Digital marketing is the best way to boost your business. Whether your company provides service or sells products, it must have a digital presence.
Thanks to search engines like Google, Bing, etc., companies can improve their sales and reach many potential customers. Over the years, online marketing has become the primary way to promote products.
Companies also market their services through online tools. These tools help you improve search rankings. One such Search Engine Optimization tool is called Ahrefs.
Apart from being an SEO tool, Ahrefs also educates people about SEO. Ahrefs provides informative tools and strategies that help optimize your website through its YouTube channel and educational blogs.
What is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is a web services company that provides its customers with extensive SEO tools. These tools help you improve your website’s search ranking, track your competitors, and get access to over 421 billion backlinks.
Backlinks are the backbone of SEO. It is a core part of your SEO strategy. Ahrefs has a high-end crawling setup.
It also allows users to create content, search for appropriate keywords, track ranking, do competitor research, audit websites, and measure their organic traffic. Ahrefs is a robust SaaS tool that aids SEO analysis.
Pros
- Ahrefs is an excellent tool for monitoring backlinks. You can check how well your backlinks are doing. It will help you understand which backlinks are bringing in traffic. Depending on their performance, you can then add or remove backlinks.
- Keyword research is another vital feature of Ahrefs. You can find the most accurate keywords using Ahrefs. These keywords can then be effectively placed on your website and online ads.
- Ahrefs helps you analyze competitor websites. You can check out your competitor’s traffic, how well their keywords are doing and what is working for them. It will help you go ahead of your competitors.
- Content is king, especially if you are trying to improve your SEO ranking. Search engines give a lot of emphasis to content. With Ahrefs’ content creation tool, you can create perfect SEO content. Adding the right keywords will improve your SEO ranking.
- You can do a comprehensive search of organic and paid traffic to your website. It will enable you to improve your SEO strategies and invest in a technique that works.
- It gives you access to a Facebook community and allows you to use educational materials. This way, you can create an effective SEO strategy. In case you need help, the community is there to solve your problems.
- Ahrefs allows you to cancel your subscription easily. You don’t have to haggle with them for it.
Cons
- Ahrefs is more expensive than other SEO tools. Small businesses may not be able to afford it.
- The software is overwhelming. It is highly advanced and might be confusing for a beginner.
- The local rank tracker is not accurate.
- It is hard to generate and export custom CSVs.
Domain Analysis
With Ahrefs, you can check the strength of your domain. Add your link to Ahrefs’ authority checker page, and you will get a detailed analysis of your domain. Ahrefs checks your website’s authority.
They also call it domain rating. Once you type in your domain link, Ahrefs measures the number of unique links on your website. It then checks the authority of the link domain.
It does not include factors like traffic, domain age, etc. Domain analysis is subjective. It is different on each website.
Even though domain authority does not define the success of your domain, it gives you a clear idea of where you stand. It states the website links and determines the strength of your domain.
In addition, domain analysis helps you check the authenticity of links. For example, some links may seem compelling but end up causing more harm than good. Through domain analysis, you can pick out these links and replace them with better ones.
Backlink Profile Checker
Backlinks play a vital role in optimizing a website. Bad backlinks can destroy your website’s ranking. That is why it is essential to check your backlinks using a backlink profile checker.
When a website adds your website to theirs, you get a backlink from them. Likewise, if you add a link to their website to your website, then they have a backlink from you.
Backlinks are the core aspect of search engine optimization. Search engines like Google consider backlinks to put significant emphasis on backlinks.
A good backlink enhances the discoverability of your website. If another website adds your link to theirs, the traffic from that website will be directed towards your website.
It also improves your ranking and improves your authority. A strong backlink improves your website ranking. It is essential to place the backlinks discreetly. They should not seem like advertisements.
You must seamlessly place the backlinks in your content. The content should be relevant to your website. This way, your audience will not only find the content informational but will also be able to take action.
Ahrefs provides you with a free backlink checker. All you have to do is type your website link in the backlink profile checker bar. Ahrefs has a sophisticated crawler. It is the second most active crawler after Google.
Ahrefs checks the quality of your backlink by comparing it to the backlink database. It has one of the largest backlink databases. Ahrefs helps measure your backlinks growth. It also measures the effectiveness of the target’s backlinks.
You can also analyze the estimated organic traffic of each backlink. Ahrefs helps you find the right backlinks for your website. For example, if you own an automobile business, then you will need backlinks from auto bloggers.
On the other hand, you cannot get a backlink from a beauty blogger. Relevance is a crucial aspect of backlinking.
By going through Ahrefs’ backlink database, you can find a suitable backlink for your website. With this tool, you can also check your competitor’s backlink profiles.
The backlink anchor text analysis helps you safeguard your website from possible SEO attacks. The backlink checker also allows you to add spam links to Google’s Disavow tool.
It will protect your website from suspicious backlink activity. Since Google measures a website’s authority through backlinks, it is vital to keep them in check.
Google’s crawlers go through your website pages and check every backlink. Finding spammy or broken backlinks can reduce your search engine ranking. You can also check both followed and unfollowed links using Ahrefs’ backlink tool.
