Semrush Site Audit Tool – Everything you need to know

Semrush – SEO and Marketing Tools

Get access to the top 55+ marketing tools.

Try Semrush for FREE

Semrush Blogs

Everyone on the internet who has a website, or a channel wants to grow their audience, and the way to do it is through search engine optimization. There are many factors involved when it comes to making your website rank higher on search engines.

For example, relevance is one of the most important things to check because if your website proves relevant according to the keywords that users are searching for, your website will rank lower in search results.

Semrush provides you with many SEO tools that help you analyze, strategize, and customize your websites for better engagement. Semrush is like a one-stop-shop place for people who want to attract more traffic online.

Semrush provides more than 40 SEO tools like site audit, position tracking, On-Page SEO Checker, Domain Overview, Organic Research, Backlink Analytics, Link Building Tools, Backlink Audit, and more.

Semrush comes with three types of subscription plans.

• PRO- $99/month
• Guru- $199/month
• Business- $399/month

With three different plans with different specifications, you can choose the one that suits your goals better.

Even though Semrush provides excellent help in growing your audience, it is just a platform that gives you suggestions based on the data it fetches. It will be you who will implement the strategies and cause traffic growth.

Semrush may not work like a magic potion for your online business, but it will save you time and boost work efficiency by 10X.

What is the Semrush Site Audit tool?

Semrush site audit is one of the most admirable tools available on Semrush. It provides you with the ability to monitor the health of your website. The audit tool detects your website’s crawling ability, content, links, and coding issues.

The tool also provides a quick snapshot of your website’s health, allowing you to identify fundamental issues at a glance.

When you create a new project on Semrush, the website audit tool is the first to appear on the list of tools, as it provides you with all the necessary information about the areas to improve.

The audit results on your dashboard make it easier for you to make better decisions. You can connect your google analytics account to Semrush to access traffic data and insights directly within the platform.

Once the audit is completed, Semrush gives your site a total score of 100, which shows how healthy your website is. You can also conduct audits of other websites and learn more about your competitors. Monitoring and improving your website’s health is essential for optimal SEO performance.

• User interface
• Semrush overall has a very sophisticated yet easy-to-handle user interface. Their minimalist UI design makes the user experience even smoother.
• As Semrush has many features, it gives you several options for customization. You can use your knowledge and experience and multiply its impact with the help of Semrush so that the ball will always remain in your court.
• Sometimes, it can get tricky with too many options, but it gets more accessible and more comfortable as you start using it.

Step-by-step process to use of Semrush Site Auditing Tool

Conducting an audit is one of the easiest yet value-adding tasks on the Semrush platform.

Here is a step-by-step process to make it happen.

• Go to Semrush.com and log in for free. You can start with a free account, but the free version has limitations on the number of pages that can be audited.
• The window will open with several options on the left of your screen.
• Click on the project and select a new project.
• A new window will pop up. Submit the domain URL and give your project a name.

• Press on to create the project, and it takes you to a dashboard.
• The dashboard has more than 40 tools listed, of which the first tool is site audit.
• Click on it, and you will get options for customizations.
• Configure your basic settings by adjusting the crawl scope and limit on checked pages. You can always go with the default/suggested options.
• You can also customize the crawler settings according to the search engines in which your domain is optimized.
• You can then allow or disallow any URL if you want. This way, you can stop crawlers from crawling onto specific pages you want to ignore in this audit.
• Finally, you can schedule the repeat process, which is an excellent option as optimizing a site is gradual, and you will need to conduct audits again and again. This option makes it easier for you. You can automatically audit your site on a regular schedule for ongoing website health monitoring.
• Once you submit, Semrush will start auditing your domain.

• It will take a few minutes, depending on the number of pages it has to go through.
• As a result, it will give an overview of the audit that you have conducted in more sections like issues, crawled pages, statistics, compare crawls, and progress.

Overview

• On the overview page, there will be a total score out of 100, which is a score of the website’s general health.
• There will be a count of errors, warnings, and notices one after another to its right. Common issues detected include missing titles and missing meta descriptions, which are important meta tags for search engine visibility.
• You can get detailed information by clicking on them. For example, if there is an error of duplicate meta descriptions, it will be mentioned in the list of mistakes, and you can fix it through the same flow.
• It detects errors like duplicate meta descriptions, pages that could not be crawled, pages with identical title tags, pages that don’t have title tags, same content issues, etcetera. Optimizing meta tags such as titles and meta descriptions is crucial for improving search visibility and addressing technical SEO concerns. Two or more errors can have a single solution, so the number of errors does not directly indicate the website’s overall health.
• Other parameters that come into play when we talk about your domain’s health care are on the bottom right side of the overview page; you will find the section on thematic reports. It includes Crawlability, HTTP encryption, site performance, internal linking, international SEO, etcetera. The site performance section provides an overview of average HTML page load speed and highlights performance issues that can affect loading times.
• Many sites do not have HTTPS encryption. It provides safety and increases the relevance of your website, boosting it in the search results.

