What is a free SEO scan?
A free SEO scan (also called an SEO site scan or SEO audit) is an automated check of your website that identifies issues affecting your Google ranking. It looks at your pages the same way a search engine does and flags everything that needs fixing.
A good SEO scan checks hundreds of factors — from technical issues like broken links and slow page speed, to on-page elements like missing meta tags and schema markup. It scores your site out of 100 and tells you exactly what to fix first.
The difference between a free SEO scan and a paid one is depth. Free tools like Google Search Console show you some data. A proper free SEO scan tool checks everything at once and gives you a prioritised action list.
What does a free SEO scan actually check?
A complete SEO site scan covers all of the following. If your current tool is not checking all of these, you are missing problems that are costing you traffic.
Page Speed
How fast your site loads on desktop and mobile. Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. Slow pages rank lower — full stop.
Meta Tags
Title tag and meta description on every page. Missing or duplicate meta tags are one of the most common and fixable SEO issues.
Schema Markup
Structured data that helps Google understand your content. Without schema, you miss out on rich snippets (star ratings, FAQs, breadcrumbs) in search results.
SSL Certificate
Whether your site is on HTTPS. Google flags HTTP sites as insecure and ranks them lower. A missing or expired SSL certificate is a critical issue.
Broken Links
Internal and external links that point to 404 pages. Broken links waste crawl budget and frustrate users — both hurt rankings.
Sitemap
Whether your sitemap.xml exists, is valid, and is submitted to Google. Without a sitemap, pages can take weeks to get indexed.
Robots.txt
Whether your robots.txt is blocking pages it should not be. A misconfigured robots.txt can accidentally block Google from crawling your entire site.
Heading Structure
Whether your H1, H2, H3 tags are used correctly. Every page should have exactly one H1 containing your primary keyword.
Social Preview
How your pages look when shared on WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn. Missing OG tags mean your links show as blank previews — terrible for click-through rates.
Tech Stack
What technologies your site is built on. Helps identify outdated frameworks or conflicting plugins that may be causing issues.
Redirects
Whether redirect chains or loops exist. Every extra redirect adds load time and dilutes link equity passed to the destination page.
Competitor Analysis
How your site compares to competitors ranking for the same keywords. Knowing the gap is the first step to closing it.
How many checks does a proper SEO scan run?
How to run a free SEO scan on your website
Takes under 60 seconds. No signup required to see your score.
Go to seo-snap.com
Enter your website URL in the scan box on the homepage. Use the full URL including https:// and www if your site uses it.
Wait 30–60 seconds
The scanner crawls your site, checks all 251 rules, and generates your score. Larger sites with many pages take slightly longer.
Review your score
You get an overall score out of 100, a grade (A to F), and a breakdown by category — Technical, On-Page, Performance, Links, and more.
Fix critical issues first
Issues are sorted by severity — Critical, Warning, and Pass. Fix Critical issues first as they have the biggest impact on your ranking.
Download the PDF report
Export a full PDF report you can keep, share with your developer, or use to track progress over time.
What does your SEO score actually mean?
90–100 / 100
Excellent. Your site is well-optimised. Focus on content and backlinks.
75–89 / 100
Good. A few fixable issues. Address them to get into the top tier.
60–74 / 100
Average. Noticeable issues holding you back. Prioritise critical fixes.
40–59 / 100
Poor. Multiple serious issues. Your ranking is significantly impacted.
0–39 / 100
Critical. Major technical problems. Fix these before anything else.
Free SEO scan vs paid tools — what is the difference?
Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs are excellent but cost $100–$500 per month. That is not realistic for most small business owners or solo founders.
A free SEO scan from SEO-Snap covers everything a small business needs — 251 checks, a downloadable PDF report, and actionable fix recommendations — for free. The paid plan ($5/week) adds weekly automated scans, score history tracking, and alerts when something breaks.
Google Search Console
~20 checks
Free
No action list
Semrush / Ahrefs
300+ checks
$100–500/mo
Overkill for SMBs
SEO-Snap
251 checks
Free / $5/week
Built for SMBs
How often should you run an SEO scan?
Run a scan every time you make changes to your website — new pages, plugin updates, redesigns. Each change can introduce new issues.
Beyond that, a monthly scan catches issues that creep in over time: SSL certificates that expire, links that break when external sites go offline, pages that accidentally get blocked in robots.txt after a CMS update.
If you are actively trying to grow organic traffic, weekly scans are ideal. SEO-Snap automates this — your site is scanned every Monday and you get emailed if anything changes.
Most common issues found in a free SEO site scan
Based on scans run through SEO-Snap, these are the issues that appear most often:
Missing meta descriptions
Reduces click-through rate from Google results
Images without alt text
Missed ranking opportunity for image search
No schema markup
No rich snippets in search results
Slow page speed on mobile
Direct ranking penalty from Google Core Web Vitals
Broken internal links
Wastes crawl budget, poor user experience
Duplicate title tags
Confuses Google about which page to rank
Missing H1 tag
Google cannot determine the main topic of the page
No sitemap submitted
Pages take weeks longer to get indexed
Run your free SEO scan now
Enter your URL and get your SEO score in 60 seconds. 251 checks, instant results, no signup required.
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