How to Use Ahrefs For Keyword Research?

What is Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is one of the top SEO software suites in the world, with tons of features and tools that are each aligned with ensuring your website is equipped to rank highly on search engine results pages. There are many different types of Ahrefs checker tools, some of the most popular include the Ahrefs site audit tool, the keyword ranking tool and many more that are each designed to improve the health of your webpages SEO. 

Ahrefs was created in 2011 with the initial idea that it was going to be a platform to analyse backlinks. The Ahrefs backlinks grew to include a number of other features and tools, though the backlink technology is still widely perceived to be one of the top tools to use! As the platform grew and the type of tools offered by Ahrefs began to grow, the platform and the number of users grew with it, leading to it becoming one of the most used SEO platforms with many different tools that are used across different cities and countries across the globe. The platform is now home to one of the top SEO suites, with many different types of tools that are designed to improve how a website functions and ranks on search engine results pages. 

Ahrefs is a suite of SEO tools that are used by a number of different people and many different kinds of businesses use the platform to analyse and correct issues that crop up with their website. With tools like the auditing technology offered, having an Ahrefs account and access to the platform ensures that you are able to do a whole bunch of corrections to your web pages and website without having to look for any other tools to help out. 

What is Ahrefs Used For?

Ahrefs is a software suite of SEO tools that are used for many different things, but the main idea behind each of the features is that they are there to help ensure you give your website the best possible chance to rank highly on search engines results pages! There are many different functions, features and parts of a website that we do not notice and cannot see that may impact how well search engine crawlers are able to read your content. Without tools to pick up on, keep track of and fix these issues, they would otherwise go unnoticed and a webpage would receive fewer sight visits and far less organic traffic. Using tools like Ahrefs is also handy when it comes to analysing the competition and seeing what they are doing to improve their SEO and search engine results page standing. These kinds of tools are vital if you are hoping to get ahead of your competitors and they can outline exactly what a brand is doing right and what they could improve on so that you can use this information to do the same! 

Is Ahrefs Free For Users?

Ahrefs has a suite of free SEO tools that are available for anyone to use, though if you are wanting to have access to all that this toolset has to offer, you are unfortunately going to have to sign up and pay. To ensure that you only pay for what you use, Ahrefs has designed a 4-tiered price plan program, with Lite, Standard, Advanced and Agency packages each designed to provide coverage for certain people or groups. The Ahrefs price package that you choose entirely depends on what you are hoping to accomplish with Ahrefs, and as the packages move upward and more features are included, so do the different prices. The prices are offered to customers with the option to pay monthly or sign up for an annual payment scheme, this annual payment option offers two months for free. 

While Ahrefs is not associated with being a free SEO tool, the prices offered by this platform are competitive and measure below some of the larger names in the business. Brands like Semrush come in at a higher price and do not offer as many of the unique features and additions that Ahrefs does. 

How is Ahrefs Different Compared to Other Tools?

Ahrefs is one of the top platforms to use when it comes to improving the health of a website. One of the reasons why this tool is specifically used, as opposed to other kinds of tools, is because it has many different features within it, ensuring that Ahrefs users will not have to use any other platform or tool when an issue crops up. This suite of different SEO features offers users a sort of one-stop-shop platform where they are able to use multiple tools to manage their website. Having different accounts with different types of platforms, each offering one kind of tool can be costly and it can also become very confusing. With an Ahrefs account, you no longer have to worry about this as all of the tools you need can be easily found on the platform! 

Along with having many different types of tools and features to use on your own website, Ahrefs is also incredibly popular because it allows for you to measure and see your competitors strengths and weaknesses in ways that have never been done before! By being able to see exactly what your competitors are doing right, and what they can improve on, you are sure to get ahead of them and achieve better SEO results and receive more organically sourced traffic! 

What are The Ahrefs Terms and Metrics?

URL Rating (UR)

In order to determine the quality of the backlinks of a website, you would need to determine the URL rating. These ratings are scored in a range from 1 to 100, with 100 being seen as the strongest rating to receive. backlinks are an incredibly important part of SEO and having valuable and highly rated backlinks appearing on your page can go a long way to ensure that you are ranked highly on search engine results pages. Backlinks that score poorly can actually do damage to your rankings, as search engines like Google associate poor backlinks with poor websites. This is an incredibly popular metric provided by Ahrefs since having good backlinks directly impacts your SEO and search engine results page placements, so be sure to carefully consider your URL ratings when placing links on webpages. 

