The best free website SEO checker for most small businesses is Google Search Console, paired with one crawler-based audit tool that turns problems into a prioritised fix list. No single checker sees everything. Search Console shows what Google actually indexed; a crawler or audit tool shows what is broken on the page; a speed test shows performance. The trick is knowing which warnings matter and which are noise.
If you searched for a free SEO audit, a free website audit tool or simply the best SEO audit tools, the short version is below: every tool on this list has a free option, and you can run a useful audit without paying anything.
This guide compares seven free SEO audit tools on what they check, how much they crawl for free, and how useful their reports are, then shows how to do an SEO audit in 60 minutes and turn the report into fixes. We make one of the seven, the KissMySkills AI SEO audit. We say where it fits and where the others are better. Prices and free limits checked October 2026.
What an SEO checker can and can't tell you
A website SEO checker reads your pages the way a search engine crawler does and flags problems. A good one catches:
- Missing or duplicate titles and meta descriptions, missing H1s.
- Broken links, redirect chains and pages returning errors.
- Canonical, noindex and robots.txt mistakes that hide pages from search.
- Missing or invalid structured data (schema).
- Slow pages and Core Web Vitals problems.
- Increasingly, whether AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot can read the site.
What no checker can tell you on its own: whether your content answers what searchers want, whether your prices and offers are competitive, or why a competitor outranks you. Audit tools find technical faults. They do not write a strategy.
How we compared
We looked at each tool the way a small-business owner would use it, on a typical small site of a few hundred pages, and asked five questions:
- How many pages can you check for free?
- Which technical checks does it run?
- Does it prioritise fixes, or hand you a list of 200 warnings?
- Does it check AI-search readiness (AI crawler access, llms.txt, schema)?
- What does the paid version cost if you outgrow the free one?
Free limits and prices come from each vendor's own site, checked in October 2026.
The 7 tools
Google Search Console
Free, from Google, and the one tool every site owner should have. It is not a crawler of your whole site in the usual sense, but it tells you what no third-party tool can: which pages Google indexed and which it excluded and why, which queries you appear for, Core Web Vitals from real users, manual actions, and structured data errors Google found.
Best for: the truth about indexing. If a page is "Crawled, currently not indexed", no other checker will tell you that.
PageSpeed Insights
Free, from Google. Enter a URL and get performance scores, Core Web Vitals (field data when your site has enough traffic) and a list of specific speed fixes. It checks one page at a time.
Best for: speed problems on key templates such as the homepage, a product page and a blog post.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free version)
A desktop crawler and the industry standard for technical audits. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs; the paid licence is $279 a year with no crawl limit and adds features such as JavaScript rendering and integrations.
Best for: crawl depth and detail. It finds every broken link, redirect, duplicate title and canonical issue. The downside is that it reports everything and leaves you to decide what matters.
Seobility
A web-based audit tool with a genuinely useful free plan: one project, up to 100 pages per crawl, 10 tracked keywords and a few AI prompts. Paid plans start at €59.90 a month on its pricing page (shown to us in euros), with a 14-day free trial.
Best for: a friendly, browser-based audit of a small site with no install.
Semrush and Ahrefs free audits
Both big suites offer free audit access. Semrush's free plan includes a limited project with a small number of reports a day. Ahrefs offers free site data and auditing tools for sites you verify as the owner. Paid plans start at $139 a month (Semrush SEO plan) and $129 a month (Ahrefs Lite).
Best for: combining an audit with keyword and backlink data. The audit itself is solid; the real advantage is everything around it.
SE Ranking
An all-in-one suite with a site audit, rank tracker and keyword research. There is no permanent free plan, but there is a 14-day free trial with no credit card. Paid plans start at €87.20 a month billed annually for Core, which audits up to 250,000 pages a month (prices shown to us in euros).
Best for: agencies and freelancers who want audits plus rank tracking at a lower price than Semrush.
KissMySkills AI SEO audit
Our tool. Enter a page address and in about 20 seconds you get a score from 0 to 100 for classic SEO, structured data and AI search visibility, plus a list of fixes in order of impact. It checks title, meta, headings, canonical, schema, llms.txt, robots.txt rules for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and others, and whether those crawlers actually get your page. No sign-up for the one-off check. Weekly monitoring and alerts are included in the All-Access subscription at $15 a month or $129 a year.
Best for: a quick, plain-English answer to "what should I fix first?", including AI-search readiness. Not for: crawling thousands of URLs, keyword research or backlinks.
