N Ways to Use Ahrefs in a Search Audit

Introduction

- What is he reading? The traveler asked the neighbor.
- Intro for your book. We gather here every
Sunday and show drafts.
“Are you writers?”
- We begin.
Maria Farisa. Aventurine

Ahrefs service is an indispensable tool in the work of an SEO specialist. Therefore, it is not surprising that a number of reviews are devoted to the description of its functionality. But, unfortunately, most of the articles are limited to listing the main functions of the service, which are available in the help, without going into details. And here comes to mind the dialogue from "Alice in Wonderland": "Meet! Alice, this is pudding! Pudding, this is Alice! ", Which can be rephrased as:" Meet! Reader, this is Ahrefs! Ahrefs, this is the Reader! ” But just as Alice wanted to cut a piece of pudding and try it, so the service wants to be "tested".
 
Agree, it is always more interesting to read not the instructions, even if retold in your own words, on a blender / drill / MozBar / AutoCad / Ahrefs, etc. ( choose which is closer), and specific “recipes” for using the equipment / service / program. For example, "8 dishes for a child that can be prepared using a blender."
 
In this review we want to share the experience of using Ahrefs at Ukrkontekst to audit sites, both at the start of work with projects and for scheduled recurring checks. As examples, we cited the characteristics of sites that are not promoted by the agency. We use this service for the following sections of search audit:

• eat the original site settings;
  
• checking reference parameters;
  
• selection of the semantic core;
  
• competitor analysis.
  

The removal of the initial parameters of the site

On the contrary, I am more interested in the beginning - in the beginning there are always so many hopes. The finale has no merits, except for one thing — to show how wrong those hopes were .
Minet Walters Grumpy Bridle

At the stage of removing the initial parameters of the site using the service, we usually fix ( Fig. 1 ):

• Number of links (URL) - this characteristic is taken as a reference point and subsequently allows us to evaluate the progress in increasing the link mass in the process of promotion ( Fig. 1, position 3 );
  
  
• The ratio of donor domains to the number of backlinks - there are no clear recommendations on the maximum allowable value of this parameter. Since it is not recommended to get many links from one donor, this ratio should ideally tend to unity ( Fig. 1, item 4: item 3 ).
  
  
• The rating of the domain’s Ahrefs and the main pages of the site should grow in the process of promotion, in addition, the rating of pages more significant for promotion should be higher than that of others ( Fig. 1, items 1-2 ).
  

Fig. 1 - Site parameters recorded during the audit (for example, interflora.co.uk)

 
A number of the points described above may seem obvious or inconsequential, but, as the creator of Lolita Vladimir Nabokov wrote: " Nurture details, divine details . " And a good specialist in any field is distinguished by attention to details.
  

Reference Audit

Everything is sheer banality.
Link to link to link.
- The main question that people are now asking themselves
is not "What is the meaning of existence?" - say the lips.
- The main question is “Where did this quote come from?”
Chuck Palahniuk. Surviving

A full reference audit without Ahrefs will take quite a lot of time. The service helps to save time, allowing you to quickly and with a high degree of reliability determine the reference characteristics, namely:

• Keywords in the links to the site (Fig. 2) . Conveniently, this data is available as in the form of a cloud of anchors, while it is immediately clear what requests prevail: selling (with the words “buy”, “price”), branded (company name), non-anchor (no text)
  

Fig. 2 - The site anchor cloud shown by Ahrefs service (using seicosecurity.com as an example)
 
A detailed report on all anchor text is also presented with the ability to sort by number of keywords, type of links and other characteristics ( Fig. 3 ).


Fig. 3 - Distribution of anchor backlinks with filtering of link types (on the example of seicosecurity.com)

• Are there links from sites of similar / related topics  - this parameter is determined by viewing the list of donor sites (current index or live index) and, if necessary, switching to them. It is logical that the site selling ship pumps has links from offshore sites ( Fig. 4 ).
  

