In this piece, I’ll demonstrate:
The finest aspects of Ahrefs
The worst aspects of Ahrefs
How Ahrefs stacks up vs SEMrush
Whether I recommend it or not
Let’s dig into it!
Before we go into my Ahrefs review, I’d want to make a few remarks. First and foremost, I’ve been a paying Ahrefs customer since August 2012.
Ahrefs was mostly used for link building at the time… and that was about it. Ahrefs has added a TON of features since then. Many of which I will discuss in this review.
I tell you this to emphasize that I did not join up for Ahrefs last week. I’ve been using the tool almost every day for the last 8 years or more.
Second, you might have seen that I’m on the Ahrefs homepage.
No, Ahrefs did not pay me to say that. And I have no formal affiliation with Ahrefs.
In reality, I continue to pay for my Ahrefs account on a monthly basis.
As a general rule, I do not take freebies. As a result, my reviews (such as this one) stay unbiased.
With those disclaimers out of the way, let’s get into the review.
Ahrefs’ mainstay feature is Site Explorer.
Enter the URL of a website. Additionally, obtain a snapshot of the overall SEO performance of that site (or page).
This analysis displays the number of backlinks that the site (or web page) has. The amount of traffic it receives from Google. How much is that traffic worth? And a whole lot more.It’s essentially a dashboard that displays a plethora of SEO-related data on a single page.
This feature displays a site’s complete backlink profile.
On the surface, this backlink report appears to be the same as most other backlink checkers available (like SEMrush and Moz Pro).This feature combines two important aspects (backlinks and organic traffic). So let’s take a look at each of these aspects individually.You enter a URL, much as the other tools. Also, obtain a list of their backlinks. What distinguishes Ahrefs from other backlink checkers?
This is quite crucial. Assume you wish to examine the backlinks leading to a significant authority site, such as NerdWallet. NerdWallet has 2 MILLION backlinks, according to Ahrefs.
Or perhaps you simply want to see no follow links. Again, Ahrefs makes this simple.
But suppose you only want to view links from sites that have a high Domain Rating. Alternatively, pages having a high URL Rating. That is a simple task. Good luck working your way through that link profile one by one.
Another advantage of Ahrefs’ link analysis tool is its massive index. It’s also constantly updated. As a result, you’ll never have to worry about looking at out-of-date connection info.
So, sure, I really appreciate Ahrefs’ filtering and sorting choices. It saves a lot of time. According to Ahrefs, their crawler is the second most active (after Google of course).
I recently conducted a test to check how soon Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, and Majestic discovered new links. In actuality, Ahrefs is really effective in discovering new links. However, they are not necessarily the finest available.
Ahrefs was proven to be quicker than SEMrush. But not as quickly as Moz or Majestic.
Overall, I believe Ahrefs’ backlink analysis capability is a significant asset to the product. It’s simple to use. Regularly updated. And it assists me in locating just what I want.
Despite the fact that I spend the majority of my time in Ahrefs researching a site’s link profile. I should mention that Ahrefs includes a few neat small backlink-related features that I utilize from time to time.
For example, I occasionally utilize Ahrefs to detect new links that a site has just gained.
To determine which pages have had the highest link increase in the previous 30 days.
Both of which help me figure out what kind of link building is working best
This function is all about uncovering your competition’s top SEO keywords.
Obviously, this report isn’t likely to 100% reflect somebody’s Google Search Console information. Ahrefs comes pretty darn close.For example, here’s what Ahrefs lists as my top keywords in Google.
According to Search Console, the following are the top ten keywords.
Not too shabby. The actual strength of this tool, like Ahrefs’ backlinks tool, comes from sorting and filtering. As a result, Ahrefs does a good job of identifying keywords for which a site ranks. And calculating how much search traffic such terms generate.
HubSpot, for example, is one of my primary SEO rivals.
According to Ahrefs, HubSpot now ranks for 1.5 million keywords.
That is ridiculous. How am I expected to sift through that list and pick terms that make sense for me? Enter Ahrefs’ fantastic filters. These filters let me quickly locate terms that contain a certain word or phrase.
They each have a different keyword difficulty level.
Rank as the Featured Snippet.
And there’s more, Down a nutshell, these filters make it simple for me to narrow in on a set of terms that work best for me.
There are also a few neat little features hidden under Organic Search.
