Free SEO Tools To Help You Dominate Your Competition As A Beginner SEO via @sejournal, @ahrefs

This post was sponsored by Ahrefs. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Could your website use performance improvements but you aren’t quite sure where to start?

Are you looking to improve your search engine rankings but are still gaining the SEO expertise it takes to pull it off?

You probably already know that you need an advanced suite of SEO tools that can help take you from beginner to SEO pro.

What if you could get these SEO tools for free?

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) can help you with various SEO tasks, such as:

AWT packs all the power of Google Webmaster Tools, without the complicated learning curve.

So, if you’re looking for free SEO tools that are beginner-friendly, Ahrefs has you covered.

Ahrefs fills in the functionality gaps Google Search Console (GSC) leaves behind. While GSC only provides a limited scope of your website data, AWT shows you the full picture.

Ready to improve your website optimization to boost traffic and conversions? Now, you can take advantage of professional-grade SEO tools without the steep investment.

Here, we break down the features and benefits of Ahrefs Webmaster Tools to help you get started.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Quickly Uncover Your Website’s Technical & On-Page SEO Issues

Free SEO Tools Included:

Get your free SEO tools, now → 

When running a small business, it’s crucial to analyze your website and monitor its performance regularly.

And if you’ve ever wondered why your website isn’t ranking in search results, you can find out without paying for an expensive SEO tool.

In fact, Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools provide you with a fully comprehensive analysis of your website for free.

Get your free, fully comprehensive SEO analysis, now →

Once the tool crawls all of your webpages, you’ll get an overall health score for your site, which not only flags all possible SEO issues, but also recommends detailed advice on how to fix them.

This comprehensive website audit allows you to check for more than 100 pre-defined issues, grouped by the following types:

Google Search Console, on the other hand, only monitors a handful of issues and provides very limited suggestions on how to resolve each one.

With Ahrefs’ Data Explorer, you can control various data points and create custom filters based on numerous parameters. This tool also allows you to view every detail of each specific URL within your site, including incoming and outgoing links, hreflang, pagination, duplicates, and resources.

AWT even makes it easy for you to track your progress and schedule automatic crawls for your projects. Plus, you can stay on top of Google’s mobile-first indexing rollout by crawling the mobile version of your website.

Try this free SEO audit tool and start improving your site’s SEO health today!

Free Tool: Indexability Report

AWT users can access a thorough Indexability report of their website.

It’s important to index your website’s content in order for it to be detected by Google and rank in search results.

Indexing refers to how search engines organize information based on the contents of a website.

“It’s a fundamental report because, without indexing, pages are invisible to search engines and can’t bring in any search traffic. If there are any canonicalization issues or misplaced ‘noindex’ tags, this report will let you know.”

Free Tool: Internal Pages Report

One of the worst things a user can experience while browsing a website is a series of 4XX or 5XX response codes (such as the 404 code for non-existing pages).

With Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools, you get an Internal Pages report that’ll help you spot any broken pages within your site.

Then, by adding a column to the report, you can view the number of referring domains to those pages.

This report also highlights pages that are using HTTP protocol instead of HTTPS, which also affects Google rankings as part of the Page Experience signals.

Free Tool: Links Report

The Links report in AWT shows any issues with links on your website, for instance:

Free Tool: Content Report

If you want your business to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs), optimizing your content is essential – and Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools will help you stay on top of things that would usually slip through the cracks.

“For low-hanging, on-page optimization opportunities, go to the Content report. Some issues may directly hinder your ability to rank, such as title tag issues.”

Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and experience the difference this site auditing service can make for your website.

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer Suite: 3 Powerful SEO Tools In 1 Intuitive Interface

SEO Tools Included with a subscription:

Get them now →

Competitive research can be a complex task for website owners – but it doesn’t have to be.

What if there was a comprehensive research platform that combined the power of three separate SEO tools?

Site Explorer is the ultimate research tool for small businesses looking to get a leg up on the competition.

You get an in-depth report for any website or URL in the following areas:

Organic Traffic Research

If you’re looking for keyword ideas to help your website rank higher in search results, it can be helpful to know how others in your field are ranking.

This is where organic traffic research comes in.

By finding out which keywords your competitors are ranking for, as well as which terms and pages bring most of their search engine traffic, you can better plan your strategy.

Ahrefs makes it possible to analyze the search volumes of other sites within your industry and adjust your page content accordingly. Simply enter your competitor’s website into Site Explorer and browse the “Organic Search” section of the reports.

“Ahrefs monitors over 150 million keywords in the US alone (+ more for over 150 countries), so we have enough coverage to paint an accurate picture of websites’ organic search traffic.”

Site Explorer shows you all of the known keywords that impact rankings, while Google Search Console only gives you the top 1,000. Ahrefs also provides the following details, which GSC does not:

Backlink Checker

Site Explorer also allows you to dissect the backlink profile of any particular website.

Links continue to be one the strongest ranking factors for most search engines, so if you want your site to rank highly in SERPs, you want to make sure you have a well-rounded backlink profile.

What is a backlink profile?

A website’s backlink profile consists of the total number of links pointing to it, as well as the quality, authority, and relevance of the referring domains.

Are you considering a link building campaign for your small business?

Use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to evaluate the profiles of your competitors and see how you stack up.

Once you navigate to the “Backlink Profile” section of the tool, you’ll be able to see which websites are linked to your competitors’ sites and assess the quality of their backlinks.

“Ahrefs has the fastest backlink crawler in the industry and boasts the world’s biggest index of live backlinks (nearly 30 trillion links), which makes Site Explorer the best tool for backlink research.”

While Google Search Console only shows you the top 1,000 link results for a specific URL, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools give you all known backlinks, plus a variety of other useful metrics.

Paid Traffic Research

As the digital landscape becomes more and more competitive, you must be smarter about the paid traffic sources you invest in.

If you’re planning your search advertising strategy, it may help to know where your competitors are funneling their paid traffic. And that’s where Site Explorer comes in.

Ahrefs helps you find out whether your competitors are buying PPC ads and which keywords they’re bidding on.

In the “Paid Search” section of the Site Explorer reports, you get access to:

Are you ready to access the valuable data you need to succeed in the online space? Sign up for Ahrefs Webmaster Tools now and find out how Site Explorer can give your business a competitive edge.

Start Using Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools & Step Up Your SEO Strategy

With AWT, you can use SEO data to evaluate your website’s worth and make the necessary adjustments to improve your rankings.

Ahrefs allows you to look past Google Search Console’s 16-month organic traffic limit and instead provides a full report of your site’s traffic patterns. This can help you discover traffic drops that may have coincided with Google’s core updates and make sure your site is always in compliance with the latest search engine requirements.

Plus, you can see how quickly you’re acquiring backlinks and keywords plus assess the quality of your backlinks, as well as those of your competitors.

You can even see which of your web pages have a chance of moving from the second to the first SERP and spot negative SEO attacks (through spammy anchors or sudden spikes in referring domains) to get ahead of the curve.

The benefits of using Ahrefs Webmaster Tools are limitless – so, what are you waiting for? Try AWT now and take your website to the next level.