Looking to create high-performing SEO campaigns?

Then you need a stout SEO toolset.

The problem? The more tools you buy/subscribe-to, the more costs skyrocket.

Think about it:

Keyword research tool…$100+/month.

Link analysis tool…$100+/month.

Rank tracking tool…$100+/month.

Site audit tool...$100+/month.

And you're just getting started. Before you know it, you’re spending $500+ a month on SEO tools.

Not to mention:

Each standalone tool comes with its own learning curve. And few, if any, of the tools will integrate with each other.

The solution? Ahrefs (affiliate).

In this review, I’m going to show you EVERYTHING Ahrefs can do, and walk you step-by-step through 60+ practical applications of the tool you can use to immediately boost the performance of your SEO campaigns, grow your organic traffic, and business. 

Ok, before we dive in let me make one thing clear...

Ahrefs isn’t an SEO tool.

It’s a suite of SEO tools.

Link analysis. Keyword research. Content exploration. Rank tracking…Ahrefs can do it all.

And because all the tools are under one roof, they integrate with one-another perfectly.

While Ahrefs is most well-known for its HUGE link index....

Over the last couple years, it’s morphed into a swiss-army knife for any serious marketer or SEO practitioner. In fact, Ahrefs was voted the #1 SEO agency software.

Here’s a look at the data:

Here are the 6 core areas where the tool can provide value for SEOs and marketers:

Ahrefs provides a near endless number of potential use cases—I’ve listed over 50 below.

But:

While it can do a lot, Ahrefs is only as powerful as the person using it (i.e. you!)

Truth is, many people get excited about everything the tool can do, sign up for an account (affiliate), and only get a fraction of the potential value from it.

I don’t want this to be you.

In this review, I’m going to break down the core areas of the tool and dive into 60+ step-by-step applications of the tool. I want you to immediately harness the power of this tool in your business and/or client campaigns. 

This is a monster review of Ahrefs, so I have included a table of content below so you can jump straight to a specific tool or topic of interest.

You can also download a PDF of this guide.

Let’s start from the top...

Here’s what you’ll see when you log in to Ahrefs (affiliate)—the Dashboard:

It gives you a high-level overview of all your web properties (i.e. any websites that you add to your account).

At a glance, it shows you:

• Ahrefs Rank: How your website stacks up against every other website in Ahrefs’ index. The lower, the better.
• Domain Rating (DR): A domain “authority” rating on a scale of 0-100
• URL Rating (UR): A URL “authority” rating (again, on a 100-point scale)
• Backlinks: Number of backlinks pointing to your entire website (i.e. across every page/post)
• Referring Domains: Number of unique domains linking to your domain
• Organic Keywords: Total number of organic keywords your website currently ranks for
• Tracked Keywords: The total number of tracked keywords (i.e. keywords you specifically told Ahrefs to track during the setup stage) your site is ranking for. And the positions in which each of those keywords is ranking. 

You can click any of the metrics in your dashboard to see more in-depth information.

Within your dashboard, there’s an option to add a new project. 

Once a project is added, it will show up in your dashboard.

Note: Your plan will dictate the number of websites you can add to your account. But it will be somewhere between 5-100. More info on Ahrefs plans and pricing here (affiliate).

Here’s how to do it:

Enter your domain and a project name. You should always use the “http + https” naming convention here:

Select keywords to track. These can be entered manually, or you can select them from the list:

Add a few competitors. Again, these can be entered manually (if you have specific competitors in mind). Or you can select them from the auto-generated list:

Finally, enter any keywords or online brand mentions you want to monitor. I recommend entering at least a few branded keywords (e.g. “robbie richards”, “www.robbierichards.com”, etc.):

And that’s it. You’re all set up and ready to go! 🙂

Each tool in the Ahrefs toolset has a specific use case.

We'll dive into the practical applications of each one, but here is a brief overview of the main tools you'll see in the top-level navigation bar:

Alerts (affiliate): Set up alerts (via email) for new keyword rankings, new backlinks, and online mentions. Very useful for link building (as we’ll discuss later!).

Site Explorer (affiliate): Analyze the link profile of any website or URL. Check backlinks, referring domains, anchors, organic traffic, broken links, and more.

Keywords Explorer (affiliate): Find thousands of relevant keyword ideas from a single parent topic. Gather accurate search volume data, keyword difficulty scores, and a bunch of other advanced metrics in the SERP overview report.

Content Explorer (affiliate): Find the most shared content on the web, related to any topic. Use advanced filters - referring domains, social shares, organic traffic and more - to find proven content topics for your website.

Rank Tracker (affiliate): Track the rankings of important keywords for your website and competitors. Shows where you’re ranking for tracked keywords. Also shows organic traffic estimates, SERP features, visibility, and more.

Site Audit (affiliate): Scan your website and quickly uncover hundreds of technical and on-page SEO issues.

Domain Comparison (affiliate): See how multiple domains (up to 5) stack up against each other across key SEO metrics - backlinks, domain ratings, content and more.

Link Intersect (affiliate): See who’s linking to your competitors (up to 10), but not to you. Also, quickly find all the websites linking to your competitors multiple times. An extremely powerful tool for finding high quality link prospects.

