How to Analyse Site SEO: Selecting the Right Audit Tools and Metrics

If you want to analyse site SEO properly, you need a method before you need a tool.

What does it mean to analyse site SEO, and where should you start?

To analyse site SEO is to check how well your website is set up to be found, crawled, understood and ranked by search engines, and then to decide what to fix first. A useful analysis starts before any tool is opened. Write down what the site is for: leads, product sales, subscriptions or readership. Everything you measure later gets judged against that purpose.

Next, record a baseline. Without one you cannot tell whether a change helped.

• Average position for your core queries
• Indexed page count compared with the number of pages you actually want indexed
• Top landing pages that already earn the most organic traffic
• Conversions attributed to organic visits

Then set the scope. Decide which sections matter most to revenue, which templates repeat across the site, and which pages were published recently. Auditing by template rather than by single URL keeps the work bounded and makes the findings far easier to prioritise later.

Which audit tools should you choose?

Two kinds of tool cover most of an audit.

1. A crawler reads your site the way a search bot does and reports broken links, redirect chains, missing titles, duplicate content and canonical conflicts. Desktop crawlers such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider are widely used for this. Its free version has a crawl limit of 500 URLs, which is enough for a small site or a sample of a larger one. Paid licences remove the cap and add features such as JavaScript rendering.
2. Google Search Console shows how Google itself sees your site: which pages are indexed, which queries bring impressions and clicks, and where problems have been flagged. It is first-party data from Google, and it is free.

Choose tools by the question you need answered, not by the number of features.

Start with the free sources, and add a paid tool only when the size of the site or the research question outgrows them.

How do you separate crawling, rendering and indexing problems?

• Crawling is the bot requesting a URL.
• Rendering is the process of building the page, including content generated by JavaScript.
• Indexing is the decision to store the page and make it eligible to rank.

A page can be crawled but not rendered properly, so its main text never reaches the index. It can also be rendered perfectly and still be left out because Google judges it not worth storing.

Work through it in this order:

1. Compare the crawl with Search Console's indexing report, looking for pages you want indexed that are not, and pages indexed that should not be.
2. Inspect individual URLs to see the rendered HTML, so you know whether key content and links exist after rendering.
3. Classify each problem by stage before you assign it to anyone.

The classification tells you who acts. If a page shows as excluded by a noindex tag, the fix is a template or plugin setting, not a rewrite. If important text only appears after scripts run and the rendered view is empty, that is a developer task. Keeping these categories separate shows whether the developer, the writer or the site owner should move first.

How should you evaluate content, intent and depth?

Technical health only gets a page into the running. Content decides whether it ranks. For each important URL, check the search intent: does the query want a definition, a comparison, a product page or a how-to? Compare your page with the results that already rank. Are they more specific, better structured, more complete?

Review these elements on every priority page:

• Title and meta description: do they match the query and promise something the page delivers?
• Internal links: does the page link to related pages, and do related pages link back?
• Duplicates: are several pages targeting the same query and splitting signals between URLs?

Judge depth by usefulness rather than word count. A short page that answers the question completely can outperform a long page padded to hit a number. When several pages compete for one topic, consolidate them or give each a distinct purpose.

Refreshing existing articles is often faster than publishing new ones. Our guide to an on-page SEO audit for existing articles walks through that process.

This is also the point where an audit tends to stall: you now know which topics are missing, but writing for them takes weeks. Attela is an AI content platform that plans, researches and writes SEO articles and matching Instagram posts in your brand's voice, pulls search volumes directly from Google Ads, organises content into topic clusters, and publishes to platforms like WordPress and Shopify once you approve each piece. Used here, it turns the content gaps from your audit into a month of planned articles. You can see how it is priced in the pricing section.

How do you read Search Console, GA4 and Core Web Vitals together?

Read the three sources side by side rather than one at a time. Search Console tells you how people reach the page, GA4 tells you what they do once they arrive, and Core Web Vitals tell you whether the experience itself is getting in the way.

Core Web Vitals measure loading, responsiveness and visual stability, and they matter most on mobile. The three to watch are Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift.

Fix the template that affects the most pages first, such as a heavy header script or an unsized hero image, rather than optimising one page at a time. Test on a mid-range phone, not only on a fast desktop connection, because that is where slow experiences show up.

How do you prioritise findings, assign owners and track fixes?

An audit that ends in a long spreadsheet changes nothing. Score each finding on two things: how many pages or how much traffic it affects, and how much effort the fix takes.

Give every item one owner and one due date. Developers take crawl and speed issues, writers take intent and depth, and the site owner signs off on priorities. Keep a simple log of what changed and when, so results can be tied to specific actions.

If you manage a large domain, the process scales by repeating the same checklist per section. Our guide on how to audit your entire site shows how to structure that work, and the roadmap to modern SEO puts the audit in the context of a longer visibility plan.

Conclusion

To analyse site SEO well, treat it as a sequence rather than a single report: set a baseline, pick a small set of tools that answer specific questions, separate crawling from rendering and indexing, judge content against intent, read performance data together, and then fix the highest-impact items with named owners. Done this way, an audit produces decisions you can act on within a quarter.

When the audit shows content gaps you need to fill, start a free trial of Attela and turn those findings into planned, published articles.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free tool to analyse site SEO?

Google Search Console is the best free starting point because it shows real indexing status, search queries and performance data from Google itself. Pair it with the free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider, which crawls up to 500 URLs. That limit is enough to audit a small site fully or to sample the templates of a larger one, and it is a reasonable way to test your process before paying for anything.

How often should I run a full SEO site analysis?

Run a full audit on a regular schedule, such as once a quarter, and check Search Console for new issues between audits. Run an extra audit after a redesign, a platform migration or a large content change, because these are the moments when technical problems are most likely to appear unnoticed.

What metrics matter most in an SEO audit?

Start with indexed pages, clicks, impressions, average position and organic conversions, since these show whether the pages that matter are being found and used. Add Core Web Vitals field data for mobile, especially Largest Contentful Paint and Interaction to Next Paint. Track these against your baseline. Vanity figures such as total keyword count matter less than whether the right pages are earning traffic.

Why is my page crawled but not indexed?

This usually means Google found the page but judged it not valuable enough to store, often because the content is thin, duplicates another URL or closely resembles other pages on the site. Check for a canonical tag pointing elsewhere, compare the page with the results already ranking for its query, and improve or consolidate it. Requesting indexing before fixing the underlying issue rarely helps for long.

Do I need a paid SEO tool for a site audit?

Not always. A paid crawler removes the 500 URL limit in Screaming Frog and adds JavaScript rendering, which matters for sites built on heavy client-side frameworks. Keyword and competitor tools are usually paid. If your audit is limited to technical health and your own content, free tools cover most needs. Pay for an upgrade when the size of the site or the research question outgrows them.

How do I prioritise the findings from an SEO audit?

Fix sitewide template problems with low effort first, followed by pages that already rank on the second page of results, since small improvements there can move them onto the first page. Leave cosmetic issues with no traffic impact until the important work is finished.

Can I analyse a site's SEO without technical knowledge?

You can cover much of it. Search Console's reports, a crawl summary and a plain checklist of titles, headings, internal links and page speed are readable without coding. Technical fixes such as redirects, canonical rules and script loading usually need a developer, so brief them with specific URLs and the exact problem rather than a general request to "improve SEO".

What should I do after the audit is complete?

Keep a log of what changed and when, so you can connect results to specific actions. Then repeat the cycle regularly, because search performance shifts as competitors, content and Google's systems change.