Ahrefs is an amazing tool that is used a lot for a variety of features. In this article, we will uncover the features of Ahrefs and tell you how to effectively use this great tool.
Digital Marketing is the most lucrative field at present. With everyone wanting to be active digitally, the need for digital marketing managers is increasing like anything. There are a lot of digital marketing courses available as well.
However, a lot of digital marketers are taking help of different digital marketing tools for planning strategies and reading the analytics. The tools make the job very easy. They are used as a reference to check the ranking of a particular website. Apart from that, you can carry the complete audit of your website, content analysis, on-page SEO and even backlink analysis.
Manual website analysis is a very time consuming process. A lot of digital marketers consider it a waste of time. Also, the bigger digital marketing agencies have various companies to cater at once. So, they find it easy to use all the tools.
At the same time, there are a lot of marketing tools available online. Some are paid while some are free. Each tool is different as it works on its own parameters, database and structure. Thus, it is wise to use tools that produce accurate results.
Which digital marketing tool is widely used by industry leaders?
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an amazing tool and is widely used by a lot of digital marketing managers. It helps in preparing an audit report, URL ranking, backlink analysis and SEO analysis. Agencies or companies which use Ahrefs know that the tool has mastery in backlink analysis. It is also good in giving keyword analysis and website rankings.
Ahrefs used to only do backlink analysis when it was first launched. However, they have evolved with time and now, they give various reports. Also, it had a free version available when it was launched. Now, they do not offer any free plans. Although, they do have a free trial plan.
Ahrefs is a better tool as compared to the other tools available in the market. There are various ways that Ahrefs can help you in planning a better digital marketing strategy.
1. Get an organic search report
AHREFS comes with a site explorer tool. It will analyse your complete site holistically. Then, it will come up with a report which will give you a lot of different insights. It will give you suggestions that might help you to increase your website’s ranking and visibility in all the search results.
The report includes a complete comprehensive traffic analysis of your website. It also includes the number of backlinks, the traffic value that your website might get and organic traffic itself.
2. Get content opportunities
You can actually add your competitor’s domain name in the site explorer tab of AHREFS. After that, you can check which of your competitor’s posts have the highest number of traffic. You can even check whether it is paid traffic or organic traffic.
Thus, even you can work your content around that topic and post a blog. This will give you an opportunity to understand about things that work in a search engine. You will understand the topic that receive engagement and thus, you can work your strategies around those.
3. Find how to outperform your competitors
Ahrefs is genuinely a great tool. If you know how to use it, you will surely take the internet by storm. The tool has a site explorer tab where you can find the top performing pages of your competitor. At the same time, you can also find pages that are not performing well.
All you have to do is find out the domains competing with yours in the site explorer tab. AHREFS will show you websites that are ranking in your genre. For finding a content opportunity, you will have to find pages of your competitor’s domain which generate a lot of traffic in spite of having no backlinks. You can find such pages by adding filters of the referring domain and traffic columns.
Once you find such an article, use the keywords dropdown to understand more about the topic. You will be able to find the number of keywords that a particular page ranks on Google for 100 listings. Studying those keywords will give you a lot of insights which can help you in building a nice strategy.
4. Keyword Search Volume
AHREFS has a metric system which shows you the number of times your audience searches for your keywords in a month. It also has a country filter that you can add. It is important to understand that keyword search is different from country to country.
For example, Diwali gifts for family might work a lot in India but, the same keywords might not be as prominent in Spain. At the same time, the Diwali keyword is season specific in India as well. No one searches for that in the month of May. You will get all of these insights with AHREFS.
5. Backlink Analysis Report
AHREFS is popular for it backlink analysis report. It originally started with this service only. It will give you a complete report of all the backlinks generated from a 3rd party site. You can get a backlink analysis report for your domain as well as your competitor’s domain.
Your competitor’s backlink report actually gives you insights on the 3rd party referral sites they are using. This will give you an opportunity to use those sites for your benefit as well. It is always a good idea to generate links from websites who have good domain authority. AHREFS will help you recognize those.
6. Do Not Lose On Backlinks
The tool is simply amazing. You can get new backlink opportunities every single day. There are a lot of websites that might mention your brand name but, forget to add you website link. You are losing a backlink in that case. However, with AHREFS you can find that out.
You can use the branded query or search operator to find that out. Then, you will have to set an interval in the tool and it will notify you about your brand mentions. You can check their article and if your link is not mentioned, you can always ask them to do it.
7. Acquire New Link Opportunities
With AHREFS, you can find out some pages that are mentioning your competitor’s brands. You can track them down and ask them to include your brand in their article as well. You can contact them via mail.
