Ahrefs Review: Is It Worth It?

Ahrefs is an SEO tool designed for content marketing professionals. It is one of the most comprehensive options on the market. Our Ahfrefs review explains more.

The market for search engine optimization (SEO) tools has grown substantially over the last few years. There are now many marketing tools built to help with SEO. Some are free, and some are paid.

Ahrefs is one of the most well-known tools. It claims to provide all the information and tools you need to with keyword research, link building, and content marketing. 

But it’s not cheap and it takes time to see results. So, is Ahref the best SEO tool for you? In this detailed Ahrefs review, we’ll help you figure it out before signing up. 

What Is Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is a suite of tools that helps you plan content and optimize your site for Google SERP engine results (SERP) pages. It was first released in 2010 by founder Dmitry Gerasimenk. 

It’s built for achieving organic search growth with content. Aherfs crawls the web and gathers information about popular content, keywords and other search data. It also enables users to analyze sites run by competitors. 

You can utilize this information for every part of your SEO strategy. It can help you decide on keywords, build links, and track your ranking. It can also help you research your competition and figure out how to rank higher. 

Popular paid alternatives include software like SEMRush, SerpStat, and Moz. Google Keywords Planner is a free alternative.

Ahrefs Pricing

Ahrefs offers a few different plans for you to choose from. However, all the plans are expensive unless you’ve a budget to invest in SEO. 

Its lowest Lite tier starts at $99, while its highest option costs $999. The former is affordable for small businesses serious about SEO. It’s less so for freelancers and new content publishers. 

Each tier provides more projects and keyword tracking, as well as additional reports/

Key Features

Ahrefs isn’t a stand-alone keyword research tool. Instead, it comes with many different features and tools designed to research and optimize organic content, like blog posts, articles and landing and web pages.

Most serious bloggers and content marketers can benefit from tools. You get them all in your plan, so there is little reason not to try them. Each one gives you unique insight into your site’s ranking and helps with your digital marketing and SEO efforts. Let’s dive in. 

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

Ahref’s excels at finding new keywords that you can use to create content about. Thanks to a recent update, the search volume metrics are accurate than before. But don’t take them as 100% accurate (no keyword tool is).

To get working, seed it with a couple of keywords first. You can enter up to 10,000 seed keywords at a time. After you enter the keywords necessary, you’ll get a report on each word. 

Unless you’re on a premium plan, you’re limited to 100 words a day. Therefore, I recommend being careful about which words you use. You can go through all these keywords far faster than you might imagine. 

Next, you can use the keyword ideas option to bring up related suggestions. Truthfully, this is one of the most useful features of this tool, as it allows you to expand topic ideas and find similar keywords for use in your content. 

Keyword Filtering

There are many filtering options available. For instance, you can use phrase match to find longer organic keywords that include your exact phase. 

You can also choose to see only keywords that rank based on your seed keyword. You can also filter by cost per click (CPC), search volume, keyword difficulty and more. I regularly filter for question keywords to plan content. 

You get a massive amount of suggestions per keyword. For instance, I got over 70,000 keyword suggestions after only three keywords. 

However, just because there are a lot of keywords doesn’t particularly mean anything. You have to use the filters correctly to find the best keywords. After all, you simply can’t include thousands of keywords in a single article. That just isn’t going to work. 

Luckily, Ahrefs has ten different filters available. You can easily use these filters to figure out which keywords are best for your article. 

For instance, you can filter out keywords based on search volume. Click per search metrics is also available, which tells you how many clicks each search result yields. The higher this number, the more likely you are to get a click. 

You can also utilize the rate of return metric. This metric allows you to see how many times someone searches that keyword in the same month. Aim for popular searches, ones with little competition or high commercial intent.

At first glance, all of this information can be a bit overwhelming. However, if you know how to use it and what to look for, you can quickly find the best keywords for your purposes. 

They also have a free keyword generator tool, though this isn’t nearly as powerful as the full version.

Site Explorer

Site Explorer is a key tool if you’re trying to drive search traffic with organic content. It is one of the most comprehensive tools on Ahrefs, allowing you to access information on a website’s content and backlinks. 

This SEO tool also works as a rank tracker to see how you compare against other websites. 

It allows you to see your domain rating, backlink profile, referring domains, and countless other metrics. Most of the important information needed for proper SEO optimization is located in this section. 

You can use this information to analyze your website, of course. However, you can also use it to analyze competitor websites, giving you some information on your competitors. If you use the metrics correctly, you can locate markets that are ripe for the taking. 

You can also use the top pages function to view the top pages for that particular website. Use this to spot key pages. This information can give you an idea of what works best for certain competitors. In many cases, you can use this to figure out which pages you should focus on making.