Batch Analysis (affiliate): Upload and analyze up to 200 domains or specific URLs.

SEO Toolbar (affiliate): Analyze domain and page-level SEO metrics directly in the SERP. 

That’s a lot of functionality.

But, this guide is about practical application. There’s no point in me listing a bunch of awesome features and reports. You can see all that on the Ahrefs homepage.  

In this guide, I’ll walk you step-by-step through how to actually use the Ahrefs toolset to improve your efficiency and performance in keyword research, link building, content strategy, PPC and more.

Let’s go.

Want to know who is linking to a domain or webpage?

How about the amount of organic traffic going to a specific page/post?

Maybe you want to know which specific keywords are driving traffic to a certain page/post?

Or perhaps you want to look at all the PPC keywords your top competitors are bidding on?...

Site Explorer can do all of this. And a LOT more.

But, it all begins with Ahrefs' HUGE link index...

This report shows every inbound link pointing ​to any domain or URL:

It also shows a bunch of other important metrics for each backlink:

• Referring page URL
• DR & UR of each referring page
• # of external backlinks on the referring page (i.e. how many backlinks your link is amongst)
• Destination URL
• Link anchor text
• Social signals for the referring page
• Date the link was first seen, last seen, or lost

This is very useful for uncovering how your competitors are building backlinks and domain/page authority.

The report has several handy filters:

• Link type: Dofollow, nofollow, educational, governmental, redirects, etc.
• Platform: Blogs, ecommerce sites, message boards, WordPress, etc.
• Language: English, Russian, etc.

Using these filters will allow you to get immediate visibility into the types of links your competitors are getting.

You can also sort by DR to quickly identify the highest authority link sources.

This report shows any new backlinks acquired by a domain or specific URL.

At the top of the report, you’ll see a calendar view. This shows backlinks acquired on a day-by-day basis:

And below it, you’ll see a list of all the new backlinks over a certain time period:

You can filter this view across several different timeframes: 

And a variety of other data points:

• Link type: Dofollow, nofollow, governmental, educational, etc.
• Platform: WordPress, Wikis, message boards, etc.
• Language: English, Russian, etc.

BOOM. You can now see all the links your competitor acquired in the last 30 days.

Sift through the links and take note of how they were built (e.g. guest post? editorial?), and where they were built. Next, reach out and grab those links for yourself!

Note: Do this every 30 days and you’ll have a never-ending supply of link prospects!

You can also use the backlink report filters to find your competitor’s most authoritative backlink sources that have the highest referral traffic potential:

This report is the same as the new backlinks report, only it shows lost backlinks:

Again, there’s a calendar view:

And a list-view:

And you have all the same filters as the new backlinks report:

If there are any good links in there, check out the page(s) and try to figure out why the link was dropped.

If it looks like a mistake, reach out to the site and reclaim the link!

Note: Do this every 30 days for some quick link wins.

This report shows any broken inbound links pointing to your website (or a particular URL):

Check why the link is broken—it will usually be a 404 error:

Then you have three options:

1. Reinstate the page on your website (by fixing the broken link)
2. Redirect the broken link (301) to another relevant page
3. Reach out to the site linking to the broken address, explain the issue, and tell them where that piece of content now resides on your website (hint: this is the option you should go for if the person linking to you made a mistake on their end)

Done! This is one of the first strategies I look at when planning link building strategies for my clients.

This report shows all the unique referring domains pointing to any website/webpage:

Note: You’ll notice that this list is ordered by the Domain Rating, by default. 

It also shows how many times each domain links to you:

And if you click the drop-down, you’ll see the actual pages they’re linking to/from:

You should reach out to these people and thank them, share their content, and start to build a relationship. Chances are these "advocates" will link out to you again in the future

Here’s a video showing how to use the referring domains report + a Google Custom Search Engine to build a TON of links through your existing advocates:

This report shows the anchor text people are using when linking to you:

You can use this report to identify unnatural, over-optimized anchor text that could put your site at risk of a potential Penguin penalty.

You should have a nicely balanced anchor text profile containing branded, generic, exact and partial match anchor text, as well as some naked URLs.

If your profile is more than 10-15% exact-match anchors (e.g. lots of people linking with “best wireless router” as the anchor), it could flag spam filters:

Disavow anything that is unnatural (or at least reach out and request an anchor text change).

Here’s a cool trick:

Look out for anchor text mentioning some kind of service or product:

If you spot this, click the drop-down arrow to reveal the actual domains/pages using this anchor text:

This is a good way to discover some quick opportunities.

Why? Because sites that link with this kind of anchor text are most likely linking to deep product/service-type pages (i.e. pages that are difficult to get links to).

This report shows the IP addresses of the domains linking to any website (or webpage):

By default, the list is grouped by networks (i.e. referring c-class IPs).

And it’s sorted by the number of domains falling under each c-class IP.

This is really useful.

Why? Because you can use this report to identify low-quality, spammy links...such as links from PBNs.

How to use this report:

Enter your domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Referring IPs.

Look for links from many domains with the same c-class IP.

Example:

32 links from 8 referring domains...all of which are under the same c-class IP.

If you spot anything like this, hit the drop-down arrow to reveal the actual domains/links:

In this instance, the links are all on the same c-class IP because they’re from .blogspot blogs.

