Ahrefs Review: Best SEO Software Tool of 2022

Ahrefs is a well-known tool primarily used for checking backlinks, but what most SEOs forget to take into consideration is that it is capable of so much more. With their massive data index, Ahrefs is definitely one of the most sought-after SaaS tools out in the market. Tools such as this helped eradicate the days wherein Google gets played by unethical, black hat SEO tactics.  They helped the industry turn for the better, and SEO has never been simpler. With the tools such as Ahrefs being available in the market, it became simple for us to get better at what we do.

With SEO-Hacker’s ever-growing toolbox, it’s not a surprise that we try out different tools for our keyword research, competitor research, content writing and optimization, and site management. While tools may not write our content for us or do our work for us, it can help us in different ways:

  • Strategically choose content topics
  • Find the right people for our content
  • Know which people we should do an outreach to
  • Managing our website

Features

  • Competitive Analysis
  • Keyword Research
  • Backlink Research
  • Content Research
  • Rank Tracking
  • Web Monitoring

Organic Search Report

It helps users analyze their competitors’ search traffic. See the exact keywords for which the competitors rank in organic search and the amount of traffic driven by each of them. Users can access the Top Pages report to see which pages send the most traffic to their sites and use the Content Gap feature to uncover the keywords they rank for but users’ don’t.

Ahref have data for 150 million keywords in the United States alone (+ more for over 150 other countries), so users get the best possible coverage with Ahrefs.

Keywords Explorer

Thousands of keyword ideas, keyword difficulty and advanced metrics. Users get thousands of relevant keyword suggestions from a mammoth database of over 3 billion keywords, where they can use the Keyword difficulty score and the advanced keyword metrics to decide which keywords to target.

Keywords Explorer also shows users annual search volume trends and gives users some great insights into searchers’ behavior and SERP ranking history.

Backlink data

Ahrefs is the best backlink checker tool in the industry.  Ahrefs is proud to run the world’s largest index of live backlinks. Their robots constantly crawl 54 billion web pages, and every 15 minutes they update the index with the fresh data they report. Users can put any website or URL into Site Explorer to see all its backlinks and some useful SEO metrics. Advanced reports and handy filters let users dig real deep into the data.

Content Explorer

Users can research what content works well in their niche. They can put any keyword into this tool to see which content has performed best in terms of social buzz, number of backlinks and organic search traffic. Users are able to find all articles that mentioned the target keyword and use the “Highlight unlinked domains” feature to see which of these websites have never linked to theirs. 

Rank Tracker

Users can get accurate location-specific ranking reports. Ahrefs tracks their desktop and mobile keyword rankings from any location and plot their full ranking history on a handy graph. Users can set up automated ranking reports to be sent to their email address, so they’ll never forget to check the ranking progress. 

Alerts

Users can monitor their niche for opportunities. They can get an email notification whenever they or their competitors win or lose a backlink. This is a great way to track their PR and linkbuilding activities and the users own, almost in real time.

Users can also set up alerts for any keywords related to their brand, business, product or service. Whenever someone mentions one of these keywords on their website, users get an email notification with a link to that page. This way they can also track who is talking about their competitors online, so that they can jump into relevant conversations and exploit these opportunities immediately. 

DashBoard Overview- Details

Site Explorer

Get an in-depth look at the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL.

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer combines three powerful SEO tools in one interface:

Organic traffic research – See what keywords your competitors are ranking for and which pages bring the most search engine traffic.

Backlink checker – See which websites link to your competitors’ sites and gauge the quality of their backlink profiles.

Paid traffic research – Learn whether your competitors are doing paid search advertising and where they funnel their paid traffic.

Keywords Explorer

Discover thousands of great keyword ideas, analyze their ranking difficulty and calculate their traffic potential.

Thousands of Keyword Suggestions: Never run out of keyword ideas. Keywords Explorer runs on a huge database of more than 7 billion keywords, updated with fresh data every month.