For instance, “top pages” displays the pages on a website that receive the most organic traffic.
“Competing domains” displays the main SEO competitors of a site.
You’ll be able to identify more sites to reverse engineer for backlinks or keywords this way.
Now, let us take a closer look at the Ahrefs keyword tool, Keyword Explorer. Keyword Explorer, unlike many other keyword tools, does not restrict you to a single search engine. Keyword Explorer can help you locate and evaluate keywords on YouTube, Amazon, Yandex, and Bing.
Ultimately, Keyword Explorer provides several significant advantages. And some significant flaws. Let’s start with the positives. To begin, Term Explorer is fantastic at providing in-depth information on a certain keyword.
This report provides useful information on search traffic, competition, CPC, CTR, SERP position history, and more. So, if you’re picking amongst a variety of keywords, these aspects can assist you in determining the finest keywords for you. Ahrefs excels at evaluating particular search terms. The bad news is that Ahrefs isn’t particularly good at generating fresh keyword suggestions.
We just conducted a large-scale keyword research tool examination.
We discovered that Ahrefs produced the most keyword recommendations of any program.
Isn’t everything fine? No, not really.
When you examine these keyword recommendations, you’ll realize that many of them are utterly unrelated to what you typed in.
For example, here are some keyword suggestions for “paleo diet.”
There are some good keyword suggestions here.
But there’s also a lot of garbage to sort through.
The same may be said for the majority of terms. You must sift through a list that contains a plethora of absolutely unrelated phrases. SEMrush, in my opinion, performs a far better job at generating useful keyword ideas.
Keyword Explorer is a 10/10 if you want to go “an inch broad and a mile deep” on a certain keyword.
However, if you’re looking for a tool to assist you identify new keywords to rank for, I don’t think you’ll be completely satisfied with Keyword Explorer.
Let’s take a glance at Ahrefs’ SEO site assessment tool in more detail.
Ahrefs, like most other audit programs, assigns your site an overall “health score.” If you’ve ever used an SEO site audit tool, you won’t be shocked by the results.
Backlinko now has an 84 percent success rate. That is something I need to improve on. You get the standard list of technical SEO concerns to correct, such as duplicate meta tags and faulty redirects.
Overall, this is an excellent SEO site auditing tool. SEO newcomers can rapidly find out what they need to perform.
There’s a lot for SEO specialists to get their fingers into.
I also enjoy how it operates on its own on a regular basis. That way, I won’t have to remember to crawl.
It’s now time to dissect “Rank Tracker,” the Ahrefs rank tracking tool.
The Ahrefs rank tracking tool works in the same way as any other: enter a lot of keywords. Also, look at how they rank on Google. You may also track ranking changes over time. The issue is that, unlike most other rank trackers, this one does not update on a daily basis. The frequency with which you receive ranking updates is determined on the plan you select.
If you use Ahrefs Lite, for example, your keyword rankings will only be updated once per week.
That’s not a good sign. Checking your rankings once a week may not be a huge problem if SEO isn’t a key aspect of your site’s digital marketing.
However, if you’re an SEO expert, you must monitor your rankings 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Ahrefs, however, does not provide daily updates. For their higher-tier plans, the most they can give is “every 3 days.” Consider the following scenario: a client calls you and inquires about how your rankings have changed today. You’ll need a tool to get that information.
Overall, I believe Ahrefs provides a reliable rank tracking tool. It’s simple to use. It has a fantastic user interface. It’s simply a bad that the data isn’t updated on a daily basis.
This is where you may compare and contrast the backlinks of up to five different sites at the same time.
There’s also a graphic that shows how each site’s link profile has altered over time.
It would be fantastic if Ahrefs offered a similar option for organic traffic. That way, you could monitor how the search traffic of a variety of different websites has evolved over time. But, other from that, I believe this functionality is quite great.
Content Explorer is comparable to BuzzSumo’s “Content Analyzer.” To utilize it, enter a subject. And you’ll be given a list of articles on that topic that has received a lot of social media shares, backlinks, or both.
This is a really useful feature. And a feature that neither SEMrush nor Moz Pro have.
However, comparing Content Explorer to the BuzzSumo product as a whole isn’t really fair. Aside from Content Analyzer, BuzzSumo provides a TON of great tools.
