SEO Sarge FAQ — How SEO Works & How to Use SEO Sarge

Question 1

What is SEO Sarge?

Accepted Answer

SEO Sarge is a free, no-account-required SEO audit and analysis tool. Enter any domain and instantly get a full breakdown of on-page SEO issues, keyword opportunities, Core Web Vitals scores, business intelligence from BuzzBoard, site crawl results, competitor comparisons, and infrastructure health — all in one dashboard.

Question 2

Is SEO Sarge really free?

Accepted Answer

Yes, completely free. No credit card, no account, no trial period. Just enter a domain and click Analyze. We use a combination of public data sources, Google PageSpeed Insights API, and BuzzBoard business intelligence to power the reports.

Question 3

Who is SEO Sarge built for?

Accepted Answer

SEO Sarge is built for digital marketing agencies, freelance SEO consultants, small business owners, and web developers who need fast, actionable SEO data without paying for expensive enterprise tools. The "Generate Client Email" feature makes it especially useful for agencies presenting findings to clients.

Question 4

How accurate is the data?

Accepted Answer

SEO Sarge pulls from multiple authoritative sources: Google PageSpeed Insights for Core Web Vitals, live DNS lookups for infrastructure data, direct page crawling for on-page analysis, and BuzzBoard for business intelligence. TF-IDF keyword scores are computed from the actual page content. Results are as accurate as the underlying sources allow — always verify critical findings with Google Search Console for your own site.

Question 5

What is SEO and why does it matter?

Accepted Answer

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of improving your website so it ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google. Higher rankings mean more organic (free) traffic. SEO matters because roughly 53% of all website traffic comes from organic search — it's the most cost-effective long-term traffic source for most businesses.

Question 6

What are the main factors Google uses to rank websites?

Accepted Answer

Google uses hundreds of signals, but the most impactful are: (1) Content quality and relevance — does your page genuinely answer the search query? (2) Backlinks — how many authoritative sites link to you? (3) Core Web Vitals — is your site fast and stable to use? (4) On-page optimization — are your title, H1, and meta description aligned with your target keywords? (5) Mobile-friendliness — does your site work well on phones? (6) HTTPS — is your site secure? SEO Sarge audits all of these except backlinks.

Question 7

What is on-page SEO?

Accepted Answer

On-page SEO refers to everything you can optimize directly on your web page: the title tag (shown in browser tabs and search results), meta description (the snippet under your title in Google), H1 heading (the main heading on the page), content quality and keyword usage, image alt text, internal linking, and page speed. SEO Sarge's On-Page Audit tab checks all of these and tells you exactly what to fix.

Question 8

What are Core Web Vitals?

Accepted Answer

Core Web Vitals are Google's official page experience metrics: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measures how fast the main content loads — aim for under 2.5 seconds. FID/INP (Interaction to Next Paint) measures how quickly the page responds to user input — aim for under 200ms. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures visual stability — aim for under 0.1. Google uses these as a ranking signal. SEO Sarge shows your PageSpeed scores (which incorporate Core Web Vitals) in the Overview tab.

Question 9

What is TF-IDF and why does it matter for keywords?

Accepted Answer

TF-IDF stands for Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency. It's a mathematical measure of how important a word is to a specific document relative to a larger collection of documents. In SEO terms, a high TF-IDF score means a keyword appears frequently on your page AND is relatively unique to your content (not just a common word like "the" or "and"). SEO Sarge uses TF-IDF to surface the keywords your page is actually about — these are the terms Google is most likely to associate with your content.

Question 10

What is keyword density and what's a good target?

Accepted Answer

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword appears relative to the total word count on a page. There's no magic number, but 1–3% for your primary keyword is a reasonable target. Too low and Google may not associate your page with that term. Too high (keyword stuffing) can trigger a penalty. SEO Sarge shows keyword density in the Keywords tab so you can spot both under-optimized and over-optimized terms.

Question 11

How do I analyze a website?

Accepted Answer

Just type any domain into the search bar at the top (e.g. "example.com" — no need for https:// or www) and click Analyze. SEO Sarge will simultaneously fetch data from all sources and populate each tab as results come in. Most tabs load within 5–15 seconds; PageSpeed can take up to 30 seconds for the first run.

Question 12

What does the BuzzBoard tab show?

Accepted Answer

BuzzBoard is a business intelligence layer that shows data about the business behind the domain: social media presence and engagement scores, advertising activity, local directory listings, technology stack, e-commerce signals, and an AI-generated SEO analysis. It's especially useful for agencies prospecting new clients — you can see at a glance how digitally mature a business is before your first call.

Question 13

What is the "Generate Client Email" feature?

Accepted Answer

The Generate Client Email button (in the Overview and BuzzBoard tabs) automatically drafts a professional email summarizing the site's SEO health — what's working, what needs attention, and the top 3 recommendations. It's designed for agencies and consultants to quickly create a personalized outreach email after running an audit. You can edit the draft before copying it.

Question 14

Why is PageSpeed taking so long?

Accepted Answer

Google's PageSpeed Insights API can take 15–35 seconds to complete a full analysis, especially for sites it hasn't recently crawled. This is a limitation of the upstream API, not SEO Sarge. The other tabs (On-Page, Keywords, Infrastructure) load much faster because they fetch data directly. If PageSpeed times out, you can re-analyze the domain to try again.

Question 15

What does the Site Crawl tab do?

Accepted Answer

The Site Crawl tab crawls up to 30 pages of a domain, starting from the homepage and following internal links. It identifies pages with missing title tags, missing meta descriptions, missing H1 headings, thin content (under 300 words), duplicate titles, and orphan pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them). This gives you a site-wide view of SEO health, not just the homepage.

Question 16

Does SEO Sarge store my data?

Accepted Answer

SEO Sarge caches BuzzBoard results for 24 hours per domain to avoid redundant API calls. PageSpeed and on-page data are fetched fresh each time you analyze. No personal data is collected or stored. We don't require an account, so there's no user data to store.

Question 17

Why does the BuzzBoard AI analysis sometimes say "still generating"?

Accepted Answer

BuzzBoard generates AI insights asynchronously — for domains it hasn't recently analyzed, it can take 2–5 minutes to produce the AI narrative. The scores and grade data load immediately; only the text analysis takes longer. Click the Refresh button in the BuzzBoard tab to check if the AI analysis has completed.

How SEO Works & How to Use SEO Sarge

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