Fig. 4 - Characteristics of donor domains (for example, pumpvendor.com)

• Broken links are backlinks that lead to remote pages of a site ( Fig. 5 ). It’s good when, after clicking on the Broken links (broken), the message “At the moment in our index there are no broken backlinks for the requested domain / URL” is displayed ( Fig. 5a ). It is recommended to monitor these parameters regularly, because after the next check you can see a completely different result ( Fig. 5b ).
  

a


b

Fig. 5 - Check broken links at different time periods (for example pumpvendor.com):
a - no broken links; b - broken links are found.
 
To get rid of broken links, you need to configure 301 or 302 redirects from pages that are deleted and backlinked to (if possible). With this decision, the resource will not lose links, and the link weight will be transferred to other site URLs ( Fig. 6 ).


Fig. 6 - Redirecting backlinks to other pages of the site interflora.co.uk)

• Links from trust sites with Ahrefs ratings higher than those of the site being checked are a good signal, both for an SEO specialist and for search engines. However, even with such donors, we check the number of outbound links to ensure that they are not spammed.
  

 

• Social signals , as you know, are taken into account by search engines when ranking sites. For content sites (especially news) this factor is quite significant. Ahrefs conveniently displays statistics on the resource as a whole and in the context of the pages ( Fig. 7 ).
  

a


b

Fig. 7 - Social signals from 4 social networks (for example, nytimes.com):
a - for the entire site; b - for individual pages

• The absence / presence of a “link explosion” on the site is determined using a consolidated schedule for changing the number of referring pages and domains. As you can see on the site being checked for the last 30 days ( Fig. 8a ) and 12 months ( Fig. 8b ) there was no sharp fluctuation in the number of links.
  

Of interest is also the comparison of numbers on graphs with the number of domains and referring pages. The blue graphs show that the number of referring domains increases simultaneously with a decrease in referring pages and amounts to 1: 4.4.


a


b

Fig. 8 - Dynamics of changes in the number of links and donor domains (for example, pumpvendor.com):
a - within 30 days; b - during the year

• Distribution by types of links makes it possible to evaluate the quality of the existing link mass. A good link profile should include various groups and types of links (text, pictures, dofollow, nofollow, etc.) from donors with various domain names ( Fig. 9 ).
  

The resource pumpvendor.com, the data for which is shown in Fig. 9 is an example of a site with a high-quality link profile that looks natural and includes dofollow / nofollow with the predominance (but not dominance) of links of the first type ( Fig. 9a ). There are text backlinks, image links, which is good for an online store with a large assortment ( Fig. 9b ). Among the reference donors, only the * .gov and * .edu domains are absent , although this is not critical for the site offering marine pumps (Fig. 9c).  


a


b


c

Fig. 9 - Distribution of backlinks and donor sites into various groups (for example, pumpvendor.com):
a, b - by types of links; c - by domain name

If we consider such a parameter as the language diversity of backlinks, then the vast majority of anchors should be in the language of the main audience of the site (Fig. 10a ). Of course, the link profile of well-known quoted resources may include links in dozens of languages ​​without the complete dominance of one of them ( Fig. 10b ).  


a

  
b

Fig. 10 - Distribution of backlinks in the languages ​​used:
a - for pumpvendor.com; b - for nytimes.com
 
For example, the proportion of English-language links for pumpvendor.com is 83%, links in 12 other languages ​​do not exceed 0.6% (with the exception of Dutch - 2.5% of the total). The site of the authoritative New York Timesthere are backlinks with anchors in more than 50 languages, with the following distribution: almost 75% in English, 4.2% in Indonesia - 4.2%; 1.5% and 1.2% in Spanish and German, respectively. Anchor texts in other languages ​​are less than 1% each.
 
A language distribution similar to the New York Times for a regional news resource or local commercial site will look unnatural and, with a high degree of probability, will lead to search engine sanctions.

