What is Siteliner?

Siteliner is a web-based SEO tool created by Indigo Stream Technologies —the same company behind Copyscape. While Copyscape checks plagiarism across the web, Siteliner focuses on your own website to expose technical and content issues that affect visibility and website quality.

In essence, Siteliner acts like a mini search-engine crawler. It scans your site, detects duplicate content, broken links, and evaluates your internal linking structure to show how each page contributes to overall link equity.

If you perform regular SEO site audits, Siteliner is an efficient health-check tool that pinpoints content redundancy and crawl inefficiencies that even advanced platforms might overlook.

How Siteliner Works?

When you enter a URL, Siteliner’s bot initiates a controlled website crawl. It respects robots.txt, canonical tags, and redirects such as 301 redirects or 302 redirects, mirroring how search engines behave during indexing.

1. Crawl Initiation

Once you submit your domain, Siteliner launches its bot to fetch HTML pages while skipping media files to reduce server load. This is important for maintaining technical SEO integrity.

2. Duplicate Content Detection

Siteliner analyzes each page’s content to measure how much text overlaps with other pages. Duplicate content can dilute your site’s PageRank and cause keyword cannibalization — two issues that negatively impact organic search results.

3. Broken / Dead Link Check

It detects URLs returning errors like Status Code 404 or Status Code 410. Cleaning these broken links helps preserve user trust and ensures that link equity flows efficiently throughout the site.

4. Internal Link Analysis

Siteliner calculates “Page Power,” an internal metric that reflects how many pages link to a URL and how authoritative those sources are. This metric is similar in concept to Google’s PageRank and helps identify orphan pages that don’t receive enough internal signals.

5. Skipped Pages & Related Domains

Siteliner reports URLs it didn’t scan because they were blocked or canonicalized. Reviewing these can reveal de-indexed or excluded pages that might need manual attention.

6. Report Generation

After the crawl, you’ll see a dashboard with a site-wide overview and per-page metrics like word count, duplicate percentage, link counts, and page size. You can also download the results as CSV or generate an XML sitemap to submit to Google Search Console.

Free vs Premium Plans

Paid plans are priced at about $0.01 per page, making it affordable even for mid-sized sites undergoing periodic content audits.

Core Benefits of Using Siteliner

1. Spot and Fix Duplicate Content

By identifying internal duplication, you can rewrite or merge redundant content to enhance your site’s content uniqueness. Use canonical URLs where necessary to maintain clarity for search-engine indexing.

2. Improve Crawl Efficiency

A clean link structure and reduced duplication help Google’s bot allocate your crawl budget more efficiently. Siteliner gives a visual map of how your site’s architecture affects discovery.

3. Enhance Internal Link Distribution

By identifying weakly linked pages, you can restructure your website architecture for better flow of authority — a crucial element in on-page SEO.

4. Maintain Strong User Experience

Fixing dead links and redundant pages reduces bounce and supports better user engagement metrics, both of which feed into long-term search visibility.

5. Affordable Scalability

Compared to enterprise crawlers like Sitebulb or Screaming Frog, Siteliner offers a simpler interface and low-cost auditing suitable for agencies or freelancers running routine checks.

When to Use Siteliner?

• SEO audits – Perform before major site updates or periodic cleanups.

• Site migrations – Check for redirect errors and content duplication post-launch.

• Content pruning – Identify thin or duplicate content pages for removal or consolidation.

• Monthly health checks – Keep track of internal issues affecting crawlability and ranking.

Limitations & Considerations

While Siteliner is an excellent tool for content and technical diagnostics, it’s important to recognize its boundaries within a complete SEO strategy.

1. Page Limitations

The free plan restricts users to 250 pages per crawl and one scan per month. Larger sites may need the premium version, which can analyze up to 30,000 pages, but the per-page pricing can still add up for massive content inventories.

2. Limited Scope

Siteliner primarily checks on-site issues such as duplicate content, broken links, and internal link structures. However, it doesn’t assess off-site factors like backlinks, domain authority, or link profile, which are crucial for a full audit.

3. Not a Full SEO Suite

It cannot replace comprehensive platforms such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz Pro that offer features like keyword research, backlink analysis, and competitor analysis.

4. Skipped Pages

Pages excluded by robots.txt, canonical URLs, or redirects (301 / 302) are not scanned. You’ll need to interpret skipped page reports carefully, ensuring critical URLs are not inadvertently blocked from indexing.

5. No Competitor Comparison

Siteliner focuses on one domain at a time. For competitive benchmarking or SERP performance tracking, you’ll need specialized tools like Sitebulb or Oncrawl.

6. Basic User Interface

Its minimalist dashboard makes it lightweight, but lacks advanced data visualization options compared to more modern platforms like SurferSEO or Screaming Frog.

Pricing Breakdown

Siteliner’s pricing is simple and usage-based.

Example: A site with 5,000 pages would cost around $50 per complete scan—affordable compared to enterprise SEO service pricing models.

Best Practices & Expert Tips

1. Start With Your Priority Pages

If you’re using the free plan, begin with your key content sections—such as product pages, landing pages, or top blog posts that bring the most organic traffic.

2. Resolve Duplicate Content Strategically

When duplicates are detected, use canonical tags, merge overlapping articles, or rewrite content using latent semantic indexing keywords to maintain uniqueness without losing topical relevance.

3. Strengthen Internal Linking

Leverage Siteliner’s Page Power metric to identify underlinked pages. Then, apply smart link-building internally by connecting relevant articles via contextual anchors—enhancing both link equity and crawl depth.

4. Monitor “Skipped Pages” Reports

Regularly inspect skipped pages for unintentional crawlability issues. Misconfigured redirects, blocked paths, or duplicate canonical tags can lead to wasted crawl budget.

5. Combine Siteliner With Other Tools

Use it alongside Google Search Console for index coverage and Google Analytics for engagement insights. Add tools like GTmetrix or Pingdom to evaluate page speed and performance bottlenecks.

6. Schedule Periodic Scans

If you’re on the premium plan, set a recurring scan every month or quarter. This creates a historical log to monitor progress—particularly after major site migrations or content pruning.

7. Interpret Results Intelligently

Siteliner may flag recurring design elements like headers, footers, or menus as duplicates. Don’t rush to edit these—they are structural and don’t impact ranking. Focus instead on body content duplication that reduces content quality.

How Siteliner Fits Into an SEO Ecosystem?

While Siteliner is ideal for content duplication and internal link audits, pairing it with other specialized tools builds a holistic ecosystem:

• Use Ahrefs or Majestic for backlink and link velocity analysis.

• Use SurferSEO for on-page optimization and keyword density.

• Use Screaming Frog or Sitebulb for comprehensive technical audits including status codes, metadata, and structured data.

By integrating Siteliner with these platforms, you cover all layers of technical SEO, from crawling to indexing and content quality assurance.

Final Thoughts on Siteliner

Siteliner remains a lightweight yet powerful diagnostic tool for any SEO professional, content strategist, or digital marketer. It bridges the gap between basic technical audits and in-depth content optimization by revealing hidden issues within your site structure.

Incorporate it into your regular SEO site audit routine, and pair it with more advanced crawlers and analytics suites for a truly data-driven, holistic SEO workflow.