So, it’s not really an issue.

BUT:

Sometimes you’ll uncover super-spammy links, which will then need to be disavowed.

This is one of my favorites! The report shows you the most linked-to pages on any domain:

By default, the report is sorted by referring domains (highest to lowest).

This report can provide a treasure trove of valuable insights about your competitor's content strategy and link building campaigns.

Specifically, it's useful for finding out what types of content attracts the most links in your industry.

You can then just copy what works 🙂

How to use this report:

Enter a competitors domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Pages > Best by Links

Do this for a few well-known websites in your vertical—this will give you a sense of what content types are driving the most links.

Also:

If you spot a page with a bunch of links that could be improved...hit it with the Skyscraper Technique to steal the links for yourself!

This report shows you which pages on a domain have attracted the most links during the past 1, 7, and 30 days:

This is useful for finding content ideas that attract links naturally...CONSISTENTLY.

Why is this helpful?

If a page is getting lots of links over a certain time period, it either:

• Ranks for keywords that journalists search for when looking for sources (and therefore attracts links naturally)
• Is a result of the site doing a lot of outreach for that piece of content (and if they're having success, you could have success too)
  
  

​Enter a competitors’ domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Pages > Best By Links Growth:

If you spot a page that has attracted a lot of links recently, take a look at the page and try to figure out why.

Note: You can also use the New Backlinks report to check out the actual source of the backlinks.

Next, publish something similar (but better) and replicate their success!

This report shows a domain's top content based on the number of social shares:

Again, this is a useful report for finding popular topic ideas.

How to use this report:

Enter a competitors domain into the Site Explorer.

Go to Pages > Top Content

You will now see the most popular content (ordered by number of social shares) on the domain:

These are GREAT topic ideas to steal 🙂 

Note: You can also filter the results by social channel to find which topics and types of content perform better on certain social media channels.

For example, a B2B company might want to sort the results by number of shares on LinkedIn. 

This report shows which domains any website is linking to: 

It also shows how many times each domain is being linked-to (domain-wide). And a bunch of useful metrics.

For example, I’ve linked to Moz.com 130 times:

How to use this report:

Enter your domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Outgoing Links > Linked Domains

Filter to only show dofollow links.

Sort the list by DR (from low-to-high):

This will uncover any potential "low quality" outbound links on your website—these should be removed (if they’re irrelevant/bad).

Spammy backlinks are BAD news for your website.

​How to find and disavow links in Ahrefs:

Enter your domain into Site Explorer and go to Backlink Profile > Backlinks

Filter to only show dofollow links. Sort the list by DR (from low-to-high).

Look for anything spammy, like so:

Hit the checkbox (on the left-hand side):

Scroll back to the top. You should see these two options:

Hit one of the options to add either the URL or entire domain to a disavow file.

This guide (affiliate) will walk you through the entire process of building a disavow file with Ahrefs. 

Backlink analysis...DONE.

Site Explorer isn't just backlinks and content metrics. It also provides powerful organic search insights. 

In fact, Ahrefs' keywords database—from which the data in all organic reports is pulled from—is one of the largest in the industry. 

Here is an overview of the organic search reports (and how to use them):

This report shows all the organic keywords you’re currently ranking for: 

It also tells you the Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty Score (KD), Cost-per-click (CPC), Position, and an estimate of the amount of traffic each keyword is sending to a given page each month.

How to use this report:

Enter your domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Organic Search > Organic Keywords

Add a positions filter to show only keywords where you currently in positions 5-10:

Hit apply.

You should prioritize these keywords.

Why? Because you currently rank on the first page...but not in the top 5.

Most of the traffic goes to pages ranking in positions 1-3:

If you optimize these pages, build a few links, and relaunch the content, you should be able to move up a few positions and boost your organic traffic:

I've used this exact process to drive fast organic traffic growth to this website, and my clients'.

This report shows keywords with improved rankings in the past week:

This is a great place to spot new keywords you’re ranking for.

How to use this report:

Enter your domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Organic Search > New

Look for keywords that don’t quite align with the content that is ranking. Next, create content better matched to those keywords.

Example:

My list of recommended tools currently ranks for the keyword “gmass tutorial”:

Yes, I mention Gmass on that list. But it isn’t a full Gmass tutorial.

It would probably be better if I created a piece of content specifically around that keyword/topic.

This is a quick and easy way to come up with relevant topic ideas.

This is another one of my favorite reports inside Ahrefs. It shows all the pages on a domain that attract the most organic traffic:

It also shows you the estimated value of the organic traffic (in $), the number of keywords the page is ranking for, the top traffic-generating keyword for each page (and its volume), and the position in which the URL ranks for each keyword.

How to use this report:

Enter a competitors’ domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Organic Search > Top Pages

Look at their top pages to identify topics and keywords that generate a lot of organic to their site. Scan the list and make a note of the keyword/topic ad the corresponding content types that are most relevant to your business.

This is a great report that can help you quickly start mapping out your main product/service pages, and blog assets.

You can also use the report to find loads of secondary keywords for your content, and drastically increase your organic footprint:

Use the URL filters to build a laser focused content strategy.

