Running regular SEO audits is essential if you want to unlock the full potential of your website. An SEO site audit reveals opportunities and flaws that impact your search visibility – issues you may not even realize exist.
By finding and resolving these problems, you can significantly improve organic traffic and conversions. But with so many SEO tools to choose from, which one should you use?
In this post, we‘ll explore SE Ranking – an all-in-one site auditor that I consider to be the gold standard for comprehensive technical and on-page checks.
I‘ll cover SE Ranking‘s standout features, detailed customization options, and intuitive progress tracking. You‘ll also see how it compares against competitors like Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz.
By the end, you‘ll understand why SE Ranking is my top recommendation for DIY audits and monitoring day-to-day SEO health.
Why You Need to Audit Your Website’s SEO
A website audit examines all elements that affect your online visibility in search engines like Google. It lets you diagnose critical issues that damage rankings and traffic, including:
- Crawl errors blocking pages from being indexed
- Slow page speed hurting user experience
- Thin or duplicated content failing to rank
- Broken internal links, buttons and images
- Issues with structured data and schema markup
Without realizing these problems even exist, you can‘t fix them. And that leaves potential organic traffic and revenue on the table.
I recommend running full SEO site audits quarterly. This ensures you catch any new issues before they significantly impact performance.
You should also use SEO tools with monitoring features to stay on top of changes daily. SE Ranking provides both auditing and real-time tracking – making it an ideal one-stop solution.
Now let‘s dive into SE Ranking‘s best-in-class capabilities for analyzing on-page and technical SEO…
SE Ranking’s Powerful Crawl Capabilities
The foundation of every SEO audit is crawling and indexing your URLs to uncover issues Googlebot would encounter.
SE Ranking utilizes robust crawlers that mimic search engine spiders by scraping and rendering pages like a real visitor. This reveals problems that static HTML analysis tools would miss.
With the Pro and Agency plans, you can crawl up to 500K pages per month – exceeding my largest client sites. The tool also avoids overloading servers by controlling the number of parallel connections.
Impressively, SE Ranking can crawl JavaScript-heavy sites without headaches. The smart crawler accurately executes JS code to detect errors that might go unseen otherwise.
For example, sites relying on client-side JavaScript rendering can have issues like missing tags or alt text that only display after page load. By processing JavaScript, SE Ranking sees what search bots see.
You‘ll save hours of manual analysis time thanks to blazing fast turnaround. Medium websites with 10K+ pages are audited in under 30 minutes in my experience.
Now let‘s explore the goldmine of SEO insights uncovered with each scan…
Uncovering Technical SEO Flaws
SE Ranking puts your site under the microscope to catch critical technical problems affecting site health and indexation:
🔎 Crawlability: First checks that pages can be accessed by search bots without issue. This avoids having perfectly optimized pages that still won‘t get indexed!
🔎 Indexing directives: Detects incorrect noindex tags and canonical tags that can hide or duplicate pages.
🔎 Page speed: Analyzes page load times on mobile and desktop to meet Core Web Vitals thresholds. Slow speeds hurt user experience leading to higher bounce rates.
🔎 Structured data: Validates schema markup so rich snippets can be shown in SERPs. Incorrect data can also trigger manual spam actions.
🔎 Security: Checks for harmful redirects, flagged resources, and vulnerabilities like cross-site scripting. Hackers can exploit unpatched CMS issues.
Each discovered problem includes clear explanations and action steps – no technical expertise required. For example, a 404 error would note adding a redirect to avoid losing link equity.
So without any prior SEO experience, you can go down the list and knock out the most harmful issues first.
Technical Issues Are More Common Than You‘d Expect
In 2021, SE Ranking shared anonymized audit data uncovering some jarring statistics on how often tech issues fly under the radar:
- 65% of sites have broken links and images that negatively impact user experience
- 50% still load pages slower than Core Web Vitals thresholds – imperiling long-term visibility
- 30% are missing security protections like TLS, allowing easy exploits of site data
This shows why being proactive with occasional checkups pays massive dividends. Don‘t wait for a warning or traffic drop to finally hunt down festering issues.
Fixing Just a Few Issues Can Yield Big Improvements
When Toronto design agency Clear Ink ran an initial SE Ranking audit, they found:
- 83 critical errors blocking crawling or indexing
- 72 issues causing slow 3+ second page load times
- Duplicated title tags and meta descriptions
After investing two weeks tackling problems revealed by the audit and implementing monitoring alerts, they saw:
- 50% increase in organic traffic within 3 months
- Conveted 3 new high-value keywords into ranking #1 spots
- Bounce rate drop from 65% to 52%
This shows how even a few dozen fixes uncovered by audits bring tangible returns on time spent!
Now let‘s move on to assessing the optimization of page content itself…
Drilling Into On-Page Optimization Flaws
Now for the exciting part – SE Ranking‘s on-page analysis and suggestions to help pages convert searchers into customers:
🔎 Keyword targeting suitability: Checks that your content targets valuable search queries and recommends terms to add. Getting these fundamentals right ensures relevancy.
🔎 Readability: Evaluates page content against grade level benchmarks to ensure understandability. Writing beyond visitor reading level hurts comprehension.
🔎 Text length: Compares your word count to top-ranked competitors to determine ideal article size. Shorter or longer pages suggest suboptimal content.
🔎 Media optimization: Checks that images, videos, and documents are labeled and enhanced for search visibility. Proper alt text and file naming help boost clicks.
🔎 Outline structure: Assesses whether heading tags logically outline the content for visitors and search bots. Clear structure signals relevance.