Domain Rating (DR)

Domain rating is another metric that is used to measure backlinks and it is also rated on a  scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the highest and strongest rating to receive. Domain ratings are there to analyse link popularity and rank the domains accordingly. While the URL rating is there to measure the quality of the web pages that are being linked to the webpage that you are researching, the domain rating measures the quality of the domains as opposed to the actual pages. While these two types of ratings are different, they each provide you with a ton of valuable information and both ratings should be taken into consideration when looking for backlinks. 

Ahrefs Rank

The Afrefs ranking metric takes each of the websites on the internet and ranks them according to their backlink strength. So the website that has the strongest backlink profile would take up the number one spot on the Ahrefs rank. Though this tool provides a good idea of what different websites have the best backlink potential, it is not necessarily a good indicator of measuring how well your own backlinks are doing. You may be increasing your backlinks and improving your ranking while still lowering according to the Ahrefs rank. This is because as you are developing and improving on your own backlinks, there are millions of other websites that are doing the exact same things and increasing their ranking score. 

Cost Per Click

This cost per click data is taken from Google Adwords and it is associated as being one of the more volatile metrics to measure. The cost per click amount generally fluctuates as the cost of advertisements and the availability of ad spend money increases and decreases, the more money you have to increase the number of ads, the more your cost per click amount will be. The Ahrefs cost per click numbers are taken from averages and they are therefore not considered to be 100% accurate. 

Clicks

One of the most interesting metrics to view on Ahrefs is the clicks metric. With the introduction of Googles quick answers being displayed on the search engine results page, many users are getting their answers on the first page of Google as opposed to having to click into the website and investigate further. The Clicks Ahrefs metric measures how many people refer a certain question to these quick answers as opposed to going into the website that holds the information. This is pretty important information to know and have on hand as the information would otherwise be discounted, even though the information is being used. 

Keyword search volume

This metric measures the amount of times a target keyword is searched per month and the search can be localised according to the country you are hoping to receive this information about. An important aspect to remember about this metric is that it does not distinguish between different people, and only measures the number of times a word is searched. That means that if someone searches a keyword 1000 times, this will count for 1000 searches in this metric. It is therefore not considered to be an accurate measurement and the totals can only be estimated. 

Organic traffic

This metric is designed to measure an estimate of how much traffic a certain website or webpage receives. this measurement is constructed by finding targeted keywords and then measuring the popularity of each one and estimating how many site visits will be brought in by this keyword. Though this measurement is based on estimations, it is still considered to be a relatively good metric to use to measure organic traffic. 

Organic Keyword

If you are hoping to analyse your keywords, Ahrefs organic keyword metric will be able to measure the number of organic keywords used on a page. All one has to do is copy and paste the URL of the page they are hoping to analyse in the site explorer tool that is provided by Ahrefs, this will give you the total number of keywords and how they rank according to organic keywords search results. This is completed by measuring your keywords against the extensive database of Ahrefs, which is around 650 million different words. Though this is an extensive database, it is still no match for Google and the number of organic words that are seen in this search will be lower than the amount noted by Google. The keyword database is monitored and updated by Ahrefs, with new and popular searches being added while ones that are low in popularity are discontinued. 

How are You Ever Going to Outrank Your Competitors With Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is not just a tool that will help you to analyse and rectify your own issues, but it is also a tool that is capable of measuring your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, ensuring that you can avoid their mistakes and use their strengths within your won website. Ahrefs has features that will show you all the different keywords that are bringing traffic to your competitors as well as showing the SEO mistakes that you are making on your own website along with how you can fix them. 

Keywords

The Keyword competitive analysis is an Ahrefs tool that finds valuable keywords that your competitors are using and you are not. Now you may be thinking well, why does that matter to me? If your competitors are using certain keywords and receiving hits and site visits just from using these keywords, it is likely that if you had to go and add these keywords to your webpage, you could potentially take some of that business for yourself! While there may be a few keywords that are not relative to you or your business, as your competitors, it is more than likely that there are a few you could add to your content to improve your ranking and gain more organic traffic. Doing a competitive analysis is a great way to gain insight into what your competitors are doing to succeed and it may offer you the chance to find keywords that you may not have known about before. 