I've created an in-depth video walk-through of the entire process below. 

This report uncovers keywords that you don’t yet rank for, but your competitors do:

You can use this to quickly uncover gaps in your content strategy (i.e. topical gaps for which you could/should create content around).

The idea:

If multiple competitors are ranking for a keyword, you should also be able to. You just need to create content around the topic.

How to use this report:

Enter your domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Organic Search > Content Gap

Add 3 (or more) of your competitors, like so:

(Oh, and make sure to select the “Show keywords that at least 2 of the below targets rank for” option…)

Hit show keywords.

BOOM! You will now see all the keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t. It also shows you which position they’re ranking in:

You can see exactly which pages rank for those keywords by clicking the position number.

In a matter of minutes you'll have a list of content gaps you can immediately start filling on your site. 

This report lists all the domains competing with the one you entered into Site Explorer​. It orders the list based on the number of common keywords each site is ranking for. 

Example:

Here are the competing domains for www.robbierichards.com:

How to use this report:

Enter your domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Organic Search > Competing Domains

You should now see a list of domains that compete with your in the SERPs.

Hit the drop-down on any one of the domains. Click either “Backlinks” or “Organic Keywords”:

You can then drill-down deeper to find both:

• Keyword opportunities
• Backlink opportunities

This report shows individual pages (not domains) competing with you in the SERPs.

Example:

All of these webpages are competing with my list of 14 killer link building strategies in Google:

You can see the number of common keywords we’re both ranking for in the “Common” column.

How to use this report:

Enter your domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Organic Search > Competing Pages

Hit the drop-down on any competing page (ideally the one with the most overlap) and hit Backlinks.

This shows you the backlinks pointing to that page:

Because your page is similar, chances are you can also convince those pages to link to your page.

This is an incredible (and super-quick) way to build a list of targeted outreach prospects. 

Site Explorer isn’t limited to SEO-related use cases.

It also has PPC-related reports that sit on top of its massive keyword index.

Here’s an overview of the reports and how you can use them:

This report finds all the keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic (via PPC ads):

It shows you the keyword, search volume, CPC, percentage of traffic your competitor is receiving from that keyword, and the landing page URL they are sending traffic to from the ads.

How to use this report:

Enter a competitors domain (i.e. a company with a similar product and/or target market) into Site Explorer.

Go to Paid Search > PPC Keywords

BOOM. You now have insights into EXACTLY what keywords your competitors are bidding on.

This report uncovers the exact ad copy your competitors are using in their PPC ads:

Don’t forget: ad copy is perhaps THE most important part of your ad.

You can uncover the keywords your competitors are bidding on in the PPC Keywords report…

BUT:

Unless you know how to convert those impressions into actual clicks and traffic, you’ll never get people to your site to convert.

This is where the PPC Ads report comes in handy—you can see the exact ad copy your competitors are using to win the click in the SERPs and drive traffic to their campaign landing pages.

How to use this report:

Enter a competitor's domain (i.e. a company with a similar product and/or target market) into Site Explorer.

Go to Paid Search > PPC Ads

Check out their ad copy and figure out how they’re winning the click in the SERPs.

Here are a few things to look for:

• Power words (e.g. toxic, crazy, incredible, etc)
• Numbers
• Stats (e.g. “the #1 ranked SEO tool by SEO professionals”)
• Emotional hooks

This report uncovers the top landing pages your competitors are sending PPC traffic to:

Why is this useful?

Because once you’ve won the click (see the previous report - PPC Ads), you need to convert the traffic. Otherwise it is all for nothing.

How to use this report:

Enter a competitors’ domain into Site Explorer.

Go to Paid Search > Top Landing Pages

Look at and monitor competitor landing pages over time.

If they’re live for consecutive months, you can likely infer it is converting well. So model your landing pages off these. 

IMPORTANT: You should always start with the biggest competitors. These folks spend a lot on PPC and testing. So, you can get better insights from them since they are constantly testing to optimize their ad budget. Don't try to reinvent the wheel 🙂

Most of Ahrefs’ backlink analysis tools reside within Site Explorer.

But there are a few extra ones hidden under the “more” subheading in the top menu:

Don't let the placement fool you. These tools are all extremely powerful.

Here’s an overview of each of the tools (plus practical applications):

This report uncovers link opportunities by finding websites that are linking to competitors, but NOT to you:

NOTE: It’s very similar to the Content Gap report, only it reports on links instead of keywords.

Basically, if a website is linking to one or more of your competitors, chances are you can probably convince them to link to you, too.

How to use this report:

Go to Ahrefs’ Link Intersect tool.

Enter 3 (or more) competitors domains. Or specific URLs.

Hit show link opportunities.

NOTE: Make sure to choose “show keywords that ANY of the below targets rank for” under the drop-down.

You will now see which sites are linking to 3 (or more) of your competitors...but NOT you:

You can dig deeper into exactly where these links reside by clicking the corresponding numbers under your competitors domains:

Then you can pitch your content to these websites, too. 

This tool lets you get grab Ahrefs’ metrics in bulk (for up to 200 URLs/domains at a time!):

It’s particularly useful for link-prospecting—you can run hundreds of URLs through the tool, export the results to CSV, then quickly qualify your targets.


