You don’t need to be a developer to understand your technical SEO. The right tools give you clear insights into performance, indexing, and issues.

Speed testing

Google PageSpeed Insights – Measures performance, Core Web Vitals, and improvement opportunities. Free and straightforward.

GTmetrix – Waterfall view of what loads and when. Helpful for spotting slow scripts and large assets.

WebPageTest – More detailed speed testing with filmstrip views. Useful when you need deeper diagnosis.

Crawling and indexing

Google Search Console – Shows indexed pages, coverage issues, crawl errors, Core Web Vitals, and search performance. Essential and free.

Screaming Frog – Crawls your site like a search engine. Free for smaller sites. Good for broken links, redirects, and structure.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools – Free tier useful for broken links, redirect chains, and indexing insights.

WAVE – Identifies accessibility issues in context. Free browser extension.

Lighthouse – Built into Chrome DevTools. Covers contrast, labels, navigation, and more.

SiteCheck (Sucuri) – Scans for malware and known vulnerabilities.

SSL Labs – Tests SSL configuration and gives a security grade.

Google Rich Results Test – Validates schema markup.

Schema Markup Validator – Confirms structured data is correct and complete.

DNS Checker – Check DNS propagation when you change nameservers.

Pingdom – Monitors uptime and alerts when the site goes down.

For DNS basics, see the Domains hub.

Use a developer when:

The tools above give you visibility and direction even without coding experience.

Want crawl, index, or structure issues fixed? Explore SEO foundations →