Ahrefs Tutorial: How to Use Ahrefs for SEO

Ahrefs has earned its reputation as one of the most powerful SEO toolsets available, particularly renowned for its backlink database and keyword research capabilities. With over 14 trillion known links and data from 170 countries, it provides the depth of insight that serious marketers need to make informed decisions about their search strategy.

For Singapore businesses, Ahrefs is especially valuable because it maintains a robust local database that captures search behaviour specific to the Singapore market. Whether you are an e-commerce brand competing against regional players or a local service provider trying to rank in Google.com.sg, Ahrefs gives you the competitive intelligence to understand your position and identify opportunities for growth.

This Ahrefs tutorial covers the six core tools you will use most frequently: Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit, Content Explorer, Rank Tracker, and Competitor Gap Analysis. Each section includes practical steps you can follow along with, so open your Ahrefs dashboard and let us get started. For a broader perspective on how these tools fit into a complete search strategy, visit our SEO services page.

Analysing Any Website with Site Explorer

Site Explorer is the tool you will use most often in Ahrefs. It provides a comprehensive analysis of any website’s organic search traffic, backlink profile, and paid search activity. Think of it as a window into your competitors’ SEO performance.

To begin using Site Explorer:

Enter a domain, subdomain, or specific URL into the search bar at the top of the Ahrefs dashboard.
Choose the mode: “Prefix” analyses all URLs under a specific path, “Domain” analyses the entire domain including subdomains, “Exact URL” analyses a single page, and “Subdomain” analyses a specific subdomain only.
Click the search icon to generate the report.

The Overview tab presents key metrics at a glance. Domain Rating (DR) measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile on a scale of 0 to 100. Organic Traffic shows the estimated monthly visitors from organic search. Referring Domains displays the number of unique websites linking to the target. Organic Keywords reveals how many keywords the domain ranks for in the top 100 search results.

Dig deeper by exploring the sub-reports. The “Top Pages” report shows which pages drive the most organic traffic — useful for understanding what content works for a competitor. The “Organic Keywords” report lists every keyword the domain ranks for, along with position, search volume, traffic estimate, and keyword difficulty. Use the country filter to focus on Singapore-specific data.

The “Backlinks” report is where Ahrefs truly excels. It shows every known backlink pointing to the domain, including the referring page, anchor text, DR of the linking domain, and whether the link is dofollow or nofollow. This data is invaluable for reverse-engineering a competitor’s link-building strategy. Our digital marketing team regularly uses this report to identify high-value link prospects for clients.

Finding Keywords with Keywords Explorer

Keywords Explorer is Ahrefs’ dedicated keyword research tool. It pulls data from multiple search engines including Google, YouTube, Amazon, and Bing, though most SEO professionals focus primarily on Google data.

Here is how to conduct keyword research in Ahrefs:

Navigate to Keywords Explorer from the top navigation bar.
Enter one or more seed keywords separated by commas. For a Singapore property agency, you might enter “condo for sale Singapore, HDB resale, executive condo.”
Select “Singapore” from the country dropdown.
Click “Search” to generate the report.

The overview for each keyword displays several important metrics. Search Volume shows the average monthly searches in your selected country. Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores from 0 to 100 indicate how hard it would be to rank in the top 10 — Ahrefs calculates this based on the number of referring domains the top-ranking pages have. Traffic Potential estimates the total organic traffic you could expect if you ranked number one, accounting for all keyword variations a top-ranking page typically attracts. Cost Per Click (CPC) shows the average price advertisers pay for a click on that keyword in Google Ads.

The “Matching Terms” and “Related Terms” reports expand your keyword list. Matching Terms shows keywords containing your seed keyword, while Related Terms shows semantically related keywords that may not include the exact seed phrase. Use the filters to narrow results by volume, difficulty, word count, or SERP features.

One standout feature is the SERP Overview at the bottom of each keyword report. It shows the current top 10 results for the keyword, along with each page’s backlinks, referring domains, word count, and estimated traffic. This gives you a realistic picture of what it takes to rank for that term. If the top results all have 50 or more referring domains and you have zero, you know it will require significant pemasaran kandungan and link-building effort.

Identifying Technical Issues with Site Audit

Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool crawls your website and flags technical SEO issues that could be hurting your search performance. It checks over 100 pre-defined SEO issues and presents them in an easy-to-understand format.