It helps you analyze relevant data. You can download the report as a PDF or CSV file. Finally, the backlink profile checker is Ahrefs’ most robust tool.
SEO Competitor Research
Ahrefs’ SEO competitor research tool helps you understand your competitor’s SEO strategies. You can check their backlinks and see how much organic traffic they are generating.
It will help you know what is working for you and what isn’t. Based on the backlink traffic research, you can devise strategies that will improve your traffic. Traffic is an essential part of any online business.
Whether you run a blog or an e-commerce store, traffic is an absolute must. By checking your competitors’ traffic rate, you can understand how to pull that traffic to your website.
Always remember it is the quality of the backlinks that matters. A few quality backlinks work better than a lot of low-quality backlinks.
Ahrefs’ speedy backlink crawler checks your competitors’ backlinks and gives you a detailed analysis of them. Ahrefs also has the world’s most extensive index of live backlinks. It has over 14 trillion backlinks.
Ahrefs runs your backlink through its database and provides you with accurate data.
Another way to analyze your competitors’ performance is by checking their organic traffic. Getting organic traffic is one of the hardest things.
But once you get the hang of it, you can get many people to your website. Google also ranks your website based on organic traffic. Ahrefs’ SEO tool helps you analyze where the competitor is getting its organic traffic from.
Usually, it is from backlinks. Social media also plays a vital role in pulling organic traffic. You can also run a keyword search by checking which keywords your competitors rank for.
Once you get a list of these keywords, you can check how much traffic each keyword brings. This way, you know exactly which keywords work for your business.
If it is working for your competitors, it is bound to work for you. Ahrefs keeps track of 150 million keywords used in the USA. It has an even more extensive worldwide database.
So no matter where your competitor is located, Ahrefs can help you analyze it.
You can also run competitor research by finding out which website pages have backlinks. The number of backlinks can also be measured by this tool. Social shares can also be measured by this tool.
Backlinks and social shares pull in a large amount of traffic. Once you understand how your competitor is getting their traffic, you can do it too.
Ahrefs also has an outgoing links section. This section lets you check the number of outgoing links a website has. You can easily see how many websites are providing backlinks to your competitor.
Once you get a clear picture of these websites, you can also add your links to these websites. Outgoing links are the links posted on social media, Wikipedia, Google, apple.com, etc. You can also add your links to these websites.
The ‘paid search’ section lets you check your competitors pay per click ads. Every keyword inserted in an online ad costs money. You can measure the cost of each keyword, along with the amount of traffic it is bringing in.
If a keyword is bringing high traffic, then you can utilize it for your ads too. Provided the cost of the keyword is not too high. You can also see which countries are responding well to these ads.
It gives you a clear picture of where your competitor is getting their traffic from. Knowing your competitor’s audiences is crucial. By understanding their geographical location, you can customize ads that fit them.
Keyword Search
Ahrefs offers an all-inclusive keyword search. You can enter up to 10,000 keywords at a time. The keyword tool will give you a detailed report of all the keywords. You can choose the ones that work best for you.
The Keyword Explorer provides data from 171 countries. If you are an online company, you will want to target people from all parts of the world.
With the keyword explorer, you can check which word works in which country. You can find out keywords that work well in 10 different search engines. That’s right! 10 search engines.
Contrary to popular belief, your website ranking isn’t just measured by google. You can use several other search engines to build a strong website presence.
The keyword explorer has a database of 7 billion keywords. You can put in keywords that are most relevant to your business, and Ahrefs will generate a combination of different keywords. This way, you don’t have to waste time coming up with keywords.
Every month Ahrefs adds new keywords to their database. Ahrefs provides an accurate search volume for each keyword. It helps you understand the keywords that are most searched.
It also aids in understanding which keyword will rank better. We might assume that a specific keyword will work better. But with the keyword explorer tool, you can measure the accuracy of the keyword.
With the keyword explorer, you no longer have to guess whether your keyword will work or not. You have numbers to back up the data.
Plans And Pricing
Ahrefs offers four different kinds of plans. You can either pay for them monthly or annually. If you decide to choose annual payment, then you get 2 months free! Ahrefs’ Lite plan costs $99.
This plan allows one user at a time, along with 5 non-verified projects. You can also opt for a 7-day trial that costs $7.
The second plan is called the Standard plan. It costs $179. You can choose a 7-day trial for $7. It, too, allows one user at a time. But you can work on 10 non-verified projects.
The Advanced package costs $399. Unfortunately, it does not offer a free trial but allows 3 users at a time. With this plan, you can work on 25 unverified projects.
The Agency package costs $999. It allows 5 users at a time, along with 100 non-verified projects.
You can choose a plan that fits your company’s needs and your budget.
Final Verdict
Ahrefs provides a wide variety of SEO tools. Even though it might be a bit more expensive than most tools, it is worth it. Apart from the tools, you also get access to their Facebook community.
Their customer service is excellent. Ahrefs’ colossal database of backlinks and keywords is unbeatable. So if you are planning to choose an SEO tool, Ahrefs is one of the best in the market.
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