3 Best Content Audit Tools: Ahrefs, ScreamingFrog, Letterdrop

TL;DR:

• Ahrefs provides in-depth reports on site performance and recommendations.
• ScreamingFrog offers a high-level site overview and is great for initial audits on new websites.
• Letterdrop is best for content teams at B2B companies who want to automate their site-wide SEO.

Without content audit tools, marketers like you spend their days crawling on their hands and knees through their websites, looking for signs of trouble around site performance.

You're digging through Google Search Console and creating custom reports in Google Analytics to identify areas for improvement and noting them down in a spreadsheet.

Luckily, there are tools out there that can help you spot why your SEO is taking a hit and where you can improve. Specifically Ahrefs, ScreamingFrog, and Letterdrop.

We'll show you what each of these tools can do for you in terms of helping you with your content audit.

What is a Content Audit Tool?

Content audit tools scan your website for technical SEO issues that negatively impact site traffic and generate reports.

Here are some of the issues they look for:

• missing meta titles and descriptions
• broken links and redirects
• duplicate content
• poor site architecture, such as missing internal links
• performance issues such as bloated code
• resources, such as image issues

They aim to minimize the need for manually wading through your site and point you toward improvements you can make.

Letterdrop Can Identify and Auto Fix Site Issues On Content Pages

Letterdrop was founded in 2021 by ex-Googlers, and its suite of SEO tooling is part of an end-to-end content management system.

For most websites, your blog and content pages probably form the bulk of your pages. There tend to be relatively fewer landing pages.

Letterdrop is the best SEO auditing solution for blogs and content-heavy sites. It not only identifies but also fixes on-page and site-wide issues for your blog. This is what sets it apart from other audit tools.

It's not only capable of page monitoring to show you which of your pages need an SEO refresh and why, but it can also:

• automate internal links
• automatically fix broken links and 301 redirects

Who is Letterdrop For?

Letterdrop is best built for content teams:

1. at B2B companies
2. that want to completely automate their site-wide SEO
3. want a tool that plugs into the rest of their workflows - project management, publishing, and distribution

Ahrefs Gives In-Depth Reports on Site Performance and Recommendations

Ahrefs was founded in 2011 and has long been a household name for SEOs and marketers.

Most teams use it as a keyword research tool, but it also has a Site Audit feature.

Site Audit can crawl your website, pinpoint SEO issues, and present this data to you, along with detailed 'how to fix' recommendations.

Some of the issues it can report on are:

• incoming and outgoing links
• performance issues
• missing HTML tags, including metadata and meta descriptions
• resource problems, and more.

Who is Ahrefs For?

Ahrefs keeps all its reports in one place and has a very user-friendly interface, making it a great choice for both new and experienced technical SEOs.

The Site Audit comes with a Data Explorer that lets you use more specific parameters when performing your audit. From displaying data on a specific property for a segment of pages to screening it out entirely across every crawled page, you can filter URLs:

• based on a previous or current crawl
• based on their HTTP status code
• based on specific content parameters, such as word count or title length
• based on whether they're indexable, and more

With such customizable and in-depth reports, you can really crack down on site issues no matter how long your site has been up.

ScreamingFrog Crawls Sites To Give a High-Level Site Overview

ScreamingFrog has been around since 2010. It's one of the OG site crawlers out there. You can even schedule your reports and set them up on a consistent basis.

Among the usual site performance culprits, ScreamingFrog can also help you:

• save and re-upload crawls
• generate XML sitemaps
• store and view raw and rendered HTML, and more.

Who is ScreamingFrog For?

While anyone can use ScreamingFrog, it's particularly great for doing an initial audit on new websites.

It gives you a quick, holistic view of technical issues and web architecture which can help:

• assess the scale of work needed to keep up the website
• monitor the impact of any changes to the website

Unfortunately, unlike Letterdrop or Ahrefs, ScreamingFrog doesn't really give you actionable recommendations for fixing the flagged issues. And if you're not entirely sure what you're looking out for, the software can seem a little complicated.

Pick the Tool That Can Best Help You Optimize (Faster)

All three tools we've spoken about give content teams the important data they need to improve their site and get ranking. There's no need to wade through spreadsheets and do it yourself anymore.

But imagine how much more time you could save and how much faster you could jump up on the SERP if your content audit tool used AI to speed up the process.

Tools that combine marketing and AI for SEO are fast outstripping those that don't. Marketers are increasingly busy and turning to AI to automate the mundane stuff.

Sadly, neither ScreamingFrog nor Ahrefs allow you to automate your fixes. And as of the time of writing, 79% of companies use automation in their marketing workflow, and that will only continue to grow. Don't fall behind.

Let Audit Tools Do the Heavy Lifting

With marketing changing so rapidly with AI and your own tasks piling up, opting for marketing tools that help you do more with less is the best way forward.

Getting reports on where you can improve your site is always handy, but why not take it a step further and let automation help fix some of these problems for you?

At Letterdrop, we want to help you put your content ops on autopilot so that you have more time to strategize and create. Reach out to us if you're looking to modernize your approach to content, the right way.