Setting up your first site audit:

Go to Site Audit from the main navigation and click “New Project.”
Enter your domain and verify ownership (via DNS, HTML file, or meta tag).
Configure crawl settings: set the crawl limit (number of pages), crawl speed, and any URL rules to include or exclude specific sections of your site.
Enable JavaScript rendering if your site relies heavily on client-side rendering — this is common for Singapore businesses using modern frameworks like React or Vue.
Click “Run Audit” to start the crawl.

Once complete, the Health Score gives you an overall percentage based on the ratio of error-free internal URLs to total URLs crawled. Issues are grouped into categories: Performance covers page speed and resource loading; HTML Tags checks title tags, meta descriptions, and heading structure; Social Tags verifies Open Graph and Twitter Card markup; Content identifies thin, duplicate, or orphan pages; Links flags broken internal and external links, redirect issues, and nofollow problems; and Images checks for missing alt attributes, oversized files, and broken image URLs.

Each issue includes an explanation of its SEO impact and a list of affected URLs. You can export these lists as CSV files and share them with your development team. For Singapore businesses running multilingual sites, pay special attention to hreflang errors, canonical tag conflicts, and duplicate content across language versions.

Schedule regular re-crawls — weekly for large sites and monthly for smaller ones — to track your Health Score improvement over time. If the audit reveals structural issues that require design changes, our web design services can help resolve them.

Discovering Content Ideas with Content Explorer

Content Explorer is a searchable database of over 14 billion web pages, allowing you to find popular content on any topic. It is particularly useful for content ideation, finding link-building opportunities, and identifying content gaps in your niche.

To use Content Explorer effectively:

Navigate to Content Explorer from the top navigation bar.
Enter a topic or keyword. Choose between “In title” (more specific), “In content” (broader), or “Everywhere” search modes.
Apply filters to refine results. Set a minimum referring domains threshold to find content that has attracted links, or filter by published date to focus on recent content.

The results show each page’s title, URL, referring domains, organic traffic, social shares, and word count. Sort by referring domains to find the most linked-to content on your topic — these represent proven content formats and angles that attract backlinks.

One powerful use case is finding broken link-building opportunities. Filter by HTTP status code 404 to find popular but now-deleted pages in your niche. If those pages had many referring domains, you can create a replacement piece of content and reach out to the linking sites to suggest updating their links to point to your new resource.

For Singapore-specific content research, combine topic keywords with terms like “Singapore,” “SG,” or “Southeast Asia” to find locally relevant content that performs well. Analyse what formats dominate — listicles, how-to guides, case studies, or data-driven reports — and use this insight to shape your own content calendar.

Monitoring Rankings with Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker monitors your keyword positions over time, providing daily updates on where your pages appear in search results. Consistent rank tracking is essential for measuring SEO progress and identifying issues quickly.

Setting up Rank Tracker:

Navigate to Rank Tracker and select your project (or create one if you have not already).
Add the keywords you want to track. You can type them manually, import from a CSV, or pull them from your Site Explorer or Keywords Explorer data.
Set the tracking location. For Singapore businesses, select Singapore as the country. If you have a physical location, you can set a specific city for local ranking data.
Choose to track desktop, mobile, or both — tracking both is recommended since rankings can differ between devices.
Add competitor domains to enable comparative tracking.

The Rank Tracker dashboard displays your average position, visibility score, traffic estimate, and SERP feature presence across all tracked keywords. The visibility metric is especially useful because it accounts for both ranking position and search volume, giving you a single number that reflects your overall organic footprint.

Use tags to organise keywords into groups. A Singapore digital agency might tag keywords by service type — “SEO,” “PPC,” “social media” — to track which service areas are gaining or losing visibility. The Competitors tab shows how your visibility compares to tracked competitors over time, making it easy to spot trends and react before they impact your business.

Set up email notifications for significant ranking changes, such as keywords dropping out of the top 10 or entering the top 3 for the first time. This allows you to investigate and respond quickly to both opportunities and threats.

Running a Competitor Gap Analysis

The Competitive Analysis tool in Ahrefs (found under Site Explorer) lets you compare your keyword and backlink profile directly against your competitors. This is one of the most strategically valuable exercises you can perform, as it reveals exactly where you are being outcompeted and where opportunities exist.

To run a Content Gap analysis:

Open Site Explorer and enter your domain.
Navigate to “Content Gap” under the Organic Search section.
Add up to ten competitor domains in the comparison fields.
Configure the filters: “Show keywords that the targets rank for but the bottom target does not rank for” is the default setting, which surfaces keywords your competitors rank for but you do not.
Click “Show Keywords” to generate the results.

