well on search engine result pages.
Discover Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is a common issue that many websites face, and it can negatively impact your website’s SEO efforts. Search engines penalize websites with duplicate content, as it creates a poor user experience and reduces the credibility of the website. With Screaming Frog, you can easily find duplicate content on your website and take necessary actions to fix it.
Improve Website Navigation
The navigation of your website is crucial for both users and search engines. Screaming Frog allows you to analyze the internal links on your website, making it easier to identify any broken or redirecting links. This can improve your website’s user experience and make it easier for search engine bots to crawl through your site.
Monitor Changes Over Time
With the paid version of Screaming Frog, you can schedule crawls to be performed automatically at regular intervals. This allows you to monitor changes on your website and identify any new technical issues that may arise. You can also compare the data from different crawls and see if there has been any improvement or decline in your website’s performance.
How to Use Screaming Frog?
Now that we know what Screaming Frog is and why it is useful let’s take a deeper look into how to use this tool effectively. We will guide you through the process of setting up Screaming Frog, performing crawls, and analyzing the data collected.
Setting Up Screaming Frog
Before you can start using Screaming Frog, you need to download and install the tool on your computer. The process is straightforward and takes only a few minutes. Once installed, you will be greeted with a simple interface with a few options to choose from.
Menu Bar
The menu bar at the top contains six main options – File, Mode, Configuration, Spider, Bulk Export, and Help. These options allow you to control various aspects of the tool and customize it according to your needs.
Tab Bar
The tab bar displays the current tabs open in the application. Each tab represents a crawl, and you can have multiple tabs open at once for different websites or different settings.
Configuration Manager
The configuration manager allows you to save and load different configurations that you use frequently. A configuration is a set of rules and settings that the tool follows when crawling a website. This feature comes in handy when you want to perform specific types of crawls without having to change the settings manually.
Crawl Settings
Once you have the tool set up, you need to configure it before performing your first crawl. To do this, click on ‘Configuration’ from the menu bar and then select ‘Spider.’
This will open up a new window where you can adjust the crawl settings according to your preferences. Let’s take a look at some of the key options available in this section.
Basic
Under the ‘Basic’ tab, you can choose the user-agent that you want to use when crawling. By default, Screaming Frog uses Google Chrome as its user-agent, but you can change it if you want. You can also enter the maximum number of URLs you want to crawl in one session. This is helpful if you have a large website with thousands of pages, and you don’t want the crawl to go on for too long.
Limits
The ‘Limits’ tab allows you to set limits for various aspects such as crawl depth, crawl time, and maximum page size. By default, these are set to unlimited, but you can change them according to your needs.
Search
The ‘Search’ tab lets you specify any specific words or phrases that you want the crawler to find on each page. This is useful when you want to check if certain keywords or tags are present on your website.
Render
The ‘Render’ tab allows you to check how your webpages will look when rendered by different browsers. This is useful if you want to see how your website appears on a particular browser or device.
Extraction
The ‘Extraction’ tab lets you extract specific elements from the pages you crawl. You can specify what type of elements you want to extract and where you want to save them.
Once you have adjusted the settings according to your needs, click on ‘OK’ to save the changes. Your configuration is now ready, and you can start performing crawls.
Performing Crawls
To perform a crawl using Screaming Frog, click on ‘New’ from the menu bar and then select ‘Spider.’
This will open up a new window where you can enter the URL of the website that you want to crawl. Once the URL is entered, click on ‘Start’ to begin the process.
The tool will now start crawling through the website and collecting data. Depending on the size of the website, this process may take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. Once the crawl is completed, you will be presented with a detailed report containing all the data collected from the website.
How to Analyze the Data?
The report generated by Screaming Frog contains a wealth of information about your website. It is essential to understand what these data points mean and how to interpret them.
The report produced by Screaming Frog provides extensive details about your website
Overview Tab
The overview tab gives you a brief summary of the data collected. Here, you can see the total number of URLs crawled, external and internal links, images, CSS, JavaScript, and other elements found on the website.
Internal Tab
The internal tab displays all the URLs that were crawled from the website. You can see various metrics such as status code, title tags, meta descriptions, canonical tags, and more. This tab also highlights any errors or issues found on the website, making it easier for you to identify them.
External Tab
The external tab displays all the external links found on the website. It also shows the status code, anchor text, and other information for each link.
Protocol Tab
The protocol tab displays all the protocols (HTTP, HTTPS) used by the website. It is useful when you want to check if your website is properly redirecting HTTP to HTTPS or vice versa.
Response Codes Tab
The response codes tab displays all the URLs that returned a specific status code. This makes it easy for you to identify any broken links or pages with errors.
AMP Tab
If your website is using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), then this tab will display all the URLs that are marked as AMP.
Images Tab
The images tab displays all the images found on the website along with their alt text, size, and other metrics. You can use this tab to ensure that all your images have proper alt tags and are optimized for SEO.