Here’s how to use the tool to qualify guest post opportunities:

Paste a list of “write for us” type pages into the Batch Analysis tool (hint: you can find these by scraping Google). I walk through how to do this here.

Set “mode” to domain/*

Hit start analysis.

You will soon get back a report that looks something like this:

This gives you a bunch of stats for each domain, including:

• Number of keywords the site ranks for
• Estimated organic traffic.
• Domain Rating (DR)
• Referring domains
• Ahrefs’ Rank
• And more

You can see how easy it would be to qualify link prospects like this.

With guest post opportunities, I usually look for sites that are receiving organic traffic, and have a DR of 30+. But, you can filter however you like 🙂

This final report compares up to 5 domains at a time, and shows how they stack up against each other across a range of metrics:

You can use this report to get a high-level view of how you stack up against the competition.

How to use this report:

Go to the Domain Comparison tool.

Enter your domain in the #1 spot, then up to 4 competitors.

Hit compare.

You should see how your site stacks up against the competition. Use this information to see where you need to improve.

Example:

I can see that the number of referring domains pointing to my website is a little weak, compared to the competition.

This will be an area of focus for me going forward 🙂 

The tool provides graphs so you can measure historical performance:

There is a reason the Keywords Explorer (affiliate) is now ranked one of the best keyword research tools on the market.

Not only does is boast one of the largest keyword indexes on the planet along with a treasure trove of data, it also provides a TON of practical applications.

The report shows the search volume for each keyword (note: not only does this fill the gap in Google Keyword Planner, which no longer shows KW volumes, but it’s also calculated using clickstream data. This makes it more accurate than GKP anyway!)...

It also provides a ton of other standard metrics (e.g. Keyword Difficulty, CPC), as well as unique data points around clicks per search, return rate, and SERP history reports.

You can search for keyword ideas across multiple different search engines - Google, YouTube, Amazon, Bing etc - and save your keywords into lists (more on this later!).

How to use this report:

Go to Keywords Explorer—you should see something that looks like this:

You have two options:

1. Enter a bunch of keywords manually (separated by commas)
2. Upload a list of keywords from CSV

Either way, Ahrefs will show stats and suggestions based off the keywords you enter/upload.

Let’s look at a quick example:

Here’s what the Keyword Explorer shows you by default:

Basically, a top-level overview across ALL of the keywords you’ve entered.

Here’s an overview of all the key metrics shown here:

1. Keyword Difficulty (KD) Score: An estimate as to how difficult it will be to rank for a keyword (on a scale from 0-100). KD is a reliable indicator since it is based on page-level link data, not domain level data.
   
   
2. CPC: How much you would pay per click for a given keyword in paid search. 
   
   
3. Volume: How often a keyword is searched per month in a given country. 
   
   
4. Clicks: An estimate as to how many clicks the search results are likely to get (note: this is usually lower for SERPs with featured snippets etc).
   
   
5. CPS (Click-per-search): An estimate as to how many different results the average person clicks on.
   
   
6. Return Rate (RR): A relative metric that shows how often the same person searched for a given keyword over a 30 day period.
   
   
7. SERP Features (SF): The number of different features - ads, videos, featured snippets, People Also Ask etc - that display in the SERP for a given keyword.
   
   
8. Parent Topic: This shows if you can rank for your target keyword whilst also targeting a similar keyword with more search volume.

As the Keyword Explorer (affiliate) isn’t really divided into “reports” the same way the Site Explorer is, I’m going to treat this section of the review a little differently.

Instead of showing actionable insights for each of the reports, I’m going to list a few ways I use the Keyword Explorer to drive results across personal and client projects.

Here we go:

Enter some keywords into Keywords Explorer.

Go to Keyword Ideas > All (on the left-hand sidebar).

You will now see a list of keyword ideas based off of the keywords you entered:

You can see in the image above that from entering just 4 keywords, Ahrefs’ has come up with over 24,000 similar keyword ideas!

If you want to get a bit more granular with these keyword ideas, try selecting one of the following options from the left-hand sidebar:

• All: Every keyword suggestion Ahrefs finds.
  
  
• Phrase match: All keywords that contain the exact phrase(s) you entered. Example: If you entered “SEO Tools” into KW explorer, this report will show keywords like “best SEO tools” and “SEO tools for bloggers”.
  
  
• Having same terms: Similar to “phrase match” but this report doesn’t care about word order. Example: If you entered “SEO Tools”, it would show both “best SEO Tools” and “tools for SEO that are the best” (similar to broad match modifiers in paid search)
  
  
• Also rank for: A list of keywords generated by looking at the other keywords pages in the top 10 (for the keywords you entered) rank for.
  
  
• Search suggestions: All keywords suggested via Autocomplete (for the keywords you entered).
  
  
• Newly discovered: Keywords that have entered the Ahrefs database recently (note: this is super useful for finding new keywords/topics that people are searching for recently).
  
  
• Questions: A list of question-based keyword ideas that can be used for top and mid-funnel content topics, or even FAQs on conversion-focused assets such as product and/or category pages.

