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How to Find Your Competitors’ Backlinks (And Get Them for Yourself)

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How to Find Your Competitors' Backlinks (And Get Them for Yourself)

If you’re looking to build more backlinks to your website, checking how your competitors built and earned their backlinks is a good starting point.

That’s because understanding how they got links can help inform your link building strategy. 

In this post, you’ll learn how to find, replicate, and learn from your competitors’ backlinks.

How to find your competitors’ backlinks

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You need an SEO tool like Ahrefs to do this, which is consistently voted top dog in SEO industry polls

Free method (top 100 backlinks)

Head over to our free backlink checker and plug in your competitor’s domain or URL. You’ll see the total number of backlinks and referring domains (linking websites) and the top 100 backlinks (referring page, anchor, and target URL).

Checking backlinks with Ahrefs' free backlink checker

Paid method (all backlinks)

Sign up for Ahrefs, plug your competitor’s domain or URL into Site Explorer, then go to the Backlinks report. You’ll see all their backlinks. In this case, over 80,000 of them. 

Checking backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

If you want to hone in on specific backlinks, such as those from English pages on websites with traffic, use the filters.

Filtering backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

Not sure who your competitors are?

Enter your website or webpage’s URL into Site Explorer and go to the Organic competitors report. You’ll see a list of websites or webpages that rank for the keywords as your target.
Organic competitors report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

How to replicate your competitors’ backlinks

It’s impossible to replicate all of your competitors’ backlinks, but there are ways to get some of them (or similar ones) for yourself:

  1. Find and copy their replicable links
  2. Find and copy the link building tactics that are working for them
  3. Find links that you can loot from them

Let’s take a closer look at how to do these three things.

Finding your competitors’ replicable links

Most of your competitors’ backlinks will be extremely hard to replicate like for like, but it’s usually possible to replicate some of them. Let’s look at a few ways to do this.

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Find competitors’ directory links

Directory links are far from the most powerful links, but they’re easy to replicate. Many SEOs believe they help with “map pack” rankings for local businesses too.

Here’s the easiest way to find them:

  1. Enter your homepage into Site Explorer
  2. Go to the Link Intersect report
  3. Enter a few competitors’ homepages in blank fields
  4. Set the search mode for all pages to “URL”
  5. Hit “Show link opportunities”
How to use the Link Intersect report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

This will show you the websites linking to one or more of your competitors’ homepages, but not to yours. It’s then just a case of eyeballing the list for sites that look like niche and local directories. 

Results of the Link Intersect report

If you’re not sure whether a site is a directory, click the caret in one of the competing page columns to see the referring page, anchor, and backlink. You can usually tell from this.

Reveal the referring page with the caret

If you’re still unsure, click on the page to check manually. 

Example of a directory link

Replicating these links is usually as simple as signing up for an account and adding your business. 

Sidenote.

Be aware that some directories charge a fee. Don’t be tempted to pay these for SEO purposes, as they won’t be worth it. Only pay if the directory is likely to send you customers.

Find listicles where competitors are mentioned, but not you

If competitors are mentioned in listicles of the best tools/restaurants/whatever your business does, there’s a chance you may be able to get mentioned in that same listicle (and a mention usually comes with a link).

These kinds of listicles are usually easy to spot in a competitor’s Backlinks report. 

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Examples of listicles in the Backlinks report

However, the best opportunities come from listicles mentioning multiple competitors because the topic of the page is more likely to be relevant to your business.

Here’s an easy way to find these:

  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
  2. Search for “competitor 1” “competitor 2” “competitor 3” -“your business name”
Finding competitor mentions in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

Sidenote.

Using this method, there’s no guarantee that the mentions are linked, but they usually are.

It’s then just a case of sifting through the results and pitching the authors of listicles where it makes sense to add your business. 

Here’s what that pitch might look like for Aweber:

Hey [Name],

Just came across your list of the best email marketing tools and noticed Aweber wasn’t included. Is that because you didn’t like our platform or haven’t tried it?

If it’s the latter, I’d love to hook you up with a free account so you can give it a shot.

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What do you think?

[Name]

Note that the email doesn’t explicitly ask the author to add anything to their list. It just asks if they’re familiar with the sender’s tool. This is intentional. It’s easier to ask for inclusion after you win folks over. 

Find competitors’ links from interviews and podcasts

Interview and podcast links are more common in some industries than others, so you may not find any among your competitors. But as they only take a minute to search for, it’s well worth a quick check. 

Here’s an easy way to find them:

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter the Twitter profile URL of your competitor’s CEO, CMO, or whoever the most prolific marketer is within the company
  3. Go to the Backlinks report
  4. Filter for results where the referring page URL contains “podcast,” “episode,” or “interview”
Filtering the Backlinks report for interview and podcasts links in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

You then just need to pitch the same interviews and podcasts. 

Find competitors’ guest posts

Guest posting is the third most popular link building tactic, according to Aira’s 2022 State of Link Building report, so it’s probably a tactic that at least some of your competitors are using. 

However, while you can find them in a competitor’s Backlinks report, they can be hard to spot. 

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For example, one of the links below is from a guest post and the other isn’t. But there’s no way to tell this from the link profile itself.

Examples of link that is guest post and another that isn't

With that in mind, here’s an easier way to find a competitor’s guest posts:

  1. Go to Content Explorer
  2. Search for topic + author:“name of your competitor’s prolific marketer”
  3. Filter for one page per domain
Searching for content by a prolific guest blogger in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

Most of the results should be guest posts by that person. Replicating them is as simple as reaching out and pitching the same websites.

Finding and copying link building tactics that work for competitors

If your competitors have lots of backlinks from directories, podcasts, interviews, or guest posts, these link building tactics are clearly working for them. So don’t limit yourself to replicating only the exact links they got. Pursue other links from these tactics too.

