Screaming Frog SEO Spider is one of the most popular software spiders available.
In this Screaming Frog SEO Spider Review, we’ll try to understand why such a tool is important if you want to become successful online.
Summary
| SEO Tool Name | Screaming Frog SEO Spider |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Plan Start From | £149 each per year |
| Key Features | Broken links, Redirects, Duplicate Content many more. |
| Website | Click Here |
Introduction
The first and most thing you need to understand before moving forward with our Screaming Frog SEO Spider Review is what a software spider is and what it does.
This kind of software operates as if it was a search engine: it scans the web, reads every website and web page, and records (saving the data on a hard drive) all the words and links on each web page.
If the web page contains a link, it enters that link and scans and reads and records data from that to… and so on. This can give you an idea of why it is called “spider” software.
The second step of the software spider is creating an index for all the pages it has read. Search engines used this software, that is, to create their indexes, rank the web pages, and provide the SERP.
Now that we know what a software spider is, why do you need one?
As you may already know, ranking properly on search engines is vital for the success of your website.
Why? Because most of the traffic on your web pages comes from there. With a quality software spider, you can have an audit for your SEO so that you can understand how your webpages can perform on search engines.
Without such tools, you are only guessing. But when you use a professional spider tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider you can make sure – at least – that you know how your web content is going to perform on search engines and you don’t have any excuse.
Read: Keyword Snatcher Pricing
Screaming Frog SEO Spider Review: what is it?
From a practical point of view, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a software tool that you can download on your desktop.
It’s not a web app so it’s essential that you download and install the program on your computer.
It’s not that heavy and doesn’t require many resources: even if your computer is not brand new, you are able to make the best use out of Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
The program is available for Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu: basically, any computer you have, you can install and start using Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
Why chose Screaming Frog SEO Spider
As you’ll learn by reading our Screaming Frog SEO Spider Review, the reasons why you should pick this tool in spite of all the alternatives are many.
First of all, you can download it for free and then pass – only if you want – to the paid version. It’s extremely versatile and you can use it on any computer.
It’s also light and agile and it can run on almost any device as long as it’s compatible (tablets and iPad aren’t compatible).
Last but not least, Screaming Frog SEO Spider is one of the most advanced tools out there right now (see the Features paragraph below).
Screaming Frog SEO Spider Review: Plans and Pricing in comparison
We’ve just mentioned that there is a free and paid version of this software tool.
The free version has limited features but it has the great advantage of being a small version of the software that you can utilize endlessly.
It’s not – that is – a free trial that you must upgrade at a certain point.
If the features included in the free version are enough for your needs, you can keep on using Screaming Frog SEO Spider for free as long as you like.
Paid Version
FOr professionals and big companies, the free version could be too limited. For them, there is a more advanced version that costs £149.00 per year.
With this advanced software tool, you can also schedule analysis. compare data, and integrate the tool with Google Analytics or Search Console or Page Speed Insight. With this paid version you also have technical support always available.
If you have difficulties using the software, you can get in touch with the support team and they’ll guide you through what you need to do.
Multiple licenses
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider creators call “licenses” the number of users that can use the software.
With the standard paid version you have 1 license: only one user can access and utilize the platform.
If you need access to more users, you need to pay for another license: the more licenses you purchase, the more you can save on each license. In particular:
- if you buy up to 4 licenses, you’ll pay £149 each (per year);
- if buy 5 to 9 licenses, you’re going to pay £139 each (per year);
- if you buy 10 to 19 licenses, you’re paying £129 per license (per year);
- if you buy more than 0 licenses, you’ll pay £119 per license (per year).
Screaming Frog SEO Spider Review: Pros & Cons
Pros
- It’s an essential tool for anyone running a business online;
- It’s provided with all the most advanced features to optimize your website for search engines
- There’s a free version available
Cons
- Beginners may take some time to understand all the features and learn how to use them
- The dashboard isn’t the most user-friendly. It’s crowded with data and could be intimidating
- the paid version is expensive
Screaming Frog SEO Spider review: Features
Let’s explore the Screaming Frog SEO Spider’s main features.
As mentioned, this software runs an analysis on your website as it was a search engine.
It provides a series of data on how your web pages can perform on search engines, letting you know what works and what should be improved.
But what is this data in particular?
- Broken links
Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls your websites and finds broken links (the ones that give a 404 error).
- Redirects
The software can also find temporary or permanent redirects and identify redirects loops.
- Page and metadata analysis
Screaming Frog SEO Spider analyses page titles and meta descriptions and identifies those that are too long, too short, missing, or duplicated across your entire website.
- Duplicate Content
During its crawl, the tool also discovers duplicate data, even if it’s only partially duplicated.
- Robots review
The tool can signal if there is any URL blocked by robots.txt, meta robots, or others.
- XML Sitemaps
The software creates XML sitemaps so that you can see at a glance the URLs, the last modified ones, the change frequency, and the different priorities.
- Scheduling audits
You can schedule crawl to run at specific intervals. You can also set up an automated export crawl data to any location on your computer.
- Comparing Data
You can easily compare the data from different audits.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider: Customer Service
One of the most important aspects of our Screaming Frog SEO Spider review was finding out if and how the Screaming Frog SEO Spider’s customer service works.
The quality of customer support is always a sign of the quality of the overall service offered by a company.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider offers their customer support in three ways:
- self-support: they provide tons of materials that users can use to understand the platform and solve the most common issues. If this is not enough, you can contact the customer service directly through one of the following ways.
- Email: you can send an email to [email protected] with anything you need. In particular, they ask you to save the debug logs and send them to the support team so that they can have a better understanding of your situation.
- You can open a support ticket here.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider review: the final verdict
Screaming Frog SEO Spider may not be the easiest tool to use, especially if you’ve launched your website yesterday and it’s all new to you.
For those who have the will and patience to learn how to use and how to make good use of the data it provides, it can become the feature that makes the difference for your success.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider Review: FAQ
Do I need to install Screaming Frog SEO Spider on my computer?
Yes. Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop software that you need to download and then install on your device.
The installation may take a while, but it’s an automated process, you only need to launch it and provide the information requested on the screen.
Why does the installation take a while?
When you install Screaming Frog SEO Spider on Windows, Windows Defender runs a scan on all the files. This is why it takes a while.
Can Screaming Frog SEO Spider work on a Chromebook?
Yes. Even though you wouldn’t find a ChromeOS version of the software, you may already know that ChromeOS is a Linux OS.
So, the Ubuntu version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider will work on a Chromebook.
Amit Gupta is the creator of Keyword-Research.org
Amit is a keyword research guru. After completing his high school certification, Amit spent half a decade learning about different ways to do keyword research for SEO and PPC. Before forming Keyword-Research.org, Amit worked for top Keyword Research companies for more than 10 years. When Amit is not helping people with their keyword research, he enjoys spending time with his family and friends.
