Creating backlinks is one of the important strategies in SEO to improve website ranking, reputation, and traffic. When you get backlinks to your site from high domain authority websites, it sends signals to search engines that others are certifying your website content. Thus you get higher rankings and page rank in search engine results (SERPs).
Although there are a lot of tools out there to help you with the backlink analysis of a website, Ahrefs tool has gained enough popularity over the past couple of years. As a result, we have decided to take an in-depth look at its features, pricing, and other details so that you can decide whether or not it is worth buying.
However, before we start this Ahrefs review, let’s find out what exactly is Ahrefs.
What is Ahrefs?
Ahref is an SEO suite that enables you to analyze any website for backlink profile, keyword ranking, domain ranking, and site layout.
Ahrefs was introduced as a backlink analysis tool in 2011, and currently, it is headquartered in Singapore. Over the years, Ahrefs has introduced numerous features required by digital marketers to conduct different operations.
At present, Ahrefs is providing the following tools:
- Site explorer
- Keywords explorer
- Site audit
- Rank tracker
- Content explorer
- SEO toolbar
Let’s review these features one by one.
Site Explorer
As the name indicates, this feature gives you complete information on a website’s performance. It gives you in-depth insights into domain rankings, backlinks, and other useful metrics of a website.
So, if you want to see how your rivals are performing in both organic and paid search and find out what they did to get there, this feature can help out.
The good thing is that along with figures; you also get visual data that makes it easier to analyze a competitor’s site.
Keywords Explorer
The Ahrefs keyword explorer allows you to perform keyword research on all prominent platforms such as Google, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu. The tool displays metrics related to keyword difficulty, search volume, CPC. Additionally, it also features the “Global Volume” section that lets you filter keywords based on the country.
As Ahrefs supports about 171 countries, you can get excellent keyword ideas even if you have your target audience in other countries.
Ahrefs claims that it refines its search volumes every month to provide accurate search volumes.
Site Audit
Site Audit is an impressive feature that helps you analyze the overall SEO health of your website. You can use this feature to find out exactly what is holding your site back from getting a good ranking in search engines. Suite Audit conducts a real-time search of your domains to identify errors and opportunities.
Rank Tracker
Rank Tracker enables you to monitor changes in traffic and keyword visibility, and compare your results with rivals’.
Content Explorer
What can be better than adding trending content to your site to improve its visibility and ranking? Ahrefs’ content explorer feature helps you find out top-performing content in your niche. Moreover, you get access to a vast web index, second only to Google.
SEO Toolbar
The SEO toolbar is designed to help you get quick SEO metrics for any web page. It allows you to check your Google SERPs instantly.
Ahrefs Plans & Pricing
If you go to their pricing section, you find that they’re offering four plans: Lite, Standard, Advanced, and Agency. All these plans are designed for different budget clients.
Lite is the cheapest plan that costs $99 per month. Standard and Advanced plans are intended for mid-sized businesses available at the price of $177 and $399.
Agency is the most expensive plan that costs $999 and lets you track up to 10, 000 keywords. Moreover, you can audit 2.5 million sites in one year.
The more you will pay, the more features you will get. It is as simple as that. The expensive plan will give you a higher number of features and SERP reports per month.
The good news is that Ahref is running a 7-day trial program at $7 for Lite and Standard plans. You can go for this trial plan first to check out how it works for you.
Customer Support
The majority of users find their support system to be very responsive, knowledgeable, and friendly. Although they don’t provide phone support, their email and chat support is available 24 hours, from Monday to Friday.
Besides this, they also have a knowledge base where you can search for articles related to your queries. It has more than 300 articles on a wide range of topics.
You can also go to their YouTube channel to watch SEO guides tutorials. They also provide an online marketing and blogging course.
Some Quick Pros and Cons of Ahrefs
Pros
- Ahrefs gives you access to an extensive database of backlinks and helps you keep an eye on new backlinks.
- It features a user-friendly interface. Anyone can use it without any prior training.
- Ahrefs comes with prompt customer support.
- The tool is quite helpful in finding Google features such as knowledge panels, snippets, and more.
- Ahrefs gives you access to the private Facebook community.
- The tool provides you with a lot of tutorials and training materials to help you create better SEO strategies.
- Ahrefs keeps updating its features tools with the time so you don’t need to be worried about changing SEO techniques.
Cons
- Traffic stats are somewhat inaccurate since they are estimated.
- No integration with Google Analytics.
- Restrictions on basic Lite plan.
- There is no free trial.
Final Verdict
Ahrefs has been continuously adding a lot of new features to improve its services. In the coming years, you can expect to see more robust features.
Still, it has a large number of features that help you search and create quality backlinks for your website and improve its credibility.
Though the price is bit high comparatively, powerful features, friendly customer support, and user-friendliness make it a best-in-class backlink tool. If you are not sure about Ahrefs, you can use their 7-day trial plan at $7 before making a final decision. It will help you know whether or not it is worth buying.
