Ahrefs 2023 Review: Unleashing the Power of this SEO Tool for Your Business Growth

Picture this: you are a startup company and have researched how the online environment can generate more sales and revenue, so you decided to try it. You made a website and decorated it to appeal to more customers. You read that “blogs” can maneuver customers to your website, so you wrote a few, but then you got stuck, and you are not sure which direction to go from there.

You did further research on optimizing your website, and the answer just revealed itself: you needed to incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods, and the best way to utilize this is by using a tool. You dug deeper, and search queries kept coming up about Ahrefs.

And this is how you ended up in this article, where we provide you with an in-depth review of Ahrefs to determine whether this could be a tool to sign up for to help you in your online journey.

But before we begin, check out this big list of SEO reporting tools that contain different platforms similar to Ahrefs that could fit the qualities you are looking for.   

Ahrefs is an SEO software toolset that has tools used for keyword research, link building, competitor analysis, site audits, and rank tracking. Founded by Dmitry Gerasimenko in 2010, this tool is used for optimizing a marketer’s website through crawling search engines and sites to accumulate data and for a marketer to formulate strategies that bring out the best of his or her website.  

Now, we discuss the list of benefits you can enjoy when signing up for this tool:

• It has a free webmaster tool that enables marketers to keep track of their website’s health and identify any issues, backlinks, and keywords. 
• It enables marketers to search keywords for over five search engines, such as Google, Amazon, YouTube, Yahoo, and Bing. Moreover, it can gather data from search engines from other countries including, Baidu from China, Seznam from the Czech Republic, Yandex from Russia, and Daum and Naver from South Korea, and see the respective monthly search volumes. 
• It allows a marketer to check the website’s content and identify which blogs have had high-performing ranks to distinguish what aspects they should apply to blogs that are not so well-performing. 
• It allows a marketer to check for any broken links. These do not lead to their website, usually because the site removes the page to which the marketer’s website links. 
• Ahref’s site audit crawls each page, scans everything from keywords to links, and presents you with fixes and suggestions to improve your website’s state. 
• It allows marketers to check their analytics in different countries from the comfort of their own homes.   

Jumping into the most expected segment of this article, the features it contains. Here we explain the quality of these features.

The following features are included:

Ahref’s keyword research can go beyond search volumes and present the estimated number of clicks on search results. Monitoring the “clicks” count of a specific keyword allows marketers to identify whether it is a worthy target for consumers and might increase sales.

In addition, with its SERP overview, it shows the estimated monthly organic search traffic of the current top-ranking pages and gives the marketer an idea of which keywords are search-worthy. This feature is available both locally and globally.

Backlinks determine how well a piece of a marketer’s content performs in the search results. The marketer will see the following data: 

• The anchor text used in the link 
• The types of domains linked to it 
• Who is linking to the URL and;
• Any broken URL links

The purpose of acquiring this data is to sneakily use the competitor’s data and approach the same websites, requesting a link directed to the owner’s website. In addition, Ahref’s backlink data is flatly laid out to display what particular domain has lost or gained a link along with the value of the links, such as domain ratings. 

The starting point of an SEO project is domain analysis. It displays the quality of a domain, rank performance for phrases, and search traffic. This can be done through the website showing the SEO improvements needed or via a competitor’s site to check how to outrank them in the search results. 

In addition, domain analysis can be a great way to determine a high-quality website that can be a potential backlink to your website. When conducting a domain analysis in Ahrefs, there is certain information you can retrieve, such as: 

• Domain rating 
• Total number of visitors to the website every month 
• The number of external links 
• Total number of keywords 
• Anchor text used in links to the URL
• Historical information on the number of referring domains and the site’s domain rating in a period 
• Traffic value of a URL

A site audit’s job is to see that a marketer’s technical side of SEO is covered. Since search engines are putting more advanced emphasis on the technical performance of a website, this tool can do the job for you. Ahref’s site auditing tool crawls the site for any issues that can affect its health. A few of these are: 

• SSL problems 
• Crawl errors 
• Slow-loading content 
• Missing headers and alt texts 
• Duplicate content 
• Broken links 

In addition, Ahrefs has added a new tool termed Core Web Vitals. These are targets from Google focusing on the responsiveness, speed, and stability of a website. It is divided into two statistical categories: “field data” which is based on the real user experience (aka chrome users), and “lab data,” which is collected data within a controlled environment.  

Unlike other tools that take a week to update their rankings, Ahref’s rank tracker can update keyword rankings every 3 days, which is highly beneficial for marketers who want to stay on top of their niche’s rankings 24/7 as well as check ranks from any location in the world. 

Ahref’s content explorer is programmed to display which content on a marketer’s website gets the most social shares. Also, it can be filtered by what social media channel to check. In addition, it searches for keywords and presents legitimate websites related to those keywords, making it a possible site to pitch to for getting backlinks. This feature has a database of 11 billion web pages along with the following metrics: 

• Domain Rating of the website
• Organic search traffic 
• live/broken links
• Word count 
• Number of referring domains
• Publish date 
• Update date
• Author

This is a helpful feature when searching for link prospects and content ideas.   

