Web crawlers: the best tools to scan websites

One tool that comes into play in SEO optimization is the web crawler. This does a dirty job, as it is tasked with scanning and ranking the web pages that are suggested to it.

The more linear and understandable the structure and navigation of a website, the more likely the search engine will reward it when it comes to ranking on the SERP.

Table of Contents:
What is a web crawler?
How do crawlers work
How to manage crawlers
The best web crawler tools
Semrush
LinkAssistant.com
Screaming Frog
Site Checker
Dyno Mapper
Bottom line.
What is a web crawler?
Every time you make a query, the search engine would have to look at every single website and page (or other data) related to the keyword you use.

Without a crawler, the search engine would take minutes (if not hours) to produce relevant results. While this is an obvious benefit to users, what is the benefit to website owners and operators? The crawler examines sites for information and develops a database of search strings that is then loaded into the search engine’s index.

Crawlers, in essence, allow people to submit their sites for review and be included in the SERP based on the relevance of their content. Without overriding current search engine rankings based on popularity and or other SEO factors, the crawler gives new and updated websites an opportunity to be found online. Not only that, because it allows you to see where you can improve your site’s ranking.

How crawlers work
As information on the Internet increases, search engines use the crawler to organize information quickly and effectively. The effort of the spiders is aimed at indexing and disseminating information very quickly, operating in an orderly manner.

A good book, for example, must be well organized, or it will be incomprehensible. Similarly, the crawler scans all the content of sites and creates a summary that lists all the information in an easy-to-understand order. Thus, when someone makes a search query, a quick glance at the summary will suffice.

How to manage crawlers
It is important to learn how to properly use crawlers so that they can, in the course of searches, be a valuable ally. One of the ways to encourage crawler activity is to create a sitemap so that it does not scan unnecessary pages of websites.

It is advisable, to this end, to use the Robots.txt protocol, which is also useful in preventing indexing by other malicious crawlers intent on stealing data.

Free tools scan only a limited number of pages. For this, several paid options are available that are much more effective in finding important information about websites. In addition, paid crawlers have more access points, updated databases, and virus scanners. In addition, they can extract data from multiple sources at once to provide a more comprehensive report.

The best web crawler tools
Below, we present some of the best tools around the web.

Semrush
Semrush is a comprehensive online marketing tool that allows users to manage their web strategies. You can use it to perform keyword research, analyze your competitors, create landing pages and more.

The platform offers an abundance of useful tools for any kind of online marketing project. Semrush also uses web crawlers for two basic reasons:

1.To build and maintain an up-to-date backlink database. With the Backlink Audit tool you have the ability to check the backlink profiles of your competitors.
2.To analyze the health of your site, via Site Audit: this is a crawler that studies and ranks the content of websites to enable you to check their health.

LinkAssistant.com.
Research can be tiring and time-consuming, but there are websites that make it easier. One such site is LinkAssistant.com. This platform offers free research reports on topics of interest, providing links to historical documents, for example.

The built-in WebSite Auditor tool has a powerful SEO spider that scans your site just as search engine bots do. It not only examines HTML, but also sees CSS, JavaScript, Flash, images, videos, PDFs, and other resources, both internal and external, and shows how all pages and resources link. This allows you to see the whole picture and make decisions based on the data.

Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider is a powerful and flexible crawler that can efficiently crawl both showcase and heavier websites, allowing you to analyze results in real time.

Any website that aspires to success must meet customer expectations, and ‘screaming frogs’ help determine what those expectations are. In fact, designers who have used Screaming Frog have reported significant improvements in both the quantity and quality of their work as a result of sessions with the service offered by the platform.

Among the software’s available packages, there is the least expensive one that allows designers to test only one page at a time. The higher plans, on the other hand, allow multiple pages to be tested at once.

Site Checker
This is a useful tool for webmasters and marketers. It helps check websites for broken links, server load, and security issues. Most websites have at least some of these problems, especially smaller ones that have not been updated for a long time. Such sites may have outdated codes that make web pages vulnerable to security flaws.

Site Checker’s crawler scans websites and detects any technical problems, providing detailed guides on how to take action to correct the errors.

Dyno Mapper
Dyno Mapper is a very functional software with remarkable performance in creating Web site maps.

The software is available in three packages, each of which allows scanning a different number of sites and pages. With the Standard package it is possible to act on your own site or those of some competitors; the Organization and Enterprise versions, on the other hand, are suitable for those who intend to scan numerous sites and a maximum of 20,000 pages, and are adequate for the needs of medium and large enterprises.

Bottom line.
The tools illustrated above perform, among other functions, web page scanning. Not surprisingly, they are tools that provide maximum integration with the most popular CMSs on the market, including WordPress.