Ahrefs: The Marketeers of the Digital Age

Quite frankly, SEO is simple. But the thing is simple doesn’t always translates into easy. In this context, it just means that black hat methods of the past simply don’t work. The desired ranking is simply a matter of quality writing and engaging content—content that will compel people to share. But the thing is, irrespective of the quality, people can’t share something they don’t know exist.

ahrefs

SEO tools aren’t anything to fawn over. It is simple analytics that helps us understand the digital demographics of our audience and strategically funnel our content in order to get it to our desired target audiences. Simply put, you won’t find a comedy sitcom on a news network simply because of behavioral patterns and expectations.

SEO is simply a way to understand the digital dynamics of human behavioral patterns. We can use it to strategize according to the digital environment. Without these tools, it would be akin to blindly shooting in the dark and hoping for the best, which anything but a good business strategy.

Let’s take a look at Ahrefs, a complete digital analytics tools suite. After looking at all of the features the suite offers, we will also look at one of its competitors in order to get a better idea of the product.

Ahrefs Features

What is Ahrefs you ask? Ahrefs is a digital marketing company and a digital analytics and SEO tools provider. The company dates back to 2011 when it was launched as a site explorer. The launch of the powerful tool stimulated the rather moribund field of backlink analytics and spurred a race for backlink development. Today, Ahrefs’ site explorer tool is considered as one of the best backlink analytics tools on the world wide web.

Despite the company’s humble and recent beginnings, it has grown at a neck break pace and is no longer considered as a mere startup. The company used its initial windfall to heavily invest in digital infrastructure, which is the primary reason for its current dominant standing.

As of 2017, the company’s indexing software updates with the newest backlinks every 15 minutes. What’s more impressive is the crawler, which can process up to six billion pages a day, a feat to be reckoned with.

The following are some of the information Ahrefs’ SEO tools can provide to its data-hungry customers:

  • Keyword Research
  • Position Tracking
  • Backlink Analysis
  • Technical SEO
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Organic Traffic Analysis
  • On-page Optimization
  • Link Building
  • Data-Driven Ideation Process
  • One of the best UX and UI

Some of the other features worth mentioning include an extensive database for backlinks, which can help a fledgling website to build a foundational structure to stand on. Its SEO web crawler is by far the most powerful tool on the internet, which allows us to acquire valuable insights into keyword mentions almost instantaneously.

The company uses all of its data to offer extensive databases for clickstream data, as well as pay-per-click ads. All of this enhances the effectiveness of the social media tools and considerably increases a company’s ability to target its targeted audiences. Moreover, customers can also benefit from a simple domain rank features, which can help assess the quality of its backlinks.

Pros

  • By far the most extensive web crawler on the internet
  • Ability to craft bespoke alert and reports for daily consumption
  • Comprehensive coverage of all of the major social media platforms
  • Offers metrics exclusive to Ahrefs
  • SERP analysis and features
  • Real-time update of vital information

Cons

  • Limits of the basic plan can limit the extent of research that can be conducted
  • Lacks integration with other major analytics tools such as Google Analytics
  • Keyword analysis lacks an automated relevance score and requires manual work
  • Web traffic analysis tools a bit dated compared to competitors

Summary

One of the key features that accurately summarizes Ahrefs is its user interface. Despite the plethora of analytical tools and metrics, the user interface makes the process so simple that you don’t need to be a data scientist to make use of all of the data. It truly embodies the potential of big data for the casual user.

The full SEO Suite is filled with almost every tool you could think of. The suite contains all of the bells and whistles that come with digital data analytics. If you get the complete package, you’d probably not have to worry about getting another software. However, if you do wish to run another analytics software, you’d probably have trouble syncing data from both software.

Comparison

Moz, an SEO consulting agency, is considered as a direct competitor to Ahrefs. Moz is considered as a powerhouse of SEO analytics suite. It is considered as an industry standard bearer. Aside from Google, Moz has been around for longer than any other digital analytics firm. It offers pretty much all of the tools that Ahrefs does. However, it is important to note that its crawler lags Ahrefs in terms of the number of pages crawled per day.

Similar to Ahrefs, its most basic plan offers just the bare bones and is not suitable for extensive research. It does, however, offer much greater ease of use as it internally ranks all of the data it collects, which is a way could be a turnoff for those who prefer raw data for their research.

As far as the user experience is concerned, both companies offer a clean and crisp UI. Ahrefs does stand out a bit in its design. The keyword management and reporting tools will help you get almost any job done, just like Ahrefs. The company recently revamped its site crawler, in order to match Ahrefs’ crawler, but Ahrefs still boasts the most powerful crawler after Google.

Verdict

There is no doubt that Ahrefs and Moz both offer incredible value to digital marketers. Both companies are constantly vying for the top spot and constantly innovating and improving their services in order to offer the greatest possible user experience. The fact is, both of these companies will help you get the job done.

However, if you’re looking to get the most and indulge in some serious digital research, it would be hard to deny that Ahrefs should be your choice. Despite offering similar tools, the company does everything just a tab bit better and is considered as the superior product, at least by our standards.

ahrefs