How to Use Screaming Frog SEO Spider (The Real Guide for Beginners)

Let’s be honest: Screaming Frog sounds like a weird name for an SEO tool. I mean, if you’ve never used it before, it’s easy to assume it’s some kind of horror movie or a video game where a mutant frog eats backlinks.

But no—Screaming Frog is actually one of the most powerful SEO audit tools on the planet.

I avoided it for years. It looked intimidating. There were too many tabs, filters, exports… and let’s not even talk about the crawl errors. But once you learn how to use it properly? Game-changer. Your technical SEO levels up like crazy.

So in this guide, I’ll walk you through exactly how to use Screaming Frog SEO Spider the way normal humans do. No jargon. No overwhelm. Just real, practical stuff.

---

🐸 What the Heck Is Screaming Frog SEO Spider?

Screaming Frog is a desktop-based crawler that mimics how search engines like Google crawl your website. It goes through your pages, collects data, and tells you all the stuff that might be broken, messy, missing, or just plain dumb.

So instead of clicking around your site manually every time to check for 404 errors, missing titles, or duplicate content—you can let Screaming Frog do it for you

It’s like having a robot intern who scans everything, points out your SEO mistakes, and doesn’t complain.

Here’s what it can find:

• Broken links (internal & external)

• Duplicate content

• Redirect chains

• Meta tags issues

• Page speed elements

• Canonical problems

• Robots.txt, sitemap, crawl depth… and more

You get the point. It’s powerful. But it’s also easy to screw up if you don’t know what buttons to click. So let’s get into that.

---

🛠️ How to Install Screaming Frog SEO Spider (It’s Free Up to 500 URLs)

First up—yes, Screaming Frog has a free version.

🚀 Step-by-Step Setup:

1. Go to screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

2. Click “Download SEO Spider”

3. Choose your OS (Windows, Mac, Ubuntu)

4. Install it like any normal app

5. Boom, done

The free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which is fine if you’re just auditing a small blog or testing stuff. For big sites, yeah… you’ll want the paid version (about £149/year, which is like $190-ish).

---

🧪 Step 1: Crawl Your Website

Okay. Open Screaming Frog. Deep breath. I know it may look scary at first, but don’t panic.

👉 Here’s what to do:

1. Type in your website’s homepage URL in the bar at the top (e.g. https://yourblog.com)

2. Click Start

3. Wait while it crawls (can take 1-10 minutes depending on site size)

4. You’ll see data start to appear like a waterfall of chaos. That’s normal.

You’ll get columns like:

• Address

• Status Code

• Page Title

• Meta Description

• Canonicals

• Word Count

• H1, H2s, Images… etc.

This is where the magic starts.

---

🔎 Step 2: Check for Broken Links (404 Errors)

404s hurt your SEO. If users or bots click links that go nowhere, that’s bad news.

🧼 How to Find Them:

• Click the “Response Codes” tab

• Filter: “Client Error (4xx)”

• Boom. There’s your list.

You can click the “Inlinks” tab at the bottom to see which pages link to those broken URLs. That way, you know exactly what to fix.

Real example: One time I deleted an old page and forgot 3 other blog posts linked to it. Screaming Frog caught it, I updated the links, and boom—no more dead ends.

---

🧠 Step 3: Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

Google loves solid title tags. Screaming Frog shows them all in one place.

Go to:

• Page Titles tab

• Sort by: Missing / Duplicate / Over 60 characters

Look for:

• Pages with missing titles (that’s lazy SEO)

• Duplicates (that’s confusing to Google)

• Titles that are way too long and get cut off

Same process for meta descriptions.

💡 Pro tip: Click “Export” and you get a sweet Excel sheet of everything. Fix them in bulk.

---

💥 Step 4: Audit Your H1s and H2s

This is where a lot of bloggers screw up.

What to look for:

• Missing H1s

• Multiple H1s (you should usually have just one)

• Duplicate H1s across pages (lazy copy-paste issues)

• Missing H2s where content needs structure

Go to the H1 tab and filter for “Missing” or “Multiple.” Do the same for H2s.

You’ll be shocked how many times you forget to update these after cloning a blog post.

---

🛑 Step 5: Canonicals, Redirects, Robots… Oh My

🧭 Canonicals

These tell Google which version of a page is the main one.

If you have:

• Multiple pages with the same content

• Pages with URL parameters (like ?ref=twitter)

You NEED proper canonical tags.

Check the “Canonicals” tab. Make sure they’re:

• Present

• Pointing to the correct version

• Not conflicting

🔄 Redirect Chains

Go to the Redirects tab → Check for chains (A → B → C) or loops (A → B → A). These suck for site speed and SEO.

🧱 Robots.txt + Noindex

Check the “Directives” tab and make sure you’re not accidentally noindexing pages you want Google to rank.

Example mistake: I once blocked /blog/ in robots.txt. Didn’t realize for 2 months. RIP rankings.

---

🎨 Step 6: Image Optimization

Big images = slow site.

Screaming Frog shows you:

• All image files

• Their size

• If they’re missing ALT text

ALT text matters for:

• SEO

• Accessibility

• Google Image Search

Go to:

• Images tab

• Filter by: “Missing Alt Text” or “Over 100KB”

Shrink, compress, and label your images like a sane person. “image1.jpg” doesn’t help Google.

---

⚡ Step 7: Internal Linking & Crawl Depth

Want Google to love your site structure?

Go to:

• Site Structure tab

• View crawl depth (how many clicks from homepage)

• View orphan pages (no internal links pointing to them)

💥 Fix:

• Add internal links to important posts buried too deep

• Use breadcrumbs or category links to surface key content

If your best money page takes 6 clicks to reach, no one’s ever gonna find it.

---

🧾 Bonus: Screaming Frog + Google Search Console + GA

You can connect Screaming Frog to:

• Google Analytics

• Google Search Console

• PageSpeed Insights API

This lets you pull in:

• Traffic data

• Impressions

• Clicks

• Real load time metrics

It’s advanced, but super powerful once you get the hang of it.

---

🤯 Final Thoughts: Is Screaming Frog Worth It?

YES. I avoided it for way too long.

Once I finally embraced it:

• I found 97 broken links

• Fixed 27 duplicate titles

• Cut page load time by 1.3 seconds

• Improved rankings on 11 blog posts

Was it fun? No. But was it worth it? 1000%.

---

🐸 TL;DR – Screaming Frog for Bloggers in Plain English

• ✅ Download free version (up to 500 URLs)

• ✅ Crawl your site

• ✅ Fix broken links, titles, descriptions

• ✅ Audit H1s, canonicals, and image ALT tags

• ✅ Use internal links to reduce crawl depth

• ✅ Export everything, fix in bulk

Done right, this tool is your secret weapon for technical SEO wins that most bloggers ignore.

---

🎁 Bonus Tip: Run Screaming Frog once a month and export the crawl. You’ll catch issues early before Google does.

Want me to create a custom Screaming Frog audit checklist template you can copy? Just say the word.