How to use ahrefs and best practices for 2022

Table of Contents

How to use Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is a keyword research tool designed to help websites get on the front page of search engines like Google and Bing. This process is called Search engine optimization (SEO). We will cover everything that ahrefs has to offer in this article. For more info on SEO here is an article on 8 Affordable SEO services to rank your website in 2022. We will not cover EVERYTHING ahrefs has to offer, just what I believe are the most beneficial practices for the tool in a beginner friendly manner. Ahrefs blog has more info incase you didn’t find what you are looking for in this article.

The focus of this article is to educate on the 5 main Tools Ahrefs has to offer: Site explorer, keyword explorer, content explorer, site audit, and rank tracker. Hopefully you’ll have a complete understanding of how to use ahrefs by the time you’re done with this article.

how to use Ahrefs

Site Explorer

If you’re still thinking how to use ahrefs, don’t worry were just getting started. we will first start off with ahrefs site explorer tool. Site explorer allows you to research ANY website, Getting a better idea of what your competitors are doing right and they are doing wrong. Here you can see your competitors Backlink profile, organic keywords, and paid search information.

site explorer

Backlink Profile

Here is where you would find your competitors backlinks (old and new) and referring domains. You can do so much more like check referring IPs and see where links intersect, but that’s more advanced and not something we should get too deep into this since its usually beginners that are reading articles titled “how to use ahrefs”. We’ll dive into backlinks since its very important and can be used on a day to day basis.

Backlinks are pieces of content on the web that point back to your website. Google trust and ranks sites with a lot of backlinks because of the authority and trust it builds. there are lots of ways you can build backlinks, here’s a article on 9 easy link building strategies.

ahrefs backlink profile

Organic Search

This is a crucial keyword research tool you will need to rank your website and better understand how to use ahrefs. The organic search tool will help you find keyword ideas that bring in much more traffic than some of the keyword ideas we believe we need to rank for.

Not only will you be able to see their top keywords, you’ll also be able to see the top pages, competing domains, and competing pages. Understanding what the competition is doing gives you a blueprint to ranking your site.

You can check what keywords are reaching the top page and try to dominate them in every aspect. If they have 500 words on that page you put 1000. They have 10 backlinks being sent to that page? build your backlinks and get 20 sent to that page. you get the concept. Hopefully you’re starting to get a better understanding of how to use ahrefs.

Don’t be limited to just the competition you’re aware of. Under competing domains you’ll find a list of domains that are also ranking for keywords with your competition. Really dive deep into your research, if you would like us to help you with your research feel free to reach out for a FREE site audit!

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Paid Search

Here you can see what keywords your competitors are currently bidding on as well as view their ad structure and top landing pages. With this you can emulate what is working instead of trying to create something that may or may not work. That’s it for the site explorer and now we will continue onto the second step tool listed in this article “how to use ahrefs” : Ahrefs Keyword explorer.

Ahrefs paid search

Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs keyword explorer allows users to search up any keyword and see the metrics for that keyword. This allows you to see how much volume the keyword brings as well as related ideas and SERP (search engine results page) positions for the terms. Here you’ll be able to see what sites are ranking for that keyword and separate the metrics by country. This is my favorite tool well cover in this article “how to use ahrefs”.

Keyword Ideas

This is an extremely helpful tool that allows you to see different keyword ideas. The different options ahrefs has are : phrase match, having same terms also rank for, search suggestions, newly discovered, and questions.

Take some time and play with this tool, the more time you spend researching keywords the higher the chance you’ll find something easy to rank for with higher search volumes.

ahrefs keyword explorer

Keyword List

Once you find some keywords you are interested in you can add them to your keyword list for later use. You can also add these keywords to the rank tracker once you link your site to ahrefs with the site audit. Now you know how to use ahrefs keyword explorer for, lets move on to the site audit.

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Site Audit

Site audit is where you link your site to ahrefs. Here you will find your sites health score, tools, and reports. once you link your site ahrefs will give a list of all issues with your site.

Tools & Reports

Here you’ll find four different tools: page explorer, link explorer, link opportunities, structure opportunities. These are pretty advanced tools and require some serious optimization that may require a developer. Since this article “how to use ahrefs” is primarily for beginners we will not go deep into this topic. Please reach out if you would link any assistance by filling out this questionaire for a free site audit! Once you connect your site you can start tracking keywords with ahrefs rank tracker.

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Rank Tracker

Here is where you add keywords you are currently trying to rank for to see the current keywords position. You can also add competing domains to see what traffic you might be sharing or missing out on. This is a very good tool when you get the ball rolling. something pretty advanced if you’re a beginner trying to figure out “how to use ahrefs”.

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Content Explorer

Having trouble finding ideas for your keyword? With ahrefs keyword explorer you can search up your ideal keyword and see what competitors are currently doing & emulate what is working vs what isn’t. You can find pages, authors, websites and even separate it all by language preference. Here you’ll be able to filter the content by publish date, live & broken links, referring domains, website traffic and so much more.

Overview

If you read through this all you should have a decent understanding of how to use ahrefs and how to use their 5 main tools : Site explorer, Keyword Explorer, Site audit, Rank tracker, and content explorer. If you would like some help on your SEO journey feel free to reach out and receive a free SEO audit. Thank you for your time.

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