In this article, I'm going to give my honest review of Ahrefs, one of the many tools available that I have used to elevate my website. My goal is to help you decide if this is right for you for your needs.
What Is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is a paid SEO software suite. It is known to be one of the most extensive site crawlers alongside Google.
It is known to be a tool that different website owners use for their research and analysis to effectively optimize theirs for different search engines.
Even though his focus was initially for backlink analysis, he has added various features over the years for his users to make use of it entirely to keep his website on top of every new content posted.
Ahrefs Tools and Features
In this section, let's explore the five main categories of Ahrefs:
1. Backlinks Explore
2. Explore Keywords
3. Content Explore
4. Rank tracker
5. Alerts
Backlinks Explorer
This feature of Ahrefs is where you can view a detailed profile for your website or competitor.
It has three parts:
1. Organic traffic research
This module helps you show which keywords your website competitors rank for and which pages bring the most search engine traffic.
2. Backlink Checker
To find out if your competition has used any of your websites in their content, this is where you can see them. This module will also help you check if their profiles have quality backlinks so that you can decide which ones you can include in your future content.
3. Paid traffic research
Finally, this part is where you can find out if your competitor is investing in paid search advertising. Apart from that, you can also learn where they are using this paid traffic.
How to use it?
To use this module, open Ahrefs and navigate to its "Site Explorer" module. You are then taken to a screen that would ask you to enter a website's URL, and it will report a generated report of its backlinks, metrics, and organic traffic.
Tips and Tricks
To avoid no-follow links, after submitting the report generated by the URL in the Site Explorer, go to “Backlinks” - “Link Type -“ Dofollow. ”Use the generated list of links to use for your future content and help you and your competitor to keep you coming back to each other.
You can also check which backlinks are present in two or more websites that you can add to your future content by going to the top navigation - "More" - "Link Intersect."
Now, if you want to know what topic you need to do to get the most clicks for your website, you can check out a "Best By Links" website after searching for one up using this module.
In this article, they cited an example of how the author was able to get a ton of clicks after learning from the Moz site's Ahref report that their Ultimate Guides brought in the most traffic.
Explore Keywords
As I mentioned, this is the main focus of the app, they have a search query database, one of the biggest in the world that came from a third-party company.
They cited that they have a bank of over 7 billion keywords with updates every month. Apart from that, it is collected from 171 different countries.
This data is also retrieved from different search engines such as Google, Youtube, Bing, and Baidu.
Apart from that, they also feature how hard it would be to rank using any searched keyword, an estimate of how many clicks he can make to his website, and if you can rank while using a specific keyword while targeting a general topic in your content.
If you want to research the SEO strategy that one of your competitors used to make theirs work, Ahrefs also includes SEO metrics, rank history, rate of return, percentage of clicks. , and the percentage of clicks paid.
After getting all of this information, the suite also has a save feature so you can go back to those and keep up to date on that keyword.
How to use it?
You enter a keyword in their Keywords Explorer module. It then presents a report that includes search volume and keyword competition.
Tips and Tricks
Keep in mind the following metrics in this module's report for choosing between two or more keywords to do content first:
- Rate of return - how often people search for a keyword more than once
- Number of clicks - how many times people are browsing this keyword's content
- Difference between clicks on paid results vs clicks on organic results - compare clicks made by investing in paid results versus clicks made through organic search results
- Search clicks - number of times a user clicks on an article related to this keyword
- Keyword First Page Results - Find out if you made it to the first page of results for the content you wrote for the keyword and which of your competition reached that level.
Content Explore
If the previous mod has statistics on a specific keyword, this add-on has some elements that would help you rate your content with content from other websites.
You can search their content database based on the following filters:
- Published once / Republished
- Date of publication / first date published
- Live / Broken
- Language
- Social actions
- Domain evaluation
- Reference areas
- Organic traffic
- Number of words
- Traffic value
- Site
- Author
In addition to looking at the results based on these filters, one can also check more details of each posted content to learn more about the reasons it is running or underperforming. This mod also has a trending chart for any topic you want overtime, including information on brand mentions and how much content your competition is posting.
Users can also check this add-on against posted content for live links, dead links, and referral domains. It will help you get a feel for the article you can do in the newest content for your webpage and get lots of backlinks at the same time.
