Search Engine Optimization is important for every business that wants to build their authority and boost its ranking on search results. Competition in the rankings is so high that it is impossible for these companies to compete without the necessary SEO tools.
SEO is the set of rules to optimize the site for search engines like Google to improve their rankings. It is the method of improving the quality of your site to make it easy to navigate, user-friendly, and fast.
Before going into details and discuss Ahrefs, let’s first find out the importance of SEO:
People are most likely to click to the top 5 topics they found in the search engine result pages (SERPs). If your site is optimized for the search engines, they are going to find you on the top search results. It leads to more visitors to your site.
SEO involves good SEO practices that will promote the user’s experience and the relevancy of your site.
SEO can make your site more prominent than your competitor. Between two companies that sell the same product, the one that is more optimized would have more customers and higher sales.
People trust search engines. When they search on Google and find your site, they are more likely to trust your site.
SEO is crucial for social media marketing. The more likes and shares your content has the higher your site’s ranking.
In SEO, you need to be updated with search engines algorithms regularly, according to Neil Patel in order to rank better on search results. You also need to ensure that you are ranking higher than your competitors.
You need to check old content and update them. As there are changes in algorithms, you need to adapt to these new SEO techniques. You must ensure that there are no broken links that could impact the flow of traffic to your site.
SEO auditing on your website must be done on a regular basis. Auditing is like submitting your site to a doctor to check its health. It's recommended to perform small audits each month.
You must also perform full audit each time you have big developments or changes on your site. An audit can take place every 4 to 6 months too.
It is impossible to do SEO without the necessary tools. With the right SEO tools, you can have successful campaigns and business. The right tools can save a lot of your time and investment, promote your offerings, discover new strategies, and make more sales.
SEO tools help optimize a site so that it appears on the top rankings. It is needed to drive traffic to a site. One of the best SEO tools that you may have already heard is Ahrefs.
What is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is an SEO software that has tools important for keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, site audits, web monitoring, and link building prospecting.
It's the most popular SEO tool these days and it always be, because there are lot's of feature that you might want to engage in.
Key Features:
1.) Backlink Profile/ Backlink Analysis
To use it, simply type in the site’s homepage into the “site explorer.” After that, you’ll have a dashboard with data on the site’s backlinks, organic traffic, and metrics.
To see the site’s link profile, press “backlinks” located at the sidebar. You’ll be getting a full list.
If you see that the site has too many backlinks, proceed to the “link type” and then the “DoFollow.” When you click the “DoFollow,” you don’t have to go through the long list of “nofollow” links.
When you have already gathered the list of “DoFollow,” follow these steps:
Find sites that link to your competitors because they can also link back to you. If you have blogs or articles related to those sites, pitch it to them. Repeat the process until you are finished scanning your competitor’s list.
Study your competitor’s link profile why sites link to them. It would a good opportunity to research their activities and the reason why sites link to them. The analysis can give you an idea on how you are going to do the same on your site.
2.) Link Intersect
This feature is not so obvious in the interface. From the top navigation, click “More” then “Link Intersect.” Type the URL of two or more competitor sites.
You’ll be getting the list of all the sites that link to each site you have written. The information gives you a hint that if a site links to more than two of your competitors, those sites can also link back to you.
3.) Keywords Explorer
It is Ahrefs’ keyword research tool. This is a very useful tool because it doesn’t only provide information like search volume and keyword competition but also keyword return rate, number of clicks, clicks per search, and percentage of people who clicked on paid vs organic results.
It is useful when getting the breakdown of the first page SERPs for a certain keyword. It helps you in choosing the right keyword. However, this feature is not ideal for generating new keyword ideas.
4.) New Backlinks
This feature provides the list of new sites that linked to your site or to your competitor. The information is significant because it provides you insights on the link building opportunities available right now. You can take advantage of this opportunity.
5.) Best By Links
This refers to the pages of a site that have the most backlinks. It is so far considered one of the best features of Ahrefs.
This feature will give you insight into the most linked-to-pages of a site. You’ll discover the sites that link to a site and possibly get the idea to publish more content like that. It’s another tactic of using your competitor’s data to have successful campaigns.
6.) Lost Backlinks
This feature provides you a list of sites that previously link to you and is not linked to you anymore. The purpose of this feature is for “link reclamation.” It is the process of getting back your lost backlinks.
7.) Competing Domains
This feature provides the list of domains that rank for similar search terms. For example, it gives the list of sites that compete with each other on Google’s organic search results. This feature is especially useful if you have a new client or a new site.
