SEO Dev Tools

Essential tools for technical SEO implementation, monitoring, and debugging.

Crawl & Analysis

  • Screaming Frog: Desktop crawler for auditing links, titles, and indexation issues
  • Sitebulb: Visual crawler with detailed reports and hreflang validation
  • JetOctopus: Cloud crawler and log analyzer for large sites

Performance & Core Web Vitals

  • Lighthouse: Built into Chrome DevTools - lab testing for performance, SEO, accessibility
  • WebPageTest: Advanced lab testing with filmstrip view and connection throttling
  • PageSpeed Insights: Combines Lighthouse with real Chrome user data (CrUX)
  • Google Search Console: Core Web Vitals report showing real user performance

Rendering & Testing

  • Puppeteer / Playwright: Headless browser automation to test JavaScript rendering
  • Chrome DevTools: Network/Performance/Coverage panels for debugging render-blocking resources
  • Google Rich Results Test: Validate structured data for rich results eligibility

Deploy & Monitor

  • Vercel / Netlify: Modern hosting with automatic deployments and preview URLs
  • GitHub Actions: CI/CD pipelines - run Lighthouse CI to catch performance regressions
  • Cloudflare: Edge workers for redirects, caching headers, and security rules
  • Sentry / Datadog: Error tracking and APM for production monitoring

Security & Headers

  • SecurityHeaders.com: Test CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, and other security headers
  • curl / HTTPie: Command-line tools to test headers and redirect chains

Starter Stack

Migration Checklist

  • Crawl staging with Screaming Frog before launch
  • Diff old vs new sitemaps to catch missing pages
  • Test all redirects with List Mode crawler
  • Add Search Console annotation and monitor Coverage daily