Search engine optimization has changed in the past few years. A lot. Not only have the methods to get to the top of the search results changed, but the tools have too.
Today, quality is as important (if not more) than quantity, and many of the tools that used to dominate the arena have vanished completely. But some, like online services such as Ahrefs, remain just as popular as they always were. Here’s why.
WHAT IS AHREFS?
Ahrefs is, first and foremost, a back link checker. Link building has changed a lot, but contrary to popular belief, it’s far from dead. Knowing who links to the biggest sites in your industry can be the first step in building quality links of your own. You want great sites to be linking to content on your website, that boosts your search ranking. Identifying links has always been the cornerstone of Ahrefs, which sets it apart.
But it’s a whole lot more than that too, and there are all sorts of nifty and useful SEO features like rankings, referring pages, keyword tools and more.
In short, it’s the ultimate tool to learn from the best sites, to get ideas and learn from for implementation in your own context on your own website. If you want to kickstart your SEO, it gives you all the tools you could need to emulate the best.
HOW DOES AHREFS WORK?
Ahrefs uses a sophisticated crawling software to recreate the way search engines see sites. This allows the software (and the user) to see complex networks of incoming links. It also does a page level analysis of content, ranks content by popularity, and sorts and reports all kinds of data.
With this type of information, and using the so called “skyscraper method”, Ahrefs allows you to generate the exact type of content that you already know people want to read.
It’s not a shortcut, you still need to do the work, but it gives you the roadmap you need to move forward, faster.
WHAT DOES IT COST?
As SEO tools go, Ahrefs is certainly not the cheapest out there. In fact, with packages starting at $99 a month, it’s definitely an investment. There are, however, so many features that allow you to view, analyze and replicate the exact strategies major sites in your niche use to rank on Google that it’s infinitely worth its price in my opinion. If you are serious about SEO results, this is the kind of tool to use.
In fact, compared to hiring a professional SEO firm to conduct this sort of in depth research and planning for you, that’s a downright steal!
If you’re still not convinced Ahrefs is the right tool for you, there’s a two-week free trial. So you can test the system before you invest. But if you’re like most people, it won’t take you that long to see this is one of the best SEO tools out there.
Mike Gingerich is president of Digital Hill Multimedia (www.DigitalHill.com), a Goshen web design and marketing agency. He is also a co-founder of TabSite.com and Waftio.com, leading software tools for contests and lead capture, and author of the book “Game Plan for Social Media Lead Generation”. Find out more at www.MikeGingerich.com/book.