Backlinks

One of the best ways to get reputable backlinks is to find them from your competitors. If you can find where your competitors are getting their backlinks from, you will be able to replicate these links and improve your SEO and search engine results page rankings! The Ahrefs site checker and explorer tool that is provided by Ahrefs will help you to find reputable backlinks, but to ensure you have backlinks that are directed towards the content on your website, using your competitors is usually a safer bet. The best way to do this is to search for relevant pages with similar content to your own and then use the site explorer tool to measure the backlinks and their effectiveness. Remember, never just copy all of the backlinks that a page has, you never know if these backlinks are from non-reputable sources! 

Crawl Report

The crawl report is a feature of Ahrefs that is able to crawl any webpage and report back on issues. While most use this tool to analyse their own progress and issues that they need to fix, you can also monitor the progress of your competitors. Knowing how well a certain brand or business is doing may greatly impact your company and so completing these crawl reports is an essential part of developing your own brand or business and making sure that you are better than the competition! Staying one step ahead of your nearest contended will ensure you remain ahead! 

Automatic Report

The automatic reports that you use to track your own websites new backlinks and ranking improvements can be used to do the same for your competition. These automatic reports help you to monitor your competition and track changes, without having to visit the site and look for new updates. This is another feature that is important if you are looking to stay ahead of the competition! 

How To Do Backlink Analysis Using Ahrefs?

Performing a backlink analysis is vital when you start looking into improving a websites SEO and ranking higher on search engine results pages. One of the leading causes of lower rankings on search engines like Google is that websites have bad backlinks on their website, if a page has a lot of these links, Google is likely to lower your ranking which impacts your SEO and the overall number of site visits. Ahrefs has an amazing tool that is used to do a full and thorough backlink analysis, ensuring that the links you have are not negatively affecting your ranking according to search engine crawlers. 

How to Use Ahrefs For Keyword Research?

One of the easiest ways to find out what people are typing into their search engines is by performing keyword research. Without having this vital information, it’s going to be pretty hard to know what your target audience is interested in and understand how you can better present yourself as a brand or business. The following are just a few ways you can use the Ahrefs suite of tools for keyword research. 

Use Keyword Explorer Tool

The Ahrefs keywords explorer tool is one of the best tools to use when it comes to discovering new keywords and it greatly helps to generate ideas around unique and highly searched terms and words. This tool does this by coming up with hundreds of different words when a user inserts seed words into the tool. These seed words are the basis of the thousands of keyword results that come up. This tool also allows you to add in search metrics, ensuring that you only get keywords with a high search density and the highest potential. What makes this tool so great is that you are able to easily find the best and most effective kinds of keywords, simply by placing a couple of seed words in the search tab and placing metrics to monitor what kinds of words come up! This easy process leads to high rewards, with the best possible keywords for you to use.  

See Your Competitor’s New Keywords

Ahrefs is a platform that allows for users to explore and analyse their competitor’s keywords, and whether or not these keywords are effective. By being able to see what your closet competitors are doing and by being able to use the keywords that they have that are relative to your own website, you are ultimately moving to take some of the organic traffic that would make its way to their page, and streaming it towards your own! The power of keywords should never be underestimated and search engines rank this as one of their top factors to consider. Ahrefs competitor analysis of keywords is a feature that should be used if you are looking to jump ahead of your competition. 

Find Competitor’s Top Pages

Part of understanding who your competition is and how you can get ahead of them is seeing what hits they are getting and what types of search queries they are ranking for. Gaining this information can help you to better structure your content and understand the consumer market you are in. 

Find Another Competitor

Through the use of tools like the Ahrefs site explorer, users are able to explore who their nearest competitors are. When in the site explorer tool, continue on by clicking on the ‘Competing Domains Report’, and this will show you the websites that rank within the top 10 compared to you. this is done by looking at the keywords you and your competitors are both using. 

How To Do A Content Gap Analysis in Ahrefs?