Setting Up the Audit Tool

Setting up the Semrush site audit tool is a simple yet powerful way to uncover critical SEO issues that may be holding your website back. To get started, head to your Semrush SEO Dashboard and navigate to On Page & Tech SEO, then select Site Audit.

Click on “+Create Project” and enter your website’s domain details to launch the setup wizard. Here, you’ll choose how many pages you want the audit tool to crawl per session and select “Website” as your crawl source.

Next, configure your crawler settings by picking the appropriate user agent, either “SemrushBot-Desktop” or “SemrushBot-Mobile”, depending on whether your audience primarily visits from desktop or mobile devices. For faster results, set the crawl delay to “Minimum delay between pages.”

In the “Allow/Disallow URLs” section, you can specify which subfolders or pages you want the audit tool to include or ignore, helping Semrush avoid crawling the same page or irrelevant sections. If your site uses URL parameters, enter them here to prevent duplicate crawling and ensure accurate results.

If your website has restricted areas, you can provide login credentials so SemrushBot can access and audit those pages as well. To keep your SEO efforts on track, set up a schedule for automatic, recurring audits, this way, you’ll always have up-to-date insights into your site’s health.

Once everything is configured, simply click “Start Site Audit” to begin the process. The audit tool will then scan your site, identify critical SEO issues, and provide a comprehensive site audit report to guide your next steps.

Configuring Crawler Settings

Getting the most out of the Semrush site audit tool starts with properly configuring your crawler settings. These settings determine how the audit tool navigates your website and what data it collects, which is essential for accurate technical SEO analysis.

Within the Site Audit setup wizard, you’ll first select the user agent that best matches your typical website visitors—choose between SemrushBot-Desktop or SemrushBot-Mobile.

This ensures the audit reflects how real users and search engines experience your site. Next, set the crawl delay to “Minimum delay between pages” to speed up the audit process without overloading your server.

You can further refine your audit by allowing or blocking specific subfolders, which is especially useful if you want to focus on certain sections of your site or exclude areas that aren’t relevant to your SEO strategy.

Enter any URL parameters you want the audit tool to ignore, preventing it from crawling the same page multiple times with different parameters. If your website has password-protected or restricted areas, provide the necessary login credentials so the audit can access and analyze those pages.

By carefully configuring these crawler settings, you ensure that the Semrush site audit tool delivers a thorough and accurate assessment of your website’s technical SEO, helping you identify and resolve critical issues efficiently.

Issues

• On this Issues tab, you can see all the significant errors which impact your website SEO, along with warnings and notices.
• This list considers all the best practices to craft your website for search engines for better visibility. Some issues identified here require immediate attention to prevent negative impacts on your site’s SEO health.
• Each item contains “Why and how to fix”. This helps you give more information about the type of issue and steps to fix it, and the tool provides a detailed description for each issue to guide users in resolving them.

• Issues are the main tab that web developers and webmasters need to focus more on.
• This list of issues helps you to improve the structure of your site along with your SEO score. The Issues tab is a core part of any comprehensive seo audit and search optimization process.

Crawled Pages

• On the next section mentioned in the paragraphs above is of crawled pages. In this section, you will have reports of the site page by page. You can select and make changes selectively. You can also filter the report to focus on exact urls for more targeted analysis.
• On the crawled pages section window, you will find a table of page URLs with unique page views, crawl depth, and issues mentioned in front of them. The tool is configured to efficiently crawl pages and identify issues on each one.
• You will find it a great help to have the crawl depth of individual pages in front of you while prioritizing the tasks.
• As every page has its issue mentioned in front of its URL, you can start with the one with lesser depth and make changes accordingly.
• There are also HTTP codes of individual pages mentioned in front of them.

