How to check your articles for SEO quality

By PlainQuill

14 September 2026

Written by PlainQuill's own pipeline, from sources gathered for each post. Every claim is checked against those sources before publication. An AI agent authorised by PlainQuill runs this blog, and nothing is published until it has been approved, by that agent or by a person.

Learn how to check your existing articles for SEO quality using free and paid tools, from no-signup scans to full-site audits and monthly routines.

You already have articles written and you want to know whether they meet SEO standards. Ranken offers one free article scan per day without requiring a signup ^[2], so you can start verifying your content right now without creating an account or paying anything.

What you need before you start

Gather the URLs or draft text for every article you want to check. If the article is already published, copy the full URL from your browser. If it is still a draft, copy the full text into a plain text file so you can paste it into tools that accept raw text. You do not need a paid subscription to begin. Ranken offers one free article scan per day without requiring a signup ^[2]. Backlinko lists over 20 free SEO and AI tools with no signup required ^[6]. That gives you a starting set of tools to test your articles before you spend anything.

If you find that free tools do not cover everything you need, paid plans fall into three general price bands. Free and starter plans cost under $100 per month, growth plans cost $150 to $300 per month, and enterprise plans start at $600 per month or higher ^[7]. Start with the free tools, identify what gaps remain in your analysis, and only then consider whether a paid plan fills those gaps. Keep a simple list of what each free tool could not check so you know exactly what to look for in a paid option.

Step 1: Run a free no-signup scan

Take one article and run it through a free checker that does not require an account. Ranken lets you perform one free scan per day without signing up ^[2]. Paste your article URL or text into the tool and review the score it returns. Look for any flagged issues in the report and note them in a simple list: which problems appear, which sections of the article they affect, and how severe each one is.

If the score highlights problems you did not expect, run the same article through a second free tool to confirm. Backlinko provides over 20 free SEO and AI tools with no signup ^[6], so you have multiple options to cross-check results without committing to a platform. Using two tools helps you distinguish real problems from a single tool's quirks. If both tools flag the same issue, it is almost certainly real. If only one flags something, investigate further before acting on it.

For a faster turnaround on a single article, Intelliwriter's free article checker delivers a professional-grade audit in under 15 seconds ^[5]. Paste your article, wait for the audit to finish, and compare its findings with what the first tool reported. The speed means you can check several articles in a single sitting without waiting long between scans. You will know this step worked when you have a score or set of flagged issues from at least two tools and can see whether they agree on the same problems.

Step 2: Check on-page SEO elements

Once you have a baseline scan, focus on the on-page elements that search engines read directly. Use Yoast's SEO Checker to analyze your page's title tags, meta descriptions and headings ^[1]. These three elements tell search engines what your page is about. If any are missing, duplicated or poorly written, the tool will flag them. Fix each one based on what the tool reports.

Next, look for link problems on the page. Yoast can discover broken links, 404 errors and other link-related issues that may hurt SEO ^[1]. Broken links frustrate visitors who click them and waste search engine crawl budget because crawlers follow dead ends. For each broken link the tool finds, either update the destination URL to point to a working page, set up a redirect from the old URL to a new one, or remove the link entirely if it no longer serves a purpose.

Then evaluate how your content is structured. Yoast checks content structure by examining headings, internal links and image alt attributes ^[1]. Headings create a hierarchy that helps readers and search engines follow your argument from introduction to conclusion. Internal links connect related pages on your site and help search engines discover content they might otherwise miss. Alt attributes describe images for visitors using screen readers and for search engines that cannot see images. If any of these are missing or weak, add them now.

For a broader on-page check, SEOCheckr examines meta titles and descriptions, content optimization, link structure, page loading speed, URL structure and image optimization ^[4]. Run your page through it and work through each category it flags. If it reports slow page loading speed, the cause may be large image files, heavy scripts or a slow hosting provider. If it flags URL structure, check whether your URLs are short, descriptive and use hyphens to separate words. You will know this step worked when every on-page element the tools check is either passing or has a concrete fix queued.

Step 3: Review content readability and wording

SEO is not only about tags and links. The way your article reads affects how long visitors stay and whether they engage with your content. Plerdy provides a free online SEO content checker that works on live pages or unpublished drafts ^[3]. Paste your content into the tool and review the report it generates.

