Are you looking to optimize each page on your website to make it easier for Google to crawl, resulting in higher rankings?
This is a form of on-page SEO—a set of tactics you apply page-by-page to improve a specific page’s presence in search engines.
It’s easy to optimize a page once you know where to look. But it can be tricky to comb through each page on your website and find areas for improvement.
Luckily, you don’t have to fork out an expensive SEO tool to find them.
Siteliner is a great budget-friendly option.
In this guide, we’ll cover the following:
- What Siteliner is
- The difference between Siteliner and Copyscape
- How to use Siteliner
- Whether Siteliner really works
- How much Siteliner costs
What is Siteliner?
Siteliner is marketed as a duplicate content checker for your website. It shows how many pages on your website have similar content on another internal URL.
For example: If you have one paragraph on URL.com/tips and the same is copied on URL.com/advice, Siteliner should show it.
Siteliner is an essential tool because duplicate content is a major SEO problem. It confuses Google, which doesn’t know which page best answers a searcher’s query and which URL to rank in their search engine results pages.
The goal is to have unique content on every page. Siteliner was designed to help you find (and replace) those pages containing duplicate content before it becomes a bigger problem.
What’s the difference between Siteliner and Copyscape?
Siteliner and Copyscape are both duplicate content-checking tools.
However, there is one main difference.
Siteliner only finds duplicate content within your website. It does an internal scan of every page on your website and searches for duplicates.
On the other hand, Copyscape checks your website’s content against other pages found on the internet. It will flag instances where content has been copied from your site and used on another.
(Fun fact: Both tools are created by the same parent company, Indigo Steam Technologies.)
5 ways to use Siteliner
Siteliner is more than a duplicate content tool; it helps you do a complete (and free!) content audit of your website.
Add your URL into the search box and use their tools to:
1. Find internal duplicate content
We’ve already mentioned that duplicate content can cause issues for you in SEO.
Siteliner’s report shows the percentage of your website that has unique, common, and duplicate content:
Click through to see those URLs flagged as having duplicate content.
You’ll see the number of words that are duplicated, the match percentage, and how many pages it is found on:
Click through to each link, and Siteliner will highlight the content found on several pages of your website.
Judge whether it’s sensible to change the duplicate content. For example: If you have the same paragraph in two blog posts, edit the second piece to rejig the sentences. The context can stay the same, but it shouldn’t be a word-for-word copy.
(You probably won’t need to change the duplicate content if it’s a generalized, branded piece of text—such as your “About” information, customer testimonials, or contact details.)
2. Replace broken links
Broken links are the equivalent of a dead end. Google and your visitors land on a 404 error page and don’t get to the link they wanted to end up on. They’re bad for SEO because Google prioritizes sites with an excellent user experience.
Dead ends don’t fit those criteria, and you’d be frustrated if you landed on a broken page, right?
Siteliner helps you find these on your own website. Head to the ‘Broken Links’ tab to find them, and click through to find the broken URL highlighted on a specific page:
Once you’ve found them, you’ve got two ways to fix the problem:
- Change the link: This one is simple; head to the page containing the broken link and update the link you’re sending people to. (Bear in mind that your surrounding content and anchor text might need to change if you’re sending people elsewhere.)
- Redirect the broken URL: Internal links can break when you change the URL structure of a post after it’s been published. So, when changing URLs, use a tool like Redirection. It will automatically direct site visitors (and Google) to the correct and updated URL rather than a 404 error page.
3. Compare page sizes and load speed
Did you know that fast-loading pages rank better in Google?
It’s easy to understand why.
You click a result from a Google results page. The page takes 10 seconds to load, but even when the primary text is there, it takes another few seconds for other on-page elements to be shown.
It’s frustrating, right? Hence why Google prioritizes fast-loading pages in their search results.
One major thing influencing loading speed is the size of a page. Hundreds of elements, large image files, and complex code take longer for a web browser to load.
Siteliner shows these under the “Comparison with Other Sites” section:
You’ll see how large your pages are, compared with the average for a normal website. It shows the exact data for your load times.
If you’re higher than the 25th percentile for either, consider making some on-site changes to reduce your page size and your average load time. It’ll work wonders for your SEO strategy and user experience.
