How to use Ahrefs for Keyword Research?

Undoubtedly Ahrefs is the world’s leading SEO tool one can use. It can be confirmed by the statement from Ahrefs that they have never had affiliate programs. And we hope it will continue to serve the SEO community with the same genuineness and sincerity. Today we’re going to show you the complete process of keyword research on Ahrefs.

This step-by-step guide shows you how to start the keyword research on Ahrefs. And find a keyword that you can rank for.

Keyword Explorer:

Though Ahrefs allows using the keyword generator tool for free, you need to access the premium tools for thorough keyword research, including the keyword Explorer.

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Before starting, revealing keywords, you need to understand the different sections on the keyword explorer page. The very first thing you may notice is the place to type any “Seed” word. (“Seed” words are the whole words that you can use to find all other keywords related to it).

Beside the keyword typing bar, you can see the “Search Engine option.” For example, you want to search for keywords on YouTube. So, you can change the target search Engine from this slide. And if you are searching keywords for Google. You should select Google. This option is essential because it can affect the whole game.

Next, when you type any word in the search space. Below, you will get the full search queries that Ahrefs has collected. For example: For the search term “Keyword,” Ahrefs has detected about “119,752” related search queries. Moreover, these search queries are only for the USA, as mentioned beside the search bar.

Filtering keywords:

So, you have found a large number of queries that people search around the globe. Next, you need to find the keyword. That is useful for you. The keyword that you can rank for. And here, you need to filter out the keywords.

You can filter the keywords upon keyword difficulty level (KD), the keyword’s volume, or global volume. You can also filter keywords with a specific word count, search features. Or you can include or exclude a particular keyword in this list.

Suppose you don’t filter the keywords. It is impossible to find a keyword that you can rank for. For example, the first keyword, “Google Keyword Planner,” has about 438K” global search volume. You might think that if you put all your efforts into this keyword. And if you could rank for this keyword. You could get a +439K traffic daily.

But let me tell you that it is impossible to rank on the number one spot for this keyword other than the Google website. Because this place will always be held by the “Google keyword planner tool.” And the (KD) also shows its point.

You can filter out the keywords depending on the strength of your website. For example, I want to find a keyword to use in “Techvatan.com.” The Domain Rating of “Techvatan.com” is “21”. So, let’s filter out the keywords that I can use for this blog.

“Techvatan.com” isn’t much old and authority website yet. Therefore, choosing a competitive keyword for it will be a total waste of time. Therefore, the best strategy is to target the long tail keywords with not high search volumes.

Because, if you search for a short keyword on the search engine. You will always get authority websites in the search results. And ranking on those keywords becomes impossible for websites like Techvatan.com.

Secondly, you should also target the low volume keywords because low volume keywords aren’t much competitive as authority websites don’t use these.

Finalizing the keyword:

After filtering the keywords, I got only 19 keywords out of thousands. And from these keywords. I found a low, competitive long-tail keyword. That I think I can rank for it if I create unique content.

The keyword is “How to keyword search on mac”?

This keyword has the difficulty of “7”. It is reachable for “Techvatan.com.” Moreover, it has a 200 with $0.00 CPC volume.

Note:

No tool in the world can give 100% accurate search volume or CPC. Even Google keyword planner. And there’s an excellent reason behind it too. The tools like Ahrefs can only give a bit of idea and insight about the keyword. Furthermore, you need to decide the most crucial part on your own.

Though Ahrefs doesn’t show any CPC for this keyword, it also shows a total volume of 200 for this keyword, which has, in reality, much more volume. We can check this keyword from another famous tool, “UberSuggest.” Which is free to a limit, and can help in taking the final decision regarding any keyword.

You may check that in the above screenshot. “Ubersuggest” shows “1000” search volume with the “$10.86” CPC for the same keyword, which is a huge difference. And on top of that, for a keyword with only a difference of two alphabets. Ubersuggest shows “0” volume with “$0” CPC, which is unbelievable.

We can’t say that any of these tools are showing incorrect data. Both tools use their algorithm to collect data. But as the Ahrefs has a better data collection. Therefore, it is more trustworthy.

Now, we got an idea and clear picture regarding the selected keyword. Finally, let’s check out the search engine—which pages and websites rank for this particular keyword.

The websites that are ranking for the keyword “How to keyword research on macOS” (we added the keyword to get more specific results) are

  1. Miicorsystools.com
  2. Matthewwoodward.co.uk
  3. Macseoapps.com
  4. YouTube video
  5. Apple support
  6. Hibblogging.com
  7. Quora.com
  8. Pintrest.com
  9. Similerweb.com

Firstly, the search results can change in less than a minute. Secondly, this search result shows, That the keyword isn’t much competition. Therefore, Google is ranking websites like Quora, Pinterest, and YouTube videos.

And we also got an idea about its search volume. That how many visitors we can likely get by ranking on this keyword. If we create strong and unique content on this topic and make about 10 backlinks from some good websites, we can come to the first page.

However, it’s still super hard to reach the number one spot. Because the website ranking on the top has a “DR 70”. And our website has only “DR 21”. But we can rank on the first page if we do an excellent On-page and Off-page SEO.

In conclusion:

Keyword research is the fundamental and most crucial part of SEO. Because if you choose a keyword, which is highly competitive. And the first page is occupied by the niche authorities.

And you’re not yet an authority website. So, it is almost impossible to rank for such a keyword. And for websites like “Techvatan.com,” to rank for the keyword “How to keyword research” is impossible even if I create thousands of backlinks with much more unique content than the rest.

Because those spots have been occupied by the websites which are considered an authority in that niche, secondly, those websites have been there for decades. And “Techvatan.com” is only a couple of years old with almost no authority to compete with those websites.

But choosing a long keyword with less volume can work in my case.

Lastly, I should again say that these tools can only give an idea and a little bit of data about the keywords. The final decision is made by yourself, with the help of your sixth sense.

By Safar Ali

Safar Ali is an Entrepreneur, Marketer, and writer. He has been writing for more than three years. And his pieces have appeared on some of the high-authority sites, including HubSpot, Mashable, Business.com, Business Insider, TechCrunch, Makeuseof, CNET, and many more.

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