You can also view the top pages in terms of other metrics, like social media engagement, using the top content function. Finding this information otherwise is difficult. 

There is also a “best by links” option, which filters pages by the number of links and referring domains. You can also view link growth statistics, allowing you to see which pages are growing the fastest. 

Disavow Tool

You should remove bad links pointing towards your site, as they can negatively impact its search rankings. 

Google does allow you to “disavow” the link, as you often can’t remove them yourself. However, use this tactic with caution unless you’re comfortable vetting links.

If you decide to use this, Aherfs can help you create a disavow. It will also keep up with what links you have disavowed.

Link Filters

Not all links are made equal. You can use Ahrefs to filter out certain links and create unique link criteria. You can use this to figure out what links are beneficial for a website, which can help you decide which links work best for your website. 

You can filter links by platform type, redirects, traffic, and language. 

This filter can be more or less helpful, depending on your strategy. It is the feature that I use the least often. It is useful when you need it. 

Broken Links

Ahrefs allows you to locate broken links, which also provides you with the opportunity to fix them. You can locate broken links and then send a message to the website. Not only does this help you build contacts, but it also helps you save broken links whenever possible. 

I suggest that you check this feature every few months. Links go down all the time, and it can seriously affect your website or blog’s link quality.

Ahrefs also allows you to catch broken outgoing links. You can use these for your websites. However, you can also find broken links on other websites. Often, you can pitch new links to fill in the broken ones on other websites. 

Content Explorer

Content Explorer allows you to review the most shared content for topics. If you’re trying to find an angle for a post, this feature can be handy. It shows what people look at, after all, providing search metrics. It’s also useful for competitor research.

You can also find people who share content like yours. Sometimes, reaching out to these influencers helps spread your articles around. 

Furthermore, you can find high-quality content to share on your social media platforms. Sharing this sort of content is a great way to fill out your profile without much work. 

You can see searches by date. This information allows you to ride on viral news and other popular searches. When a topic blows up, you can find it. You can also see the performance of a piece of content over time. 

Site Audit Report

The Ahrefs site audit report

You can audit your website and improve its overall health using the Ahrefs site audit analysis tool. 

This feature allows you to stay on top of broken links, redirect issues, and duplicate content. If you’re a website owner, it’s a handy way of staying on top of technical SEO issues without investing hours in them. 

The audit report helps with identifying content on a site that lacks internal links. It also unearths potential usability issues like broken redirects. You can also use this report to unearth backlink opportunities on your sites. It also helps spot content gaps in your site, so you can figure out what to commission or write next.

Why You Can Trust Us

I’m a full-time freelance writer. Half of my job is SEO optimization. Therefore, I get a lot of use out of ahrefs and similar tools. I’m always looking for the best tools available to help make my job easier. 

I’ve used Aahrefs extensively, as well as many SEO tools by competitors. I’ve also been with aherfs through many different updates, so I know where the tool is heading. 

Testing Criteria

Kristin tested Ahrefs as a freelance writer. To write this Ahrefs review, she spent hours using Ahrefs for various projects across a variety of niches.

She considered this software from several viewpoints including beginners. I took into account how easy the software is to use and whether or not it helps with SEO outcomes. I also evaluated the usefulness of some of its reports based on my experiences as a freelance writer.

I (Bryan Collins) also use Ahrefs regularly to plan content for this site and provided Kristin with insights as a content publisher. I’ve been a customer for years. I count on Ahrefs to unearth metrics about search engine results, content planning and also for some technical SEO. I also use it to optimize key web pages and to identify backlink opportunities.

Is Ahrefs Worth It? The Final Word

If you’re an SEO professional and regularly producing content, this software is a good choice. It’ll help with finding keywords and driving organic traffic from SERP. You won’t need many other SEO tools to succeed with your digital marketing efforts. 

However, Ahrefs is expensive for freelancers and bloggers who aren’t already earning an income from their site. 

Furthermore, it assumes you know how to to use metrics and statistics to create content. It doesn’t hold your hand and tell you what to do. It simply provides and collects information. 

However, it offers a nifty academy that can help you figure out the metrics – if you’re willing to put in the time.  If you know what to do with this information, you’re likely fine! However, if you don’t know how to interpret these SEO metrics, Ahrefs is overkill. Watch a few tutorials before signing up.

For small business owners and content publishers, Ahrefs is a viable option as SEO can pay dividends over time.

We highly recommend this software for content writers, web publishers and content marketing professionals who earn a living from producing or publishing content. 

Want more? Check out our guide to the best content optimization tools.