Screaming Frog

If you are looking for an SEO tool that will allow you to scrape competitor websites, crawl pages and validate links in minutes and provide information about any errors or warnings on your site, Screaming Frog is the ultimate must-have. The company’s website crawler can be customized to your needs and has a robust set of features. It provides insights into the pages of your site that need optimization to rank better in search engines like Google. You can use it to find duplicate content, check robots.txt files, and even export data from XML Sitemaps! This article discusses how Screaming Frog can help with everything from link building to content discovery.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

What is Screaming Frog?

“Screaming Frog SEO Spider” is an SEO developer tool created by the UK-based search marketing agency Screaming Frog. Their SEO Spider is a website crawler that improves onsite SEO by extracting data & auditing for common SEO issues. 

How is Screaming Frog useful?

With this tool, you can:

  • Find broken links
  • Audit redirects
  • Analyze Page titles & metadata
  • Discover duplicate content
  • Extract data with CSS path, XPath, or Regex
  • Review bots and directives
  • Generate XML sitemaps
  • Integrate with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights APIs
  • Crawl Javascript websites
  • Visualize website structure / architecture
  • Custom Extractions
  • Scrape SERPs

Why use Screaming Frog?

The SEO spider mimics a GoogleBot web crawler, which gives you valuable insight into how Google Search sees your website.

These website scans give you insight into how to fix possible website errors while providing key areas to focus on and improve your search results.

Is Screaming Frog free to use?

Yes, Screaming Frog is free to use, up to 500 pages per scan. If you wish to scan more pages, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Where to download Screaming Frog?

Here is where you can download Screaming Frog for free:

Screaming Frog Download

Where can I get a Screaming Frog License?

You can purchase a Screaming Frog License from the official website:

Screaming Frog License

How do I start using Screaming Frog SEO Spider?

  1. First, you need to download the screaming frog tool
  2. Install the software on your computer
  3. Open the program
  4. Add your domain name you wish to scan in the top toolbar
  5. Wait for the scan to finish, and analyze your results.
  6. Optional: Customize your Audit settings for the most optimial reporting
Getting Started with Screaming Frog
Getting Started with Screaming Frog

I will be creating a more in-depth guide on how to get started. This guide is to give you a broad understanding of how this program functions.

Screaming Frog FAQs

  • Screaming Frog shows 403 forbidden; what should I do?
  • How to clear the cache on Screaming Frog?
  • Can a custom user agent be set in Screaming Frog?
  • How to crawl a sitemap in Screaming Frog?
  • Why is Screaming Frog only crawling Homepage?
  • How to crawl a Javascript website using Screaming Frog?
  • Screaming Frog does not crawling all URLs; How to fix it?

Learn more about practical Screaming Frog uses.

Published on: 2021-03-10
Updated on: 2022-05-12

Avatar for Isaac Adams-Hands

Isaac Adams-Hands

Isaac Adams-Hands is the SEO Director at SEO North, a company that provides Search Engine Optimization services. Isaac has considerable expertise in Search Engine Optimization, Server Administration, and Cyber Security, which gives him a leg up as a Google Algorithm Analyst and SEO Expert.