Before we proceed, you should be aware that Ahrefss doesn’t offer a free trial.

The only trial option is the free Ahrefs webmaster tool, a cutdown version of its Site Explorer and Site Audit suites, and it’s even with limited access.

That said, getting started with Ahrefs is simple. Once you sign up you need to set up at least a project.

A project is simply a website (yours or your client’s) whose SEO data you want to access or work on. To do that, you’ll input the URL of the website.

Next, you must verify the site’s ownership. Select any verification option and complete the process.

Once you’ve done this, you’ll be taken to your dashboard, where you’ll see a general overview of your projects (websites) with top-level info like Ahrefs Ranks and Backlink details.

With that, you are ready to start using the following Ahrefss features.

Site Explorer

Site Explorer is one of Ahrefs’s most powerful features. This feature allows me to analyze any website’s organic traffic and backlinks.

All I need to do is input the website URL or pages into the Site Explorer.

I love this feature not only because it shows me an overview of my site’s overall performance on a single screen, but the fact that I could do the same to my competitors’ sites and dig deeper makes it even more interesting.

I can see their top keywords, the number and sources of their backlinks, the amount of traffic they receive, and how it changes over time. That’s all I need to outrank them.

Keyword Explorer

Unlike other Keyword research tools, which provide data only from Google, Ahrefs provides search data from all major search engines, including Bing, YouTube, Amazon, Yandex, and more.

It’s super easy to zero in on keywords in Ahrefss.

Once I input a keyword, I’ll see information such as its monthly search volume, keyword difficulty score, CPC data, and many closely related keywords.

One of my favourite sections in Ahrefs Keyword Explorer is the SERP overview section.

Here, Ahrefs gives you the top 10 SERP results for the specific keywords.

You’ll see their domain rating, backlinks, and the estimated traffic each receives. You’ll also see the word count of each page, which can be very helpful when deciding what content depth you need to outrank them.

Rank Tracker

As I target keywords and invest time and money in content production, I want to see how my website ranks in search results for those targeted keywords. Ahrefs Rank Tracker allows me to do that.

This feature helps me discover whether my site’s ranking for target keywords is stagnant, improving, or declining over time, which helps me adjust my SEO and content strategy.

This tool works the same as other rank Trackers: input the keywords you’d like to track and see how your site ranks for those keywords.

Rank Tracker also helps monitor ranking for different locations, which is important for local SEO. I can also check how performance differs by device.

Site Audit

Site Audit is one of the most valuable features of an SEO suite. This tool crawls a website to find technical SEO issues that search engines detest and often cause low ranking.

Anytime I use the Site Audit tool, Ahrefs scans all the pages on my website and returns a detailed report on issues such as broken links, redirects, and 404s in an easy-to-understand format.

It also suggests ways to fix them, making it easy for me to get their website back on track.

Every website audit tool assigns an overall site health score after scanning. Ahrefs does the same. This score reflects my website is health regarding several technical SEO metrics, such as loading time, meta tags, duplicate titles, etc.

Advanced Filtering and Sorting

I’ve tried many SEO tools, and I can say this: No tool on the market matches Ahrefs’s filtering and sorting functionalities. Ahrefs puts tons of filtering options at your fingertips, which makes it super easy to pinpoint searches.

For example, when you use Site Explorer to check a competitor’s backlink profile, the result could be hundreds of thousands of links.

But let’s say you are only interested in their best-performing links. You can find them easily using the “Best Links filter”.

To make life easier, tons of other filters, such as URL rating, estimated traffic, link type, etc., are also available.

Content Gap

In addition to top-level competitor analysis, Ahrefs content gap features let you quickly find keywords that your competitors are ranking for, which you aren’t.

You only need to run the competitor’s domains against yours in the Content Gap tools, and you’ll see a list of keywords you are missing out on, like below.

Link Intersect

Like the content gap tool, this tool helps you find sites with backlinks to your competitors.

This is a very handy tool for finding link-building opportunities.

Ahrefs Alerts

You can use Ahrefs alert to receive regular notifications about actions on your site and your competitors. These include when a new link is acquired or lost, keyword ranking changes, and web mentions.

Simply input the URL of the website and select the actions whose alert you want to receive.

Ahrefs is neither cheap nor the most expensive all-in-one SEO tool. The company offers four main pricing options: Ahrefs Lite costs $129 monthly, and the standard and Advanced plans cost $249 and $449 per month, respectively.

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Each of these plans offers the same core features. They only differ in the amount of data you can access. It’s the more you pay, the more data you get.

For instance, the Lite plan lets you track only 500 keywords, while the Agency plan gives you up to 10,000. The same goes for other features such as backlinks, site audits, keywords, etc.

But there are a few exceptions to this rule. Here’s one: Content Explorer is not available on the Lite plan.

Does Ahrefs Offer Discounts?

No. Ahrefs categorically states on its official website that it never offers discounts and no longer offers a free trial.

In the past, Ahrefs offered a 7-day trial for $7 to new users. Unfortunately, as of this writing, this option is no longer available. You can only save up to 20% or get up to 2 months free for purchasing an annual plan.