These reports can generate thousands of quality keyword ideas in a matter of minutes:

You'll be able to use 10 different filters - keyword difficulty, word count, search volume etc - to quickly surface the best keyword opportunities for your business.

Select any keyword within Keywords Explorer and you’ll be taken to a report that looks like this:

Near the bottom of the page, you will see the SERP position history:

In simple terms, this shows results in the top 10 (for the keyword you selected) that have fluctuated over time—it shows a visual representation of this, so you can see which results are fluctuating in and out of the top 10.

Here are two ways to identify opportunities with this:

Let’s say you identify a page that’s recently improved their rankings dramatically for your target keyword.

They’re now sitting in the top 10.

For example, we can see that for the keyword “SEO tools”, Lunametrics have recently entered the top 10...almost from nowhere!

The question to ask if you see this is: WHY?

Chances are they’re doing something right and that there is a lot you can learn from them.

So, grab their URL and paste it into Site Explorer—more often than not, you’ll see that they’ve been doing a lot of link building, or they have epic content that is riding off the back existing domain authority. 

If this is the case, you now have a ton of prospects you can reach out to in order to build links to your page, too!

Similarly, if you notice a keyword with a lot of fluctuations in the SERP history report, like this:

This means Google is constantly giving other newer assets a chance.

And if this is the case, it’s probably a keyword you stand a chance at ranking for.

SERP Overview gives you a comprehensive look at the top 10 ranking pages.

Here’s an example for the keyword “best SEO Tools”:

You can use this report to figure out exactly what might be required to compete with these pages and rank for this keyword.

Here are a few things to look at:

• Domain Rating (DR): This shows how each of the websites stack up in terms of link and overall domain authority. It can give a good indication as to the caliber of sites that generally rank for this keyword—if you aren’t in the same ballpark as them, you’ll need to attract a lot of links directly to the page in order to compete for rankings.
  
  
• UR (URL Rating): This shows how “authoritative” each of the pages are; again, the higher the average competition, the more links you’re going to need to attract directly to your page (note: I weigh page-level authority more than domain-level authority when assessing keyword competition).
  
  
• Domains: The number of referring domains pointing to each of the pages in the SERP. If this is really high, then you’re definitely going to need some serious links to stand any chance of ranking in the top 10.
  
  
• Traffic: This is an estimate as to how much organic traffic each of the pages receives each month—this is useful for weighing up whether or not the reward is worth the effort.
  
  
• Content Type: Pay attention to the types of content that are ranking. If you notice a lot of blog posts are ranking, don't try to target a keyword with a product page.

Mini Case Study: Last year I used the checklist above to qualify a competitive keyword for a client who sells interactive content marketing software. After looking at the domain rating, and page-level link factors I determined it was a very "gettable" keyword. 

BUT:

The client was targeting the term "interactive infographics" with a product page. After looking at the SERP Overview report it became apparent that most of the content ranking for that topic were actually blog posts:

So:

We created a long form blog post targeting the term. Now, it ranks highly in the SERP and drives thousands of targeted visitors to the client's website each month. 

Rank Tracker does what it says on the tin—it allows you to track rankings across your websites.

I know from experience that there are a lot of rank tracking tools out there (and some of them are pretty good...even the free ones), but in my opinion, this is yet another area Ahrefs shines.

Not only can you track actual rankings, but also:

You can track SERP features…

You can see the estimated traffic brought in by each of the keywords...

You can see position increases/decreases​...

​And much more, across both mobile and desktop devices.

Here’s what you’ll see in your Rank Tracker dashboard when you add a website:

Here’s a breakdown:

• Visibility: The percentage of clicks that land on your website (across all your tracked keywords—the higher, the better here!)
• Average position: The average position across all of your tracked keywords.
• Traffic: The amount of estimated monthly organic traffic you’re getting across the board for all of your tracked keywords.
• SERP features: Very cool report—this tells you how many SERP features (e.g. featured snippets) there are for your tracked keywords; and how many you own!
• Positions: Shows increases/decreases in positions across the board—very useful for getting a sense of how things are progressing for your target keywords.

Here are a few actionable ways to use each of the reports within Rank Tracker:

This report gives an overview of everything related to your rankings.

Here’s what it looks like:

NOTE: You can toggle between each of the options at the top of the report (i.e. visibility, average position, etc.) to change the data displayed on the graph. This is useful for seeing a visual representation of the data.

If you scroll down, you’ll see individualized data for each tracked keyword:

You can see:

• Position
• Traffic
• Volume
• KD
• SERP Features
• URL
• Last updated

Here are the two numbers I recommend paying most attention to:

By looking at these, you can tell two things:

1. If your SEO efforts are paying off (i.e. if you’re getting increased rankings for your target keywords)
2. If increased rankings are translating into actual traffic (you may have to rethink your strategy if not!)

This report shows you how you stack up against your competitors (in terms of rankings):

But it doesn’t just give you an overview—it shows you how you stack up on a keyword by keyword basis:

This is super-useful for seeing where your competitors have the edge. And also where they might be focusing their efforts.

This report shows a TON of metrics for all of the keywords you’re tracking:

In short, this is very similar to the “metrics” report within Keywords Explorer, so I won’t go into too much detail here. However, you can see this within Rank Tracker, it only shows metrics for the keywords you’re currently tracking.