8.) Content Gap
Content Gap provides the list of keywords that your competitors are ranking for but you are not. It is useful because if you enter your site and competitor’s sites, you’ll get the list of keywords that they rank for. You’ll have an idea about the keywords that you could probably rank for.
9.) Site Audit
This feature is similar to Screaming Frog. Simply type in your site’s homepage. After some minutes or hours of analysis, it will give you information on the technical side of your site’s pages. It tells you which pages are blocked, don’t have noindex tag, and are redirected.
10.) Paid Search
This feature is dedicated to PPC campaigns. Type in competing sites on Ahrefs and click “paid search.” It reveals which ads yield the most traffic to a site and which keywords send them the highest paid traffic, and landing pages to most paid visitors.
11.) Alerts
Alerts is useful when you are serious about ranking on search results. Ahrefs will alert you when you or your competitor gets a new backlink. It also provides signals when you rank for a certain keyword.
12.) Domain Comparison
This feature shows you the comparison between sites. Simply input 2 to 5 sites to see how you are compared to other sites. You’ll get insights on your strengths as well as weaknesses.
It gives you an idea on which part of the campaign you play well and which part leaves you behind. Instead of doing campaigns that you are already doing well, you can focus on other campaigns that you should be concentrating on.
13.) Content Explorer
This feature provides information on which content receives the most social shares. It’s like the small version of BuzzSumo.
To use, type in a keyword or topic into the Content Explorer. You’ll arrive on the list of articles that get the most of shares on social media. You can opt for more information and key in the language, date, word count, and more.
14.) Organic Keywords and Organic Search Traffic
It gives the list of keywords that a domain ranks for. You’ll also know how much traffic a site is getting at the moment.
The feature provides you an idea on what keyword a competitor ranks for. It also provides insights on the traffic that each search term receives. If you have the same Domain Authority, you’ll know whether certain keywords would rank.
Features link:
Main
Extra
Features
Additional features that you’ll get with Ahrefs:
Private Facebook Community
When you register, you can join its Facebook community that is private to all the customers and SEOs and digital marketers.
Customized Learning Materials
Once you become a member, you will not be left alone in the process. You’ll get full access to its YouTube channel and Ahrefs Academy that provide marketing tutorials.
New Features Regularly
You’ll get regular updates of the SEO tool, so it’s a big advantage for your business. You could have the latest features that your competitors may not be using yet. They give a regular update on their tools. In return, you’ll stay on top of the competition.
24/ 5 Customer Support
Their team is available to chat and answer emails or calls 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Doing regular audit is necessary to check your site’s health or status. You can use Ahrefs to ensure that your site is in good shape and you are ahead of the competition.
how to audit sites that you need
In this example, you will about to see an example of higher metrics or quality links such as facebook. As you can see the Ahrefs rank is #1, DR is 100, organic keywords 394M, organic traffic 4.0B. Here is the criteria
Ahrefs Rank (AR) - shows the target website's position among all other websites in our database rated by the "strength" of their backlink profiles. The website with the strongest backlink profile is ranked #1.
URL rank ( UR ) - URL Rating (UR) shows the strength of the target URL's backlink profile on a 100-point logarithmic scale (higher = stronger). Both internal and external links influence this metric. NOTE: UR has a clear positive correlation with search rankings, meaning that high-UR pages tend to rank higher in the organic search results. When the whole domain is analyzed in Site Explorer, URL Rating will be shown for the homepage
Domain rank ( DR ) - Domain Rating (DR) shows the relative "backlink popularity" of the target website compared to all other websites in our database on a 100-point logarithmic scale (higher = stronger). We calculate DR based on the number of websites linking to the domain's URLs and their backlink profile strength
Backlinks ( BL ) - How many links point to your target in total. Not to be confused with the number of pages linking to your target, as a single page can give multiple backlinks.
Referring Domains ( RD ) - How many unique referring domains link to your target in total.
Organic Keywords ( OK ) - Shows the total number of keywords that the target website, subsection, or URL ranks for in the top 100 organic search results across all countries in our database. When the website or URL is ranking for a keyword in two countries, it will be counted twice.
Organic Traffic ( OT ) - This metric estimates the total monthly search traffic to the target website, subsection, or URL from the top 100 organic search results. It is calculated as the sum of traffic from all organic keywords for which the target ranks across all countries in our database.
Traffic Value ( TV ) - This metric shows the equivalent value of the organic search traffic, should that traffic have been acquired via PPC.
Plans and Pricing:
Monthly Billing
Annual Billing
Video Feature