Ahrefs

Ahrefs has always been the best tool for backlink research, but in the last year or two, the software has advanced in many other areas, too. Nowadays, it is also one of the best tools available for keyword research. This is great because now GoFreelance can do nearly all of its SEO research using just this one tool. That’s not only more convenient, it also saves me the cost of subscribing to multiple tools. Feature such as content gap analysis makes it easy to find opportunities to develop content, and Ahrefs is easy to use and manage. I really love the software for its features and ongoing development. The biggest downside to using Ahrefs is the high monthly subscription cost. But seeing as it replaces several other tools, the cost is still worthwhile. Two years ago, Ahrefs was a tool I found occasionally useful. Nowadays, I find it indispensable.

We've been using Ahrefs for some years now and I cannot recommend it enough. While initially it was comparable to other SEO analysis companies out there, Ahrefs has now clearly surpassed them in the features they offer, and the more you explore, the more you can discover about how the software can help you on your way to SEO success. Our digital marketing agency Living Online uses Ahrefs for our clients' campaigns - we use it to determine SEO opportunities through competitor backlink analysis, broken links and content gaps, as well as to track keyword rankings and ensure that all links to our clients' sites are the best they can be. Ahrefs is constantly adding new features as well, which I believe has led to their standout success among competitors. I rarely act as a promoter for tools or software, but I would highly recommend Ahrefs to anybody serious about their SEO. It can be costly, especially if you have many projects you want to track, but the value it provides is priceless.

I'm a content and website manager for Opportunity Business Loans, I started to use Ahrefs and l LOVED it. The front page would show you a visual summary of your site which made it easy for me to gauge my site's SEO quickly. I could determine what needed work just by looking at the front page. What I loved about Ahrefs was that you could see a visual summary of multiple sites and domains at the same time.

I use Ahrefs a lot in my role as a Marketing Manager at White Chalk Road. I find the keyword research features particularly useful for gaining insight into my website, along with competitor insights. Using the Keyword Explorer you are able to find high volume, low competition key phrases, which is very handy for content research and planning. It is also fantastic for competitor research. In particular, you can use it to research what keywords and pages your competitors rank for and look for the best competitor pages to try and outrank. You can also view what paid search campaigns your competitors are running. The backlink reports are more useful than those that you find in Semrush.

The downside to Ahrefs is the lack of integration with other tools, such as Google Analytics. Your organic traffic figures in Ahrefs will not match Google Analytics, as the data is estimated, so while it is a good comparison tool, it is not as accurate as using your real GA data.

We use Ahrefs a lot in our business - Imaginaire Digital. As a digital marketing agency, we use Ahrefs on a daily basis! As we know keyword research is a huge part of SEO and we can use Ahrefs to find the links of our competitors content and try to replicate these links on our own website. However, it does take time to get used to it.

Overall, it is a great piece of software and it can be used for a wide array of valuable tasks!

We run an Accelerator Program that helps brands in the Cannabis and CBD industry through the Growth Stage, and one of our core strategies involves SEO and organic traffic.

PROS

We leverage AHREFs tools a lot in the process. During our research and assessment phase at 420interactive, we use their toolbar to get a good sense of a brand's current SEO positioning and the organic traffic potential.

AHREFs backlink tools are also phenomenal to help do backlink research and find opportunities for backlink outreach. For brands that are looking to grow and compete, steady and diligent backlink building is one of the keys that help websites gain credibility and dominate search results for their niche.

Their keyword research tool is also helpful when building an SEO strategy. One key factor to take into account is the difficulty of competing for the keyword, and AHREFs makes it easy to assess how many backlinks that page is going to require to get to the first page of search results.

CONS

I wouldn't have any cons to report at this time.

For Building Authority links at Eduard Klein, we used Ahrefs, It is the most powerful tool with more than 1.5 trillion unique external backlinks in their database. With this tool, you get the most powerful source for backlink Analysis & Backlink Building. Ahrefs even shows you how many links you need for a Keyword to get in the Top 10 Google Results.

After implementing various tools at WebTek, I feel that Ahrefs is slightly more accurate at reporting organic traffic for competitors, gives it the edge as the strongest tool for SEO only.

I have used my fair share of paid SEO tools in my career at TopSailDigital and I have had a paid account for Ahrefs.

My Score for Paid (Competitor Research Tool) is:

Ahrefs – 4/5 – Ahrefs does an OK job at competitor Research, but I have to stick with Ahrefs since they offer CompetitorResearch and a slew of other SEO tools in one package.

Ahref Tool is a great tool to unearth your competitor’s backlink profile and build high-quality backlinks for your site. It is a perfect tool in terms of index size, freshness, building quality backlinks and also to track your position on search engines, perform technical audits, and do keyword research.