Apart from these, you can also check what topic you want your article to be related to using their “Bypass Unrelated Domains” feature. You can also choose to search for unrelated mentions as well using your website branding.
How to use it?
For this module, all you have to do is visit Content Explorer and enter a keyword or topic in its search bar.
Then it will show you a list of articles where you can sort by date, language, and word count, among others.
Tips and Tricks
Be sure to check this list regularly when looking for a new topic to write on your website. It will not only help you get clicks from organic search results but also clicks from social media sites.
Rank tracker
Speaking of competitors, Ahrefs also has a feature that would help measure how competitive you are in your search rankings. After entering a list of keywords, a list of keyword countries, and a list of competing URLs, Ahrefs generates a report on your ranking.
The generated report will have at least these three things:
-Visibility
This section of the report will show how many clicks came from organic search traffic landings.
-Average position and traffic
If you want to know how high or low you are in the search rankings, this section shows a snapshot of your progress over time.
-Job distribution
For this part of the report, you can choose how far your website has traveled based on the ranking groups determined by the data in the app.
How to use it!
After clicking on the "Rank Tracker" tab in Ahrefs, it displays a screen that allows you to enter the keywords of your choice.
After entering the keywords, Ahrefs then displays metrics including the number of content written for it and which site URL ranks highest among them.
Tips and Tricks
Update this list regularly with keywords you are aiming to write about or what topics you have already written about. This will help you plan how to rank higher for past and future content at the same time.
Alerts
This main Ahrefs module, it allows you to provide regular updates based on these three elements: web mentions, new backlinks, lost backlinks, and new keywords.
On new backlinks, the app can provide whether a particular website has gained or lost backlinks. If you are planning to increase your ranks, this is useful as you can assess your competitor's activity and build a counter-strategy against it.
In addition to learning about your competitor's backlink activity, the app can also give you information about what they have to say about your brand or your competitor's brand. It can also help you learn not only what keywords you can write in your future content, but also be able to find future backlinks for each of them as well.
How to use
Navigate to the Ahref “Site Verification” tab, enter your website on the screen that follows and determine how deep the crawl will be in the screens that follow.
Tips and Tricks
According to Databox's interview with Ja mes Pollard, he says these features should be used by all Ahrefs users as soon as they get it. This will help owners like you get a better view of your website and how to position yourself for growth by fixing the weaknesses found by said module.
Price
As mentioned at the start of this review, this SEO DE tool is a paid software suite.
On their website, there are three types of plans that you can choose from: Lite, Standard, and Advanced. Other than that, you can opt to pay monthly or buy a plan for an entire year. Among them, only their Lite and Standard plans have a 7-day paid trial access and can alone let a user use it, on trial or not.
Aside from their price, they also list which of their features are associated with each of the modules that I explained in the previous section of this review. For example, recently lost backlinks to historically lost backlinks under the Site Explorer feature will not be shown to Lite subscribers while Standard and Advanced subscribers have access to them.
Strengths
As they claim to have an up-to-date database when it comes to website metrics, this is a strong consideration when it comes to getting this product for yourself. Apart from that, they also have the support for you to compare different websites by keyword and content.
Their huge database then displays its data through a minimalist browser interface. It helps to make the information easy to read.
Weaknesses
While using this I noticed how I had to get used to using it at first. Emma Jansen told Databox in an interview that she too experienced this while using the software. With that in mind, it means getting used to this software is easier if you know how to comply to the point where you are familiar with related metrics such as click-through rate (CTR) and search rankings.
Filtering their massive database to get the data they need can also be a tall order as Hain es tells Databox it took him an hour or two to just enter keywords into the software's Explorer site.
Meanwhile, Hundred v warns future users that the software may not be able to get their SERP ranking data as up-to-date as possible while using the software. In addition, Basso s soul gone there is a daily limit on the use of the Site Explorer tool in some respects so.
Enveloping!
In short, Ahrefs is a paid software application where you as a website owner can do your research. From checking which keyword gets the most clicks to how well your website ranking is, it can help you not only chart how you want your website to grow, but also stay on top of trends. current in the content at the same time.
On the other hand, moving around the interface can be intimidating when you first get it. Apart from that, you would have to make sure that you have enough funds to not only try if it is a good fit for your SEO needs, then extra to subscribe to the plan of your choice.
Overall, I believe this app is suitable for those website owners who earn enough from their content to get this very personalized information from themselves and their competition.