8 Free Website SEO & Technical Tools Every Business Owner Should Use

Your website can look great and still have problems that affect SEO, performance, security, and user experience.

Broken links, missing meta tags, incorrect redirects, invalid schema, security header issues, and blocked pages can all go unnoticed if you don’t regularly check what’s happening behind the scenes.

The good news is that you don’t always need an expensive software subscription or a technical team to identify these problems.

Zelthra has created a collection of free website tools that allow business owners, marketers, developers, and SEO professionals to run important checks on any publicly accessible website. The tools require no signup or email and can be used as often as needed.

From checking your overall website health to finding broken links and validating structured data, these tools can help you understand what’s working and what needs attention.

In this guide, we’ll look at eight free tools you can use to check different aspects of your website and explain when each one is useful.

Why Should You Regularly Check Your Website?

Launching a website isn’t the end of the process.

Websites change constantly. New pages are published, old pages are removed, plugins are updated, redirects are added, content is changed, and third-party services are connected.

Over time, small technical issues can accumulate.

For example, you might remove a service page without adding a redirect. A blog post could contain a link to a page that no longer exists. A developer might accidentally change a meta description or block a page from search engines.

Individually, these problems may seem minor. Together, they can create a poor experience for visitors and make it harder for search engines to crawl and understand your website.

Regular website checks help you catch these problems before they become bigger issues.

1. Website Grader

Best for: Getting an overall view of your website’s health.

Link placement: Add your Website Grader link here.

If you don’t know where to start, this is the tool to use first.

The Website Grader provides a broader assessment of your website across areas such as SEO, performance, security, accessibility, and technical health.

Instead of checking one individual element, it gives you a starting point for understanding the overall condition of your website.

This can be particularly useful for business owners who aren’t sure whether their website has technical problems.

What Can You Use It For?

You can use a website grader to identify potential areas that need attention, including:

• SEO issues
• Performance problems
• Security concerns
• Accessibility issues
• Technical problems
• General website health

The biggest advantage is that you don’t need to understand every technical detail before running the check.

If you’re launching a new website, taking over an existing website, or simply wondering whether your current website needs attention, running a full website audit is a good first step.

2. Meta Tag Checker

Best for: Checking your SEO metadata and social sharing information.

Link placement: Add your Meta Tag Checker link here.

Meta tags help search engines and social platforms understand and display your pages.

Important elements include your title tag, meta description, canonical URL, Open Graph information, and other metadata.

A page can look perfectly normal to a visitor while having incomplete or incorrectly configured metadata.

A Meta Tag Checker allows you to inspect these elements and understand how your page is configured.

Why Do Meta Tags Matter?

Your title and description can influence how your page appears in search results.

They also help control how your content is presented when someone shares a page on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or X.

For example, you may have a beautifully designed service page, but if the title is missing or the description is poorly written, the search result may not communicate what the page is actually about.

Checking your metadata regularly can help you identify these issues.

What Should You Check?

Look for:

• Missing title tags
• Weak or missing meta descriptions
• Incorrect canonical URLs
• Open Graph information
• Social sharing information
• Incorrect robots directives
• Other important metadata

This is particularly useful when launching new pages or reviewing pages that aren’t performing well in search.

3. Robots.txt & Sitemap Checker

Best for: Checking whether search engines can properly crawl your website.

Link placement: Add your Robots.txt & Sitemap Checker link here.

Your robots.txt file and XML sitemap are two important technical components of a website.

The robots.txt file provides instructions to crawlers about which areas of your website they can or cannot access.

Your XML sitemap helps search engines discover important URLs on your website.

A configuration mistake in either file can cause problems.

For example, a poorly configured robots.txt file could accidentally prevent search engines from crawling pages you actually want indexed.

What Should You Check?

Make sure:

• Your robots.txt file exists
• Important pages aren’t accidentally blocked
• Your sitemap is accessible
• Your sitemap contains valid URLs
• Your sitemap is correctly structured
• Your important pages can be discovered

This check is particularly important after a website migration, redesign, or major technical update.