Ahrefs has four pricing editions you can choose from: lite, standard, advanced, and enterprise. You will be able to pay either monthly prices from $99 to $999 or pay annually, with prices ranging from $83 to $833. Ahrefs does not offer a free trial period, but has a free version with limited functionality, including site auditing and site exploration tools. 

Moreso, if you decide on subscribing annually, you will save up to 17% with two months free for any additional annual purchase. 

Let us dive into the pros and cons of this tool. Delving into SEO requires commitment, and going through several tool reviews can be exhausting to the point that somewhere within this article, you could have been sold into buying this product, but since we also care that you spend your money wisely, we present to you this segment wherein we explain how this tool really works when you sign up for it.  

Here is the list of pros that you can experience with Ahrefs 

• It is easy to use
• It offers free online courses for SEO to get you started with the platform 
• Performing broken link analysis either internally or externally is easy 
• Allows you to audit Core Web Vitals quickly and provides access to field and lab data in one dashboard
• It offers appropriate data for keyword research and has a ‘content gap option’ that you can use to gather top-ranking keywords other competitors use that you have not used. 
• You can purchase additional seats at an affordable price 
• Ahref’s traffic potential can spot untapped keywords 

As aforementioned, the pros of Ahrefs can be maximized as a long-term tool. Its features are flawlessly designed and have acquired tools that most competitors do not yet own, such as the content gap option and core web vitals, therefore making sure that users who sign up for this tool are one step ahead of their competition.

However, no tool is perfect and would favor every user’s concerns, so let us discuss the cons of this tool.  

Here are the cons of this tool:

• Ahrefs does not offer a free trial period 
• It does not have search intent data provided 
• It does not have customer phone support 
• It does not have a mobile app to do any on-the-go SEO work
• The pricing model can be confusing 
• All plans only contain one ‘power user’ seat 

Ahref’s cons are subjected to its expense, which can be a bit of a problem for users who are in small-scale businesses or freelancers. Due to this, it can be hard for them to access this certain tool. Moreso, Ahrefs is an advanced platform that coincides with the advancement of Google or any other search engine. It can be a struggle for new SEO beginners, which defeats the fact that they are looking for a tool that can attend to their needs without feeling overwhelmed. 

But do not worry, because that is where tool alternatives come in, wherein you can find the qualities you are searching for your company. 

Here are the alternatives of Ahrefs

Databox is a cloud-based analytics platform that inputs various key performance indicators (KPIs) and generates reports on one interface. In addition, it allows users to view several Google Search Console metrics in different ways.

Kissmetrics is an SEO and web analytics platform that tracks individual users and delivers key insights based on their behavior on the user’s website. This aids in formulating better SEO and marketing strategies.  

Mangools is an SEO tool that focuses on features such as keyword research, competitor and backlink analysis, SERP analysis, and rank tracking. It aims to help organizations optimize their exposure to search engines.

MoZPRO is an all-in-one toolset that helps businesses increase rankings and visibility of sites in search results. It has features such as keyword research, link building, site audits, page optimization, reporting, and rank tracking. 

Nightwatch is an SEO and rank-tracking solution that automatically discovers missed SEO opportunities for companies. It contains features such as keyword tracking, reporting, and ranking data that give users more time to seek opportunities and leave any manual tasks on the platform. 

NinjaSEO is an SEO suite that assesses individual pages of a website to improve search engine ranking and find on-page issues by performing a deep crawl. It comprises of features such as keyword tools, an on-page grader, a website crawler, an SEO auditor, link bots and trackers, and a backlink analyzer. 

Raven Tools is an SEO cloud-based tool that has white-label marketing reports and SEO auditing platforms used by agencies and media companies. This tool has features such as backlink research, SEO audits, and keyword research and gathers competitive insights to measure SEO progress on the user’s website. 

SEMRush is known as the juggernaut of SEO; it is utilized to improve online presence and discover marketing insights with its numerous features and functionality. It has tools for competitor analysis, audits, rank tracking, optimizing content, keyword research, reporting, and the list goes on. 

SERanking is an SEO tool-packed platform that allows marketers to perform integral tasks such as keyword research, rank tracking, website auditing, competitive analysis, backlink checking, etc. This tool aims to aid marketers by optimizing their websites and helping them get a good position on the search engine results page. 

Ahrefs is ideal for freelancers, large enterprises, public administrations, and non-profit organizations that are in search of a tool that can grow search traffic and optimize their websites.

With its large database and additional toolset that include features that have a bigger impact on Google’s process of determining a credible site, which no other alternatives have, it can definitely guide the users a step ahead of their competitors. 

Ahrefs is a leading platform that has a robust list of features, such as keyword research, content exploration, domain analysis, and site auditing.

When combined with world-class data, there is no question why a lot of marketers tend to favor Ahrefs more than any other tool. In addition, unlike other tools, Ahrefs data gets updated every day, which can be a good attribute when you are strictly monitoring your site’s performance. 

Overall, Ahrefs can tick off the never-ending checklist of what you need for SEO.

Now that you have reached the end, we hope we have helped in your decision-making process. Usually, the beginning of the SEO journey is the most stressful, which is why our thorough reviews can guide you in making a wise decision.