A content gap analysis involves simplifying a process that used to be extremely hard to do before Ahrefs came and created a simple and easy to use tool. A content gap refers to exactly that, a gap between your content and your competitors. A content gap analysis takes the content and the keywords that your competitor uses and then measures that against your own use of these vital keywords. This automated processing tool then spits out all of the keywords that you should be using. Along with providing you with this vital information, the Ahrefs gap tool can analyse not just one competitor’s website but many, all at the same time! You are able to determine whether you want all of the keywords your competitors are using, only the keywords that a certain number of competitors are using or the words that all of your competitors are using. This system ensures that you are able to determine each and every keyword that all of your competitors are using or you can find out what all of them are doing the same. This automated process is extremely easy and the targeted methods and options available ensure that you are getting exactly what you need! 

What are The Ahrefs Tools to Help Your SEO Plan?

Site Explorer

When it comes to the Ahrefs SEO toolbar, the Ahrefs site explorer is one of the best tools to use if you are hoping to analyze your competition. This extremely useful tool combines three facts of SEO into one and it monitors organic traffic of your competitors, analyses the backlinks they are using with an Ahrefs backlink checker and it also monitors what paid advertisements they are using and where they are funnelling this traffic to. This Ahrefs checker tool is considered to be one of the top tools to help improve your SEO and get ahead of the competition!  

Content Explorer

The Ahrefs content explorer is a tool that is able to help with many different things and its main purpose is to help you find and analyse the best content relative to your own data. This means that this tool can help you form relationships and build backlinks with similar companies, help you to find out who your competition is and analyse them in detail, supplying you with metrics and data about who they are and how you can improve your own content based on theirs. This tool is extremely useful and is another top feature within the Ahrefs tool suite. 

Keyword Explorer

The Ahrefs keywords explorer is one of the best keyword tools on the market and it can help you to narrow down the keywords you use and help you to find the words that will help you and your SEO. This explorer tool measures the search volume to determine whether or not this would be a good keyword to use and it also supplies you with similar words that may rank higher and work better than the word you have entered. This ensures that users are able to determine which keywords would be the most effective for their webpage. There are also a number of advanced metrics that can be analysed if you want a more in-depth look at the keywords you are using. 

Rank Tracker

Nowadays, you cannot simply just pick the words that you think will be the most effective and hope for the best, but you have to use keyword explorers to find the perfect words to suit your content, words that will ensure you rank highly. Along with this, users should use the Ahrefs rank tracker to monitor these words, just because it is a highly ranked word today unfortunately does not guarantee that it will rank the same tomorrow. This tool is responsible for tracking the updates of your website and how well you are ranking. This data is shown in an easy to read graph and is the perfect tool to use to show in presentations. 

Site Audit

The Ahrefs site audit tool is a popular feature on the platform and it is used to check the overall health of a webpage and provide feedback and solutions on any issues with regards to the SEO of your page. The site audit tool does this by crawling through the webpage and picking up on any inconsistencies that would be noticed by a webpage crawler. This tool measures a number of different on-page SEO features and it also digs deeper into the more technical side of your page, giving users a full rundown of their web page and how it can be improved. 

What are The Other Features of Ahrefs?

Find Broken Links

Broken links are not good to have on your webpage, both for the user experience and the overall SEO of your website. Broken links can be hard to find, and you may have broken links that go on noticed for days or even months, which is why it is always good to use the broken link checker supplied by Ahrefs to check that all of your links are in working order. This broken-link checker is a valuable Ahrefs feature and it is one of the free tools supplied by the platform, ensuring that your deadlinks can be easily found and removed or updated. 

Analyze Anchor Text

The importance of links should never be underestimated on a webpage and getting users to take action and click on these links should also be a priority. Anchor text refers to the text that draws users in and convinces them to click on a link, these words are often the words that we need to click on to take us to another page. This text is used as an SEO ranking factor and it is therefore important that you have good anchor text for your links. Ahrefs will analyse this text to determine whether or not is accurate and good for your SEO. 

Batch Analysis

Ahrefs is a suite of tools that is able to do many different things, one of those very important things that it is able to do is batch analysis. Going through each individual website and URL to find appropriate backlinks would take up a lot of time and energy. The batch analysis tool is able to pull the metrics of around 200 backlinks at one time, and all you need to do is copy and paste these different URLs into Google!