Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Yes, completely free. There are no credit card requirements, no account registrations, no locked paywalls, and no arbitrary caps on page counts or recursive crawl depths. You can audit sites with 10 pages or 10,000 pages without hitting a limitation.

No installation is necessary. All tools run in cloud-based servers and stream live results directly to your browser using Server-Sent Events (SSE). Simply enter your website URL and click Scan.

Our crawler uses intelligent concurrency management and polite request delays. It also features automatic backoff retry logic if your server responds with HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests), ensuring your production server remains stable throughout the audit.

The crawler performs deep recursive exploration of your HTML content, testing every internal and external link. It uses a lightweight HTTP HEAD request first, falling back to GET when required, and flags non-200 responses such as 404 (Not Found), 500 (Server Error), 403 (Forbidden), and redirect chains.

Search engines like Google view excessive 404 dead links as a signal of neglected or poor user experience. Dead links waste search engine crawl budget, stop PageRank flow across internal pages, and increase visitor bounce rates.

Yes. It validates both internal navigation links and outbound links pointing to external websites, ensuring none of your references lead your visitors to deleted or dead external pages.

Yes. Once a crawl completes, you can download a full CSV spreadsheet of all checked URLs, broken links, anchor text, and HTTP status codes, or export a branded PDF audit report.

An XML sitemap is a structured file listing every indexable page on your website, along with metadata such as when it was last modified (lastmod) and its relative priority. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex use sitemaps to discover and index your new and updated content efficiently.

Yes. The generated XML adheres strictly to the official sitemaps.org protocol and Google Webmaster guidelines. It validates UTF-8 encoding, XML tags (<loc>, <lastmod>, <priority>), and excludes broken or non-canonical URLs.

After downloading your sitemap.xml file, upload it to your website root folder (e.g., yoursite.com/sitemap.xml). Then open Google Search Console, navigate to the Sitemaps tab on the left sidebar, enter "sitemap.xml", and click Submit.

Headings provide structured topical context to search engines. An H1 tag indicates the primary topic of the page, while H2 to H6 tags break content into logical subtopics. Clean heading structure also assists screen readers used by visually impaired visitors.

While HTML5 technically allows multiple H1s, Google and SEO best practices strongly recommend having exactly ONE clear H1 tag per page that accurately reflects the page title and target primary keyword. Multiple H1s dilute keyword relevance.

A skipped heading level occurs when your HTML jumps directly from an H1 to an H3 or H4 without an intervening H2. This breaks document outline semantics and violates WCAG 2.1 accessibility criteria.

The scanner audits page titles (<title>), meta descriptions, meta keywords, canonical tags, and OpenGraph social meta tags (og:title, og:description, og:image). It flags missing elements and checks character lengths against Google SERP display cutoffs.

Recommended meta title length is 50–60 characters (or under 580 pixels). Meta descriptions should ideally be 140–160 characters (or under 960 pixels) to avoid truncation on Google search engine result pages (SERPs).

Shopify and Cloudflare often deploy anti-bot challenges that block traditional HTTP web crawlers. Our scanner includes a dedicated Storefront API mode that reads your catalog metadata directly through your store API token, completely bypassing crawler blocks.

Alt text (alternative text) tells Google image bots what an image represents, directly boosting your rankings in Google Image Search. It also allows screen readers to describe images to visually impaired users, which is required for ADA and WCAG 2.1 legal compliance.

Be descriptive, specific, and concise (under 125 characters). Describe the actual visual subject of the image while naturally including relevant keywords. Avoid keyword stuffing or generic text like "image1.jpg" or "photo".

You can generate high-resolution QR codes for Website URLs, Digital Business Cards (vCard contact info including name, phone, email, and company), and Google Maps direct location pins.

No. All QR codes generated are static standard QR codes that never expire and have unlimited scans forever. They contain no expiration dates, third-party redirects, or watermarks.

You can click the "Fix Website Issues" button on any tool page to open our issue resolution form. Select the problems you found (broken links, heading issues, missing meta tags, sitemap errors, or image alt tags) and describe your site needs. Our technical web team will review your site and contact you within 24–48 hours with a customized resolution plan.

Yes. Our team has extensive experience fixing technical SEO and web development issues across WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, Webflow, React/Next.js, PHP, and custom platforms.

Free Website Auditor was created by Dots and Coms, a premier digital agency with 25+ years of experience in web design, web hosting, digital marketing, and enterprise SEO. We provide these tools free to the public because we believe a healthy, error-free web benefits everyone.