Free SEO audit tools compared
| Tool | Pages crawled free | Technical checks | Prioritised fixes | AI-search checks | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Your whole indexed site (Google's view) | Indexing, Core Web Vitals, schema errors | Partly | No | Free |
| PageSpeed Insights | 1 page per test | Speed and Core Web Vitals | Yes, for speed | No | Free |
| Screaming Frog | 500 URLs | Very deep | No, you decide | Custom setup only | Free; $279/year |
| Seobility | 100 pages, 1 project | Broad | Partly | 3 AI prompts tracked | Free; from €59.90/mo |
| Semrush / Ahrefs | Limited free access | Broad | Partly | In paid plans | From $139 / $129 a month |
| SE Ranking | 14-day trial | Broad | Partly | Paid add-on | From €87.20/mo (annual) |
| KissMySkills AI SEO audit | One page per check | On-page, schema, crawler access | Yes, by impact | Yes | Free; monitoring $15/mo in All-Access |
Where others win, plainly: Screaming Frog wins on crawl depth. Semrush and Ahrefs audits win when you also need their keyword and backlink data. Google Search Console is the free must-have that none of the others replace, including ours.
Issues that matter vs noise
Most audit reports mix real problems with warnings that rarely move rankings. Fix these first:
- Pages that should rank but are not indexed (noindex by mistake, blocked by robots.txt, wrong canonical).
- Broken pages and links on important paths, especially 404s from your own menu.
- Missing or duplicate titles on key pages.
- Very slow templates that fail Core Web Vitals for real users.
- Invalid structured data on product or local business pages.
- AI crawlers blocked by robots.txt or a firewall if you want to appear in AI answers.
Usually safe to deprioritise:
- "Low text-to-HTML ratio". Not a ranking factor in any meaningful sense.
- Meta descriptions a few characters too long. Google rewrites many of them anyway.
- Missing meta keywords. Google ignores that tag.
- Every image missing alt text on decorative images. Fix alt text on meaningful images; decorative ones can stay empty.
- A generic "SEO score". Use it to track progress, not as a goal in itself.
How to do an SEO audit in 60 minutes
- Minutes 0 to 10: Search Console. Open the Pages report. Note how many pages are indexed vs not, and why. Check Core Web Vitals and any manual actions.
- Minutes 10 to 25: crawl. Run Screaming Frog free or Seobility on the whole site. Export broken links, redirects, missing titles and duplicate titles.
- Minutes 25 to 35: key pages. Run the KissMySkills AI SEO audit on your homepage, top product or service page and top blog post. Note schema and AI crawler issues.
- Minutes 35 to 45: speed. Run PageSpeed Insights on the same three pages.
- Minutes 45 to 60: write the fix list. One spreadsheet: issue, affected pages, impact (high, medium, low), effort, owner.
That is also the answer to "how to do a website audit" for most small sites. A technical SEO audit for a large site goes deeper (log files, JavaScript rendering, internal link structure), and our guide to an AI technical SEO audit covers that.
Turning the report into a fix list
An SEO audit report is only useful if it ends in action. A simple format works:
- Group by template, not by URL. If 300 product pages lack a meta description, that is one fix in the product template, not 300 tasks.
- Sort by impact times ease. Indexing and broken-page problems on money pages go first.
- Assign an owner and a date to each line.
- Re-check after each fix. Run the same checker again and confirm in Search Console over the following weeks.
If you use Claude or ChatGPT, this is where AI helps most. Connect the KissMySkills MCP connector and ask your agent to audit a URL; it runs our checks and writes a prioritised fix plan in plain English using our SEO skills. For platform-specific fixes, see using Claude for WordPress SEO, and for local businesses, our guide to the AI local SEO agent.
FAQ
How do I do an SEO audit?
Start with Google Search Console to see what is indexed and why pages are excluded. Crawl the site with a tool like Screaming Frog or Seobility to find broken links, redirects and title problems. Check key pages for schema, AI crawler access and speed. Then write a fix list sorted by impact and effort, and re-check after each fix.
How do I do a website audit?
For SEO purposes, a website audit covers indexing (Search Console), technical health (a crawler), on-page basics (titles, headings, meta descriptions), structured data, speed (PageSpeed Insights) and, increasingly, whether AI search engines can read the site. A small site can be audited in about an hour with free tools.
How do I make an SEO audit report?
Keep it short and actionable: a summary of the three to five biggest problems, then a table with issue, affected pages or template, impact, effort, owner and due date. Group issues by template rather than listing every URL, and leave low-impact warnings in an appendix.
How do I do a technical SEO audit?
Crawl the whole site and check status codes, redirects, canonicals, noindex tags, robots.txt, XML sitemaps, internal links, duplicate content, structured data and Core Web Vitals. For larger sites, also check JavaScript rendering and server logs. Compare the crawl with Search Console's indexing report to find pages Google ignores.
Are free SEO audit tools good enough?
For most small business sites, yes. Google Search Console, a free crawler and a free audit tool cover the problems that matter. Paid tools become worth it for large sites, agencies, or when you also need keyword and backlink data.
Bottom line
Use Google Search Console for the truth about indexing, one crawler for depth, PageSpeed Insights for speed, and an audit tool that tells you what to fix first. Ignore the noise, fix by template, and re-check. Run a free AI SEO audit on your site now: it takes about 20 seconds and covers AI-search readiness as well as classic SEO.