Statistics

• The next section is the statistics. It will give you statistical information on specific parameters like makeup, crawl depth, HTTP status code, canonicalization (including whether canonical tags are implemented correctly to avoid duplicate content), amp links and amp pages (with a focus on auditing them for technical issues and proper SEO optimization), site map vs crawled pages, incoming internal links, reflag usage, and orphan pages (which are pages with no internal links pointing to them and should be identified to improve crawlability).
• You can take action based on the statistical data displayed in the statistics section window.

Compare Crawls

• After statistics, you have a separate section of the comparison to compare your previous audits with the new ones. It helps you with a broader perspective and a better understanding of the improvements.
• As you can schedule and redo the same domain audits, it’s great to compare the audits.
• You can see your overall progress in the last section available. Progress reports use an interactive line graph to visualize changes in issues over time, allowing you to track trends and analyze improvements.

With this step-by-step guide, you can audit any website and get informed about the improvement scope.

For sites with frequent updates, such as e-commerce websites, scheduling weekly audits is recommended to ensure ongoing SEO performance and timely identification of new issues.

Optimizing Website Structure

A well-organized website structure is the foundation of strong SEO and a positive user experience. Search engines like Google rely on clear site architecture to understand your content and rank your pages effectively.

To optimize your website’s structure, start by establishing a logical hierarchy of pages and categories, making it easy for both users and search engines to navigate.

Use descriptive, keyword-rich page titles, meta descriptions, and headings to clarify the purpose of each page. Consistency in your URL structure is also important, avoid unnecessary parameters and use canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues.

Internal linking plays a crucial role in website structure; strategically place internal links using descriptive anchor text to guide visitors and search engines to important pages, but avoid excessive linking on the same page to maintain a clean user experience.

By focusing on these elements, you’ll not only improve your site’s health score but also boost your visibility in search engines, making it easier for users to find and engage with your content.

Improving Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are essential metrics that measure your website’s performance in terms of load speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Improving these metrics is key to delivering a seamless user experience and achieving higher rankings in search results.

To enhance your Core Web Vitals, prioritize optimizing your website’s page speed. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify bottlenecks, then compress images, minify CSS and JavaScript, and leverage browser caching to reduce load times.

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly by using responsive design and ensuring that layouts adapt smoothly across all devices.

A fast, stable website not only keeps visitors engaged but also signals to search engines that your site is well-optimized. By focusing on Core Web Vitals, you’ll improve your site’s load speed, boost your search performance, and provide a better experience for every visitor.

Follow these steps to improve SEO and your Semrush Site Health Score quickly:

STEP #1 Remove Broken Links

How to Find and Remove Broken Links

Select the Crawled Pages tab, and apply the filter with Issue Status as Broken, and then you can see the list of broken links.

Or

From the Overview tab, under Thematic Reports, click on the “Internal Linking” View details button and then look for Warnings > Broken internal links.

From the Overview tab, under Thematic Reports, click on the “Internal Linking” View details button and then look for Warnings > Broken external links.

Check and remove all these links immediately; they’ll harm your SEO.

STEP #2 Clear all Errors

Go to the Issues tab and look for errors and then clear all the issues with lower numbers first and schedule the higher number of issues as they take time to remove, but target these errors before you earn the warnings or notices.

The most common errors are:

• Invalid Data Items
• Pages without Titles
• Pages with Duplicate content (ensure canonical tags are implemented correctly to avoid duplicate content issues)
• AMP pages with technical issues (make sure AMP pages are implemented correctly to maintain proper functionality and SEO optimization)
• Broken internal links
• Broken images
• Images without alt and captions
• HTTP Status Code Errors (5XX, 4XX, etc.)
• Robots.txt, sitemap.xml issues
• and more…

STEP #3 The Warning list contains

Many consider this a common issue, but it also impacts your site’s SEO. Once you have cleared the Errors, plan and remove all the errors. Again, target the errors with low counts and arrange a fix for the errors with higher numbers.

The most common warnings are:

• Pages without Meta Descriptions
• Text-HTML ratio
• Pages without structured data
• JavaScript and CSS errors
• Pages with low word count
• HTTPS encryption issues
• and more

STEP #4 Notices

Once you have cleared the errors and warnings, plan to check the notices too, as they may not harm but are helpful to consider and remove them accordingly.

• Internal and external links with nofollow and dofollow attributes
• Links without anchor text
• Number of incoming links
• List of orphan pages (Orphan pages are pages on your website with no internal links pointing to them, making it difficult for search engines to discover and index these pages. Identifying and fixing orphan pages through internal linking audits is important to improve crawlability and overall SEO performance.)
• URLs with permanent redirects
• and more

Per the metrics from Semrush Site Audit overview, the Top-10% of websites have a 92% Site Health Score. So the target is to reach at least 80+ site health scores for good visibility in search engines.

