What is the Ahrefs tool

Ahrefs is one of the most powerful tools in an SEO specialist’s arsenal. Its main task is to provide a complete picture of any website’s link structure, along with key data on visibility, competitors, growth, and vulnerabilities. In practice, it is not just a backlink checking service, but a full-fledged intelligence system: you can see who links to your competitors, which pages bring traffic, which keywords keep them at the top, and which weaknesses can be exploited. That’s why the tool is actively used in technical SEO, promotion strategies, link building, content marketing, and auditing.

It differs from other systems in its scope and speed. Ahrefs has its own crawler, which is second only to GoogleBot in terms of frequency, and therefore has a huge database. The service updates information on billions of pages daily, tracks lost and new links, measures site trust, and assigns ratings to domains. All data is available in the interface, API, and can be exported to tables. Essentially, if you know how to use Ahrefs for domain analysis, you can build a complete SEO strategy from links to structure and content.

The tool covers several tasks at once:

• checking and evaluating backlinks,
• analyzing organic keywords and traffic,
• tracking competitors’ growth/decline,
• finding new donors for link building,
• identifying the best-selling pages,
• monitoring competitors’ errors and weaknesses,
• downloading reports for auditing or reporting.

If you are involved in SEO optimization, Ahrefs is not a tool to “look at,” but to “solve problems.” It shows you where and how to strengthen your website, what to focus on, and which areas of growth are a priority.

How to register and create your first project

You can get started with Ahrefs quickly, but there is one caveat: the service is completely paid and, unlike some competitors, does not offer full free access. However, the subscription pays for itself in the first few weeks if you use it for business and not just for fun. To sign up, go to the official website ahrefs.com and click the “Start trial” button. Usually, a 7-day trial is offered for a nominal fee (e.g., $7). Next, enter your details, pay, and you will get access to all sections.

Read also: What is keyword growth.

After activation, it is important to create your first project right away. This will allow you to track the status of your website in real time: see new links appear, receive alerts about losses, and monitor growth or decline in key queries. To do this:

• in the “Dashboard” section, click “+ New project”,
• enter the website URL and its name,
• select the tracking mode (recommended: weekly or daily),
• add keywords for tracking (if necessary),
• confirm that you are the owner (via GSC or file).

The project is created in a couple of minutes, after which the analysis begins: the system crawls the site, collects backlinks, checks indexing, and displays the first dashboard. From that moment on, you can see on any day how many links have appeared, which pages are growing, and which keywords are bringing clicks. This is especially important if you offer custom SEO promotion for your business — after all, a report based on Ahrefs is taken much more seriously than a table without a source.

Main sections of Ahrefs: how to navigate the interface and data

Once you have entered the interface, the main tool is Site Explorer. Enter any domain here and you will get access to all data about it: links, organic traffic, paid traffic, page rank, anchors, donor domains, etc. This is the intelligence center. Here you can enter both your own website and any other website and see what keeps it in the search results. Ahrefs scans the URL, identifies the leading pages, evaluates the dynamics of the link mass, and shows which keywords are working. That is why Ahrefs Site Explorer is considered a basic tool for SEO analytics.

The next important block is the Backlink profile. This section is all about links. You can see:

• links by date (new, lost, returned),
• division by type (dofollow / nofollow / sponsored),
• anchor texts and their frequency,
• donor pages and link distribution,
• the growth and decline history of the link profile,
• and the pages that are linked to most often.

This is exactly what sets Ahrefs apart from other tools. The depth of analysis and detail allows you to identify not just “the site has links,” but “here are 100 specific donors, 60% of which are live blogs with a DR above 50.” This kind of analytics is not just a check, but a strategy: you understand how your competitors build link weight, where they get trust, and what you can repeat (or bypass).

Next is the Organic keywords section. This is search visibility. You can see:

• which queries the site ranks for,
• what positions it currently holds and has held in the past,
• which URLs generate the most traffic,
• how organic traffic has changed over the past 1–24 months,
• and which new keywords have appeared recently.

