SEO in QA: UKAD experience

The Internet gives QA engineer a wide choice of tools for website optimization. Some of them are paid (f. ex., Netpeaker Spider) other are free like Xenu. While choosing a tool I always consider free options first. But despite a huge advantage of being payment-free, such programs are usually limited in their features and specialization. Therefore, to achieve the best result and cover the whole task log QA engineer could combine two or more tools.

Xenu

It was the first program I got acquainted with when I began my SEO practices. Xenu is an ultimate link checking tool. It is free, UI intuitive and helps quickly detect links that require being fixed. The program works fine under wine on Ubuntu.

The main tool functions include:

• Broken links detecting;
• Website map creation;
• Non-unique titles search;
• Search high level of nesting pages;
• Search for pictures with no alt attribute, etc .;
• Easily duplicate content identification;
• Option to save the results.

Data after completion is highlighted with red and green colors (red for bad, green for good).

The result will be showing in such way:

The program perfectly copes with its main task, and despite being quite old, it is still relevant.

I also would like to consider some cons:

• Does not indicate links from the page and to the page;
• The inability to generate a report in the form of a text document and its large weight;
• Requires installation.

Netpeaker spider

Another tool to quickly conduct a comprehensive SEO audit of the entire website. Netpeaker Spider is available for Windows and Mac OS. Linux is currently in development. This tool is not free, but 14 days trial period is available.

Netpeaker Spider can:

• Checks basic SEO-parameters;
• Analyze incoming and internal links;
• Find broken links redirects;
• Detect duplicated content;
• Take into account indexing instructions;
• Calculate the internal PageRank to improve the internal site linking;
• Configure custom scanning rules for a specific part of the site;
• Save and export the received data.

One of the Netpeaker Spider valuable functions of is to sort the errors by importance.

• Error → critical errors;
• Warning → important, but not critical;
• Notice →  notice errors.

This program is similar to Xenu but captivates with its appearance and plenty of features. Also worth noting is the convenient setting of filters.

Cons:

• Requires installation;
• Registration required;
• Paid.

Plagiarism Checkers

We used this Advego Plagiatus because it is a free program with a simple interface for testing articles:

• The uniqueness of the text;
• Input;
• Copies of articles;
• Shows text sources and percentage of matches;
• Works with search engines (Yandex, Google, Bing, Yahoo);
• Editing text;
• Using a proxy.

In 2024, Advego Plagiatus is out of service, so SEO experts have to rely on a large toolset of more or less effective software. The most prominent of them are

• Grammarly Checker by famous writing helper Grammarly
• Plagiarism Checker by Semrush, one of the leading platforms for content marketing and SEO.

Along with plagiarism, these tools are also capable of detecting AI-generated copy, which makes them even more useful for complex content strategies.

Conclusions

Of course, despite the benefits of free software like Xenu usage, but as a professional, you should get acquainted with the paid programs like Netpeaker Spider. And as you experience and responsibilities will grow, you probably will prefer the paid tools.  Many SEO-experts are no longer doing a big scope of routine tasks manually. Now, many activities can be automated using the programs described in this article. It is difficult to determine the program that will give the best results for the promotion of the site. Try and practice, and you will find the best solutions.

If you are going to make the best website ever, it's also necessary to take a look at a page about web accessibility. Today, it is one of the most important trends that could make the Internet more inclusive as well as make your website accessible for people with disabilities.  

Author: Julia Peresunko

QA engineer