SEO’s a tricky thing because it’s all about striking a balance between search engines and people.

Why? Well, because you’re a human. Not a crawler.

Luckily, there’s a nifty tool called BROWSEO. 

And it’s really easy to use. 

Let’s take a look at it.

Let’s Look At BROWSEO

Before we dive into the ins-and-outs of this tool, let’s break down what it is first.

What Is BROWSEO?

BROWSEO markets itself as “your new SEO browser”.

In simpler English, though, BROWSEO is a web app that lets you look at a webpage in the same way that a crawler would. 

It strips visuals to the bare minimum and focuses instead on things that are SEO-related.

How Does BROWSEO Work?

Using the web app is super duper simple. Here’s how it works.

Head over to BROWSEO.

At the top of the page, you’ll find a search bar.

Next, you’ve just gotta pop a site URL into the search bar.

(Make sure you include “https://” into the search).

And click “Browse”.

And there it is.

If you check out the left-hand side, you can scroll through and see what the site looks like to crawlers.

On the top right, there are some options to highlight internal, external, and nofollow links.

And on the right, there’s some additional information.

Now there’s a little bit of stuff to work through, so here’s a quick list of everything and what it means:

(Depending on your website, you may or may not see some of the points here).

Response Code

Response codes are generated when your device requests something from a website (like access). 

The website receives the request and shoots back a response code.

Ideally, you want a “200” code here.

(P.S. we’ve got a complete list of HTTP status codes.)

((Please check it out, we worked hard on it.))

Text Information

This section breaks down:

– The total number of words on a page

– Internal links, which link to stuff on the same site

– External links, which link to stuff on other sites

– The number of nofollow links (links that specifically tell crawlers not to crawl that link)

Head

The “Head” section refers to a part of the webpage’s HTML code that holds important information about the webpage.

There are a ton of different things listed here. 

But here are the ones you should really focus on.

Microdata: RDFa: This is a way to add extra info (like metadata) to help search engines understand your site.

title: The title of the webpage.

canonical: This tells search engines which version of a webpage they should look at if you have duplicates of that page.

p:domain_verify: a tag that verifies ownership of a domain with a specific service (in this case, Pinterest).

twitter:card: This is a tag that Twitter/X uses when it displays a link preview (known as a Twitter/X “card”).

twitter:title: How Twitter/X shows a web page’s title when it displays a link preview.

google-site-verification: This tag verifies ownership of a website for Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

twitter:label1: This is a label for additional information shown in a Twitter/X card.

description: The meta description of your website.

twitter:label2: More additional information shown on a Twitter/X card.

generator: The tools or software you use to build a webpage.

msapplicationtileimage: The image that’d be used if you were to save the website to your Windows desktop.

twitter:image: The URL of the image that’s displayed on a Twitter/X card.

twitter:data1: Data that relates to twitter:label1 (like the name of the author).

twitter:data2: Data that relates to twitter:label2 (like the read time).

viewport: This tag controls how a website displays on different devices, like phones and tablets.

twitter:description: The description of a website that appears in a Twitter/X card.

robots: The basic rules in a robots.txt file that tells crawlers where to go.

SERP Preview

This section shows you what your site’s result would look like on Google.

Headings

This section shows you a list of the H1, H2s, H3s, etc.

It’s great for seeing how your content is structured, from most to least important.

Extras

After that, there are some extras.

You can check whether or not crawlers and people see websites in the same way (if they’re not, it’s considered cloaking, which is a no-no).

You can share the link with other people to see what you see.

Or you could download the whole thing.

Why Would You Use BROWSEO?

There are a lot of reasons to justify using BROWSEO.

It’s affordable.

It’s useful.

It makes you feel like a robot.

But ultimately, it helps you see the barebones basics of your website.

By being able to check out things like heading structure, response codes, and metadata, you can identify how your website fares in the eyes of a crawler.

On the social side, things like the Twitter card make it easier to see what your stuff’s gonna look like on social media.

It also helps you figure out if you’ve missed a chance to verify your site with something like Google or Pinterest.

A Conclusion? Yeah, Why Not.

BROWSEO is a really nifty tool, and it does address a need that wasn’t met before.

If you want to step into the shoes of a crawler and see how your website looks, this is the best way to do so.

Anyways, thanks for reading this far.

If you have suggestions for the next tool spotlight, let me know below. 

And if you have any other comments, don’t hesitate to add ’em.

Or don’t.

I can’t tell you what to do.

I’m not Google.