Ahrefs is a powerhouse in the SEO world. If you’re serious about building a strong digital presence, it’s the tool you’ll want on your team. From keyword research to backlink analysis, Ahrefs is packed with features that give you a holistic view of your website’s performance and that of your competitors. Let’s break down every important feature Ahrefs offers and look at its pricing plans.

Top Features

Ahrefs comes with more demanding top features for a Digital Marketing person. With its precise matrices and vast database, it becomes the top choice of every person who is in SEO or in Digital Marketing. Let’s discuss Ahrefs top features and see what can you do with them.

1. Site Explorer

This is Ahrefs’ bread and butter. Site Explorer gives you an in-depth look at any website’s organic traffic and backlink profile. It’s great for spying on competitors or just understanding where your traffic is coming from. You’ll see the top pages of any site, their backlinks, and the keywords they’re ranking for. This alone can help shape your entire SEO strategy.

What it offers:

• Organic Traffic Research: See what keywords a site ranks for and how much traffic it’s pulling.
• Backlink Analysis: Uncover the websites linking back to any URL and dig deep into anchor texts and link strength.
• Paid Traffic Insights: Analyze ads competitors are running and the keywords they’re bidding on.

2. Keywords Explorer

Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer is a goldmine for keyword research. You can plug in a keyword and get a full view of its search volume, difficulty, and potential for traffic. The tool goes beyond basic metrics by providing click data and search intent, helping you pick the right keywords for content creation.

What it offers:

• Keyword Difficulty: Estimates how hard it would be to rank for a keyword.
• Click Metrics: Shows the number of clicks on organic results, not just search volume.
• SERP Overview: Visualizes the top-ranking pages for any keyword.

3. Site Audit

Keeping a website in good health is crucial for rankings, and Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool helps you do just that. It crawls your website and provides an easy-to-read health score. From there, you can spot technical issues like broken links, duplicate content, and sluggish loading speeds.

What it offers:

• Health Score: A simple percentage that tells you how well your site is performing technically.
• Detailed Reports: Clear breakdowns of issues with explanations on how to fix them.
• Visual Crawl Maps: See how search engines are crawling your site.

4. Content Explorer

Have you ever wondered which topics in your niche are really taking off? Content Explorer helps you find the most shared and linked-to content across the web. It’s an excellent tool for identifying content trends and what resonates with audiences.

What it offers:

• Most Shared Content: Find out what’s gaining traction on social media.
• Link Analysis: See which pieces of content have the most backlinks.
• Topic Ideas: Discover new topics to cover that are already popular.

5. Rank Tracker

SEO is a long game, so it’s crucial to monitor your rankings over time. Rank Tracker does exactly that. It lets you track your progress for specific keywords and provides regular updates, helping you understand whether your SEO efforts are paying off.

What it offers:

• Daily Updates: Get updated ranking positions for tracked keywords.
• Performance Trends: Visualize how your rankings have changed over time.
• Segmented Views: Filter data based on desktop or mobile rankings.

6. Backlink Checker

The importance of backlinks in SEO can’t be overstated. Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker lets you see who’s linking to your site (or a competitor’s), and it does so with precision.

What it offers:

• Link Strength: View the strength of each backlink with Domain Rating and URL Rating.
• Anchor Texts: Analyze the text that’s being used in the backlinks pointing to your site.
• Historical Data: See how a site’s backlink profile has changed over time.

6. Ahrefs Backlink Analysis Features

Ahrefs is renowned for its in-depth Backlink Analysis. This feature lets you see which sites are linking to you or your competitors. You can break down the analysis to examine.

What it offers:

• Backlink Growth: Track how a site’s backlinks have grown or shrunk over time.
• New and Lost Backlinks: Understand which links are fresh or which ones you’ve lost recently.
• Link Strength: Use Domain Rating and URL Rating to determine the authority of backlinks.

Ahrefs Terms and Metrics

Ahrefs uses various terms and metrics that are critical for understanding SEO performance. Here’s a deep dive into the key terms:

• Domain Rating (DR): This measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile compared to others in Ahrefs’ database. Higher DR indicates a stronger website.
• URL Rating (UR): A metric showing the strength of a specific webpage’s backlink profile.
• Referring Domains: The number of unique domains linking to your site.
• Anchor Text: The clickable text in a hyperlink is important for understanding how other sites link to yours.

Common Ahrefs Terms

Some terms you’ll encounter frequently in Ahrefs:

• Organic Search Traffic: The amount of traffic coming to a site from non-paid search results.
• Position: The rank of a website for a particular keyword in search engine results.
• Top Pages: Pages on a website receiving the most organic traffic.
• Ahrefs Rank: A global rank is given to websites based on their backlink profile.

Organic Keywords and Organic Search Traffic

The Organic Keywords feature shows you all the keywords a site is ranking for in organic search. You can filter these results by country, position, traffic volume, and more. This helps identify which keywords are performing well and may highlight missed opportunities.

The Organic Search Traffic tool offers insights into how much traffic a website is getting from search engines for specific keywords. You can drill down by individual pages, keywords, or domains.

• Example of How I Used This Feature to Find an Awesome Keyword

Let’s say you’re looking to create content around digital marketing. You start by plugging in a competitor’s site into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. Next, you navigate to the Organic Keywords section to see the specific keywords they’re ranking for that bring in traffic. Maybe you notice that a keyword like “social media tools” is driving significant traffic, but competition is high.

After diving deeper into Keyword Explorer, you notice a related but less competitive phrase like “best social media tools for small businesses.” This gives you a more achievable keyword target while still aligning with your overall strategy.

Other Ahrefs Features

Here are some additional features that round out Ahrefs’ extensive toolset:

• Top Pages: Displays a site’s most visited pages, allowing you to see what content is performing best.
• Content Gap: Identifies keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t, giving you clear content opportunities.
• Batch Analysis: Compare up to 200 URLs at once to assess backlink profiles, keyword rankings, and traffic.
• Alerts: Get notified when you gain or lose backlinks, when competitors rank for new keywords, or when a new content opportunity arises.

Link Intersect

Link Intersect is a clever tool that compares your site’s backlink profile with that of your competitors. It identifies domains linking to your competitors but not to you, opening doors for outreach opportunities.

For example, if multiple competitors are linked from a certain website, it might make sense to try to get a link from that site as well. This helps narrow down actionable link-building strategies based on solid data.

Ahrefs Paid Plans and Pricing

Ahrefs is robust and comes with a price tag reflecting its extensive capabilities. Here’s what you can expect in terms of plans:

1. Lite – $99/month: Best for beginners or smaller websites. You’ll get access to Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and Rank Tracker, but with limits on data.
2. Standard—$199/month: This is the most popular plan. It comes with more data, including full access to Content Explorer and Site Audit and more reports per day.
3. Advanced—$399/month: This plan is for serious marketers and businesses. It offers everything in the Standard plan but with even more data and users.
4. Enterprise – $999/month: Tailored for agencies and large companies with specific needs, giving you maximum access to every feature Ahrefs offers.

Final Thoughts

Ahrefs is undeniably a top player in the SEO game. Whether you’re analyzing backlinks, tracking rankings, or researching keywords, it’s got the tools you need to succeed. While the price may be steep for some, the sheer depth of data and insights it provides more than makes up for it. If you’re serious about optimizing your website and staying ahead of competitors, Ahrefs is an investment worth making.