How to Run a Complete SEO Health Check Without Expensive Tools

Running an SEO health check is crucial for understanding how well your website is performing in search engines. A comprehensive SEO health check helps identify issues that could be affecting your rankings, user experience, and overall performance. While many premium tools offer in-depth insights, you can still conduct a thorough SEO audit without paid tools by using free resources and manual checks. This approach not only saves money but also helps you learn more about the inner workings of SEO.

In this blog, we’ll guide you through the process of running a complete SEO health check using free tools and techniques.

Why SEO Health Checks Are Important

Before diving into the audit process, let’s first understand why regular SEO health checks are necessary. Search engines like Google continuously update their algorithms, and these updates can affect your website’s rankings. An SEO audit helps:

• Identify issues affecting your search rankings (e.g., slow site speed, broken links, poor mobile optimization).
• Monitor SEO performance and track improvements over time.
• Uncover new opportunities to enhance your site’s visibility and usability.
• Ensure technical SEO is on point, including crawlability and indexing.

Now, let’s explore how to run a comprehensive SEO health check without expensive tools.

1. Check for Broken Links

Broken links on your website can harm user experience and impact your SEO rankings. Fortunately, you don’t need a paid tool to identify them. There are several free tools available, such as:

• Broken Link Checker: Simply enter your URL, and this tool will crawl your website to identify any broken links.
• Google Search Console: This free tool from Google will also flag any crawl errors, including broken links, that could affect your site’s performance.

Fixing broken links will improve your website’s user experience and ensure that search engines can crawl your pages without obstacles.

2. Analyze Site Speed

Site speed is a critical factor in both user experience and SEO rankings. A slow-loading website can lead to higher bounce rates, which negatively affect your SEO.

To check your site speed without spending money on premium tools, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights. This free tool will give you an in-depth analysis of your site’s performance on both desktop and mobile devices. It provides actionable suggestions for improving your site speed, such as:

• Optimizing images to reduce file sizes.
• Enabling compression for faster page load times.
• Minifying CSS and JavaScript to reduce unnecessary code.

Improving your site’s load speed will not only help your SEO but also improve the overall user experience.

3. Evaluate Mobile Optimization

With more users accessing websites through mobile devices, mobile optimization is essential for SEO. Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing.

To check your site’s mobile-friendliness, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, a free tool that analyzes your website’s mobile performance. This tool provides a straightforward evaluation and offers recommendations for improving mobile usability.

Key things to check:

• Responsive design: Ensure your site adjusts to different screen sizes.
• Mobile load speed: Mobile pages should load as quickly as desktop versions.
• Touchscreen-friendly navigation: Make sure buttons and menus are easily clickable on mobile.

4. Review On-Page SEO Elements

On-page SEO plays a significant role in your search rankings. Here are key on-page elements to review during your SEO health check:

• Title Tags: Ensure each page has a unique title tag that includes relevant keywords.
• Meta Descriptions: Meta descriptions should be compelling and under 160 characters, describing the page’s content with a call to action.
• Headings (H1, H2, etc.): Proper use of heading tags helps structure your content for both users and search engines.
• Image Alt Text: All images should have descriptive alt text for accessibility and SEO purposes.
• Internal Linking: Ensure your internal linking structure makes it easy for search engines to crawl your site and for users to navigate.

You can manually check these on each page of your website or use the Inspect Element feature in Google Chrome to review your page’s HTML structure.

5. Review Content Quality and Keywords

Content is a major factor in SEO rankings, and it’s important to ensure that your website is delivering high-quality, relevant content. Here’s how you can evaluate your content without paying for tools:

• Check for keyword optimization: Make sure you’re using your target keywords naturally in the text, headings, and meta tags. Avoid keyword stuffing, as Google values readability and relevance.
• Evaluate content depth: Longer, more comprehensive content tends to rank better. Aim for content that fully addresses user queries and provides value.
• Assess user engagement: Use Google Analytics (a free tool) to monitor bounce rates, time on page, and other engagement metrics. Low engagement can indicate that users aren’t finding your content helpful.

6. Crawl Your Website and Check for Technical Issues

Technical SEO ensures that search engines can crawl and index your site efficiently. Some of the most important technical elements include:

• Robots.txt: Make sure that your robots.txt file isn’t blocking any pages from being indexed.
• XML Sitemap: Ensure your sitemap is updated and submitted to Google Search Console.
• Redirects: Check for 301 redirects to make sure users and search engines are being sent to the right pages.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider offers a free version that allows you to crawl up to 500 pages of your site, providing insights into your technical SEO.

7. Backlink Profile Check

Backlinks remain a crucial factor in SEO, and you need to keep an eye on your backlink profile. While premium tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush offer in-depth backlink analysis, there are free options available:

• Google Search Console: Under the “Links” section, you can find data on your website’s backlinks.
• Ubersuggest: A free tool that provides backlink data and competitive analysis.

You should regularly monitor your backlinks to identify any toxic links that could harm your SEO and ensure you’re earning quality backlinks from authoritative sites.

Conclusion

Running an SEO health check doesn’t have to be costly. With the right approach and free tools like Google Search Console, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Mobile-Friendly Test, you can effectively audit your website’s SEO and make necessary improvements without breaking the bank. By regularly conducting these checks, you can ensure that your website remains optimized, user-friendly, and primed for search engine success.

If you want to take your SEO efforts to the next level or need help improving your website’s rankings, consider using Wranker for a detailed backlink analysis and further insights. Wranker can help you maintain a healthy SEO profile and improve your site’s visibility.