Top 8 factors to consider while choosing a web crawler tool

The ultimate goal of any business putting SEO efforts behind customers is to earn maximum organic traffic. Getting maximum organic traffic is obvious to provide better conversion rate for marketers. But, it is not that simple! SEO has too many guidelines to follow for meeting the expectation of the customers. Beginning from on page element to off page elements in a website,covering every aspect of SEO cannot be that easy while running the website. This is the reason why a crawl tool is indeed to inspect the website on a time to time basis and locate every possible errors that needs fixing.

Boston SEO professionals suggest that a good crawler helps in understanding the efficiency of the website as per the norms of the search engine. The crawler tool consider the ranking factors of the search engine and check each element of the website. Earlier, these act were performed by professionals webmasters manually which could end with discrete reports. Today with the help of crawl tool, the process can be performed in seconds with the detailed report of website performance.

Crawl tools comes in various names and functions. It is highly important to choose the right tool for better statistics of your site.

Let us discuss some factors that can help you in selecting the right crawling tool

• Identify your need

Beginning with your own effort is essential. Find out what kind of problem that your website is facing such as non-indexed pages, broken links etc. Take a steady look at the website feature. The need for smaller websites is always different and less than bigger websites. Smaller websites may go for free tools such as screaming frog to get their website tested but for larger site it is difficult.

There are many softwares that comes with free plan  and limited amount of feature. The prices of these software may get hiked with increasing number of pages and details with it. Therefore, it is highly crucial to consider budget, make decision about the number of minimum and maximum pages that needs crawling. These factors can help producing best value for your money

A good crawler tool must perform following functions:

• Detect robot.txt file and sitemap

This is the best and the least that you should expect from your crawl tool. Not only a good crawl tool should be able to detect files, it should also be able to find non indexed pages. Non indexed pages are not indexed by search engines due to restriction in hosting.

• Find broken links and pages

Consultant from best SEO company in california suggest that broken pages and links has a huge negative impact on the users experience. Google and expert webmasters highly recommend that the checking of broken links regularly.

A good crawler tool should immediately detect the broken links on your website. Some can even give interface for directly updating the link the software dashboard.

• Identify problem with HTTP and HTTPS conflict

Redirects are commonly seen on web. Good crawl tool should not only find these redirects but also provide facility to repair it. It is always beneficial to have HTTPS in order to maintain the security feature of the website. A good crawl should detect conflict and give easy updation.

Advanced features includes:

• Should be able to detect mobile element

Mobile friendliness is the most essential factor for marketers. It may happen that you have upgraded your website in responsive web design but still there can be many glitches. There can be many section in your mobile that is not working properly. A crawler tool that can find the glitch is worth of trying.

• Easily connect with google analytics

Google analytics is the most essential tool for webmaster to monitor their efforts on the website and the potential result obtained. Choose crawl tool that easily get integrated with google analytics. This integration make the job easier for webmasters.

• The option for keyword tracking

Keywords is the most essential component in SEO. A tool that help to analyse the performance of keywords and uncover the potential of unused keywords. If these features are your need, go for choosing crawl tool that has keyword tracking feature.

• UI

The aim of crawl tool is to improve the website performance. An SEO tool should definitely be able to show you what is wrong and what kind of improvement is needed. The best web crawler tool should provide a clean and clear report so that extra time is not wasted in figuring out what should be done.

Conclusion

A good crawler tool should have the intention to enhance the SEO efforts to get best value of your money. On the most essential level, SEO crawler should analyse the broken links of your site, its faulty redirects, HTTP and HTTPS conflict and non indexable pages. You can also consider crawl which can be faulty mobile element, integrated with google analytics and have other option for tracking keywords.