The report shows word and character counts, unique and repeated phrases, top words, stop words, average sentence length and Flesch Reading Ease ^[3]. A low Flesch Reading Ease score means your sentences are long or complex, which makes the article harder to read. If your score is low, trim long sentences into shorter ones and replace difficult words with simpler alternatives. Repeated phrases may indicate that you are overusing certain terms, which can read as keyword stuffing to both readers and search engines. Check your top words to see whether your target keywords appear naturally throughout the text rather than clustered in one section.

For a second opinion on the same article, use Intelliwriter's checker, which scans any article or blog and gives you a detailed SEO audit ^[5]. Beyond structural issues, it identifies passive voice and words that mean more than one thing in the text ^[5]. Passive voice weakens your writing and makes it less direct. Ambiguous wording can confuse readers about what you mean. Rewrite flagged passages in active voice and replace unclear words with precise alternatives.

If you are also thinking about the research and fact-checking behind your articles before they reach the SEO check stage, PlainQuill handles automated AI research, writing, grounding and fact checking with human approval and automatic posting.

You will know this step worked when your readability score improves and the tool no longer flags passive voice or ambiguous terms in the passages you revised.

Step 4: Run a full-site audit

After checking individual articles, step back and audit your entire site. A page-by-page check catches article-level problems, but some issues only appear when you look at the whole domain at once. SEOCheckr's tool scans your entire website and analyzes over 100 SEO factors ^[4]. Enter your domain, let the scan complete, and review the report it produces.

The factors it covers include the same on-page elements from Step 2: meta titles and descriptions, content optimization, link structure, page loading speed, URL structure and image optimization ^[4]. Because it checks every page at once, you can spot patterns across your site. If multiple pages share the same missing meta description, for example, you can fix them in a batch rather than one at a time. If page loading speed is slow across several pages, the problem may be your hosting or a heavy plugin rather than individual article content. If URL structure problems appear on many pages, you may need to update your permalink settings once rather than fixing each page individually.

For an instant score on any single page within the audit, use the SEOquake tool, which provides a detailed SEO score for any webpage instantly ^[6]. Install the browser extension, navigate to a page, and read the score it overlays on the page. This gives you a quick read on individual pages without running a full scan each time. Use it to prioritize which pages to fix first: pages with the lowest scores need the most attention. You will know this step worked when you have a site-wide report that identifies which pages need attention and which are already performing well.

Step 5: Compare paid plans for deeper checks

Free tools cover the basics, but if you need to track keywords over time, audit large sites or access historical data, a paid plan may be worth the cost. Compare plans by looking at what each tier includes and what it restricts. The most common hidden limits across paid SEO platforms are keyword caps, weekly instead of daily data refresh, per-seat cost multipliers, API throttling, gated white-label exports and short historical data retention windows ^[7]. Read the fine print on each plan before subscribing so you know exactly what you are paying for. A plan that looks cheap may become expensive if you need to add seats or exceed keyword caps partway through the month.

Several popular tools occupy the entry-level price band. SpyFu Basic costs $39 per month and includes 5,000 keyword results for a single user ^[8]. Majestic Lite costs $42 per month and allows analysis of 1 million URLs for one user ^[8]. Mangools Basic costs $49 per month, includes tracking of 200 keywords and a single user ^[8]. Ahrefs pricing starts at $99 per month ^[9]. Moz Pro pricing starts at $99 per month ^[9]. These are starter-level options that fit within the under-$100-per-month band ^[7]. Compare them by the metric that matters most to you: keyword volume, URL analysis capacity or keyword tracking count.

Above that band, SEMrush Pro costs $129.95 per month, offering 5 projects, 500 tracked keywords and 1 user ^[8]. SEMrush pricing starts at $129.95 per month ^[9]. If you need to crawl large sites regularly, Screaming Frog's free version covers 500 URLs and its paid version costs $259 per year ^[9].

You will know this step worked when you have selected a plan that covers the number of pages and keywords you need without surprises from hidden limits.

Step 6: Set a monthly checking routine

SEO is not a one-time task. Pages change, links break and search engines update their expectations over time. SEOCheckr recommends running an SEO check at least monthly to monitor your website's performance and catch issues early ^[4]. Pick a recurring date each month, such as the first Monday, and add it to your calendar. On that date, run your full-site audit, spot-check your top articles with a free scanner and review any new content you published since the last check. Keep a running log of issues found and fixes applied so you can see whether the same problems keep coming back. You will know this step worked when each monthly check takes less time than the one before because you are fixing small issues before they accumulate.