FREE! Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

If you want to unlock actionable SEO data for your website, look no further.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is 100% free and gives you access to all of their awesome data, for every single website you own.

Why is this important?

Because data like that allows you to make intelligent decisions to grow your search traffic.

I am also going to show you 7 actionable ways to use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools later.

But first, let’s take a look at what it actually does.

What Is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools?

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools gives you access to important SEO data for every single one of your websites free of charge.

You’ll be able to find what keywords your website ranks for, download your backlinks and audit your sites without spending anything.

Historically this data has only been available to paid Ahrefs subscribers ($99/mo+) so this is a huge step forward as Ahrefs make that data available to all website owners.

The only catch:

Is that you can only view data for websites you own, but even so – you get free access to TONS of actionable data as shown in my full Ahrefs review and Ahrefsbot blog post.

What Do You Get Exactly?

This is where it gets interesting because the free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools plan gives you access to two of their most powerful tools-

That means you get access to an insane amount of data on keywords, organic traffic, backlinks and much much more!

Let’s take a closer look:

Site Explorer Tool

The Ahrefs Site Explorer tool gives you everything you need to explore your sites search performance in one place.

You can get a complete overview of-

It also gives you one-click access to tons of reports that help you find things like broken links or new content opportunities.

I’m going to be showing you 7 actionable ways to use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools later.

For now, all you need to know is that the Site Explorer tool is usually the start point of any task you want to complete in Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.

It’s where you come to understand how your site is performing and where it needs improving.

Site Audit Tool

The free site audit tool will scan your site for 100+ common SEO problems weekly or monthly and generates a handy report.

It also gives you an overall “health score” so you can get a snapshot look at your sites overall performance without doing a full SEO audit.

As you can see, Ahrefs breaks down each issue it finds:

And it keeps track on your progress of fixing those issues every time the audit runs.

If you need help fixing any of the issues it finds, just click on it to learn more-

And that’s what makes the Site Audit tool great!

It doesn’t just show you what the issue is, it also tells you how to fix it.

7x Ways To Use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

One of the biggest problems with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is it’s almost too good!

You get access to a lot of data and new tools at the same time, so it can be hard to figure out how to actually use it to grow.

So I’m going to show you 7 ways you can use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to grow your search traffic-

#1 – Monitor Your Sites Health

The site audit tool will help monitor your site for SEO problems, but what does the “health score” really mean?

In essence, this is the percentage of pages crawled that don’t have any errors.

So if you see a declining health score as you see above, you must pay attention.

Ahrefs sorts issues into three categories depending on how severe the issue is:

You should focus on fixing any Errors it finds as quickly as possible-

All you have to do is work your way down the list and fix the errors it finds.

Simple!

#2 – View All Of The Keywords You Rank For

In just a couple of clicks, you can see all of the keywords you are currently ranking for along with tons of other useful data like:

This means we can easily find areas to improve on.

For example:

I was ranking in position number 4 for the term “rank math vs yoast”–

That is despite not mentioning the term or making that comparison in my content.

So I decided to add this section:

And once Google had reindexed everything…

…I jumped into the featured snippet position shortly after-

As you can see:

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools makes it easy to identify opportunities like that for you to act on.

#3 – Download All Of Your Backlinks

Ahrefs is the best backlink checker period.

It allows you to see who is linking to you, which page they are linking to, the anchor text used and the strength of the link.

You can use this report to-

You can use any of the filters at the top to dissect your link profile how you want.

For example if you’re dealing with a negative SEO attack-

It’s easy to filter all the links that were created using whacky anchors with the anchor filter.

#4 – Content Gap Analysis

Imagine being able to find all the keywords your competitors are ranking for…

…but you’re not.

Well, this is precisely what the content gap analysis report does!

It finds all the keywords competitors are ranking for, that you should be ranking for too-

Above you can see a list of keywords that Ahrefs ranks for, that I don’t. Which means I could create website content that will rank easily and close “the content gap”.

You can use the tool to compare 3 competitors-

The content gap tool is great for finding those hidden gems you might have overlooked.

And if your site has a similar Domain Rating to your competitors, you can generally assume they are easy to rank as well.

But if you are not sure who your competitors are…

#5 – View Competing Domains & Pages

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools includes 2 reports that allow you to see precisely which domains and URLs you’re competing against.

Running these reports might surprise you because your primary search competitors are not usually who you expect.

But knowing who they are is essential, especially when using the content gap tool to sniff out new opportunities.

#6 – Page Level Performance

Ahrefs also makes it easy to review how individual pages on your website are performing.

You can dig down into the number of links it has and how that has grown over time-

And then you can drill down even further than that into things like the various anchor texts that are being used-

Along with how many keywords it’s ranking for and more specifically, which keywords it’s ranking for-

Sometimes we start to rank for keywords without knowing.

But Ahrefs Webmaster Tools let us identify them easily to act accordingly.

#7 – Find Quick Win SEO Opportunities

My quick win SEO process is one of my favourite processes to increase search traffic.

Essentially we just find all the keywords that are ranking between positions 2-19, then make specific changes to increase search traffic.

Ahrefs makes it easy to find these opportunities using the keyword filters-

And all these keywords just need a little push to get them to the finishing line.

Once you have that data, you just need to download my free quick win SEO tool which generates the specific strategy you need to increase search traffic.

The tool also comes alongside a series of videos that talks you through the process step by step including featured snippet theft, internal linking optimization and more.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools vs Google Search Console

You might be wondering what does Ahrefs Webmaster Tools do that Google Search Console doesn’t?

And that is a great question!

So here is a closer look at Ahrefs Webmaster Tools vs Google Search Console-

I think it’s safe to say that Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is one of the best free SEO tools in existence today.

Now I’m not saying you should replace Google Search Console because there is huge value in 1st party data.

But Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is undoubtedly the perfect complement that allows you to make intelligent decisions to grow your search traffic.

Plus they are both absolutely free so what’s not to love!

Wrapping It Up

I’m very happy to see that Ahrefs Webmaster Tools gives everyone free access to actionable SEO data for websites they own.

Let’s face it:

Although I think the full version of Ahrefs is worth every dollar and then some, it is quite expensive if you’re just starting out.

But now Ahrefs has liberated your SEO data…

…you can start to grow your search traffic without spending a penny.