In the Ahrefs system, you can find additional tools that help us crawl sites better and break down the site crawl into relevant factors. This way, we analyze the site better and manage to draw the necessary conclusions to optimize sites better. In previous chapters of the Ahrefs tool analysis, we covered link analysis, keyword research, content research, organic keyword analysis, and more. In the final part, we will focus on additional features in the tool that don’t belong to any specific category, but provide us with very effective analysis options.
To get to know the Ahrefs system in depth, I recommend reading our guide series on the entire system: Ahrefs – Introduction to the SEO Tool and Glossary and Ahrefs – Backlink Analysis Tool.
Competing Domains
The Competing Domains feature in the Ahrefs tool gives you an overview of competitor sites that compete with you for Google rankings on the same keywords. This way, you’ll know who is competing against you in Google’s organic results and how close you are to outranking them or vice versa. In this analysis, you will be able to see the number of identical keywords between the sites, the percentage of overlapping keywords between the sites, the number of unique keywords for you, and the number of unique keywords for the competitor. This feature is great for SEO professionals who got a new client with a new site to work on, allowing you to get an overview of your most popular competitors targeting the same keywords on their sites at the click of a button.
Content Gap
With the Content Gap feature in the Ahrefs system, you can get an overview of the content differences between your site and competitors’ sites. To be precise, the significant difference that can be found with this option is the keywords for which you rank on Google and your competitors do not (of course, you can also check the opposite by reversing the website URLs in the image below). It is recommended to include as many sites as possible in this crawl, which will help you find keywords your competitors rank for and you don’t. As you can see in the image, I entered three direct competitors of my site, and through the crawl, I found about 350 keywords that my competitors rank for and I do not.
Extended Site Analysis - Site Audit
The Site Audit feature within Ahrefs allows us to track sites in a controlled and long-term manner by creating a specific project for each site we want to monitor. In addition, the Site Audit feature serves as a visual alternative to Screaming Frog software, essentially presenting extensive analyses within the system about site pages, outbound and internal links, an overview of site issues, redirects leading nowhere, pages blocked by a robots.txt file or pages subject to a noindex tag, and more.
Paid Ads - Paid Search
Although the Ahrefs system was originally designed for organic SEO only, it still includes several features that help us understand what paid search campaigns are being run for a site. In order to get an expanded analysis of a specific site’s paid ads after entering the URL, return to the previous view by clicking Overview and then click Paid Search.
In the analysis that appears further down the page, you will be able to see which site ads generate the most traffic for it. In addition, if you want to get an expanded breakdown of the characteristics of paid ads for a specific site, in the menu on the left under the Paid Search option, you can choose Paid Keywords, Ads, or Paid Pages to get a more extensive overview.
Alerts
Alerts in the Ahrefs system are useful for you if you track your competitors and their keywords or pages on their site. Using the alerts feature, you can ask Ahrefs to send you an email every time you or your competitors get a new backlink or start ranking for a certain keyword. In the Alerts feature, you can receive email notifications for competitors getting backlinks, for competitors getting rankings for additional keywords, and for any new content published online with a direct connection to the keyword you defined.
Domain Comparison
With the Domain Comparison feature in the Ahrefs system, you can run a head-to-head comparison between 2-5 domains. By entering several of the main competitors for your site into the tool and comparing the domains, you can obtain extensive information about the backlinks your competitors receive. For example: you can see which site has a higher DR, which site receives more backlinks, from which domain extensions the sites get the link, whether the link is Follow or NoFollow, whether the link is text or an image, and more.
Advanced tips for Ahrefs
We have covered the Ahrefs system and many features within it that help us optimize our website for Google’s search engine and other search engines. If you want to get the most out of Ahrefs, I have prepared some tips for you that will help you make better use of the system:
1. How to quickly find broken links
Inside Ahrefs, you have the ability to find broken links within your site, thus essentially saving an additional analysis in Screaming Frog or another analytics system. Several types of broken links can be found in the system – broken external links from other sites to yours, external links from your site to other sites, and internal links.
2. How to analyze link anchor texts
When building a backlink profile for a site you are optimizing, it is very important to use a variety of different anchor texts and not build links solely with the exact match keyword anchor you want to rank for. In addition, many SEO professionals claim that getting links only with exact match keyword anchors can even harm your organic SEO and your rankings. In the Ahrefs system, you can analyze the anchor text distribution of the backlinks you receive by clicking on the word Anchors in the left menu.
3. How to view pages that continuously receive links
Another interesting feature in the Ahrefs system is Best by link growth (located at the bottom of the left menu). This option essentially shows you which pages on your site receive backlinks on an ongoing basis over a timeframe of a day, week, or month. It is very useful for competitor research to understand why they choose to get backlinks to specific pages and which pages they want to rank.
4. Analyzing multiple sites simultaneously
If you are optimizing large websites or if the website you are optimizing has a lot of competitors, using the Batch Analysis feature in the Ahrefs system you can analyze a large number of websites simultaneously. With this feature, you can analyze up to 200 sites simultaneously, and the analysis you receive is identical to a standard site analysis in Ahrefs with metrics like DR, number of ranking keywords, average monthly organic traffic volume, AR, number of referring domains, and more.
Summary
We have covered many features within the Ahrefs system throughout the tool’s guide series. Using this tool, SEO professionals can analyze a large number of websites and obtain relevant information that helps us understand what actions we need to take to optimize our site. In addition to analyzing our own website, in Ahrefs we can also conduct keyword research, analyze competitor sites, analyze content on websites, and more. Although the monthly price of the tool is high (especially in the advanced plans), the system is undoubtedly worth the price in terms of the added value it provides to SEO professionals.
About the author
Dvir Naaman, 27, graduate of the Digital Marketing course at HackerU College. Experienced in building WordPress websites, paid advertising on Google, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. Specializes in SEO at Fialkov Digital. Has extensive experience in e-commerce and dropshipping, and is the owner of Merchant Center – a website that aggregates information on e-commerce platforms and advanced marketing systems to increase business conversions with an emphasis on e-commerce store sales.