The actionable tips even explain how to format elements like H2 and H3 tags around related paragraphs. This level of guidance takes the guesswork out of writing SEO-friendly content.
And I‘ve only scratched the surface of all 300+ checks – far beyond most competitors‘ capabilities!
On-Page Factors Have Huge Impact on Rankings
According to Search Engine Journal, optimizing on-page factors leads to more significant ranking boosts than link building for younger sites:
- 78% said optimizing pages for a keyword improved rankings
- Only 43% saw similar improvements solely through link acquisition
So before exhausting yourself pitching unresponsive bloggers, start by perfecting the relevancy of existing materials!
Customization Options for Advanced Audits
While some tools stick you with generic, one-size-fits-all reports, SE Ranking offers advanced customization for smarter audits:
🛠️ You can handpick from over 300 checks to create custom audit templates tailored to client needs. Irrelevant factors or previously resolved issues can be disabled to highlight only current priorities.
🛠️ For intermittent problems like server errors, you can also set conditional monitoring alerts. You‘ll get automatic notifications if response codes exceed thresholds or pages drop out of the index unexpectedly.
🛠️ The tool even lets you instantly generate shareable PDF reports containing audit results, lists of issues and indexation history. This allows seamlessly updating stakeholders on progress.
Thanks to these options, SE Ranking flexibly adapts as site priorities and SEO needs change over time. You save hours otherwise wasted on redundant checks each scan.
Tracking Progress and Monitoring Site Changes
Completing a one-off audit creates a helpful snapshot – but how do you gauge whether efforts are moving the needle?
SE Ranking has developers‘ backs by making it simple to track optimization progress across months and years.
The intuitive dashboard displays high-level performance scores for each audit. As you resolve more site flaws over time, aggregate scores improve – creating a sense of accomplishment.
Drilling deeper, you can compare audit versions to analyze trends across 500+ specific issues. New problems popping up or ongoing vulnerabilities sticking around become visible at a glance.
You‘ll also receive notifications about site changes like new issues or resolved previous errors. This constant vigilance helps you stay out ahead of potential drops in traffic.
No other tool I‘ve tested makes monitoring easier or more motivating by putting critical SEO achievements right in front of your eyes. The focus on progress empowers even novice users to methodically level up site health.
Comparing SE Ranking to Popular SEO Audit Competitors
SE Ranking stands above competitors for offering unrivaled crawl capabilities plus robust customization and progress tracking.
But how else does it compare against site audit alternatives like Ahrefs, DeepCrawl and ScreamingFrog? Let‘s analyze the key differences:
A few key takewaways:
- SE Ranking matches or outpaces top tools in critical capability areas
- Pricing very reasonable for included features and crawling limits
- The customizable alerts and historical reporting are best-in-class
The combination of value and having all the SEO fundamentals built-in makes SE Ranking hard to beat.
It also goes far deeper than entry-level options like SEMrush‘s site auditor or Moz‘s crawler. And the intuitive progress tracking and tips for non-tech users blows overly complex solutions like Screaming Frog out of the water.
Stacking Tools for Maximum SEO Insight
While SE Ranking handles technical and on-page optimization checks top to bottom, no tool exists in a vacuum.
For additional visibility, I recommend pairing it with complimentary solutions:
- Google Analytics ties audit fixes to actual traffic and revenue gains
- Rank tracking software confirms you‘re gaining ground for target keywords
- Local SEO plugins improve GMB listings visibility
- Manual QA testing provides human insight no crawler offers
With the full stack implemented, you get the complete picture of site health and performance.
Ideal Users for SE Ranking‘s SEO Audit Features
Thanks to the intuitive interface and detailed next step suggestions, SE Ranking works well for:
- Do-it-yourself website owners without prior SEO expertise
- Marketing teams collaborating with developers on optimizations
- Web developers tracking down tricky page errors sabotaging traffic
- Agencies managing large portfolios of client sites
I‘d also emphasize that the robust capabilities scaled for enterprise usage ensures growing sites won‘t outgrow features anytime soon even hitting millions of monthly visitors.
That said, SE Ranking may provide too much fine-tuned control for users just needing a general site health overview. Lightweight alternatives like SEMrush or Moz could suit those simpler use cases.
Recommended Audit Frequency By Site Type
Depending on your operations, more or less frequent checks may make sense:
- Content sites: Monthly audits to catch new issues with influx of dynamic materials
- Ecommerce stores: Quarterly audits plus real-time sales tracking to correlate fixes
- Local service businesses: Biannual audits unless major site redesign occurs
- Enterprise platforms: Ongoing daily monitoring plus quarterly full audits
Why not schedule a reminder for your next diagnostic SEO checkup today?
Get an SE Ranking Free Trial
I hope this breakdown has shown why SE Ranking is my #1 SEO site audit recommendation after years of testing every major competitor.
The powerful crawl insights, thoughtful interface updates and progress dashboards create an optimization feedback loop rival tools can‘t match.
If you‘ve been relying on limited audits within Google Search Console, it‘s time to graduate to an enterprise-level solution!
SE Ranking offers a free 14 day trial to experience crawling your site firsthand without limits.
See how many hidden issues it uncovers and how much faster diagnosing problems becomes. With free email support and live chat with their optimization consultants, you‘ll be in good hands.
Once you try SE Ranking, you won‘t want to optimize your site without it! The SEO health awareness it provides along with ever-improving scores will keep you hooked.
Have you used SE Ranking‘s site auditor before? Or have questions about unlocking its full capabilities? Share your thoughts below!