171 countries supported: Not from the U.S? No problem. Keywords Explorer gives you data for 171 countries.

10 Different Search Engines: Google isn’t the only search engine around. By processing large amounts of clickstream data, we can estimate keyword volumes for places like YouTube, Amazon, Bing, Baidu, etc.

Accurate Search Volumes: We use clickstream data to refine our search volumes on a monthly basis, ensuring they’re always up to date.

Keyword Difficulty Score: Find the “low-hanging fruit” among your keyword ideas. Our KD score calculates how hard it will be to rank for your keyword based on the current top-ranking pages.

“Clicks” Metric: A high search volume doesn’t mean people click on the search results. Ahrefs is the only tool that shows the estimated number of clicks for your keywords.

“Parent Topic”: A single page can rank for hundreds of closely-related keywords. Parent Topic determines if you can rank for your target keyword while targeting a more general topic on your page instead.

Advanced SEO Metrics: Get SEO metrics no other tool will show you: Return Rate, Clicks per search, % of clicks, % of paid clicks, and more!

SERP Overview & Positions History: Get a quick look at the SEO metrics and ranking history of the top-ranking pages. Assess the SERPs and understand why these pages rank as they do.

Keywords Lists: Save and segment keywords into lists for future reference.

Content Explorer

Discover and analyze top-performing content in your niche.

Users can research over a billion web pages, complete with SEO and social metrics, find the most popular articles on any topic. Sort the results by:

Organic Traffic: Estimated monthly traffic from search engines.

Referring Domains: The number of unique websites linking to the page.

Domain Rating: The relative “backlink popularity” of a website.

Traffic Value: The value of the organic traffic, if acquired via PPC.

Social Shares: Number of shares on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

Combine advanced operators to refine your search

Content Explorer supports advanced search operators. With the right combinations, you can easily find link building prospects, low competition topics, partnership opportunities and more!

Filter the results to find what you need

Combine any of our twelve filters to find content that matches your criteria:

  • Published once / Republished
  • Published / First published date
  • Live / Broken
  • Language
  • Social shares
  • Domain Rating
  • Referring domains
  • Organic traffic
  • Number of words
  • Traffic value
  • Site
  • Author

Delve deeper into any piece of content

Easily see whether a page is gaining or losing backlinks and organic traffic over time with our in-line charts.

Find broken link building opportunities in seconds

Content Explorer reinvents broken link building. Combine the live/broken filter and referring domains filter to find dead pages on a given topic with backlinks.

Reverse engineer your competitor’s content marketing strategy

Enter your competitor’s domain into Content Explorer to see how frequently they’re publishing and republishing content.

See which sites have yet to link to you

Search for a relevant topic and use the “Highlight unlinked domains” feature to highlight non-linking websites.

See content trends over time

Our “pages over time” chart lets you see the content creation trend for any topic over time.

Rank Tracker

Monitor your rankings over time and chart your performance against your competitors’. Get scheduled reports, straight to your inbox.

Get ranking updates for desktop and mobile

Rank Tracker lets you monitor your Google rankings on desktop and mobile across 170 countries.

Visualize your SEO progress

Track how your SEO efforts are paying off with Rank Tracker’s interactive graphs. Get a history of:

  • Visibility — See what percentage of clicks from organic search traffic land on your website.
  • Average position & traffic — See a snapshot of your progress over time.
  • Positions distribution — Track your ranking positions segmented via groups – Positions #1–3, Positions #4–10, Positions #11–50 and Positions #51–100.

See if your website ranks in SERP features

Owning SERP features is beneficial for any page. With Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker, you get data on a total of 13 features:

  • Featured snippet
  • Site links
  • Top stories
  • Image pack
  • Thumbnails
  • Adwords top
  • Adwords bottom
  • Shopping results
  • Knowledge card
  • Knowledge panel
  • Videos
  • Tweets box
  • People also ask

Sort your keyword list with filters & tags

Segment your data exactly how you want it — Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker will visualize it for you.

