6 Useful Ahrefs Tricks

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1. Generate opportunities for link baiting
If you don't know what link baiting is, I recommend you read our post in which we explain what link baiting is and strategies to get links.

When we want to create a link baiting strategy and we need ideas about what content can work but we don't know where to start, with Ahrefs, we can see what type of content attracts the most links from our competition and use it to our advantage. How? Super simple:

ahrefs dashboard
We start by entering the domain in the Site Explorer.
Once inside, in the toolbar on the left side we select Pages → Best by links

This will show us the following table, in which we can sort the content by the number of domains that link to the articles (as in the image) or even by Dofollow links. This way we will know which content attracts the most links from our competition and we will be able to attack that strategy.

best urls by links
Result
2. Replicate common links from competitors
Another trick to get links is the Link intersect tool, this tool allows us to analyze multiple domains against ours to see which domains link to them but not to us.

This strategy can be useful for getting links easily, since if several competing websites receive links from the same domains, it may mean that we can also get that link.

To do this, click on “More” and go to the “Link intersect” section.

link intersect location
In this section we can add up to 10 domains from competitors whose link profile we will analyse. It is very important to place our website, or the one on which we want to apply this strategy in “But they do not link to (optional)” so that we can see the domains that link to our competition but not to us. Continuing with the travel theme, I have placed 5 of the most important travel blogs in Spain.

link intersect fields
We add all the competing websites whose link profile we want to analyze.
This will give us a giant table with a lot of data. Before we start interpreting it, we are going to start by applying restrictions with the “Intersect” drop-down menu. This drop-down menu allows us to isolate the links from domains that link to as many of our competitors’ websites as we select. That is, if we place an intersect of 5, we will be filtering for domains that link to all of the competitor’s websites that we have placed, but not to our own. If we place an intersect of 4, we will filter for domains that link to 4 of the domains that we have placed but not to our own.

link intersect result
Result with an intersection of 4 and 5
This will result in the following table (a bit longer, showing each competitor's domain). In it we can see how the first three results link to each and every one of the domains we have provided, but do not link to ours. This may be an indication that this link can be replicated, although it does not have to be.

3. Detect cannibalizations in content
Cannibalizations are a headache for many SEOs, and although detecting interior designers service email database them is not always so easy, today I am going to explain a way that can help us find them.

First of all , are you really suffering from cannibalization? It often happens, especially with keywords that are not very competitive, that our website occupies the first and second position in the SERP. Does that mean that two URLs are cannibalizing us? No. (It has to.) Sometimes it happens, and as I indicated before, especially with keywords that are not very competitive, where due to a lack of relevant content on other websites, or because Google considers that another of our contents is better than the rest of those in the SERP, it decides to put us in similar positions.

So, when do I have to worry? When your keywords are competing for the same position and the rankings change a lot, where only one of the landing pages is ranking, and they change positions and compete with each other, then you have to worry.

Okay, back to the point, how do we detect cannibalizations with Ahrefs? We have two methods.

Review using Organic Keywords 2.0
Recently, Ahrefs introduced the new keyword tool “Organic Keywords 2.0” this renewed version offers data that the previous version did not, including the review of keyword cannibalizations.

organic keywords 2.0 tool
As we can see in the image, in the URL column, we have the option “1 more” which indicates that this keyword is ranking for one more URL. If we click on “1 more”, it will offer us a list of the URLs for which this keyword is ranking.

This tool is great for finding cannibalizations quickly, but you are 100% dependent on the application since there is no way to export them, so if we want to extract the cannibalizations to have them in a document, or deliver them to the client, we won't be able to. That's when manual extraction comes into play, which is a bit more complex but will allow us to have it in a document.

Manual extraction
We will start by entering the domain in the Site Explorer, and in Organic Keywords we analyze all the keywords for which the domain is positioning.

Grow with us!
keyword filtering
In this case, I have applied a couple of filters, one for position below 20, this way it will only report keywords in the first 20 positions, since if one is first and the other is 75th, it makes absolutely no difference to us. With this we reduce the number of keywords to analyze, and we also reduce the size of the export, which depending on the plan we have contracted can be very important.

On the other hand, I also exclude the sitelinks feature, since this would give us results of several URLs for the same keyword, making everything more confusing, as in this case.

example sitelinks
All of these steps are not necessary, but they help make the data much easier to interpret. With the final list, we export it by clicking on the " Export " button at the top right, and open it with Microsoft Excel or an equivalent spreadsheet.

Once the document is open, we keep the fields that interest us ( Keyword, Position, Volume and URL ) and delete the rest of the columns. When we only have the fields that interest us, we select the entire keywords column and mark duplicates. In Excel, this is done from Home → Conditional formatting → Rules to highlight cells → Duplicate values .

duplicate values ​​location
With the duplicate keywords marked, we apply a filter on the Keyword column and filter by the color we have chosen to mark the duplicates, in this case red. Finally, we use the filter again to sort the Keyword fields in alphabetical order (this way the keywords repeated together appear). If we follow all these steps, we will have a result like this: (You can click on the image to see it in full size)

Excel cannibalization example
From these first rows, we can draw conclusions like all the keywords related to wheelchair accessories are positioned on two different URLs. If we look at the position history of that keyword in the Ortopediaencasa URL, we can see how the two URLs are fighting each other for the keyword position.

cannibalization example chart
Each color represents a different URL, and the higher it is on the chart, the better positioned it is.
This is how we can find cannibalizations with Ahrefs. Unfortunately, they will not always appear in the first rows of Excel, and we will have to delve into the depths of the spreadsheets, but that is what we have to do!