Ahrefs boasts the world’s largest index of live backlinks. They update it with fresh data every 15-30 minutes. Here is the overall experience of the Ahref tool after using it for my agency - Grazitti Interactive:-

Every day Ahref crawl	5 Billion web pages
	170 million root domains
Ahref Index Size	16 trillion known links
	3 trillion known URLs
Ahref External Backlinks	2 trillion backlinks
Internal Backlinks	16.4 trillion internal backlinks
Every 24 hours Ahref discover	1.8 million new pages

Key Features of Ahrefs -

1. Site Explorer - In-depth analysis of the organic search traffic and backlink profiles of any website.
2. Keywords Explorer - Discover the popular keywords for any website.
3. Content Explorer - Discover the most popular content for any topic.
4. Rank Tracker - Tracks the rankings for the keywords. You can download daily/weekly/monthly reports.
5. Site Audit - Audit the complete website with metrics such as index pages, backlinks profiles, authority, citation flow, etc.
6. Alerts - Get new and lost backlinks, keyword rankings and mentions related to the brand keywords.
7. Backlink Checker - Give the detailed backlinks analysis of any website or URL.
8. Website Authority Checker - Discover the authority of the website/URL..
9. Domain Comparison - Compare the backlinks profiles of up to 5 domains.
10. Content Gap - Provides an in-depth analysis of the keywords for your competitor ranks for.

Pros -

1. Powerful backlink analysis tool.
2. Rank Tracker is accurate and reliable.
3. Keywords Explorer 2.0 sets higher standards of keyword research. They have a 9.9 billion keywords index database of search queries across 10 different search engines in 171 countries.
4. Excellent outreach tool which works better in keeping track and generating the new backlinks..
5. 100% ROI in terms of backlinks analysis at the enterprise/agencies level.

Cons-

It is expensive as compared with Spyfu.

Pricing

• Lite (Minimum Package) - $99/month
• Advanced Package - $399 (Ideal for SEO agencies)
• Agency (Maximum Package) - $999/month (Ideal for marketing agencies with a big range of clients)

Prior to launching my own venture - Illuminate Labs, I worked at one of the top SEO firms in the U.S. for four years. Here is my response:

Ahrefs is more valuable for organic search. Since Google already provides extensive paid search data and analytics, Ahrefs is more valuable overall in my opinion. The UX is superior on Ahrefs and they have better customer support as well.

I've used Ahrefs for SEO projects at Leadhub and found it by far the better software than others. Ahrefs has more tools, more current data and more capacity for SEO research. The biggest con to Ahrefs is that it is not at all intuitive to new users. The interface is more overwhelming for new users to pick-up than other software. However, it's not difficult to learn once you spend a little time with it. It can also be difficult to use on mobile, I only recommend using it on a desktop.

At TimePayment Corp., we prefer using Ahrefs over any other software it tracks your site's keyword positions over time, so you don't have to take the time to manually go in and track them. A con of using Ahrefs is that it is one of the higher monthly cost SEO tools and the price can add up over time.

I am Sean Clancy, Director of an SEO Agency - Edge Marketing and here is my point of view regarding Ahrefs software. Without a doubt, Ahrefs has been the market leader for some time and has only gone from strength to strength over the last couple of years.

Pros:

A. Has unique features that no other competitor has, such as - Keyword research for 10 searches and discover content gaps between your site and your competitors

B. Has the biggest database of links out of all the major backlink checkers

C. The dashboards are very clear and intuitive to use. Keeping it simple

D. Has great integration features with other applications to power up your analysis.

Cons:

A. Bit pricey for freelancers or small businesses

B. Is slowing up a lot lately with massive database and volume of new users

C. The free features are very limited compared to other providers.

Overall Experience:

Ahrefs features cover a variety of other SAAS services, meaning you can get most of what you need under one package. Usually, a jack of all trades suffer in quality, not Ahrefs, each of their features could stand up to individual SAAS competitors.

Their blog and how-to videos/articles are top-notch and really allow you to maximize your use of Ahrefs, using almost all the features to good effect.

My firm - Octiv Digital handles SEO campaigns for businesses large and small, so a solid set of tools is vital. Ahrefs is a go-to tool I use almost daily for backlink analysis. Unlike some of its competing platforms, Ahrefs offers extensive analysis into competitors’ links that allow us to set up a competitive link acquisition strategy for them. The tool also shows different types of links that can be acquired ranging from different domain name extensions (.net, .com., .edu) to link types (Nofollow vs. followed links). It carries a lot of pros and the only con is the price. However, for the amount of information available, it’s well worth it.