See how you stack up against your competitors

Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker charts your data against up to five competitors and automatically reports on three key areas:

  • Ranking progress
  • Search traffic
  • SERP features

Have advanced metrics at your fingertips

Get deeper insights with a list of up-to-date key metrics for each of your tracked keywords. Users can view:

  • Ranking progress
  • CPC
  • Estimated search volume
  • Clicks
  • Return Rate

Receive scheduled email reports

Stay up to date with all your ranking movements, right in your inbox. Rank Tracker sends you regular email reports detailing the most notable changes in your keyword rankings, along with a sample of gained and lost SERP features and performance data based on your tags.

Free Trial and discount coupons

Ahrefs doesn’t offer any free trial, but they offer a starter pack of 7 days for $7 with the following features:

  • Dashboard
  • Rank Tracker
  • Site Audit
  • Site Explorer
  • Content Explorer
  • Keywords Explorer
  • Alerts
  • Extra Tools

Pricing

Ahrefs offers four paid plans: Lite ($99/month), Standard ($179/month), Advanced ($399/month), and Agency ($999/month). The main difference between the packages is the number of campaigns you can run, keywords you can track, and reports you can generate. Discounted rates are available for annual subscribers.


Monthly Pricing($/month)Annual Pricing($/year)
Lite $99
$990(or around $82/month)
Standard $179
$1790(or around $149/month)
Advanced $399$3990(or around $332/month)
Agency
$999
$9990(or around $832/month)

Alternatives

1. SEMrush: It is not just an SEO tool but includes a cluster of useful stuff including

  • Backlink analysis
  • Rank tracking
  • Advertising planning
  • Traffic analytics etc.

It is an all-in-one solution for digital marketing and pouring out the competitive data which makes it a great Ahrefs alternative.

2. SEO Power Suite: SEO Power Suite offers a software-based program instead of the online web tool. For using their services, you need to download their software on your local computer and then install it. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. SEO Power Suite is trusted by more than 500k users.

They offer 4 amazing tools which are

  • Rank Tracker
  • SEO SpyGlass
  • Website Auditor
  • Link Assistant.

3. Serpstat: is an all-in-one SEO platform that consists of 5 tools:

  • Rank tracking
  • Keyword research
  • Competitive analysis
  • Site audit
  • Backlink analysis

4. Moz: Moz is the exceptionally well-known tool and considered as the strong Ahrefs alternative. Moz started its journey in 2004 as an SEO consulting company, but now they offer multiple products. It is heavily used by the small to expert level bloggers, developer, and businesses for better SEO and keywords explorations.

5. Majestic: The next in the list is Majestic. It is owned by Majestic-12 Ltd, a UK based company. This single link building software offers multiple tools at one place such as

  • Site Explorer
  • Backlinks analysis
  • Domain comparing
  • Search Explorer
  • And a powerful API for developers.

Rounding Up

There are numerous SEO tools out in the market; however, if link building is the topic at hand, then using Ahrefs is enough. Starting with the dashboard – just input the details of your site and your keywords, and then it will give your potential competitors. It’s easy to use and it also has one of the best features for finding broken links, curating skyscraper articles, and link reclamation.

The organic keywords and rank tracker feature offers immense help for any SEO professional to monitor rankings and pulling up relevant data. The user interface is where Ahrefs performs best. It’s definitely simple yet, at the same time, informative. Meanwhile, for Ahrefs, everything you need to see is right there in front of you.

However, even if it’s simple to use, SEO professional can get lost with the data that they see. Even though the data is presented in a way that a seasoned SEO professional will understand, some amateur SEOs can get confused, and will only waste your time trying to understand all the data that you see. So, when using Ahrefs, be sure to focus on one dataset at a time, do not take in everything at once because you’ll only be confusing yourself.

Overall, Ahrefs is a great tool – especially for link building. Whether it’s new, lost, or broken links, Ahrefs has the capacity to display the data that you need.