My 5 Favorite Ahrefs Use Cases for Content Marketers

I’ve utilized Ahrefs since 2016. I thought I was a powerfulness user, but since joining the team, I’ve discovered a clump much usage cases that I can’t ideate surviving without.

Here are 5 of my favourite ways to usage Ahrefs for contented marketing:

Let’s beryllium honest: we each snoop connected our competitors to spot what’s moving (and isn’t). But today, a batch of the astir breathtaking contented strategies unrecorded extracurricular of the institution blog: escaped tools, app integrations, programmatic content, you name it.

For astir websites, you tin usage the Site structure study successful Site Explorer to rapidly spot however the website is structured, and which parts make the astir integrated traffic.

In the illustration below, we’re looking astatine Copy.ai’s tract structure. We mightiness expect their blog to thrust astir of their integrated hunt traffic, but according to the Site structure report, it lone accounts for 4% of integrated traffic. Instead, their /tools subfolder drives astir 60% of their traffic:

Click deeper into the tract structure, and you tin spot the idiosyncratic pages generating the astir traffic. In this case, 3 tools unsocial relationship for an estimated 20% of the full website’s integrated hunt traffic:

We tin adjacent comparison metrics from contiguous to a constituent successful the past and spot however their strategy has changed. Compared to a twelvemonth ago, Copy.ai has grown postulation to its /tools subfolder but removed 195 pages from its blog:

It’s casual to way the show of immoderate blog arsenic a whole. Add the URL into Site Explorer, and a 2nd later, you’ll spot key metrics:

But for large blogs (ours has immoderate 2.5k indexed pages), it’s harder to reply questions like:

• Which authors are driving the astir traffic?
• How does link acquisition disagree betwixt SEO contented and thought enactment content?
• Does updating our articles with an on-page SEO instrumentality amended show beyond conscionable updating them normally?

Enter Portfolios. Portfolios let you to radical a database of URLs unneurotic and presumption their aggregated metrics. I usage 1 portfolio for tracking the show of my articles:

And different for tracking caller articles published by my team:

And different inactive for monitoring the hunt show of immoderate of the biggest “parasite SEO” publishers (to spot whether oregon not Google is truly doing thing to combat it):

In each case, you tin click into your portfolio and spot the aforesaid elaborate metrics you’re utilized to from Site Explorer:

Portfolios has go my default mode of utilizing Ahrefs, and determination are tons of use cases:

• Compare articles written by freelancers, in-house terms, and (dare I accidental it) AI tools
• See which nonfiction topics thrust the astir traffic
• Analyze the show of antithetic contented types (helpful for separating retired the interaction of hunt contented and thought enactment content)
• Monitor the show of cardinal rival articles
• Measure the interaction of newly updated oregon rewritten articles
• Track experiments (create 1 portfolio arsenic a power and different for the articles you privation to experimentation on)

The hardest portion of keyword probe (at slightest for me) is ever generating seed keywords.

When you person a fewer presumption to explore, it’s casual to find long-tail variations, matching terms, related terms, you sanction it. But coming up with those archetypal fewer topics? Not ever easy, and it becomes adjacent harder erstwhile you’ve exhausted evident topics.

But now, we tin conscionable usage a small AI brainstorming powerfulness to crook a blank leafage into dozens and dozens of effect keywords. In Site Explorer, conscionable inquire our small AI person for help:

Let’s usage the bog modular keyword “content marketing” arsenic an example. Here are technical and specialized terms related to contented marketing:

Here are emerging trends:

And present controversial and debate-generating keywords (“quality vs quantity”—going close for the meaty topics):

With our large database of effect keywords, deed “Search” and we’ll spot the estimated hunt volume, keyword difficulty, and a clump of different information points for our ideas. Click the Matching terms oregon Related terms reports and our database of possibilities volition turn massively:

Not each thought volition beryllium a location tally successful presumption of important hunt volume, but galore will—and they mightiness beryllium ideas you wouldn’t different person considered.

It’s beauteous tricky to refine a database of 300 people keywords to a realistic enactment of nonfiction ideas. Many keywords volition person overlapping intent, others mightiness beryllium subtopics that marque much consciousness to notation arsenic portion of different topic. Tricky!

Here we’ve utilized AI to brainstorm effect topics and utilized the Matching terms study to find adjacent much ideas. We’ve coiled up with 1,622 keyword ideas successful astir 30 seconds of research:

Great, but besides wholly overwhelming. But we tin marque beingness overmuch easier by utilizing the Cluster by Parent Topic tab.

Parent taxable aims to cluster keywords with akin oregon the aforesaid hunt intent, truthful you tin people them each connected 1 leafage alternatively of many.

If we wanted to people the keywords “content selling audit” and “content audit definition”, we could alternatively people the genitor taxable “content audit”—and besides rank for “content selling audit” and “content audit definition”.

Three keyword rankings, 1 article.

In the representation beneath our 1,622 keywords are grouped by their genitor topic. We’ve gone from 1,622 keywords to conscionable 162 clusters—much much manageable:

Just 1 of these clusters, content audit, contains 43 keywords. So by penning 1 nonfiction targeted astatine content audit, we basal to fertile for 43 of the keywords we were funny in:

Competitive SERPs are usually a never-ending crippled of content optimization and updating. Competitors people caller articles, oregon update their existing ones, and you person to update your contented to debar sliding down the rankings.

When you formulate your program for updating an article, it’s utile to spot precisely however competitors person updated their articles.

Here’s the integrated postulation graph for Zapier’s astir fashionable blog post, How to Use ChatGPT. We tin spot a immense summation successful integrated postulation starting successful November 2023:

This begs an evident question: what happened successful November? What caused the monolithic postulation increase? Is it thing that we tin learn from?

Well, bully news: we tin usage the Page inspect study to find out.

By default, you tin spot the existent HTML and leafage substance for your chosen URL:

But much importantly, we tin usage Page inspect to comparison the on-page substance astatine specific points successful time: similar conscionable earlier and aft their large postulation surge successful November 2023. In a mates of clicks, we tin really see if Zapier updated the leafage successful a mode that mightiness person triggered the postulation increase.

In this case, we tin spot wholly caller sections of substance that were added to the nonfiction astir the clip of the postulation increase, similar this postulation of “how to” content:

There are plentifulness of factors that tin amended hunt performance, but this is simply a almighty mode of isolating the interaction of on-page changes. If we were penning an nonfiction connected the aforesaid topic, oregon refreshing an nonfiction Zapier had dethroned, this is precisely the benignant of conception I would see adding.

Final thoughts

I’ve utilized Ahrefs for keyword research, nexus building, and reporting since forever, but these new-to-me workflows person made my beingness overmuch easier. If you’re a contented marketer, they mightiness assistance you too.

Got immoderate absorbing Ahrefs workflows to share? Let maine cognize connected X oregon LinkedIn!