The Ultimate Screaming Frog Guide for 2025

TL;DR

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an essential desktop tool for technical SEO. It crawls websites like a search engine to identify critical issues. This guide covers everything from your first crawl to advanced strategies. You will learn to find broken links, audit redirects, analyze metadata, and uncover duplicate content. We also dive into advanced features like JavaScript rendering for modern sites, custom extraction for web scraping, and API integrations with Google Search Console and Analytics for richer data. We provide practical workflows for complex tasks like site migrations, content audits, and competitive analysis. By the end, you will have the knowledge to use Screaming Frog to significantly improve any website's technical health and search performance.

Introduction: Why Every SEO Needs to Master Screaming Frog

In the world of search engine optimization, few tools command as much respect and universal adoption as the Screaming Frog SEO Spider. For over a decade, it has been the trusted workhorse for technical SEOs, digital marketing agencies, and in-house teams at companies like Google and Amazon. It’s the digital equivalent of a master key, capable of unlocking a website's deepest structural secrets and revealing the technical issues that hold back performance.

But with great power comes a steep learning curve. The interface, packed with tabs, filters, and columns of data, can feel intimidating to newcomers. This guide is designed to change that. We are not just going to show you what the buttons do. We are going to provide you with the practical, experience-driven workflows we use every day to diagnose problems, strategize solutions, and drive meaningful results.

This is more than a feature list. It’s a comprehensive roadmap to mastering the Screaming Frog SEO Spider in 2025.

What is the Screaming Frog SEO Spider?

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop-based website crawler. It systematically browses a website by following links, just like a search engine bot. As it moves through the site, it collects and organizes data about every URL it finds, from pages and images to CSS and JavaScript files.

This process gives you a complete, top-down view of a website’s architecture and technical health. It operates on a freemium model. The free version is incredibly useful for small sites or quick checks, but it’s limited to crawling 500 URLs. The paid version unlocks unlimited crawling (bound only by your computer's hardware) and a suite of advanced features essential for professional work.

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Getting Started: Your First Crawl

Before you can diagnose complex issues, you need to master the basics. Let's walk through setting up and running your first crawl.

Installation and SetupFirst, download the SEO Spider from the official Screaming Frog website. It’s available for Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu. The installation is straightforward.
Memory vs. Database StorageOnce installed, you have a critical choice to make in the settings: storage mode (File > Settings > Storage Mode).
- Memory (RAM) Storage: This is the default. It's fast and ideal for crawling sites under 500,000 URLs. All data is held in your computer's RAM.
- Database Storage: This is essential for large websites. It saves crawl data to your hard drive (an SSD is highly recommended for speed), allowing you to crawl millions of URLs and reopen massive projects almost instantly. For any serious work, switch to Database Storage.
Running the CrawlIn the main window, you will see a bar at the top that says "Enter URL to spider." Enter the homepage of the website you want to audit and click "Start." The tool will immediately begin crawling, and you will see URLs populating the main window in real-time. A progress bar on the right will show you the crawl's status.

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Core Audits for Immediate Wins

Once your crawl is complete, the real work begins. The interface organizes data into tabs. Here are the first places to look to find high-impact issues.

Finding Broken Links (404s) and RedirectsBroken links create a frustrating user experience and waste crawl budget.

How to find them: Navigate to the Response Codes tab and use the filter to select Client Error (4xx). This lists all broken links. ‍
How to fix them: Click on a 404 URL in the top window. In the bottom pane, click the Inlinks tab. This instantly shows you every page on your site that links to the broken resource, so you know exactly where to go to fix it. ‍
Auditing Redirects: In the same Response Codes tab, filter for Redirection (3xx). Look for redirect chains (one redirect leading to another) and loops, which can harm performance.

Analyzing Page Titles and Meta DescriptionsThese elements are crucial for click-through rates from search results.

How to find issues: Go to the Page Titles and Meta Description tabs.
What to look for: Use the built-in filters to find common problems like "Missing," "Duplicate," "Over 60 Characters" for titles, and "Over 155 Characters" for descriptions. Optimizing these is one of the quickest ways to improve on-page SEO.

Uncovering Duplicate and Thin ContentGoogle prioritizes unique, valuable content.

Exact Duplicates: Go to the Content tab and filter for "Exact Duplicates." The tool uses a hashing algorithm to find pages that are 100% identical. ‍
Near-Duplicates: The paid version can also find "Near-Duplicates," which are pages with a high percentage of similar content. This is great for finding boilerplate text issues. ‍
Thin Content: In the Internal tab, sort by the Word Count column. Pages with very low word counts may be considered "thin content" and should be improved or consolidated.

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Level Up: Advanced Screaming Frog Techniques

The true power of the SEO Spider lies in its advanced features. Mastering these will set you apart as a technical SEO expert.

Crawling the Modern Web with JavaScript RenderingMany modern websites use JavaScript frameworks like React or Angular. This means content is often loaded on the client-side, and a simple crawler that only reads the initial HTML will miss it.

How it works: Screaming Frog integrates a headless Chrome browser to execute JavaScript and crawl the final, rendered HTML that users and Google see. ‍
How to enable it: Go to Configuration > Spider > Rendering and switch from "Text Only" to "JavaScript.
‍What to look for: The JavaScript tab will highlight content, links, and directives (like canonicals) that are only present after rendering. It also flags JavaScript errors that could prevent a page from loading correctly.

