Using Ahrefs to analyze off-page optimization

Just few companies can create such tools as they have to scan the Web and constantly analyze each page in an attempt to have a large-scale view of the network and the relationship of sites within it.

For a long time Open site Explorer and Majestic SEO were the most useful and popular among other SEO tools enabled to analyze off-page optimization. Not long ago was offered   Ahrefs.

Despite the fact that Ahrefs is a commercial product many of its features are available for free (and after registration some restrictions are removed). Consider what features are available for Ahrefs and how it can be used to analyze off-page optimization.

1. Search the amount and sources of backlinks

The simplest but one of the important functions of such services – is to find backlinks to your site or to competitor. To do this, you can use the tab “Site Explorer”.

The analysis provides information about the number of links, referring domains, IP addresses of sites, number of text links that were closed in the attribute nofollow and delivered through redirect or image. In the table below the statistics you can find specific pages, which link to the site under analysis used by anchors and date of the page addition to the index service.

By analyzing your own sites it’s better to use reports in the tab “Reports” because there are fewer restrictions and, therefore, more data for analysis.

2. View and export of an anchor sheet

In a separate table you can see all the text links that link resources on the site that is analyzed. By analyzing, for this purpose you must choose the tab “Anchors”.

Anchors can be sorted by the number of backlinks, the attribute nofollow, domains, and some other parameters. Thus, we can find common anchors.

3. Position analysis

Including the number of key words that are queried no less than 35 times a month the service analyzes Top 100 SERPs and build back table. For a given site you can find all the queries that it is in the top.

Also the table contains information about changing of site position according to this request since the last inspection, search volume and competitiveness of the request.

4. Search for pages that are most often referred to

Very interesting which pages attracted the most links or for which purchased links in case of unnatural project promotion? Go into the “Reports - your project – Pages” and sort the table by the number of backlinks.

Each address in the table can be further analyzed for the position of backlinks or by clicking on the icon of the selected record.

5.  Link analysis to subdomains

In reports select the tab “Subdomains” and get a table with data on all subdomains of the site. If you do not use subdomains then the table to determine which of several options for website link more often to the www-prefix or not and at the same time check whether the main domain set in the panel for webmasters.

Given the large number of subdomains on the site you can found which ones are most popular and which get less attention.

6. Search of the most often referring domains

To find out what sites most often cite the resource use the tab “Domains”. Choosing different sort in the table we can analyze the domains by several parameters. For example, to find cross-cutting links to the site including closed to nofollow.

7. Last found backlinks

Select in reports the tab "Backlinks" and sort table by date to find Web Page (Updated). Obtain the most recent links to the site under analysis.

There is a filter on the top of the table where you can specify parameters to filter report results, for example, specify the addresses of domains from which you want to exclude data for the report.

8.  Often referring countries  and domain zones

If project is overseas and has a large audience than analyzing countries and link domain zones we can learn more about the audience of the project and draw appropriate conclusions. To view the most often linking countries in the reports choose the tab “Countries” and for domain zones “TLDs”.

Ahrefs also provides many other opportunities for and webmasters. If you have not tried the above-described service, it's time to do it - .