Free SEO Tool Alert! On-Page Content Analyzer

Free SEO Tool Alert! On-Page Content Analyzer was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

You know about the brand new SEOToolSet 6 with the completely free SEOToolSet Lite ? Sign up for free to use the SEOToolSet Lite’s:

Content grader
Keyword usage analyzer
Crawl errors report
Internal link visualization
And server health assessment

Maybe you haven’t signed up for the free Lite tools suite because you’re not sure how these tools can help you improve your site’s rankings. For you, we offer 10 select SEO tools that aren’t behind a sign-in wall and can be run on a one-off, on-demand basis, for free. These 10 free tools don’t require a log in, credit card info, or software download. Use them as much as you like from the Free SEO Tools page on SEOToolSet.com.

To give you a chance to see in action how the data you get enhances your organic SEO efforts, this miniseries covers each of the 10 free SEO tools. ( See the whole miniseries here! ) In this post, you meet a lightweight version of our most frequently-used SEO tool, the Single Page Analyzer.

Today’s Free SEO Tool: Single Page Analyzer

Tool type: on-page content analysis, on-page optimization

What you’ll learn: When you submit a URL, the tool:

Grades the optimization of page components (meta data, other tags and body content)
Flags any SEO errors, and
Provides suggestions on how to improve your web page optimization.

Why this matters: Proper page analysis is key to improving your web page optimization. Review this data for your own pages and for top-ranking competitors to discover what makes a web page rank high in the search engines for your industry and keywords.

Run the Single Page Analyzer:    

Page URL:

SEOToolSet® Tag Information

Tag
Word Count
Stop Words
Used Words
Length
Contents

Text Metrics and Readability

Metric
Value
Description

Word Phrase Usage

Keyword
Title
Meta Desc
Meta Keywords
Headings
ALT Tags
First Words
Body Words
All Words

 

How to Use It

Enter a single URL and click Run Page Analyzer. You can enter your own web page or a competitor’s URL. The tool can analyze only one page at a time.
The Single Page Analyzer (SPA) produces data about various elements of a web page. This free version returns a report that’s separated into three sections:

The first category, Tag Information, examines the tags for a page.
The second category, Text Metrics and Readability, analyzes the content and scores the reading level of the text.
The final category, Word Phrase Usage, breaks down the most commonly used words and phrases used in various elements on the page.

How to get more from the SPA: The SPA tool featured here is a lightweight version of the tool, which means it’s not the full version. However, you can now access the complete version of this robust tool for FREE by signing up for the SEOToolSet Lite. By simply providing a username and password, you can use the full version of the Single Page Analyzer tool — an opportunity that was, until recently, only available with a paid SEOToolSet subscription.

5 Ways to Use This Data

The point of running the SPA is to spot any SEO-related issues with the content on a web page. This tool in particular will show you any major errors, weak areas, as well as any elements that are missing from the page. You can use this information to fix those errors, strengthen weaknesses, and add the missing elements that are vital to the optimization of that page.

Our SEO analysts usually run this tool over and over again to see how the changes they’ve made meet SEO best practices and to learn from their competitors. Before we get into the specifics of how to use the tool and decode the reports, this is what you get from the Single Page Analyzer’s data analysis.

Here are five valuable ways you can use this data to enhance your search engine optimization strategy for a web page:

1. Improve the optimization of your meta tags. Is your meta description too long or too short? Because it matters. Are your tags in the right order? That matters, too. There are basic dos and don’ts to writing meta tags. Use the Tag Information report provided by the SPA to fix or strengthen your tags according to SEO best practices. If you find errors in red, fix them. If you discover that you’re missing any tags, add them. Once you’ve made the changes and have added the missing elements, you can then run the tool a second time to examine the recent changes.

2. Adjust the reading level of your text. High-quality web content has many characteristics, and an appropriate reading level is one of them. Content that is too simple or too complicated can lose the attention of your target audience and fail to bring conversions. So how do you know if your content is written in the appropriate reading level? The SPA will tell you.

Using the Text Metrics and Readability section of the report (outlined below), find out the reading level of your text. If it’s too high, consider adjusting it by reducing the number of three-syllable words and shortening your sentences.

While most web content should be simple to digest, certain industries or businesses require a higher reading level.

Tip: A good way to find out the appropriate reading level for your business or industry is to check out a competitor that is ranking high in the SERPs. Run the SPA on a competitor’s page and get a breakdown of their text. You can then emulate the same writing style and language accordingly.