4. Balance internal and external links
Siteliner shows a breakdown of links on your site, including the number of:
- Total
- Internal (e.g., from URL.com/blog to URL.com/advice)
- External (e.g., from URL.com/blog to OTHER.com/blog)
- Inbound (e.g., from OTHER.com/blog to URL.com)
…links you have on each page.
This report is helpful because you can compare and balance your links.
Generally, it’s good to have an equal balance of both internal. Internal shows Google around your website, and you can control the anchor text. Backlinks (how to get backlinks), however, associate your site with high-authority sites, which helps to build credibility in your industry.
Alongside each link, the count is the average of a specific page to help you compare. You can use this to add (or remove) links if they’re way out of the “norm.”
5. Find technical SEO errors
Most Siteliner features are geared toward on-page SEO tactics, changes you can make on a page-by-page basis to improve your keyword rankings.
However, Siteliner also offers a “skipped pages” report. It’s a list of URLs that Siteliner didn’t scan, along with the reason why:
Reasons, why Siteliner skipped your page, might be because:
- It had a canonical tag
- The URL was redirected
- A page was disallowed by robots.txt
- The URLs had a no-follow attribute
These technical SEO elements could cause search engines to skip specific URLs on your website. Check whether the reason for the skip is intentional. If not, fix it.
Does Siteliner really work?
Now that we know the different ways you can use Siteliner for SEO, one question remains: Does it really work?
We put Siteliner to the test and found it has its advantages and drawbacks:
Pros of Siteliner
One positive thing we noticed about Siteliner was that it’s incredibly fast to retrieve results.
But arguably, one of the most significant benefits of Siteliner is that it’s free for most users. The primary, free version of Siteliner allows users to scan up to 250 pages—which is likely enough for small websites or blogs.
Siteliner also has several features inside one free tool. You don’t need one tool to check for broken links and another to scan for duplicate content. Siteliner can do everything, making it a superb addition to any SEO toolkit.
Plus, you can download Siteliner reports in various formats, including PDFs, CSV files, and Excel sheets. This makes it easy to show reports to show clients, highlight actual results, and change the formatting.
Cons of Siteliner
While Siteliner is a great tool as a whole, we ran into a few limitations during our tests; the first is that scans are limited to your website.
Whilst Siteliner does show how some metrics—like page speed and loading times—compare to the average, it is the average of the entire internet. It’s not a direct comparison against your competitors… Whose actual timings might be much faster than what you’re comparing them to.
And, regarding comparisons, Siteliner doesn’t give any insight into improving page speeds and loading times. It simply tells you how you compare. (Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is a better replacement for this feature because it gives personalized recommendations for your site.)
We also ran into an error with the broken link feature. It highlighted our affiliate link to Semrush (see the Semrush review) as being broken, but it isn’t. It directs people to a live sign-up page on the Semrush site:
Finally, the overall interface of Siteliner feels very basic.
There has been no effort put into the design, and although it doesn’t impact the performance, it doesn’t give the impression of a professional and trustworthy SEO tool.
How much does Siteliner cost?
As we touched on in the positives of Siteliner, their software is free for up to 250 pages. That’s usually enough to scan a small website or blog.
(Check how many pages your site has by doing a site search in Google.)
If you’re over the 250-page allowance, Siteliner offers a Premium version. This costs 1 cent per page, which is still affordable compared to most SEO tools. (For context: A full scan for a 500-page website with Siteliner Premium would set you back a mere $5.)
The Premium version has a cap of 25,000 pages, but it also saves previous results to look back on. You can see how your reports change over time as you make changes based on their recommendations, like reducing page sizes.
Is Siteliner Premium worth the money?
With the accessible version of Siteliner offering enough features for most small to mid-sized websites, most users can get away with the free account. You likely only need to run the comparisons once a month or once a quarter—and you’d still be within your limit each time.
We’d only recommend the Premium Siteliner account if you’re an agency with many client websites to scan or own a large website with more than 250 pages.
Other than that, the basic version will do everything you need… Without costing a dime.
Final thoughts on Siteliner’s SEO software
Siteliner is a great, free tool that SEOs can use to get an overview of their on-page elements. It highlights issues like duplicate content, broken links, and skipped pages—all of which could hurt your rankings in the long run if not fixed early.
Head over to Siteliner and judge for yourself. It’s free to get started and can give tons of valuable information.
In this case, you get more than what you (don’t) pay for.
P.S. Check out Duplichecker if you’re looking for an alternative.
