Audit or tools — which do I use?

They do different jobs, and they are designed to be used together.

The audit tells you what is wrong

A site-wide analysis producing one score with factors underneath. It answers "what should I be working on?" — the question you have before you know what the problem is.

Run it occasionally: after significant changes, or quarterly to benchmark. See When to run a new scan.

Tools fix one thing

Each tool does one job on one input — check a page, generate a piece of content, look up data. They answer "how do I fix this specific thing?"

Run them constantly. Many are free.

The intended path between them

The audit finds a weak factor. Fix this with opens the right tool with your domain already filled in. You fix it, then move to the next factor. See Working through your audit findings.

That is the loop the product is built around, and it is faster than either half alone.

When to skip the audit

If you already know the problem — you need a meta description for one page, or a keyword list for one campaign — go straight to the tool with Ctrl+K. Running a full audit to answer a question you have already answered is a slower route to the same place.

When to skip the tools

If you do not know where to start, start with the audit. Working through the tool library hoping to find your problem is the least efficient way to use any of this.

Next: if you know the problem, press Ctrl+K. If you do not, run an audit.