This report tracks position changes for the keywords you’re tracking:

It gives you an overview of changes over the past 1, 7, 30, and 90 days. And, of course, it shows stats for “all time”, too.

Stats are divided into both mobile and desktop views:

Content Explorer (affiliate) finds the most popular content on ANY topic, and allows you to filter and sort the results by a number of different metrics - domain rating, referring domains, organic traffic, share counts by channel and more:

Enter a keyword or topic to analyze:

Before we dive into the results, here are some stats for the Content Explorer:

Yep...that’s 1.1 billion pages in the content index!

As you would expect, this gives you a LOT of content results for pretty much any keyword/topic you could imagine.

Here are the results for “link building”:

That’s 123K+ results!

And for each one of these results, you will see the following metrics:

Here’s an overview of the metrics:

• Word Count
• Publish Date
• Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Pinterest share counts
• Domain Rating
• Referring Domains
• Organic Traffic
• Traffic Value

You’ll be able to sort the results by each of the metrics listed above.

And if you hit the “details” button, you’ll see a bunch of useful charts:

You'll be able to see a complete list of all the keywords a piece of content is ranking for, along with all the domains and backlinks pointing to it:

Enough of the features, let's jump into the application...

Enter any keyword into Content Explorer.

Let’s go for “keyword research”.

Then filter ONLY for content with 100+ referring domains:

This will show you all results related to the topic you entered (in this case, “keyword research”) with 100 or more referring domains pointing at the page:

All of this content is clearly popular—this means it’s easy to find skyscraper content opportunities.

Go to Details >> Backlinks to see all the links pointing to each particular page:

Then, simply create something better and reach out to these people to steal the links 🙂

Most keywords with decent search volume require a TON of links to rank in the top 10, right?

True. But there are some exceptions.

Content Explorer can help you find these exceptions (low-hanging opportunities).

Here’s how to do it:

Enter a keyword into Content Explorer.

Filter ONLY for results with 5 referring domains (or fewer):

Filter only for results with 1,000 estimated organic visitors per month (or more):

You will now see content that has at least 1000 organic visitors per month, yet has achieved this with no more than 5 referring domains pointing to the page.

NOTE: If this returns no results, try increasing the number of referring domains to 10. Or decreasing the amount of traffic to 500. Results will vary depending on your vertical and the keyword(s) you enter:

Ahrefs Alerts (affiliate) allows you to trigger alerts for any of the following events:

• You get a new backlink to a particular domain (or URL).
• You rank for a new keyword on a certain domain (note: you can also choose to ONLY be alerted for keywords of a certain volume, if you like).
• A keyword is mentioned somewhere on the web.

Basically, it’s like a more granular, powerful version of Google Alerts.

Here’s how to set up an alert:

Go to Ahrefs Alerts.

Choose between a “Backlinks”, “Keywords”, or “Mentions” alert.

Hit the “+ New Alert” button:

This will bring up an input box that looks something like this:

NOTE: This is the input box for a “backlinks” alert—it will look slightly different for the others.

Here is one of the actionable ways I use this tool:

Link building is one of the most difficult and time consuming SEO tasks.

So, it’s worth making sure you have every link you deserve, and they stay live. 

You can use Ahrefs Alerts to monitor brand mentions without links, and reclaim them.

Here’s how to do it:

Add a new “mentions” alert:

In the “search query” box, enter a brand name (or something related to your brand):

Add your own domain in the “blocked domains” box—this will prevent Ahrefs alerts from telling you about mentions on your own domain (which are pointless):

Add a recipient email address (if you want email alerts, that is—if not, toggle the email alerts to the off position):

And finally, select the interval. There are 3 choices here:

• Real-time
• Daily
• Weekly

I recommend weekly. Otherwise you end up with a ton of emails!

Click “Add”.

Ahrefs will now alert you when your brand name is mentioned on the web. You can check out the mention and double-check they’re linking to you.

If they aren’t, shoot them an email and ask if they’d kindly add your link to the article (as they already mentioned your brand name). Most people should say yes.

That’s it—you just landed yourself an extra link in no time at all!

Site Audit (affiliate) is one of the newest features in the Ahrefs toolset:

It crawls your website and identifies a range of technical and on-page SEO issues that might be negatively affecting your SEO.

Things like:

Site speed;
Missing HTML tags (e.g. title, description, etc.);
Thin/duplicate content issues;
Indexation/accessibility issues (canonicals, redirects, exclusions);
Localization (international SEO) errors;
Internal links and orphaned pages;
Coding issues...

And a LOT more.

You'll be able to see it all across the various audit reports Ahrefs generates following the site crawl:

The best part: It’s super-easy to use.

Here’s the basics of using the Site Audit tool:

First, go to Site Audit and hit “+ New Project”.

You will be prompted to enter a domain, and name your project:

Hit “Next” and Ahrefs will ask you to verify domain ownership:

As you can see, there are a few ways to do this.​

NOTE: You cannot use Site Audit to audit a competitors website. It MUST be a site that you own (or at least have access to).

You’ll then have an opportunity to adjust the crawl settings:

My advice here? Leave everything as default unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

And finally, you can setup a schedule for the crawl:

This is useful if you want to stay on top of SEO issues. It automates the ​entire site crawl process. 

