---
title: How to prioritize the issues from a Semrush or Screaming Frog site audit
description: Fix first the issues that stop search engines from reaching or indexing the pages that bring you traffic and customers, group the rest by the template or setting that causes them, and leave the low-impact warnings for later.
slug: /how-to/prioritize-the-issues-from-a-semrush-or-screaming-frog-site-audit
page_type: playbook
lead_prompt: My site audit shows hundreds of warnings. How do I know which ones to fix first?
target_prompts:
  - How can I use an AI marketing agent to prioritize the issues from a Semrush or Screaming Frog site audit?
entity: Kite
category: AI marketing agent
author: Devon Wells and Kite
date_published: '2026-10-19'
date_modified: '2026-10-19'
related_use_cases:
  - /use-cases/marketing-audit.md
  - /use-cases/grow-organic-search-traffic.md
integrations:
  - name: Semrush
    page: /integrations/semrush.md
  - name: Google Search Console
    page: /integrations/google-search-console.md
---

# Playbook

# How to prioritize the issues from a Semrush or Screaming Frog site audit

## Key Takeaways

- Fix first the issues that keep search engines from reaching or indexing your important pages, then the issues on pages that already earn traffic or sales, and leave cosmetic warnings for last.
- Semrush and Screaming Frog rank issues by how serious each type of problem is in general. Neither tool knows which of your pages bring in customers, so their order is a starting point rather than a plan.
- Most of the hundreds of warnings in an audit come from a handful of causes, such as one page template or one site setting. Fixing the cause clears every warning it created.
- Kite reads your audit export, confirms each issue on the live site, and weighs it against the clicks, rankings, and conversions of the pages it affects, using your Semrush and Google Search Console data.
- You get a short fix-first list with the reason and the evidence for each item, a list of warnings that are safe to ignore, and, where Kite can make the change, the fixes themselves ready for you to publish.

## How do I know which site audit issues to fix first?

Fix the issues that stop search engines from reaching or indexing the pages that matter to your business, and judge everything else by how much traffic and revenue the affected pages carry. A broken link on your pricing page matters more than fifty missing image descriptions on old blog posts, even though the audit counts the second one fifty times.

Both audit tools give you a rough order to start from. Semrush's Site Audit sorts what it finds into errors, warnings, and notices, and rolls them into a Site Health score. Each issue lists the affected pages and a short note on why it matters and how to fix it. Screaming Frog's SEO Spider shows an Issues tab that labels each issue as high, medium, or low priority and as an issue, a warning, or an opportunity, with a count of affected URLs. You can export either audit as a spreadsheet. Semrush also exports a PDF report, and Screaming Frog's bulk export gives you every issue with its list of URLs.

Those labels describe how serious a type of problem usually is. They can't tell you how serious it is on your site. The audit doesn't know that one of your 300 pages with a missing meta description is the page that books most of your demos, or that a "noindex" tag it flagged was put there on purpose. It also counts each page separately, so one mistake in a blog template shows up as 400 warnings, while one redirect loop on your signup page shows up as one.

A useful priority list sorts issues by three things:

- **Severity.** Does the issue stop a page from being crawled, indexed, or loaded at all, or does it only make a page a bit less polished?
- **Page value.** Does the affected page earn search clicks, rank for terms you care about, or lead people to sign up or buy?
- **Shared cause.** Do many warnings come from one template, one setting, or one plugin, so that a single change clears them all?

Kite does this sorting for you. It works from the audit you already ran, checks each issue against the live site and your search data, and hands back a short list of what to fix and why.

## How to get started

Start by sharing your audit with Kite and saying what you want from it:

> "Here's our latest Semrush Site Audit. Tell me what to fix first and what we can ignore."

Or, if your audit came from Screaming Frog:

> "This is a Screaming Frog crawl of our site. Which of these issues are actually hurting us?"

Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. From that research, it already knows which pages carry your product, your pricing, and your signups, and which search terms matter to you, so it can judge the audit against what your business needs without a long brief.

In Slack, share the spreadsheet or CSV export in the thread. In the Kite web app, upload the PDF report. The fuller the export, the better: Screaming Frog's export of all issues and Semrush's issue list include every affected URL, which lets Kite check pages one by one.

Kite's Semrush connection reads search data such as rankings, keywords, and backlinks. It doesn't open your Site Audit projects, which is why Kite works from the file you export. To connect Semrush, paste an API key from a Semrush plan that includes API access. Connecting Google Search Console through OAuth gives Kite your real clicks and impressions and Google's own view of whether each page is indexed. Neither connection is required, because Kite also has built-in search ranking data, but your own accounts make the weighting more precise.

## How Kite prioritizes your site audit

### What did the audit actually find?

Kite starts by turning the audit into a list of causes rather than a list of warnings. It reads every issue in the export along with the URLs it affects, then groups issues that share a pattern. When all the blog posts are missing the same tag, or every page under one folder redirects twice, Kite treats that as one problem with one fix.

It also notes how each tool rated the issue, whether that's an error in Semrush or a high-priority issue in Screaming Frog. That rating stays on the list as one input, alongside the evidence Kite gathers next.

### Is the issue real?

Kite checks each issue against the live site before it ranks anything, because crawlers report some problems that aren't there or aren't problems. It opens the affected pages, reads your `robots.txt` file and your sitemap, and looks at the page's tags, canonical URL, and redirects as they stand today.

