Ahrefs - Comprehensive SEO Tool For Professional Business (Review 2021)
If you are looking for an SEO solution that combines keyword research, content audit, link building, site audit, SERP insights, and rank tracker in one tool then you are now in the correct place. In this article, we are going to cover Ahrefs, a comprehensive SEO tool for your business.
What is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset with free learning materials suitable for marketing professionals. It contains tools for link building, keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, and site audits. So, you can get tons of insight into your competitors and make much better marketing decisions through Ahrefs.
Launched in 2011, back then Ahrefs was mainly analyzing website’s backlinks. Now, Ahrefs has offered a lot of tools to make useful content and lead you the way to gain more access to search engines. Ahrefs has proved to be one of the best SEO tools providers that is used by marketers from some of the world’s leading companies, including Facebook, eBay, Tripadvisor, Adobe, and many more.
How Does Ahrefs Work?
You can use Ahrefs to analyze a website’s link profile, keyword rankings, and SEO health. It helps you to gain insights by:
- Optimizing your website with Site Audit
- Analyzing your competitors with Site Explorer
- Doing keyword research for Google, Youtube, and Amazon with Keywords Explorer
- Finding out your top-performing content with Content Explorer
- Tracking your website ranking progress with Rank Tracker
- See a site’s backlink with Backlink Checker
- and many more.
What Are the Best Features of Ahrefs?
Site Explorer
This tool analyzes organic traffic and backlinks from any site by typing in the site’s URL. Then, you will get an overview of that site’s (or page’s) overall SEO performance.
Inside, there are two major features: the Ahrefs Backlink Checker & Organic Search. With this, you can find out how many backlinks the site (or web page) has, how much traffic it gets from Google, what is your competitor’s top SEO keywords, and more.
Keyword Explorer
This tool finds the top keywords for YouTube, Amazon, Yandex, and Bing. It comes with a report with info on search volume, competition, CPC, CTR, SERP position history, and more.
Content Explorer
This is Ahrefs’ content marketing tool. With this, you can get a list of content on a specific topic that you want along with lots of social media shares, backlinks, or both.
Site Audit
This tool can find technical SEO problems on your website. The report gives your site an overall “health score” and a list of technical SEO issues to fix: duplicate meta tags, broken redirects, stuff like that.
Overall, this is a very solid SEO site audit tool. It’s easy for SEO beginners to quickly figure out what they need to do.
Rank Tracker
Ahrefs rank tracking tool tracks your most important keywords. It gives you a bunch of keywords, sees where they rank in Google, and track ranking changes over time.
However, Ahrefs only updates the keyword rankings once per week for the Lite plan or every 3 days on its Standard plan.
Domain Comparison
Ahrefs domain comparison allows you to compare multiple sides by side up to 5 different websites. You can see the contrast between domains and backlinks. In addition to that, there’s a chart to see how each website’s link profile has changed over time.
Keyword Research
Ahrefs provides free keyword research tools, including keyword generator, keyword difficulty checker, and keyword tool dedicated for Youtube, Amazon, and Bing.
Using those tools, you can find thousands of relevant keyword ideas in seconds and choose those that rank in the top 10 keywords.
SERP & Ranking Insights
Ahrefs also has a free SERP Checker tool that can analyze the top 10 rankings for any keyword you search. Besides that, you can check your website’s ranking position using the Keyword Rank Checker.
Link Building
There are three tools for link building that are offered by Ahrefs. The Backlink Checker allows you to see the top 100 backlinks to any website or webpage. There is a Broken Link Checker that can find broken links to and from your website or webpage in seconds. Furthermore, you can check the Domain Rating (DR) of your website using the Website Authority Checker to see the strength of your backlink profile.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
It is an innovative SEO tool by Ahrefs to give you free access to Ahrefs premium features. With this tool, you can use the limited Ahrefs Site Audit & Site Explorer to improve your website’s SEO performance and get more traffic from search. It is 100% free for website owners.
Why Should I Use Ahrefs?
Monitor your SEO health easily
Ahrefs can scan your website for 100+ common SEO issues that might be hurting its performance in search engines. Furthermore, you will also get advice on fixing those issues and keep an eye on your website’s SEO health over time.
Do keyword research for 10 search engines
Ahrefs uses anonymous clickstream data to build its keyword databases, which makes it the most reliable keyword research tool in the industry. You can search for databases in 10 different search engines, including Google, Youtube, Amazon, Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu.
See keywords that bring traffics to your website
After getting the keywords list from Ahrefs Keyword Generator then you can learn what keywords your website ranks for and compare them against competitors in the SERPs. Also, you can understand more of your website’s SEO potential with the help of actionable SEO metrics like Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty, and Traffic Value.
Know your backlinks
You can browse your website’s backlink data with Ahrefs Backlink Checker that collected by the industry’s favorite third-party backlink crawler. Using that, you will get actionable insights from your inbound and outbound link profiles along with the reports and filters.
Who is Ahrefs For?
- Small business owners that do SEO for their own websites
- SEO agencies that work with multiple clients
- “In house” marketers that run marketing for their employer’s site
- Affiliate marketers that run several different sites
- SEO consultants that advise clients on their SEO strategy
Who is Ahrefs Not for?
- Casual bloggers
- Market pioneers
- Low budget marketeers
- Sites with infrequent updates
Can I Use Ahrefs for Free?
Yes, you can use the free SEO tools by Ahrefs and the Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
The free SEO tools include tools for keyword research, SERP & ranking insights, and link building.
Meanwhile, the Ahrefs Webmaster Tools gives you free limited access to Ahrefs Site Explorer & Site Audit.
How Much Does Ahrefs Cost?
There are four types of premium plans in Ahrefs to suit your SEO needs:
Lite
- Monthly subscription: $99/ month
- Yearly subscription: $ 82/ month
Standard
- Monthly subscription: $179/ month
- Yearly subscription: $149/ month
Advanced
- Monthly subscription: $399/month
- Yearly subscription: $332/ month
Agency
- Month subscription: $999/ month
- Yearly subscription: $832/ month
Besides that, Ahrefs also offers a special 7-days trial for $7 to let you try out all premium features by Ahrefs.
Find out more about Ahrefs plans & pricing here.
How to Use Ahrefs
For some that like to learn from a video tutorial, you can check out tutorials below :
Pros
- The best keyword research tool
- Provides the best link database
- Has content explorer for content ideas
- Many new features for SEO
Cons
- Not beginner-friendly (steep learning curve)
- Pretty expensive
What Are the Alternatives to Ahrefs?
- Semrush – the ultimate all-in-one SEO tool
- Moz – provides free SEO tool
- Spyfu – great tool to help you spy on your competitors
- Majestic – cheaper SEO tool
- Ubersuggest – best free keyword research tool
- KWfinder – another alternative for free keyword research tool
- Serpstat – most cost-effective content marketing tool
Conclusion
Ahrefs provides you with various SEO tools that work great to give you insights and improve your website’s ranking on search engines. It has a complete suite of SEO tools, such as keyword research, content research, website audit, link building, and SERP & ranking insights. The premium Ahrefs is suitable for professionals with medium to big websites.
Even though the premium plans cost pretty expensive, Ahrefs still provides several free SEO tools that you can use. Also, we recommend the website owners to try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools as it allows you to take advantage of Ahrefs Site Audit & Explorer tools for free & limited use.
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