This is especially useful if you are analyzing a competitor’s growth or decline: if you see that they have added a new service, look at which keywords have grown sharply, which pages have appeared, and which phrases have started to generate leads. Ahrefs for competitors shows how their SEO is performing in real time.

Plus, there are sections:

• Top pages — which pages generate the most traffic,
• Content Gap — which keywords your competitors have that you don’t,
• Best by links — which pages get the most links,
• Top subfolders / subdomains — useful for eCommerce and multi-level websites.

If you are involved in SEO website optimization, these blocks allow you to show your client: “Here is an article from a competitor that is linked to by 34 websites and generates 400 visits per month — we can do better.” This is not just a report, it is an argument.

Read also: What is organic traffic growth.

How to analyze competitors using Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ strongest feature is competitive intelligence. Unlike other tools, it shows not only visibility and links, but also how other players’ strategies are built: what clusters they are developing, what exactly brings them traffic, and what texts or landing pages are driving them up. This is especially important in niches where standard approaches don’t work — where you can’t just write “best service” and get to the top. Through Ahrefs domain analysis, you can see everything from structure to links.

The first step is to enter your competitor’s domain in Site Explorer. Next, look at the Top Pages section to see what brings them the most traffic. Pay attention to the type of content: is it commercial, a blog, longreads, videos, or a glossary? Then go to Organic Keywords and filter by position: which phrases are in 1–3rd place, which are in 4–10th place, and which are growing. This will give you an understanding of where their strengths lie and where you can “beat them.”

Next, analyze the links. In the Referring domains section, look for trusted sites. You can filter by DR, region, and anchors. It is especially important to track:

• new donors over the last 30 days,
• donors that it has “lost” — meaning you can go there,
• which pages receive the most link weight.

The content part is done through Content Gap. Here you enter your website and 2–3 competitors. Ahrefs will show you which queries they have that you don’t. This is a treasure trove of topics for your blog, tips for landing pages, and structure expansion. You can also use Batch Analysis — enter a list of domains at once, and the system will display the DR, traffic, links, and keywords for each one. This is useful if you are comparing many players at once, for example, 10 online stores in a niche. When working with custom SEO promotion for your business in Kyiv, such comparisons are not just useful — they are essential. You are not going in blind, you can see what your competitors are doing to get where they are and how you can get there too.

How to work with link profiles in Ahrefs: filters, donors, and tactics

The most important resource in SEO is trust. And it is links (not only in number but also in quality) that form the very power of a website that influences its ranking. In Ahrefs, working with link profiles has been taken to a whole new level — you can see not just “who has links,” but who gives weight, where it goes, how it is distributed, and what you can use in your strategy. This is no longer just analysis, but systematic work with data. In the Backlink profile section, go to Referring domains — this is a list of all domains that have ever linked to the site. Sorting by DR will immediately show who really influences trust. You can then filter by last activity (last seen), link type (dofollow/nofollow), region, and language. This helps you weed out “junk” links and find valuable sites for outreach. It is especially important to track:

• donors who have linked only once — and to which page,
• spikes in new links per day/week — this could be spam,
• losses — if a donor has disappeared, you can restore the link,
• links to non-target pages — it may be worth redirecting them.

The next step is Anchors. Here you can see which anchor texts are used most often. This helps to identify overspam and also to assess which keywords your competitors are “pulling” with links. If 30% of their links have the anchor text “order SEO in Kiev,” it’s obvious that this is their focus. You can balance your strategy to avoid repeating mistakes or, conversely, strengthen a specific cluster.

Ahrefs also shows Pages with most backlinks — these are the top pages by number of incoming links. This is very useful for finding a successful content format. See that your competitor has an article on their blog called “50 free tools for marketing” — and 150 sites link to it? Make yours better: more relevant, more in-depth, in your own language. Links will start coming in on their own if your content is better.

All of this is the foundation of link building. You don’t just find donors, you build a plan:

• which sites have the potential to link to you,
• which pages to promote first,
• where to replace lost mentions,
• which anchors to use without risk.

This is how a site link profile is formed — not by number, but by meaning and strength. And this is what determines whether you can outperform your competitors in dense search results.