 

Semantic core selection

The keywords "Pig", "Weapon" and "Safe" strained my nerves. Naf-Naf decided to rob a bank to pay the mortgage Nif-Nif and Nuf-Nuf?
From the game "The Missing: A Search and Rescue Mystery"

When selecting a semantic core, Ahrefs allows you to see what keywords the site is already showing in the search, giving statistics on the frequency of requests (replacing the Ad Planner with Google Adwords, which now shows not specific values, but the range of the number of requests), by the relevant page, position in output, as well as a number of other useful parameters (Fig. 11).


Fig. 11 - Keywords by which the site is shown in the TOP-100 of search results (for example, seicosecurity.com)
 
In addition to the standard snippets in the search results, other search results for the site for this request are also returned - SERP features (video, contextual advertising, image, advanced regular snippet, etc.). For example, in fig. 12 you can see that for a number of keywords the site is shown in the search by images, product listings, advanced snippets, etc.


Fig. 12 - Results of the site showing in search results for the query “myers pump parts” (for example, interflora.co.uk)

 
When selecting search queries for a site, an effective tool is Keywords Explorer , which allows you to select query options. To do this, enter the basic queries (or load them in a file) that describe the site, specify the region of promotion and choose from the proposed options (Fig. 13).


a


b

Fig. 13 - Query selection using the Keywords Explorer tool :
а - input / selection form for initial data; b - query options
 

Competitor analysis

- You got a competitor near the porch there.
- Competitor? My competitors crayfish in the river feed.
Artyom Kamenisty. Weirdest noob

With Ahrefs, competitors can be compared in several ways:

• самый простой — это перейти по ссылке Competing domains и посмотреть данные по количеству уникальных и совпадающих ключевых слов. Если нужна более подробная информация по сайту-конкуренту, то она отображается в том же окне (рис. 14).
  

Рис. 14 — Конкуренты в поисковой выдаче (на примере seicosecurity.com)

• Нередко бывает, что предлагаемый сервисом список конкурентов не устраивает, поскольку не учитывает особенностей бизнеса, предлагаемого ассортимента и ряда других нюансов. В этом случае после отбора конкурентов можно сравнить их основные параметры с сайтом, для которого проводится аудит, используя инструмент Пакетный анализ (рис. 15).
  
  

Рис. 15 — Анализ конкурентов в сервисе Ahrefs (на примере pumpvendor.com)
 

• for a more detailed analysis of the reference mass of competitive resources, including and to identify common donors, you can use Cross Reference Analysis (Figure 16) .
  
  

Fig. 16 - Search for common link donors for sites
 
If you exclude the analyzed site from the list, you can find a list of disjoint link donors for competitor sites. It is possible that in this list interesting resources will be found on which you can get a link to your site (Fig. 17).


Fig. 17 - Deleting a site from the list during cross-link analysis
 

Conclusion

– Дживс, – говорю я, – знаете что?
– Нет, сэр.
– Знаете, кого я видел вчера вечером?
– Нет, сэр.
– Дж. Уошберна Стоукера и его дочь Полину.
– В самом деле, сэр?
– Должно быть, они в Англии.
– Такое заключение напрашивается, сэр.
Пэлем Гринвел Вудхауз. Дживс, Вы гений!

As you can see, the Ahrefs service, if used correctly and to the fullest extent possible, will help save tens of hours of working time for a search engine optimization specialist, allowing you to quickly check a number of points on the search audit checklist. I would also like to note that the wide range of offered functions fully justifies not the lowest price of the service, especially if we talk about the tariff for agencies. Saving time and effort to obtain high-quality statistics in such a volume as in Ahrefs will quickly recover these costs.

In this article, we tried to reveal some of the features of the service that are useful to an SEO specialist. Functionality Ahrefs is much wider, and, in our opinion, is of interest to specialists in various fields in the field of Internet marketing, allowing it to be used also for PPC and SMM.