Apart from that, you can add your competitor’s brand in the alert section of AHREFS. However, remember to filter out your brand’s name. You will be notified if you competitor’s brand gets mentioned. This is a great way of sending free trials and collaborating with prospects. You can even set up affiliates for your business.
8. Generate Millions of Keywords Ideas
There are quite a few keyword research tools available in the market. AHREFS is one of them. However, what makes it different than the other tools is that it will generate almost 5.6 million keyword ideas for your single keyword.
They continuously show a lot of different keyword ideas as compared to their competition. A research says that they show 211% more keywords as compared to any of the other tools.
They surely have the largest keyword database in the market today. Also, they have keyword database for more than 170 countries.
9. Find Less Competitive Keywords
It is important to use keywords that have a thick search volume. At the same time, it is important to use keywords that have low competition but, have high traffic and business potential. A page ranks with an average search volume of 1000 long tail keywords.
So, you can go to the content explorer tab and enter a topic. Filter the results for 0 RDs and 1000 search volume with organic traffic. It will surely give you the data and you can work your content around that.
10. Check New Keywords Every Month
Ahrefs adds new keywords to its database every month. It is a report under the category of Keywords explorer. They have a page which says newly discovered.
Any newly added keyword will be found there. You can also filter the report month-wise. This is a great way of checking trending things in your niche. Also, you will be able to generate a decent amount of traffic, if you are writing on trending topics.
11. Ahrefs Rank
The tool has a huge collection of data. It can actually track a website’s traffic and give a rank based on the different parameters. It actually makes comparisons with other competitive domains as well.
So, apart from the Google rank, AHREFS gives their own ranking to a particular site as well. This can help you make a comparison with your competitors and take back some valuable insights.
12. Find SEO Issues
SEO is really important for the performance of your website on Google. Sometimes simple technical SEO issues can hold your site back. You can crawl your whole website with AHREF’s site audit.
The site audit will run a live crawl and present you the SEO issues, if they exist. It will also give you the health score of your website.
13. Dive Deeper With SEO Issues
The tool does not give you a general audit report only. You can actually dive deeper and check if your website is having any issues. You can address specific issues like HTML Tags and Meta descriptions.
All you have to do is go to the site audit tab and add the specific filters. Choose project, crawl, overview and scroll to HTML tags and content. Thus, even single crawls are possible with this tool.
14. Check Traffic Estimations
You can add any keyword in the explorer tab and the tool will show you the top 10 ranking pages on it. Apart from that, it also shows the estimated monthly traffic the particular page gets. You can actually switch countries and also check the traffic of a particular page.
Also, AHREFS is the only tool that gives you these metrics. Hence, you can get an idea about what kind of content works with your audience in different countries. This feature is extremely beneficial to bloggers as they can identify engaging content ideas.
15. URL Rating
The tool will give you a unique perspective in website analysis. They have URL rating features which even guides the Google webmasters.
It will give you a report on which links are working well quantitatively and qualitatively.
Hence, you can improve your URL performance by adding rich keywords in it. It will surely help you with your ranking on search engines.
16. Check the Ranking History
By now you are aware that AHREFS shows you the keywords and URL that makes a website rank. However, it shows you the ranking progress of a single keyword. It will also show you the pages of your site that have ranked on a single keyword.
This will help you to intersect those two pages, if they have the same content. Also, you can make a guide out of pages that are ranking on the same topic.
17. Minimalize the Content Gap
When you are making strategies for your business, it helps if you have all the data in one spreadsheet. However, if you have 2 of your competitor sites ranking on a keyword while the other one is not, it might be difficult to read the data.
Hence, you can download the reports and enter a content gap filter on AHREFS. It will combine the data of different domains and make a sheet that is easy for you to read.
18. Do Your Content Research
AHREFS has a content explorer tab and it is almost like a mini search engine. You can use it to search a piece by just adding a mention or a phrase.
The search result will end up showing the text of the page, organic search traffic, social shares and referring domains that are linking to that page. You can find easy to rank topics with a sample content.
19. Find Guest Posting Sites
Guest posting is a powerful way to generate a backlink. With the content explorer tab, you can write a keyword related to your niche.
You can find blogs that are written on that topic. After that, you can pitch them for an article in return of a backlink. With the help of Ahrefs, you can find guest posting sites quickly.
20. Competitor Analysis
The tool gives you a complete report on your competitors. It gives you facts and figures because of which they are performing better in the SERP Result page.
You can study the report and create a different strategy for your business. It will help you in performing better.
Conclusion:
These were some of the ways through which AHREFS can help you. It is an innovative tool which has got great potential. You only have to use it right.
Try all these things on your website and then, plan a new digital marketing strategy for yourself.