Search optimisation is more like a battle for survival and only the fittest survive. It takes tools and knowledge to rank on keywords and ultimately get quality organic traffic to your website.
Though there are zillion Free SEO tools out there offering all manner of free and paid options. This is the same case with the most popular SEO tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs tools.
The good thing about these two tools is that you can trust their results. These tools have established authority over many other similar tools based on their reputation.
Though both Semrush and Ahrefs are not completely free, there are great free features you can always access to make the most out of it.
In this post, I will walk you through how to combine both free options provided by these tools to improve your search engine optimization results.
Let’s dive in.
What is SEO?
SEO simply means “Search Engine Optimization“. Its search engine techniques or activities aimed at rankings on particular keywords in search engines to enhance website traffic.
SEO activities involve the use of tools both free and paid such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Keyword planner, Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz and many others.
What is SEO tools
These are tools used to analyse websites in order to find technical issues on websites or find areas these need optimization for better results.
SEO tools are also used to find technical issues on websites in order to make required changes such as broken links. Other uses include link building, competitors analysis, website audit, content audit, traffic analysis and many more.
Now that you have an idea about SEO and SEO tools, let’s start by looking at what you can get for free from Semrush and Ahrefs.
Ahrefs Free SEO Tools and features
At a glance, Ahrefs presents you with all the vital information about your websites. This information includes your domain rating, URL rating, number of backlinks, referring domains, organic keywords, organic traffic and traffic value shown on the top of your Ahrefs dashboard.
This information is updated daily and can be customised depending on your preference which makes Ahrefs a great SEO tool. All these updates and information are provided for free.
Apart from the above display of stats on the status of your website, you also have a more detailed report on each section such as website errors, warnings, notices and overall health score of your website.
This is all for free and great for your webmaster to go through each of the issues identified and make all the necessary modifications. This SEO technical report is what you don’t normally get on many other SEO tools for free.
Personally, I feel it’s a great gift that helps keep your website healthy and optimised for search engine rankings. Use this free technical SEO report to your advantage.
Another great and free feature of Ahrefs you should take advantage of is the link opportunity function. This tool crawls your website and provides a great opportunity to enhance your internal linking.
If only you know the value of internal links, you will be using this feature every week to find the right places to link your website pages for better search engine rankings.
If you take a look at the image below, you will see the first link by the left is suggested to be linked to the “mobile video advertising” article“mobile video advertising” where the same keyword is mentioned.
Doing so tells search engines you are linking to other related content on your websites which helps elevate your ‘EAT” and improves your page authority on both linked pages and your overall domain authority.
Don’t let this advantage go to waste. Use it to improve your website search engine ranking power.
Though there are more free great features from Ahrefs, these are the few ones you can use to improve your site rankings.
Let’s take a look at Semrush free SEO tools to use too.
Semrush Backlink Audit Tool
The backlink audit tool gives you the opportunity to audit and remove or disavow toxic or bad backlinks that are harmful to your website and prevent your organic growth and rankings.
Though you will have more detailed information about all your backlinks, the free version allow you to have a good number of bad links to disavow or ask the webmasters linking to your website to remove those links.
harmful links are bad for your overall SEO growth and you should do your best to prevent toxic backlinks from preventing your website to rank in search engines.
Semrush Organic Search Positions
This is updated every day to give you a snapshot of how your most popular keywords are doing in search engines. I personally look at this almost every other day.
This makes me understand how my keywords are performing and if there is a need to optimise certain keywords to either rank better or maintain their current organic position.
It shows you not only the position and the difference of your keywords but also keywords volume and which particular pages of your website are ranking for those specific keywords.
Organic Competitors
This is one of my favourite free SEO tools in Semrush. This section enables you to know who is competing with you in search engines and on each specific keyword they are competing with you.
As seen in the image below, The tool displays your competitor’s domain, common keywords which are the same keywords you both are competing for, SE Keywords, Traffic and traffic cost.
This is pretty valuable information to have to enable you to compete better on the same keywords and rank just as your competitors or even better than them in search engines.
Semrush Competitive Positioning Map
If you want to know how your website is doing in comparison to your competitors, here is your best shot. Semrush competitive positioning map shows you your position.
It’s just like telling you everything about your competitors SEO strategy and what is actually working for them so you can as well apply their tactics and rank on the same level or even better.
You basically spy on your rivals and know what they are doing better than you and what you can do to beat them or outrank them in terms of a number of backlinks and keywords in search engines.
This map also motivates you to work harder either to maintain your rankings or improve your website rankings.
Conclusion
Search engine optimisation is vital for any online business today. It’s all about learning from experts and applying the necessary skills to advance your online growth.
I believe you don’t need a huge list of free SEO tools but how you can be able to use the best free features on the best SEO tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs to enhance your SEO.
These tools are the best, most accurate and highly advanced to help you achieve your SEO goals. It all depends on how you choose to use them to your advantage.
I hope these tips help you grow better and dominate search engines and beat your competitors in learning rankings.
Share your thought in the comment section below.
2 Responses
Thanks for such an elaborate piece!
You shared some of the best know secrets of Semrush and Ahrefs in this article. This alone is a great gift for those who understand the value of organic traffic and working to get the best traffic online.
I learn some great hacks here and hope to use these tips such as internal linking using Ahrefs and backlink audit in semrush to improve my website visibility in search engines.
It’s true that if you need some quality organic traffic. You need to get involved in SEO. Glad you found this helpful.