And, in my opinion, BuzzSumo’s Content Analyzer is far superior. On Twitter, for example, you can see who shared a certain piece of material.
So, no, it’s not BuzzSumo. However, Content Explorer is beneficial. Something that Content Explorer cannot do.
Poor customer service can leave me perplexed. My experience with a tool may be made or broken by its support. I’ll be able to overcome obstacles with the aid of wonderful people. And extract additional value from each characteristic.
Furthermore, in my SEMrush vs. Ahrefs piece, I ran a brief test of Ahrefs support.
I asked this question for the exam at 5:56 a.m. Eastern. However, that test was about a year ago. So I wanted to see if their support was still enough.
This question was chosen for two reasons. First and foremost, I was truly interested in it.
Second, it was a difficult question. A difficult query for which their support personnel most likely did not have a “copy & paste” routine. And 8 minutes later, I got this response.
To be honest, it’s not that useful. I posed the question since I’m not particularly technical. However, the response seemed to imply that I was a skilled developer. So that didn’t bring me any closer to understanding the distinction between referring ips and referring subnets.
Ahrefs offers four distinct options, ranging from $99 to $999 per month.
The primary characteristics of each plan are the same. The amount of data obtained from each attribute is what distinguishes them. On the Lite subscription, for example, you can track 500 keywords. However, on an Agency subscription, you may track up to 10,000 keywords. The same characteristic. However, one provides you 50 times the amount of data to deal with. The same is true for backlinks, keywords, site audit crawls, and other features. Each plan provides the same access as any other plan. However, the more you spend, the more you can get. Please keep in mind that there are a few exceptions to this rule. A Lite package, for example, does not allow you to track mobile rankings at all. The biggest difference between each plan, though, is the quantity of data that you have access to.
Excellent UI & UX: As with any tool, learning to use Ahrefs might take some time. However, once you’ve become acclimated to Ahrefs, it’s quite simple to find what you’re looking for. And it generally just takes a few of clicks to get there. For instance, suppose I wish to view a site’s anchor text split. I can get that report immediately from the sidebar.
Solid Data: A program like Ahrefs is only as good as the data it contains. Ahrefs’ data is quite useful, whether it’s for search volume, backlinks, ranks, or social shares.
Excellent Site Audit Tool: I consider the Ahrefs site audit tool to be one of the finest available. And even on par with site auditing tools.
Term Deep Dives: Ahrefs Keyword Explorer is ideal for performing a DEEP dive on a certain keyword. On a single page, you may get almost all you need to know about a certain term.
Cool “Minor Features”: Ahrefs has a TON of useful little features that I didn’t have time to go through.”Link Intersect,” for example, identifies sites that link to many rivals.
“Internal backlinks” displays internal connections pointing to a given page.
“Content gap” displays terms for which your rivals rank (but you do not).
These are only a few instances. There are a slew of others.
Poor Rank Monitoring: For their light subscription, Ahrefs only refreshes your rank tracking data once every 7 days. In addition, with their normal plan, they will contact you once every 5 days. A rank tracker, in my opinion, should be updated every day. Period.
PPC Tool Set: Ahrefs does provide a PPC tool set.
It’s rather excellent, in my perspective. But if you only run Google Ads for your site and a few clients, that could be plenty. However, when it comes to PPC features, Ahrefs does not exist in the same world as SEMrush.
Keyword Suggestions That Aren’t Relevant: I have a love-hate relationship with Keyword Explorer. I like how much information you can obtain from a keyword. But I despise the fact that I can’t utilize it to find fresh keyword ideas since there are so many recommendations that don’t make sense.
Ahrefs is something I use on a regular basis. Several times every day, on average. It’s become a part of my daily routine at work. When I need to verify a site’s backlinks, identify a new keyword, or watch my ranks, I use Ahrefs to gather the information I need.
Ahrefs is a renowned SEO software package with a comprehensive feature set that includes backlink analysis, keyword research, and technical SEO audits. When you combine it with world-class data and a fantastic user interface, it’s no surprise that Ahrefs has established itself as a leader in the SEO software field.
Overall, I would strongly suggest Ahrefs. It’s the greatest SEO tool on the market at the moment currently, in my perspective.
So that concludes my Ahrefs evaluation.
Now I’d want to know about your Ahrefs experience.
What do you find appealing about it?
What do you believe they should work on?
Please let me know right now by writing a comment below.