And that’s it—you’re ready to go.

Here are a couple of actionable ways you can use the Site Audit tool:

Go to Reports > Internal Pages > HTML tags.

This will show if (and how many) missing title, description, and h1 tags you have:

Click on any of these (e.g. the red meta description bar) and it will show you exactly where these issues reside:

This makes identifying on-page issues issues super easy—previously, you would have had to run a tool like Screaming Frog to gather these insights.

And when you consider that the Site Audit tool can be scheduled to run automatically, you can stay on top of these issues at all times without much effort.

There a dozens of practical applications of this tool I could list, but the team over at Ahrefs put together an awesome 16-step SEO audit guide here that will walk through it all. Highly recommend you check it out if you plan to do any kind of site audit.

And if you prefer to watch video, here is a great overview from Ahrefs' head of content, Josh Hardwick: 

The Ahrefs Toolbar (affiliate) is a Chrome browser add-on that lets you view data from Ahrefs directly in your web browser.

It’s totally free to install—just go to this page (affiliate) and hit the appropriate download link:

If the toolbar is installed correctly, you should see the following icon next to the search bar in your browser:

Click this and it will activate the toolbar, which looks like this (hint: it will appear at the top of your browser): but you have the option to position it at the bottom.

Here are the metrics it will show in the browser:

• Domain Rating (DR)
• URL Rating (UR)
• Referring Domains (RD) (at both domain-level and page-level)
• Backlinks (BL) (at both domain-level and page-level)
• Search Traffic (ST) (at both domain-level and page-level)
• Keywords (KW) (at both domain-level and page-level)
• Ahrefs Rank (AR)

This is super-useful when link prospecting—you can simply hit the Ahrefs toolbar icon to see stats for any website. This makes decision-making super quick and easy.

Oh, and the toolbar also displays these metrics directly within the SERPs:

Plus, you can click the download icon (top-left) to export the SERP for rapid link prospecting:

You will get access to the Ahrefs API with your account.

Note: API credits differ depending on the account level you have. More information here (affiliate).

The API can be used with a number of third-party tools such as Screaming Frog and URL Profiler (affiliate).

Example:

In my premium training course, The SEO Playbook, I show you how to map link data from Ahrefs to thousands of pages at a time by simply connecting the Ahrefs API key inside URL Profiler:

Once you've checked the Ahrefs box, you'll be asked to enter your API access token (from your account):

Here are the metrics you can pull back with the API:

• Domain Rating (DR)
• Backlinks
• Referring Domains

• URL Rating (UR)
• Backlinks
• Referring Domains

In the context of a content audit, I can use this link data to help make page-level strategic recommendations on whether to keep, remove, improve or consolidate existing assets. 

Issues will arise.

Maybe there is a technical error. No software is perfect.
​
Maybe you're unsure about how to use a certain feature in the tool. Everything has a learning curve.

Regardless of what you're confronted with, Ahrefs will be there to help out. 

Here is what they offer:

Help: Here you can find a bunch of resources written by Ahrefs team members that will help with most of the questions you have. It’s essentially a fully-searchable knowledge base which covers issues relating to billing & account access, metrics, use cases, best practices, and more.

Live Chat: Ahrefs uses Intercom on their website. You’ll see this in the bottom right-hand corner as you’re using the tool. The support team is always only one click away. Just hit the “New Conversation” button to begin chatting.

Academy: Ahrefs have recently launched the Ahrefs Academy (affiliate). It contains actionable video tutorials showing how to get the most value from the tool. These videos as useful for all skill levels. 

In fact, they just launched an advanced course called "Blogging for Business" that provides over 5hrs of video tutorials walking you step-by-step through how they used Ahrefs to help grow their blog to over 100,000 monthly visitors, and 8 figures in annual recurring revenue:

And, if for any reason these three options don’t solve your problem, the Ahrefs’ team members are always responsive. I’ve reached out to them many times in the past and a response is never more than a few hours away.

You can find contact details for their team members here (affiliate).

By now, you know how powerful Ahrefs' insights can be for your business.

But, you probably still have one BIG question 🙂

How much does it cost?

Here are the current prices and plans (affiliate):

As you can see in the screenshot, there’s an option to start a trial of either the Lite or Standard plan for $7. I highly recommend you do this.

It's a low risk way to take the tool for a test drive and see if it is a good fit for your business.

Ahrefs is without a doubt one of the most powerful SEO/PPC/Content/Audit/Competitor Analysis "toolsets" (not tools) on the market.

While we covered a lot of practical applications of the tool in this review, we really only scratched the surface.

The fact that all the tools integrate seamlessly with one another provides an endless stream of potential use cases to help you crush the competition, and grow your business. 

There is so much functionality housed under one roof:

Backlink analysis.

Keyword research.

Content analysis. 

PPC research.

Competitor analysis. 

Rank tracking.

Site audits.

And more...

It's now a central component of the tool stack we use to run our agency, and drive growth for our clients.

And I'm not the only fan. Many other SEOs and content marketers have voiced the same sentiment here, here, here and here.

Grab a $7 trial (affiliate) and give Ahrefs a test drive today!