This post is a continuation of my last post on keyword tools that one can start working on. I had mentioned 3 tools earlier, shortly after which I came across a 4th tool, which I believe is a star-runner in the space of keyword tools and competitive analysis. I am adding more about the tool here in this post.
You can find my last post on keyword tools, here. I talk about SEMrush, Google Analytics, and KW Finder, here. You will find some quick and easy tips of how to find more value out of these tools and navigate them easily.
The latest addition to this post and to the list of some of the best keyword tools ever, would be Ahrefs (pronounced: hrefs).
Ahrefs happens to have one of the biggest keyword databases in the market, with about 5.1 billion keywords worldwide and about 2 billion keywords in the US alone. This helps it return maximum relevant keyword suggestions.
One of the most important things that you need when analyzing and comparing your keywords are the right metrics to help choose and drive the right keywords.
Ahrefs provides a few unique keyword metrics such as clicks and clicks per search. Upon using Ahrefs, I found it to have a user-friendly interface which helped me take the necessary steps to set up profile and track metrics quite easy.
One more of its biggest USPs happens to be competitor keyword analysis. You can add your competitor URL, too, to find out what they might be doing right or wrong with their keyword efforts and incorporate their learnings to your keyword strategy.
Their easy-to-use interface and rich features, which provided information through graphs and clear tables, made the tool so much more easy to use.
Here are a few screenshots taken from a walk-through of Ahrefs, while setting up the initial dashboard and some examples of what your keyword analysis and research might look like.
If you want to engage your audience (niche) using long-tail keywords, Ahrefs will be a great tool to start off with.
You start with creating your profile, where you enter the your website's URL.
Next, you will be asked to enter the keywords relevant to your business and the locations in which you would like to track the usage of these keywords. In my example, I added 4 keywords (the fourth one being SEO, which cannot be seen in the screenshot, above) and 2 locations (language-specific): India and the US.
Ahrefs, then shows you the number of tracked keywords as the number of keywords multiplied by the number of locations. This helps Ahrefs return better keyword results and more accurate location-specific, keyword difficulty scores.
You can go ahead and conduct keyword searches. I conducted a keyword search with the phrase "content marketing" which returned the above result. The dial on the upper left corner shows the keyword difficulty level. That is followed by the unique metrics I had mentioned above, namely clicks and clicks per search. The search volume is also segregated by numbers such as ones with clicks and without clicks and how many of those clicks are organic and how many are paid.
The difícil-o-meter (that's what I call it) above also gives you some useful information on how many backlinks you would need to rank in the top 10 for a particular keyword.
If you find the challenge too difficult, you can go ahead and try another keyword, (I tried content writing, instead) and see if the target seems achievable. This one tells me that I need backlinks from 13 websites to rank in the top 10 for this particular keyword.
Coming back to your profile, your dashboard gives you Link Statistics for your URL which includes details such as domain rating, URL rating, Ahrefs rank, backlinks, reference domains, and organic traffic.
Like I said earlier, you can add your competitor's URLs here as well to keep track of their ratings and keyword performance.
You can also specify the number of alerts on Mentions you would like to receive for the keywords you have listed.
Ahrefs sends you daily emails with a list of mentions of your keywords all across the world. This is a rich source of curated content that you can use for your social media efforts. You can also find out markets where your keywords are trending and what kind of topics are working well with the target audience there. This helps you create content directed towards specific target audience groups in different geographies.
You also receive alerts from Ahrefs for new and lost backlinks, which helps you keep track of the same.
There is so much you can do with this super tool and its huge keyword database. If you want to make the most of these features, you can try out their video tutorials to learn more about how to put all this data and information into practical use.
What keyword tools do you use for your keyword research? If you found this post useful please do share it.
Thanks for the read!