Web Scraping with Custom ExtractionCustom Extraction turns the SEO Spider into a powerful web scraper, allowing you to pull almost any data from a page's HTML at scale. You configure it under Configuration > Custom > Extraction. There are three methods:

XPath: A query language for navigating the HTML structure. Perfect for grabbing structured data like author names, publication dates, or product prices. ‍
CSS Selectors: An often simpler way to select elements, using the same logic as CSS styling. ‍
Regex (Regular Expressions): The most powerful method, used for pattern matching. Ideal for extracting data not in clean HTML tags, like tracking IDs from scripts or email addresses from text.

Example Use Case: Imagine you want to check all blog posts for a publication date. You could use an XPath extractor like //meta[@property='article:published_time']/@content to pull this data for every URL.

Enriching Data with API IntegrationsScreaming Frog can connect to external APIs to layer performance data on top of your crawl data.

Google Search Console (GSC): Pulls in clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position for each URL. It also allows you to use the URL Inspection API to check Google's indexed status for up to 2,000 URLs per day.
‍Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Adds user engagement data like sessions, users, and conversions. This helps you identify technically sound pages with poor user engagement.
‍PageSpeed Insights: Fetches Core Web Vitals and other performance scores for every URL, enabling a site-wide performance audit.

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Strategic Workflows for Real-World Scenarios

Applying these features in combination allows you to tackle complex SEO projects with confidence.

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Workflow 1: The Flawless Site Migration

‍A site migration is a high-stakes project. Screaming Frog is your safety net.

Pre-Migration: Perform a full crawl of the old site. Export everything—URLs, titles, headings, status codes. This list of old URLs is the foundation for your redirect map. ‍
During Staging: Crawl the new staging site (the tool can handle password-protected sites) to ensure all SEO elements are correct before launch. Use the Compare mode to see exactly what has changed between the old and new sites. ‍
Post-Launch: Switch to List Mode. Upload the complete list of old URLs and crawl it. Verify that every single one returns a 301 status code and redirects to the correct new page. Use the Reports > Redirects > All Redirects export to check for chains and loops.

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Workflow 2: The Deep Content and Internal Linking Audit

‍A comprehensive content audit combines technical data with performance metrics.

Gather Data: Run a full crawl with GSC and GA4 APIs connected. ‍
Identify Problem Pages: Find thin content (low word count), duplicate content, and pages with a high Crawl Depth (meaning they are buried deep in the site architecture). ‍
Find Orphan Pages: Use the API connections to find pages that get traffic (according to GSC/GA) or are in your sitemap but were not found during the crawl. These are orphan pages with no internal links. ‍
Discover Linking Opportunities: Use Custom Search (Configuration > Custom > Search). Search for unlinked mentions of your target keywords across the site. This is a highly effective way to find perfect contextual locations to add internal links to important pages.

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Workflow 3: Auditing Structured Data at Scale

Structured data (Schema.org markup) is vital for rich results in Google.

How to audit: Enable structured data validation under Configuration > Spider > Extraction > Structured Data. ‍
What it does: After the crawl, the Structured Data tab will show every page with schema. It validates the markup against both Schema.org standards and Google's specific requirements, flagging Errors (which can block rich results), Warnings, and Parse Errors. This allows you to audit and fix schema across thousands of pages efficiently.

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Conclusion: Your Indispensable Technical SEO Tool

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is more than just a crawler. It is a diagnostic platform, a data extraction engine, and a strategic analysis tool rolled into one. While newer, more visual tools have entered the market, none offer the same raw power, granular control, and unfiltered data access.

Mastering it requires an investment of time, but the return is immense. It empowers you to move beyond surface-level checklists and perform the kind of deep, data-driven technical SEO that truly moves the needle. Whether you are auditing a new client's site, preparing for a complex migration, or hunting for competitive insights, the SEO Spider remains the professional's choice for a reason. It is, and will continue to be, an essential part of any serious SEO's toolkit.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)‍

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What is the main purpose of Screaming Frog?
- ‍Screaming Frog is a website crawler used for technical SEO audits. Its main purpose is to scan a website to find common technical issues like broken links, incorrect redirects, duplicate content, and problems with page titles and meta descriptions, providing SEOs with the data needed to improve a site's health and search engine performance.
Can Screaming Frog crawl a JavaScript website?
- ‍Yes. Screaming Frog has a JavaScript rendering feature that uses a headless Chrome browser to execute JavaScript. This allows it to crawl the final rendered HTML of modern websites built with frameworks like React or Angular, ensuring it sees the same content and links that users and Googlebot do.
How do you find broken links with Screaming Frog?
- ‍To find broken links, run a crawl and navigate to the Response Codes tab. Use the filter to select "Client Error (4xx)." This will show you all URLs that returned a 404 "Not Found" or similar error. To find where the broken link is located, click the URL and then select the Inlinks tab in the bottom pane.
Is Screaming Frog free to use?
- Yes, Screaming Frog offers a free version that allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs. This is great for small websites or for learning the tool. The paid version, which requires an annual license, removes the 500 URL limit and unlocks advanced features like crawl configuration, saving crawls, JavaScript rendering, and API integrations.
What is Custom Extraction in Screaming Frog?
- ‍Custom Extraction is an advanced feature that turns Screaming Frog into a web scraper. It allows you to extract specific pieces of data from the HTML of any page on a website using XPath, CSS Selectors, or Regex. This is useful for collecting data at scale, such as author names, product prices, publication dates, or schema details.

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