With Search Console connected, Kite also runs Google's URL inspection on your important pages. That shows whether Google has indexed the page, which canonical URL Google chose, and when it last crawled it. It's the most direct way to tell whether a "noindex" or canonical warning is actually keeping a page out of search.

Issues that turn out to be fixed already, intentional, or harmless move to a separate list with the reason. A "noindex" tag on your thank-you page, for example, is doing its job.

### Which pages matter most?

Kite weighs each confirmed issue by the value of the pages it touches. With Search Console connected, it reads clicks, impressions, and average position for each page over recent months. From Semrush, it reads the pages on your domain that rank in Google and the keywords each one ranks for. For a site Kite hosts, it adds visits and conversions from its built-in analytics.

Pages that already rank in positions five to twenty get extra weight. They're close enough to the top that fixing a real problem on them is often the cheapest way to win more clicks. Your homepage, pricing page, signup page, and the pages that bring in most of your search traffic come next. Old pages with no traffic and no rankings sit at the bottom, however many warnings they have.

### What goes on the fix-first list?

Kite ranks the causes and keeps the fix-first list short, usually five to ten items, so your team can finish it. Problems that block crawling or indexing on valuable pages come first. These include server errors, pages blocked by `robots.txt`, a stray "noindex" tag, a canonical URL that points to the wrong page, and broken links or redirect chains leading to key pages. Next come problems on pages that already earn traffic, such as duplicate or missing titles, slow load times, and broken internal links. Template-wide fixes that clear hundreds of warnings at once move up, because one change is cheap.

Each item on the list says what's wrong, which pages it affects, why it matters for those pages, how Kite confirmed it, and what the fix is. It also says how big the change is and who can make it, whether that's Kite, your developer, or whoever manages your CMS.

### Making the fixes

Kite makes the fixes itself where it can work on your site. On a site Kite builds and hosts, or a GitHub repository you've imported, it can correct titles and meta descriptions, canonical URLs, structured data, redirects, internal links, `robots.txt`, and the sitemap, and it can repair pages that fail to load. On a site that runs in a supported CMS such as Webflow, Contentful, or Sanity, it updates the page content through your connection. With Search Console connected, it can submit your updated sitemap to Google.

Kite's changes wait as unpublished changes, and you can preview each one before it goes live. When you publish, Kite checks that the site displays correctly. On an imported GitHub site, Kite merges into your default branch, or opens a pull request if you've protected that branch. For fixes outside Kite's reach, such as server settings on a site Kite doesn't host, the fix-first list gives your developer the exact pages and the change to make.

### What Kite reports back

When the review is done, Kite posts its findings in the conversation where you asked. The summary says how many issues the audit listed, how many causes they came down to, how many Kite confirmed on the live site, and which ones it fixed or prepared for you to publish. The full fix-first list and the safe-to-ignore list come with it.

After the fixes go live, Kite checks the changed pages again and, with Search Console connected, inspects them in Google to confirm they can be indexed. Run your next Semrush or Screaming Frog crawl and share the new export, and Kite compares it with the last one so you can see which problems are gone and whether anything new appeared.

## What the finished work contains

When Kite finishes, you have a short plan your team can act on this week, the evidence behind it, and any fixes Kite could make waiting for you to publish.

- **The fix-first list.** Five to ten causes ranked by impact, each with the affected pages, the reason it matters, the evidence from the live site and your search data, the size of the fix, and who should make it.
- **The safe-to-ignore list.** Warnings Kite checked and set aside, each with a one-line reason, so nobody spends time on them or wonders whether they were missed.
- **Page context.** For each affected page that matters, its recent clicks, impressions, average position, and the main keywords it ranks for.
- **Prepared fixes.** The changes Kite made on your site or in your CMS, each ready to preview and publish, plus notes for your developer on anything Kite can't change itself.
- **The summary.** The conversation shows how the full audit boiled down to the final list and what Kite changed.

## Common questions

### Should I fix every warning in my site audit?

No, most sites never need to clear every warning, and a perfect Site Health score isn't the goal. Many warnings are low-impact or describe pages that get no search traffic, such as a low text-to-HTML ratio or a missing description on an old tag page. Time spent on those is time not spent on the pages that bring in customers.

### Is Semrush or Screaming Frog better for a site audit?

They suit different needs. Semrush's Site Audit runs in the browser, crawls on a schedule, and sits next to Semrush's ranking and backlink data. Screaming Frog is a desktop crawler that gives you more control over how it crawls and more detail on every URL. Its free version crawls up to 500 URLs. Kite works from the export of either one.

### How often should I run a site audit?

Run a full crawl about once a month, and again after any redesign, migration, or large batch of new pages. Semrush can schedule recurring crawls for you, and Screaming Frog can schedule crawls on your computer. Share each new export with Kite, and it compares the results with the last audit.

## Related pages

- **Use case:** [Audit your marketing and prioritize what to fix](/use-cases/marketing-audit.md)
- **Use case:** [Grow organic search traffic](/use-cases/grow-organic-search-traffic.md)
- **Use case:** Audit your website (coming soon)
- **Integration:** [Semrush + Kite](/integrations/semrush.md)
- **Integration:** [Google Search Console + Kite](/integrations/google-search-console.md)