3. Improve the keyword density on a page. As mentioned above, quality content has many features that set it apart from low-quality content. Does your text feature the keywords and phrases searchers use to find your products or services? Are these important words used in the right places and in the right frequency? The Single Page Analyzer can give you a great snapshot of the most commonly used words on the page and where they’re located. Find out whether you’re using the important words often enough and in the right locations and edit your content accordingly.

4. Locate opportunities. The reports provided by the SPA can help you spot opportunities you otherwise might not have noticed. The Tag Information section, for example, can help you pinpoint keywords that you’re not using in anchor text.

5. Research and learn from your competition. The Single Page Analyzer tool can be used to examine on-page elements of a competitor’s web page. You will want to choose a competitor who is ranking well in the search engines that is similar to your website (Wikipedia and Amazon are probably not the best competitors to examine). Submit a web page into the tool and get a report of everything they’re doing right or wrong. Both sets of information can help you improve your own SEO for a similar page. For example, if you notice that they don’t have any errors in the Tag Information tab, you can get an idea of properly crafted meta tags. On the other hand, if you spot any problems with the page, it could be a great opportunity to beat the competition by making sure your own web page is free of those errors.

How Not to Use this Data

Now that we’ve covered how to utilize the information in the Single Page Analyzer report to improve the optimization of a web page, here’s one way you shouldn’t use this data:

Without applying wisdom. Just because you see a red error message in the SPA report doesn’t mean you should fix it without thinking it through. For example, certain pages of BruceClay.com come up with red error messages when run through the SPA. However, these same pages may rank high in the search engines, so it’s always important to consider the bigger picture before making any changes to important elements on a web page.

How to Decode the Single Page Analyzer Report

Here’s a closer look at the data produced by this free SEO tool and how to read it.

Tag Information

This section is where you’ll find a breakdown of your tags and whether you’re crafting them according to SEO best practices. The Tag Information section examines the title, meta description, and keywords tags. For each tag, the report tells you the total word count (Word Count), Stop Words, Used Words (the number of stop words minus the Word Count), and the character length of the tag.

The Tag Information section also tells you if there are any issues with those tags. You will see any issues listed in red in the last column of the report (the Tag Contents column). In that same column you will also find suggestions on how to solve those problems to improve the SEO of the page. For example, if the SPA discovers that your meta description is too long, you will see two notes in the Tag Contents column: the first note will inform you that the tag is longer than desired, and the second note will tell you the preferred average length of the meta description according to SEO best practices.

Text Metrics and Readability

In the second section of the SPA report, you will see text-specific metrics that help examine the reading level of your content. Here you’ll find everything from how many sentences you have on each page to the average number of syllables per word in the body of the page. The first column shows the metrics, the second features the value, and the third provides a description of the value so that you can better understand the numbers you’re looking at.

Along with text statistics, the SPA produces reading scores based on three different formulas or readability tests. Each test has its own scoring system, so make sure to read the information in the Description column to find out where your content stands according to each test. (The three readability tests are the Fog Reading level, Flesch Reading Ease level, and Flesch-Kincaid Grade level, if you’re wondering.)

 

Word Phrase Usage

The SPA can help you examine the most commonly used words and phrases on the page and let you know whether you’re using them appropriately, in the right places and according to a frequency that’s common and natural for your industry.

In the Word Phrase Usage category of the SPA report you will see a list of the most commonly used keywords and phrases on that page, listed in order with the longest phrases first. This list is not necessarily your chosen keywords, but the phrases that are the most prominent on the page.

Next to each keyword you will find the number of times the word or phrase is used in various elements on the page, such as in the title, meta description, keywords tag, in the headings, and alt tags. The report also shows you how many times the words are used in the first 200 words of the page, in the body, and in all of the on-page elements combined.

So how do you read the errors? Pay attention to colors. Numbers in red mean that the keyword or phrase is not used often enough, while numbers in blue mean you’ve used them too often.

Note: A red zero appears when you have no instances of a keyword in an element; however, the red color means that it’s a best practice to include it there.  A dash also means there’s no keyword in the element, but you don’t have to add it. This happens often with alt image tags.

Discover More Free SEO Tools

Free and easy to use, the SPA is an advanced search engine optimization tool that provides a full page analysis of a web page. You can use it to identify broken areas and key places on a page that need improvement. It’s a tool you can use to take small but effective steps to improve the optimization of each page. Finally, it’s a testing tool you can keep going back to reassess the enhancements and additions to the page.

Take the free, external SPA for a spin, but remember that this isn’t all that the free SPA has to offer. Within the free SEOToolSet Lite, you get a more robust SPA and many other tools that will help you better optimize your website for both search engines and human beings.