Can you use Ahrefs for free?
Paid and free Ahrefs is one of the best software suites for people engaged in search engine optimization. In addition, Ahrefs free offers essential functionality for checking domain authority, backlink checker, and broken link checker.
The paid version of free Ahrefs offers features like website auditing, competitor analysis, keyword research capabilities, and rank tracking. Most of Ahrefs’ functionalities cater to those working in digital marketing and SEO.
Signing up for a free Ahrefs account gives access to one of the few comprehensive and reliable SEO tools that can directly help improve website ranking through data analysis. While no SEO tool directly influences SERPs, you can rest easy knowing that the paid version and Ahrefs free uses proprietary technology and innovative frameworks to help people understand how their websites stack against the competition. So, while the Ahrefs free account does not give you all the results, you’d at least have baseline data to stimulate your SEO strategy and get you on the right track.
Since search engine rankings are competitive, it’s essential to know the whole story behind those SERP rankings with the help of Ahrefs free. SERP rankings do not exist in a vacuum but are the result of social media efforts and SEO. While a large chunk of results does not have backlinks, you can be sure that for the keywords that matter to your business, the sitelinks that appear on the first page are engineered to stay there for a long time.
Your competitors can do it because they do search engine optimization. Ahrefs free can provide a glimpse of what’s happening behind the scenes.
If you happen to sign up for the premium version instead of Ahrefs com free, the utility lets you dig more data such as:
– Site link profile
– Keyword rankings
– SEO health
– Google keyword research
Using Ahrefs Free for the First Time
What are Ahrefs free tools?
If you searched for “Ahrefs free” or “free Ahrefs,” you’re probably a business owner or professional seeking to improve your site’s SEO health by checking out the competition, looking for an Ahrefs free tool?
You don’t have to sign up for the premium service to use any available Ahrefs free tool on their website. The company offers three free utilities to free users:
– Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator
– Ahrefs Website Authority Checker
How to Use Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker?
You searched for Ahrefs free backlink checker precisely because you want to know the backlink status of your website, or perhaps you’re interested in knowing more about the backlink profile of your competitors.
The website authority score (equivalent to Moz’s domain authority) reflects the confidence score of a website on the internet.
While Google never revealed the exact formula for determining website scores, studies over ten years show that the more quality backlinks lead to a website, the better the score.
The Ahrefs free backlink checker shows you the most recent backlink results for the URL you feed the system. The Ahrefs free backlink checker goes both ways: you can check your website or other people’s websites.
While the free Ahrefs free does not fetch and display all the possible results for the given domain, the first few results should already give you a good idea of how a website’s link profile looks.
The Ahrefs free tool gives users a list of backlinks that come in many forms. In the context of SEO and link-building campaigns, editorial links from outside a website are the most valuable links. In addition, Ahrefs free tools provide an overview of the landscape, so you have an idea of how your competitors are faring and how your website is faring in contrast to theirs.
Editorial links are inserted in press releases, new stories, articles, blogs, and other digital content formats. Editorial links from quality content and digital formats are a solid vote of confidence and say that the target website is a reference or reliable source and, therefore, should be trusted (by readers).
Natural links are inbound links and brand mentions from social media platforms and websites. People give these links without you asking for them.
For example, if you sell custom sneakers and a blogger creates a nice blog post for you, linking to your website and socials, those links to your pages are all natural and editorial links simultaneously.
As you can imagine, such links can have an immense impact on your link-building efforts, as they are genuine and authentic. The top results from an SEO tool like the Ahrefs free keyword tool will yield actual SERP results corresponding to the most authentic and helpful content related to the search terms.
While AI can never fully comprehend what authentic means to people when they read content on the internet, the Google algorithm already has a pretty good idea of what’s real and what’s potentially paid/fake/self-created. Consider this review of sneakers from RunRepeat:
RunRepeat ensures that their reviews are well-crafted, and they even add videos to their reviews to keep people on the page. Other rich media to a page increases dwell time and supports the popularity of a page vis-à-vis Google’s proprietary scoring system, which the search engine delivers in SERPs. Should you land a friendly, natural link from a top-rated website related to your market, you can be sure that the Ahrefs free backlink checker will eventually record the new inbound link as it becomes part of your website’s link profile. There’s real power even in free Ahrefs!
How to Use Ahrefs Free Keyword Tool?
Like their other free utilities, Ahrefs keyword explorer free version is straightforward. Type a search term, and the website provides a glimpse of the best-matching keywords and their corresponding metrics.
Ahrefs keyword explorer free provides KD (Keyword Difficulty), Volume (estimated monthly Volume), and when Ahrefs’ crawlers last updated their keyword data (third column). Like Google and Bing, the free Ahrefs keyword tool relies on frequent web crawls to stay updated.
While it takes just one step to perform a keyword search using the Ahrefs free keyword generator, the more important question here is how to use such information and how to arrive at your choice for keyword research.
Follow the tips below to help you get more from using SEO tools like the Ahrefs’ keyword explorer free:
- Don’t forget about longtail keywords while looking at data from the free Ahrefs keyword tool
It’s a common reaction for people to want to rank for the keywords with the highest monthly search volume. Who wouldn’t want to compete for a keyword with 5,000 monthly hits, right?
The problem with high-volume keywords with top monthly searches is plenty of competition. Regarding how much SEO is going into the page ranking for these search terms, you’re looking at the work of countless SEO professionals and throwing in maybe a few SEO companies, too.
The second issue with these broad keywords with high search volumes is that they may not connect with the customer intention you’re looking for. For example, if you are selling scented soy candles in Los Angeles, you’ll want more local customers to find your pages and content.
Focusing on a more general term like “scented soy candles” brings up Etsy, Target, and Amazon results. While these three are undoubtedly high authority websites with reliable supplies of the product in question, they’re huge competitors, and you can’t see any local results with the search term.
So, to hit your goal of attracting more local business from customers from Los Angeles, you will have to create content for a more global audience, which may not be your goal.
Takeaway: If you need to go local, use longtail keywords that help your cause and are approximately within the radius of the customer intentions that support your SEO strategy.
Observe Keyword Search Trends
As a business owner, you must stay updated about your market. If you are actively promoting your brands, riding the crest of keyword trends and searches can pump activity into your website and generate buzz if done correctly. Tools like Google Trends can quickly provide you with top-notch keyword ideas that you may not have thought of before precisely because picking keywords from an Excel file is like picking a needle from a haystack. Tools like Google Trends can help identify usable topics and general keyword directions that you can then use for content marketing efforts.
There is no effective SEO strategy without keywords. The keywords unlock the direction, and content is the body that makes SEO possible. Therefore, using Ahrefs free is not the end of the road. It is simply the beginning. Even if you unlock the premium version, you need to know which keyword trends are most beneficial for your SEO efforts.
