Definition
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop software (Windows, macOS, Linux) that works as a website crawler. It browses a site's pages by following links, exactly as Googlebot would, and collects essential data for technical SEO audits. The tool analyzes title and meta description tags, HTTP response codes, redirects, canonical tags, hreflang, schema markup, images, CSS and JavaScript files, and much more. The free version allows crawling up to 500 URLs. The paid version removes this limit and adds advanced features like integration with Google Analytics, Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights. Screaming Frog is considered the reference tool for technical SEO audits by the majority of professionals.
Key Points
- Reference tool for technical SEO audits used by most professionals
- Functional free version allowing crawling up to 500 URLs
- Simulates Googlebot crawling to identify issues the search engine actually sees
Practical Examples
Full audit before a link building campaign
Before launching a link building campaign via LemmiLink, crawl your site with Screaming Frog to identify and fix 404 errors, redirect chains, and internal linking issues that could dilute acquired link juice.
Duplicate content detection
Screaming Frog identifies pages with identical title tags, meta descriptions, or content, allowing you to fix duplicate content issues that can harm rankings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Screaming Frog offers a free version limited to 500 crawled URLs. The paid license costs $259/year and removes the URL limit while adding features like Google Analytics and Search Console integration, custom data extraction, and scheduled crawls.
Screaming Frog is a technical data collection and analysis tool, not a recommendation tool. It identifies problems but interpreting results and prioritizing fixes requires SEO expertise. It is essential but does not replace human expertise.
Go Further with LemmiLink
Discover how LemmiLink can help you put these SEO concepts into practice.
Last updated: 2026-02-07