Ahrefs a powerful tool is and basta. And as of now, access to this powerhouse is largely free thanks to a bold marketing move. Ladies and gentlemen, here is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, a free tool that you simply must have!
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a tool similar in concept to Google Search Console, but the differences are visible to the naked eye. It is designed to supplement the data from GSC in the ranges that are omitted there or treated in a haphazard manner. Of course, both tools are free, so nothing prevents you from using both in parallel.
If you are a paying customer of Ahrefs then first – congratulations on your choice, and second – the release of Ahrefs Webmaster Tools means an increase in existing limits and unlimited analysis of verified sites.
Spis treści
What is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools?
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a free tool that uses the Ahrefs database – a powerful SEO harvester that is the second most active crawler on the web after Google. This means that once the site is verified, we have access to data previously available only after paying a sizable subscription.
There we can check data about links to our site, keywords and SEO problems of our site.
In practice, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools provides free access to Site Explorer and Site Audit for verified sites.
(…) it is possible that In-House SEO for small businesses or enthusiasts just became free.
Site Explorer
The core Ahrefs feature on which the power of this tool was built is from now on available to verified sites for free. It gives access to full knowledge of links, keywords and estimated organic traffic to our site.
There is no point in decrying the power of this tool – I believe it is the best SEO tool on the market, period.
Site Audit
Site Audit is an automatic crawl of a site, conducted on a regular basis (in this case weekly) allowing us to manually or completely automatically fish out SEO problems on our site. From missing headers or meta tags, to incorrect redirects, to problems with canonicals.
The site is checked for hundreds of issues, additionally using not only crawl, but also the Ahrefs database (e.g. indicating 404 pages receiving organic traffic).
How to get started?
If you already have an Ahrefs account, you don’t have to do anything – AWT uses the same interface as your account.
If you don’t have an Ahrefs account, AWT is available at this link, just create an account and verify as many of your sites as you like.
Verification of the site is quick, the simplest method is to connect to Google Search Console.
Other methods include:
- DNS entry
- HTML file
- HTML tag
What is the advantage of Ahrefs Webmaster Tools over Google Search Console?
Search Console, of course, will always remain the main analytics tool for SEO, primarily because the data comes directly from the source.
However, there are a few elements that you won’t experience in Search Consola, in AWT as much as possible:
- Site Audit shows more than 100 SEO errors – Search Console shows only a select few
- Ahrefs shows all the links it finds, GSC only 1000
- Ahrefs tries (with better or worse results) to rate specific addresses with its Domain Rating and other metrics
- indicating broken internal links, as well as the type of links (nofollow, UGC, sponsored)
- Ahrefs shows all known keywords for which the site ranks, GSC only top 1000
- for each keyword full analytical data
- for each keyword snapshot SERP
- for each keyword info on rich results
Limits in Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
A surprising issue is the amount of limits placed on the use of AWT, or rather the lack thereof.
The biggest limitation – otherwise understandable – is the number of pages that can be traversed per month. It is 5,000 pages per month, but per project. That is, if we have more sites, for each we can traverse 5,000 subpages per month. For small sites this is quietly enough for a weekly crawl, for larger sites it is enough to limit yourself to a crawl once a month, or exclude from crawling the less interesting parts of your site.
There are also some limitations in displaying large amounts of data (max. 1,000 rows / report, 100,000 rows per month) and in exporting data (1,000 rows / export, 10,000 rows / month). However, these are minor limitations, knowing how much this data has cost so far.
I am already an Ahrefs customer, what will I get out of it?
In order to make Ahrefs’ paying customers not feel a bit cheated, a number of bonuses have been prepared for them; however, in my opinion, they are insufficient.
- unlimited number of verified projects in the Dashboard (pfff, the free version also has this)
- Lite plan will show all ranked keywords (top 100) instead of the current top 20
- JavaScript rendering during crawl in all plans
- additional limits (increasing the limits by the amounts offered in the free version)
In my opinion
Bravo Ahrefs, a great move, probably being a plan for further expansion, and perhaps even a prelude to plans to create its own search engine.
The question, however, is whether in tinkering with the price list the giant has shot itself in the foot. I think many customers will be tempted to click the Downgrade button, because the removal of some limits (offered to customers in exchange for them sponsoring the new tool in a sense) makes less and less of an argument for Standard or Advanced plans.
Anyway, it is possible that In-House SEO for small businesses or enthusiasts just became free.