The report produces a list of keywords where your competitors have visibility and you do not. These represent clear content opportunities. Sort by search volume to prioritise high-traffic keywords, or sort by keyword difficulty to find quick wins. You can also filter by position to find keywords where competitors rank on page one, indicating proven demand.

For the backlink gap analysis, use the “Link Intersect” tool. Enter your domain and your competitors’ domains to find websites that link to multiple competitors but not to you. These sites have demonstrated a willingness to link to businesses in your space, making them strong outreach targets.

Singapore businesses should run competitor gap analyses quarterly. The local search landscape evolves rapidly, particularly in industries like fintech, food delivery, and professional services, where new entrants frequently disrupt the market. For businesses looking to complement organic gap closure with paid strategies, our Google Ads services can provide immediate visibility for high-value keywords while you build organic rankings.

Putting It All Together: A Singapore SEO Workflow

Now that you understand each Ahrefs tool individually, here is a practical workflow for Singapore businesses to follow on a monthly basis.

Start with a Site Audit to identify and fix any new technical issues. Review the Health Score trend and prioritise errors that have appeared since the last audit. Share the issue list with your development team and set deadlines for resolution.

Next, check Rank Tracker for significant ranking changes. Investigate any keywords that have dropped — look for potential causes such as lost backlinks, new competitors, algorithm updates, or on-page changes. For keywords that have improved, analyse what drove the improvement so you can replicate the approach.

Then, run a Keywords Explorer session to discover new keyword opportunities. Focus on terms that align with your business goals and have achievable difficulty scores. Add promising keywords to your Rank Tracker and plan content around them.

Use Content Explorer to research the top-performing content on those topics and identify the formats, angles, and depth that will be needed to compete. Create content briefs based on this research.

Finally, run a monthly competitor gap analysis to ensure you are not missing emerging opportunities. Update your content calendar and link-building targets based on the findings.

This structured approach ensures you are making data-driven decisions rather than guessing. If you need support implementing any part of this workflow, our SEO team can help you build and execute a complete strategy. You can also explore our perkhidmatan pemasaran media sosial to amplify the content you create through Ahrefs-informed research.

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How much does Ahrefs cost?

Ahrefs offers several pricing tiers. The Lite plan is suitable for small businesses and freelancers, while Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise plans offer increasing data allowances, user seats, and features. Ahrefs no longer offers a free trial, but you can access limited free tools including a backlink checker, keyword generator, and SERP checker at ahrefs.com/free-seo-tools.

Is Ahrefs better than SEMrush for SEO?

Both tools are excellent for SEO research. Ahrefs is generally considered to have the superior backlink database and a cleaner interface, while SEMrush offers more extensive paid search data and additional marketing tools beyond SEO. Many professional SEOs use both. For Singapore-specific research, either tool provides reliable local data. The best choice depends on your workflow preferences and which features matter most to your business.

How accurate is Ahrefs’ traffic estimation?

Ahrefs’ traffic estimates are directionally accurate but should be treated as relative indicators rather than exact numbers. They are most useful for comparing pages or domains against each other. For precise traffic data for your own site, use Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console. Cross-referencing Ahrefs estimates with actual data helps you calibrate expectations when evaluating competitors.

What is Domain Rating and why does it matter?

Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs’ proprietary metric that measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile on a logarithmic scale of 0 to 100. Higher DR generally correlates with better ranking potential, but it is not a direct ranking factor used by Google. DR is most useful for comparing the relative authority of different domains and for qualifying link-building prospects. A backlink from a DR 70 site is typically more valuable than one from a DR 20 site.

Can I use Ahrefs for local SEO in Singapore?

Yes, Ahrefs supports local keyword research and rank tracking for Singapore. Set the country filter to Singapore in Keywords Explorer for locally relevant search volumes, and configure Rank Tracker to monitor positions in Singapore-specific search results. While Ahrefs does not have dedicated local SEO tools like Google Business Profile management, its keyword and backlink data is valuable for informing local SEO strategies.

How often should I check my Ahrefs data?

Check Rank Tracker weekly to stay on top of ranking changes. Run Site Audit monthly (or after major website updates). Conduct keyword research and competitor gap analyses monthly or quarterly depending on how competitive your industry is. For backlink monitoring, review new and lost backlinks weekly, as this helps you spot negative SEO attacks or lost links quickly.

Ahrefs Tutorial: How to Use Ahrefs for SEO