How to track traffic, errors, and website growth in Ahrefs

Ahrefs is not just about links. It’s also about dynamics. It collects data on traffic, positions, pages, and even shows estimated visibility, which is often more accurate than the numbers from GSC. This is especially useful if you are analyzing someone else’s website rather than your own. Ahrefs traffic is based on organic keywords and shows you how much the website is growing, which pages are performing well, where the growth points are, and where the decline is. In the Overview or Organic search section, you will see a graph showing traffic growth or decline, keyword dynamics, and brand share. The country filter is especially useful — you can see how the site is performing in Ukraine, the US, Poland, regardless of the main region.

Additionally, the Top pages block shows specific URLs that bring in the most visits. Filtering by language, region, and query type (branded/informational/commercial) helps you quickly determine which pages are the main drivers of visibility. This gives you an understanding of what to promote and what to rework. Similarly, in the Competing domains section, you can compare yourself to other players. Ahrefs determines who your competitors are based on keywords. It then shows how many queries they have in the top 3, how many you have, and where you overlap. It’s like a battle map where you can see the front lines: who is moving where, who is losing, and who is gaining ground.

Another strong point of Ahrefs is Alerts. You can set up automatic notifications if:

• new backlinks appear,
• important links are lost,
• traffic for keywords increases or decreases,
• a competitor appears in search results for new phrases.
• Notifications are sent to your email, allowing you to respond quickly rather than reacting after the fact.

If you are working on custom SEO promotion, this data allows you not only to build a strategy, but also to defend it: you can show your client which pages have grown, why, where the links came from, and where edits are needed.

How to use Ahrefs systematically: scenarios, reports, and strategy

For Ahrefs to really work for results, it needs to be integrated into the process. It’s not a tool you log into once a month. It’s a tool for daily intelligence, operational analytics, and strategic planning. Everything you see in the interface can be turned into actionable items: downloads, checklists, dashboards, automatic notifications. This is how a link analysis tool becomes not just a review tool, but a management tool.

The first task is to establish a regular schedule. Each project should have a frequency of analysis:

• once a week — check for new and lost links,
• once a month — update the list of competitors and content gaps,
• once a quarter — compare the link profile and review the strategy,
• every day (if necessary) — automatic notifications about links and traffic.
• The second is data export. Ahrefs allows you to export everything:
• a list of donors with DR/UR parameters and dates of appearance,
• anchor texts by group and frequency,
• pages with the most incoming links,
• top keywords and pages,
• gap analysis by keywords and competitors,
• position dynamics for each URL.

This data can be inserted into Google Sheets, Power BI, Looker Studio, or used in your own audit templates. This is important when you are doing SEO optimization for businesses, because reports cease to be “visuals” and become a basis for action: where to link, which articles to strengthen, where the weak points are.

The third is system scenarios. Examples:

Scenario: content update. Once a month, open Content Gap → find 10 topics that your competitors have but you don’t → go to your competitors’ Top Pages → analyze the structure → create a brief → publish better content → after 2 weeks, track the appearance of keywords → after a month, monitor traffic and link growth.

Scenario: page enhancement. Select a page that receives organic traffic but has few links → go to Best by links → look for similar pages from competitors with a large number of donors → write down the donors → analyze which ones are available → do outreach or create an additional page that links to it → track the change in position.

Scenario: protecting against link loss. Set up Alerts → every time you lose a dofollow link with DR > 50, you receive a notification → go to the donor page → check: the page has been deleted, the link has been removed, the anchor has changed → take action: restore, offer a replacement, redirect.

The last element is integration. Ahrefs provides API access, and you can:

• connect data to Google Sheets,
• create automatic reports in Looker Studio,
• integrate monitoring into Slack or Telegram via Apps Script,
• combine link profiles with analytics from GA4 and CRM.

This is how a complete SEO system based on Ahrefs is built: from data collection to action, from analysis to growth. And most importantly, you don’t just watch, you manage. And when you use such approaches as part of custom SEO promotion, this is what separates a performer from an expert. Because an expert doesn’t do the work — they build a system in which website growth becomes predictable and manageable.