I have worked with many SEO professionals over the years, and they all use the same method.
- Use an automated tool to highlight issues
- Use a checklist for what has to be done manually
For example, checking the relevance/quality of page titles needs the eyes of a human. All a tool can tell you is if the titles exist, and how many characters long they are
Tools – Free
SEO Quake – a browser plugin from the SEM Rush folk
Moz – a variety of tools and a popular toolbar. Three free SEO audit reports per day.
SE Ranking – get a single, free site audit after providing your details
SEObility – free for 1 site, 10 keywords, audit, competitor analysis and rank checker
SEOptimer – fuss free, doesn’t ask for details, perfect for beginners
Website Grader – from HubSpot. Basic speed and SEO checker
Site Analyzer – 14 day free trial, no card needed
SEO Site Checkup – 14 day free trial, but also a bunch of free technical tools
Ahrefs – SEO checker for sites you own, and a SEO toolbar
Screaming Frog – free for 500 URLs in one site. It actually crawls your site and finds issues like duplicate pages or 404s. SEO professionals use this.
Siteliner – checks for duplicate content within your site and broken links (both are bad) as well as other SEO data.
SEO Spyglass has a free backlink checker – good for checking on how you are progressing, or for domains you are considering buying
Loganix – free for 10 sites, a metasearch of your DR/DA – domain rank/domain authority, backlink count etc from Moz/aHREFs/Majestic/Google. They also have SEO templates (join for free)
Tools – Paid
SEM Rush – on page checker, whole site audit & a report on how Google’s crawler interacts with the site. from $120/mo (full suite)
SE Ranking – similar to SEM Rush, but cheaper – from $31/mo (full suite)
Extras for Agencies
My Site Auditor has checklists and an embeddable form that sends people an SEO audit