4. Schema Markup Validator

Best for: Checking structured data on your website.

Link placement: Add your Schema Markup Validator link here.

Search engines need to understand what your content represents.

Schema markup, also known as structured data, provides additional information about a page in a machine-readable format.

Depending on the page, structured data can describe things such as:

• Organisations
• Products
• FAQs
• Articles
• Events
• Local businesses
• Services

For example, if you have a product page, structured data can help search engines understand that the page represents a product and provide information about that product.

Why Validate Schema?

Adding schema markup isn’t enough.

Incorrect JSON-LD or invalid properties can prevent structured data from being understood properly.

A schema validator can help identify issues before they become a problem.

If you’ve recently added structured data to your website, it’s a good idea to validate it rather than assuming the implementation is correct.

5. Broken Link Checker

Best for: Finding broken and redirected links.

Link placement: Add your Broken Link Checker link here.

Broken links are one of the easiest website problems to overlook.

A website may contain hundreds of links across service pages, blog posts, navigation menus, resources, and footers.

Over time, pages are removed or URLs change. When that happens, links pointing to those pages can stop working.

A broken link checker scans a page and identifies links that may need attention.

Why Are Broken Links a Problem?

Broken links create a frustrating experience for visitors.

Imagine someone reading a detailed article and clicking a link because they want additional information, only to land on a 404 page.

That’s a poor user experience.

Broken links can also make a website harder to maintain and may indicate that older content needs updating.

What Can You Find?

A broken link check can help identify:

• Dead links
• 404 URLs
• Redirected links
• Problematic destinations
• Anchor text associated with the link
• The location of the link on the page

Run this check regularly, particularly if your website contains a large amount of older content.

6. SSL & Security Headers Checker

Best for: Checking basic website security configuration.

Link placement: Add your SSL & Security Headers Checker link here.

Website security isn’t only about installing an SSL certificate.

HTTPS protects the connection between a visitor’s browser and your website, while security headers can provide additional protections against certain types of attacks and unwanted browser behaviour.

An SSL and security headers check can help you understand whether your website has a valid SSL certificate and whether important security headers are configured correctly.

What Should You Check?

Depending on your website setup, important checks can include:

• SSL certificate validity
• Certificate expiry
• HTTPS configuration
• Security headers
• Browser security policies
• Common configuration issues

This is especially important for websites that collect contact information, process transactions, or connect to external services.

Security should be treated as an ongoing responsibility rather than a one-time setup task.

7. Redirect Chain Checker

Best for: Finding unnecessary redirect hops and redirect problems.

Link placement: Add your Redirect Chain Checker link here.

Redirects are useful when URLs change.

For example, if an old page has moved to a new URL, a permanent redirect can send visitors and search engines to the correct destination.

The problem starts when multiple redirects are chained together.

For example:

Old URL → Redirect → Redirect → Redirect → Final URL

Instead of sending the visitor directly to the final destination, the browser has to go through several steps.

A redirect chain checker allows you to trace the path of a URL and identify how many hops occur before reaching the final destination.

Why Should You Care About Redirect Chains?

Long or unnecessary redirect chains can create technical inefficiencies and make website management more complicated.

They are particularly common after:

• Website migrations
• Domain changes
• Website redesigns
• URL restructuring
• Multiple rounds of redirects

Checking important URLs can help keep your redirect structure clean.

8. Website Technology Detector

Best for: Finding out what technologies a website uses.

Link placement: Add your Website Technology Detector link here.

Ever wondered what CMS or page builder another website is using?

A technology detector can help identify technologies associated with a publicly accessible website.

Depending on the site, you may be able to identify things such as:

• CMS platforms
• Page builders
• Analytics tools
• JavaScript libraries
• Other website technologies

This can be useful for developers, marketers, business owners, and anyone researching how a website has been built.

When Is a Technology Detector Useful?

You might use it when:

• Researching competitors
• Evaluating a website before a redesign
• Understanding an existing website
• Researching technology stacks
• Planning a migration
• Comparing different website platforms

For example, if you’re considering rebuilding your website and want to understand how another company has structured its site, identifying the technologies behind it can provide useful context.