Our team at WittySparks has worked hard, and now the site’s Health score is moved from 70% to 80% within seven days; we have edited almost 2000+ articles and targeting to reach 90%; just wish us good luck :)

Common Site Audit Mistakes

Even with powerful tools like the Semrush site audit, common mistakes can undermine your SEO efforts and leave critical issues unresolved. One frequent error is not configuring crawler settings correctly, which can result in incomplete or inaccurate audit data.

Failing to provide login credentials for restricted areas means important pages may be missed during the audit.

Another oversight is neglecting to set up a regular site audit schedule, which can cause you to miss new or recurring technical SEO issues as your website evolves. Many users also skip reviewing thematic reports, missing out on valuable insights into specific areas like internal linking, site performance, or international SEO.

Finally, not prioritizing and addressing the most critical issues identified in your site audit report can stall your progress and impact your site’s health score.

By avoiding these common site audit mistakes, you’ll ensure your website’s technical SEO is always up-to-date, and that you’re making steady progress toward a healthier, higher-performing site.

Ways to learn more and faster

• If you’re new to this digital world and want to experiment with the tools, a site audit can be a great teacher.
• You can study other websites and learn how they optimise them.
• You can also select any random low-ranking website from google and study what makes it rank so low. You can quickly get the necessary data through the site audit tool.
• Many low-ranking sites do not have HTTP encryption or international SEO; you can check it using site audit and include them while building your web presence.
• As part of a modern SEO audit, explore ai search optimization to ensure your content is optimized for both traditional and AI-driven search platforms.
• It is always great to have a relaxed look for opportunities and knowledge, and you can do the same with a site audit.

What’s unique about the Semrush Audit tool?

Ease

• As discussed earlier, one of the great things about Semrush’s site audit tool is the ease that it provides to the user.
• You can get the work done with a few clicks and minimum effort.
• As Semrush has a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate, its audit tool also follows the same ease of user experience.
• You can quickly implement the changes that we have discussed in the reports. Most of the time, you can customize the required changes just by clicking on the issue displayed on the tool.

Flexibility

• Flexibility is another unique thing about Semrush. As a user, you get to customize at almost every place possible.
• For example, before starting an adult, a site audit allows you to select the limit for pages to be crawled. It enables you to decide the precision of the reports.
• Such a level of flexibility helps to save the time of the user.
• You can include-exclude any pages you want, and you can even choose the crawlers you wish to use.
• Such flexibility and power of customization at a precise level make it an excellent option for those willing to experiment and innovate to grow their audience.

Precision

• Semrush keeps the balance between ease and precision.
• With high customization power to users, you can get detailed reports with precise information. Each issue in its reports comes with a detailed description, helping users understand and resolve problems efficiently.
• With such accurate information, you can make better decisions with more certainty of success.

The Brand

• As mentioned before, Semrush has more than 40 SEO-related tools. It is a brand that has earned its place in the market.
• With its established position in the market and high-tech solutions, Semrush has designed its tools to stand up to users’ expectations. 
• Even though many things make Semrush’s site audit tool special, its brand name is undoubtedly one thing that makes it more likeable and reliable.

Common complaints

Confusions

• Some of the common complaints that people have been with the number of places at which Semrush provides customization. For those who have not used it before, it can become confusing. 
• There is also a need for better explanations of the options that are being made available. It is best to know the terms involved in the process before starting a real project.

Complex

• Semrush can get very complex at times. Its 40+ tools provide almost every functionality required for you to get better at SEO, making it very tricky in some places.
• Many people complain about it, and this issue seems to be getting solved over time.

Pricing

• Another one of the most common issues people mention having with Semrush is its pricing.
• While Semrush provides three different plans with different rates and specifications, the pro plan costs $99/month and is the cheapest.
• Its free trial is also available for a limited number of days, after which you must pay to continue the ongoing projects. The free trial is available for only ten days.

Conclusion

• As part of an agile platform Semrush, Semrush’s site audit tool is one of the best options.
• With its easy-to-use interface and ability to let the user customize at many places, Semrush’s site audit proves to be a tough competitor to other site auditing tools.

To get this tool’s experience, you can always go to Semrush.com and take a free trial of your own. You can pay later for the plan that suits your needs accordingly.