Ahrefs Interactive Demo
Explore a sandbox demo of Ahrefs, a widely used SEO toolset designed for optimizing websites and tracking competitors' data to improve SEO ranking.
What is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO toolset best known for having the world's largest backlink database, processing over 8 billion web pages daily. Founded in 2010 by Dmitry Gerasimenko, Ahrefs serves SEO professionals, content marketers, and link builders who need accurate competitive intelligence and backlink research.
Ahrefs' Site Explorer shows any website's organic traffic, top keywords, and backlink profile. Content Explorer finds the most-shared content on any topic. Keywords Explorer provides search volume, keyword difficulty, and SERP analysis for keyword research. The Site Audit tool identifies technical SEO issues.
Unlike tools that estimate traffic, Ahrefs shows granular data on which keywords drive traffic to any page and how that traffic has changed over time — making it invaluable for reverse-engineering competitors' SEO strategies.
How to get started with Ahrefs
- 1
Start your trial
Sign up at ahrefs.com — $7 for a 7-day trial. Plans start at $99/month. Enter a competitor's domain in Site Explorer to get your first competitive intelligence view.
- 2
Analyze competitor backlinks
Enter a competitor's domain and go to Backlinks. Filter by dofollow links, sort by Domain Rating. Identify the highest-authority sites linking to competitors for your outreach target list.
- 3
Find keyword opportunities
Use Keywords Explorer to research terms in your niche. Filter by low KD (keyword difficulty) and reasonable volume. Look for keywords your competitors rank for that you don't yet target.
- 4
Audit your own site
Set up a Site Audit crawl of your own domain. Address critical issues first: broken links, missing meta tags, slow pages, duplicate content, and crawlability issues.
- 5
Track your rankings
Add your target keywords to Rank Tracker. Monitor daily position changes. Compare your ranking trend against competitors targeting the same keywords.
Who is Ahrefs most useful for?
SEO professionals who need the deepest backlink data available and accurate organic traffic estimates for competitor research. Use Supademo to create walkthroughs of your Ahrefs analysis process for your content and marketing teams.
Link builders who need to find backlink opportunities, analyze competitor link profiles, and track their link building progress. Create Supademo guides of your link prospecting workflow.
Content strategists who use Ahrefs to find content gaps, identify high-performing competitor content, and prioritize topic opportunities.
Agency SEOs managing multiple client domains who need efficient workflows for reporting, monitoring, and research.
Looking for alternatives to Ahrefs?
Here are four tools worth evaluating depending on your needs.
More tools beyond SEO — PPC research, social media, content templates. Ahrefs has better backlink data; SEMrush has more marketing breadth. Many pros use both.
View demo →
Creator of the DA metric. Less data depth than Ahrefs. Better for beginners and smaller agencies with tighter budgets.
Specialized backlink analysis tool. Often used alongside Ahrefs for its Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics. Less comprehensive as an all-in-one SEO suite.
More affordable entry point with a clean UX. Less data depth than Ahrefs. Good for freelancers and small businesses.
FAQs on Ahrefs
Commonly asked questions about Ahrefs. Have more? Reach out and our team will be happy to help.
What makes Ahrefs different from other SEO tools?
Ahrefs has the largest backlink database updated most frequently, and many SEOs consider its organic traffic estimates the most accurate. Its UX is generally praised as intuitive for complex data.
Is Ahrefs free?
No free plan. There's a $7 trial for 7 days. Plans start at $99/month (Lite) for 5 projects, $199/month (Standard) for 20 projects, or $399/month (Advanced) for 50 projects.
What is Ahrefs Domain Rating?
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' proprietary metric measuring a website's backlink authority on a 0-100 scale. Higher DR indicates a stronger backlink profile. Useful for quickly assessing link-building target quality.
Can Ahrefs track rankings?
Yes. Ahrefs Rank Tracker monitors keyword positions daily and shows SERP feature changes, mobile vs desktop rankings, and competitor position comparisons.
How does Ahrefs Content Explorer work?
Content Explorer searches billions of web pages by keyword and ranks results by organic traffic, backlinks, or social shares. It's used to find top-performing content on any topic for content ideation and link prospecting.
Does Ahrefs have a keyword research tool?
Yes. Keywords Explorer has data for 10 search engines across 170+ countries. It shows volume, KD, clicks, and parent topics. The SERP overview shows exactly what's ranking for any keyword.