Which Website Tool Should You Use First?

It provides a broader overview of your website and can help you identify which areas need further investigation.

If you’re not sure where to begin, start with the Website Grader.

From there, you can use the other tools for more specific checks.

A simple workflow could look like this:

Step 1: Run the Website Grader.

Step 2: Check your meta tags.

Step 3: Review robots.txt and your sitemap.

Step 4: Validate your schema.

Step 5: Check for broken links.

Step 6: Review SSL and security headers.

Step 7: Check important redirects.

Step 8: Use the Technology Detector if you need to understand the technology behind a website.

You don’t need to run every check every day. The right frequency depends on how often your website changes.

How Often Should You Audit Your Website?

There’s no single schedule that works for every business.

A small brochure website that rarely changes may only need a technical review every few months.

A large website with frequent content updates, campaigns, migrations, and technical changes should be checked more often.

You should also run additional checks after major changes such as:

• Website redesigns
• CMS migrations
• Domain changes
• URL restructuring
• Major plugin updates
• New website launches
• Large content migrations

A few minutes of checking can sometimes save hours of troubleshooting later.

Common Website Problems These Tools Can Help Find

One of the biggest benefits of having several specialised tools is that they help you look at different parts of your website.

For example, you may discover that:

• A page is missing important metadata.
• Your sitemap isn’t accessible.
• A page is accidentally blocked from crawling.
• Your schema contains errors.
• An old blog post contains broken links.
• A URL passes through several redirects.
• Your SSL certificate needs attention.
• Your website is using outdated or unexpected technologies.

Not every issue will have the same level of importance.

Some problems require immediate attention, while others may simply be recommendations for improvement.

The important thing is to identify the issue first and then decide what action makes sense for your website.

Free Tools vs Professional Website Audits

Free tools are extremely useful, but they don’t replace professional development or a complete website strategy.

A tool can identify a technical problem.

It doesn’t always tell you how that problem fits into your broader business goals.

For example, a tool may identify a broken link. A developer can determine whether the link should be removed, replaced, redirected, or supported by a broader content restructuring strategy.

Similarly, a tool can identify a performance issue, but fixing it may require changes to images, JavaScript, CSS, hosting, plugins, templates, or third-party scripts.

That’s where professional technical expertise becomes valuable.

The purpose of these tools is to give you visibility into your website and help you understand where problems may exist.

Why We Built These Tools

We built these tools around the same types of technical checks we perform when working on websites.

Instead of requiring users to sign up for multiple platforms or provide their email address just to run a basic check, we wanted to make useful website diagnostics accessible.

All eight tools are free to use, don’t require signup or an email address, and can be used repeatedly.

You can also check any publicly accessible website, which makes the tools useful for competitor research and website evaluations as well as checking your own site.

What Should You Do After Finding a Problem?

Finding an issue is only the first step.

Once you’ve identified a problem, determine how important it is and whether it affects users, search engines, security, or business performance.

For example:

Broken link: Replace the link, remove it, or redirect the destination where appropriate.

Missing metadata: Review and improve the page title and description.

Blocked page: Confirm whether the page should actually be blocked before changing robots directives.

Invalid schema: Review the structured data and correct the implementation.

Redirect chain: Simplify the redirects where possible.

Security issue: Review the configuration and address the underlying problem.

If you’re not comfortable making technical changes yourself, that’s where a developer or technical SEO specialist can help.

Final Thoughts

You don’t need expensive software to start understanding the technical health of your website.

With the right checks, you can identify many common problems affecting SEO, security, links, redirects, structured data, and website configuration.

Zelthra’s eight free website tools give business owners, marketers, and developers a simple starting point for checking their websites without requiring an account or email address.

Start with the Website Grader if you want an overall assessment, then use the specialised tools to investigate individual areas in more detail.

Regular checks can help you catch small problems before they become larger ones and give you a clearer understanding of what is happening behind the scenes of your website.

And if you discover something that needs more than a quick check, professional technical support can help you fix the underlying issue and keep your website working properly.