Custom Filters
Screaming Frog allows you to apply custom filters to the data collected from your website. This feature enables you to dig deeper into the data and find specific issues that may be affecting your website’s performance. Here are some of the custom filters that you can apply to the data:
Find Duplicate Titles and Meta Descriptions
Having duplicate titles and meta descriptions can negatively impact your website’s SEO efforts. To find these duplicates, go to ‘Reports’ from the menu bar and select ‘Duplicate Titles/Descriptions.’
This will open up a new window where you can see all the pages with duplicate titles or meta descriptions. You can then take necessary actions to fix these issues and improve your website’s SEO.
Find Missing Meta Tags
Another essential element of on-page optimization is having proper meta tags on every page of your website. To check if any pages are missing meta tags, go to ‘Reports’ and select ‘Missing Meta Descriptions.’
This will display a list of all the pages that do not have meta descriptions. You can then add them manually or using a plugin, depending on your website’s platform.
Find Pages with Broken Links
Broken links affect both user experience and SEO. With Screaming Frog, you can easily find pages with broken links by going to ‘Reports’ and selecting ‘Client Errors (4xx).’
This report displays all the pages with 4xx errors, indicating that they have broken links. You can then fix these links or redirect them to relevant pages, ensuring that users don’t encounter any errors while browsing your website.
Find Orphan Pages
An orphan page is a page that does not have any internal links pointing to it. Such pages are challenging for search engine bots to find and crawl, and they may not get indexed correctly. To identify orphan pages, go to ‘Reports’ and select ‘Orphan Pages.’
This report shows you all the orphan pages on your website and allows you to take necessary actions to make them more visible.
Using Custom Search
Custom search allows you to use advanced operators to filter through the data collected by Screaming Frog. This feature comes in handy when you want to find specific pages or elements that match certain criteria. Here are some of the ways you can use custom search to your advantage:
Find Pages with Specific Words in the URL
If you want to find pages that have specific words in their URLs, use the ‘contains:’ operator followed by those words. For example, if you want to find all pages with ‘blog’ in their URLs, type ‘contains:blog’ in the custom search bar.
Find Pages with Specific Status Codes
To find pages with a particular status code, use the ‘statuscode:’ operator. This will display all the URLs with that specific status code. For example, if you want to find all pages with a 404 error, type ‘statuscode:404’ in the custom search bar.
Find Pages with a Specific Word in the Title Tag
To find pages that contain a specific word in their title tags, use the ‘intitle:’ operator. For example, if you want to find pages with ‘SEO’ in their title tags, type ‘intitle:SEO’ in the custom search bar.
Utilizing the Data for SEO
Now that you know how to use Screaming Frog and analyze the data it collects let’s take a look at how you can utilize this data for your website’s SEO efforts.
Fix Technical Issues
The first and most crucial step is to fix any technical issues found by Screaming Frog. These issues may be hindering your website’s performance and preventing it from ranking well on search engines. By fixing these issues, you create a better user experience and make your website more accessible to search engine bots.
Optimize On-Page Elements
Screaming Frog provides you with a detailed analysis of your website’s metadata, headings, and other important elements. You can use this data to optimize these elements and improve your website’s on-page SEO. Make sure your titles and descriptions are within the recommended length, your headings are properly structured, and all other on-page elements are optimized for SEO.
Find and Fix Duplicate Content
As mentioned earlier, duplicate content can have a significant impact on your website’s SEO. Use Screaming Frog to find and fix any duplications on your website to ensure that search engines don’t penalize you for it.
Improve Website Navigation
Screaming Frog allows you to analyze the internal links on your website and identify any issues. You can use this data to improve your website’s navigation and make it easier for users to browse through your site. This, in turn, will result in better user experience and help with your website’s SEO.
Integrating with Other Tools
Screaming Frog integrates with various other tools and platforms, making it even more powerful and useful for SEO. Let’s take a look at some of the integrations available and how they can benefit your website’s SEO efforts.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that provides valuable insights into your website’s traffic and performance. With the paid version of Screaming Frog, you can extract data from Google Analytics and merge it with the crawl data to get a more comprehensive analysis.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is another essential tool that provides data on your website’s organic performance. With Screaming Frog, you can integrate Google Search Console and see how your website is performing for specific keywords and phrases.
Majestic
Majestic is a popular backlink analysis tool used by many SEO professionals. With Screaming Frog, you can integrate Majestic and get data on the backlinks pointing to your website. This allows you to analyze the quality and quantity of your backlinks and make necessary changes to improve your website’s link profile.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that analyzes your website’s speed and provides suggestions on how to improve it. By integrating this tool with Screaming Frog, you can get a detailed report on your website’s pagespeed and identify any issues that may be affecting it.
Conclusion
Screaming Frog is an indispensable tool for any digital marketer or website owner. It provides valuable data on various technical aspects of your website, allowing you to improve its performance and visibility on search engines. By using this tool effectively and analyzing the data collected, you can make informed decisions and take necessary actions to boost your website’s SEO efforts. With regular use, Screaming Frog can become your go-to tool for optimizing your website and staying ahead of the competition.