What is Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is an SEO tool that can provide you with a lot of data to set up or monitor your SEO strategies. Ahrefs is usually known for backlink analysis, but it is not limited to that.

The importance of SEO tools for an SEO strategy.

SEO or search engine optimization is now an integral part of building a website to optimize its visibility on the web. To implement a natural SEO strategy, it is important to know some online tools that allow to avoid tedious analysis work. Regular use of these tools is one of the best strategies to position your website well in search engine results lists and thus generate maximum traffic.

Ahrefs: one of the most powerful SEO tools.

Every SEO consultant knows and uses Ahrefs. Launched in 2011, this online backlink analysis service has gradually become one of the most important tools for natural SEO. Useful for web marketers who want to grow their audience, as well as for those who work on link building for multiple websites, it allows you to monitor link acquisition on the web. The analytics developed by Ahrefs, when used properly, allow you to optimize your website to appear in the top search engine results.

Although Ahrefs is known as a backlink analysis tool, which was its only function when it was founded, today it is no longer limited to this functionality and is much more comprehensive. A direct competitor of Majestic and SEMRush, this software is used for SEO audits, marketing analysis, content creation and link research. Ahrefs data can also be used to analyze other websites, such as those of your direct competitors, and understand what makes them successful on the web. Like most tools, Ahrefs offers some basic features such as exporting data in CSV format or creating analysis reports.

Ahrefs is constantly being fed with new data.

All Ahrefs teams collect and store an impressive amount of data. They constantly scour the Internet to feed their database, which is one of the largest in the world. Every day they discover 1,800,000 new pages and update metrics on 72,000,000 pages. Their Keyword Explorer, a mini search engine that provides search volume and advanced metrics on each keyword, now contains 6.1 billion keywords.

Thanks to this regularly updated database, Ahrefs has become an indispensable tool for SEO experts.

To know how to analyze important information and turn it into concrete actions, here are some of the features of this SEO software and explanations on how to use it productively.

Ahrefs main features

Site explorer

On the Site Explorer page, you can enter a website’s URL in a search bar to get information about the profile of inbound and outbound links. On this page, a graph also shows you the website’s new and missing referring domains. It also shows the anchors used to link to the analyzed website.

Ahrefs creates several charts from its database about the analyzed site. Charts are also created on the “Site Explorer” page, showing the evolution of organic traffic, organic keywords and the positioning of target keywords in the SERPs. Ahrefs offers you the possibility to retrieve this data from all result pages worldwide. With Ahrefs you can follow the evolution of your website traffic in Morocco or Japan.

The Ahrefs “Site Explorer” page is not limited to these few tools. It would take a dozen pages to present them all. But there’s nothing to stop you from browsing the site and trying out all the features.

Content Browser

The content explorer page displays the most popular content on the web, regardless of topic. Ahrefs offers you the possibility to refine your search using the filter and sort functions. For example, language, number of shares on social networks or search volume are displayed according to your criteria.

The search on the “Content Explorer” page can be filtered by various options:

• The “In content” option returns articles where the keyword only appears in the article content.
• The “In Title” option allows you to search for keywords in the title of a page.
• The “Everywhere” option asks the search engine to find the keyword in the title and in the content of the articles.

The Content Explorer is ideal for researching a topic for a new article and keeping up with trends in your field.

Whether you are a blogger or an SEO, Content Explorer will search for you for topics that are trending and have high traffic potential for your future articles.

Track metrics and rankings

Most SEO experts start their workday by watching the progress of websites in Google rankings. Ahrefs has simplified this review with its Rank Tracker page, a dashboard that allows you to track changes in search engine rankings and gain insight into where you need to improve. You can analyze current projects, but also keep an eye on your competitors and their traffic.

The Ahrefs team is aware that the best way to understand rank tracker data is to visualize it. For this reason, 5 different graphs have been created to show at a glance the progress of a website:

• Visibility: a graph showing the percentage of traffic made possible by the keyword your website is working on. For example, if you are positioned in the top 10 Google results for a search query you are working on, your visibility is 100%.
• Average position: average, from 1 to 100, compared to the ranking of the keywords for which you want to rank.
• TrafficTraffic curve for one month
• SERP Characteristics: Visual representation of what is present in the SERP for each keyword. For example, if your website is present in the shopping results for that search query or in the Adwords results….
• Posts: Shows the number of keywords that have increased or decreased in the SERP results. This graph shows the Google positions from 0 to 12.

Alarms and notifications.

Ahrefs also offers a notification system. It allows you to set your criteria to receive notifications about a website or a keyword. You have the option to add notifications if you want to be constantly informed of the evolution of your website or that of your competitors. This feature facilitates the work of SEO experts, who no longer have to check daily whether their work is successful or not.

How much does Ahrefs cost?

Ahrefs is SEO software that is not necessarily affordable for an individual. The first version is available for $79 per month for single users and can cost up to $399 for additional features. Per month, expect to pay at least $499 for three users and $2,500 for twenty-five users. However, these prices are justified by the quality of this online tool and the large amount of analysis it provides.

By using Ahrefs to optimize your website’s search engine optimization, you increase your chances of publishing content that others will want to read and share. You can become more visible on the Internet and increase your sales.

The entry What is Ahrefs? was first published in Express Profits.