Here are some tutorials to help: 

Sidenote.

*Most citations come from directories, so building citation opportunities is pretty much the same thing as finding opportunities to get links from directories.

However, there are two more commonly used tactics worth checking for. 

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Check for links from journalist requests

Bloggers and journalists often use services like Help A Reporter Out (HARO) and MuckRack to source quotes for upcoming stories—and they usually link to their sources.

For example, here’s someone from “Martha Stewart Living” asking for a quote about how plumbing leaks occur in the home.

Example HARO request

Max Rose from Four Seasons Plumbing was one of the people to respond to this, and he received a quote and backlink from the article in return.

Example HARO link

Here’s how to check if your competitors are building backlinks this way:

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter a competitor’s homepage
  3. Set the search mode to “Exact URL”
  4. Go to the Backlinks report
  5. Look for quotes in the “Anchor and target URL” column
Looking for HARO backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

If you spot a few quotes from the same person, like “Max Rose” in this case, filter for that name in the anchor and surrounding text to hone in on these kinds of links.

Filtering for HARO backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

If you see a fair number of links from quotes, there’s a good chance your competitor is actively responding to journalist requests—and that it’s working. So it’s probably worth responding to requests via HARO and similar platforms yourself too.

Check for passively earned links from linkable points

Linkable points are things like facts, statistics, and unique ideas that resonate with the linkerati and attract backlinks. Even if your competitors aren’t consciously using this tactic to earn links, it could still be one of the ways they’re earning them—so it’s worth checking.

Here’s how to do that:

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter one of the top-ranking pages for your target keyword
  3. Go to the Anchors report
  4. Look for anchors relating to facts, figures, or unique ideas

For example, the Anchors report for a page ranking for “seo copywriting” mentions the “APP” method/formula a few times:

Anchors report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

This is a term coined by the post’s author, and it has earned him some decent links.

Because of this, when we wrote our own guide to SEO copywriting, we decided to coin a similar term in an effort to earn some passive backlinks.

Coined term from our post on SEO copywriting

If we check the Anchors report for our page, we can see it’s earned us a couple of links so far: 

Backlinks we earned thanks to our coined term, via the Anchors report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

This is not astonishing by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re two links we wouldn’t have unless we included proven, linkable points.

We had more success with this method when creating our list of SEO statistics (we documented that process in this link building case study), which has earned links from over 1,700 referring domains in under two years.

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Backlink growth to our list of SEO statistics

Finding links you can loot from competitors

Your competitors may have links that no longer make sense for them to have. If you can provide linkers with a better alternative, you can often take these links for yourself.

Here are a few tactics that revolve around this idea:

Broken link building

Broken link building is where you find a dead page with backlinks, create your own resource on the topic, then ask linkers to link to that instead.

For example, this page about SEO tips can’t be found:

Example of a dead page

If we plug that URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, we see it has backlinks from 177 referring domains:

This dead page has backlinks from 177 referring domains

If we were to create our own list of SEO tips, we could reach out to these 177 websites and suggest replacing that dead link with a link to our list. 

But how do you find your competitors’ broken pages with backlinks in the first place?

If you have a specific competitor in mind, do this:

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter your competitor’s domain
  3. Go to the Best by links report
  4. Add a “404 not found” HTTP code filter
Filtering for dead pages with backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

You’ll see a list of dead pages on their website, sorted by the number of referring domains pointing to them. 

If you don’t have a specific competitor in mind, do this:

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  1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
  2. Search for a topic
  3. Filter for broken pages only
  4. Filter for pages with referring domains (the minimum number is up to you)
Searching for dead pages about a topic in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

You’ll see a list of broken pages related to the topic with at least the minimum set number of referring domains.

Regardless of which method you use, the process from there is the same: 

  • Check what the page used to be – To do this, plug the URL into the Wayback Machine. It needs to be something you can create similar content about.
  • Check the quality of the page’s backlinks – To do this, run a backlink audit in Site Explorer. If it doesn’t have good links, it’s not the best opportunity for a broken link building campaign.
  • Reach out to linkers and suggest they swap the link – To do this more easily, use an outreach tool like Pitchbox or BuzzStream.

301 redirect link building

301 redirect link building is where you look for your competitors’ irrelevant redirects, then pitch a replacement to linkers.

For example, this page about the Google Penguin Update on Search Engine Land has backlinks from 1.2K referring domains:

This redirected page has backlinks from 1.2K referring domains

But, for some reason, it redirects to a page about “Google SEO”:

Example of an irrelevant 301 redirect

This is a problem because people clicking through from those 1.2K websites will end up on a completely unrelated page. For that reason, there’s an opportunity here to pitch a link swap to linkers (same as with broken link building).

But how do you find your competitors’ irrelevant 301 redirects in the first place?

  1. Go to Site Explorer
  2. Enter a competitor’s domain
  3. Go to the Best by links report
  4. Add a “3XX redirect” HTTP code filter
Filtering for 301 redirects with backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

It’s then just a case of double-checking what the page used to be in the Wayback Machine, auditing the quality of the page’s links, creating a relevant replacement, and suggesting it to linkers. 

Run a competitor link analysis

Some of your competitors’ “lootable” links won’t fall neatly into the box of a known link building tactic. The process of finding them is quite nuanced and takes some experience, but you’ll often find unique pitches this way.

For example, say we wanted to build links to our list of Google ranking factors. If we check the top-ranking results for this keyword in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, we see that many of them have hundreds of (potentially “lootable”) backlinks from hundreds of domains: 

Referring domains pointing to the top-ranking pages for "google ranking factors"

When I plugged one of those competing URLs into Site Explorer and checked the Backlinks report, alarm bells started to ring when I saw the anchor and surrounding text for this link:

One of the backlinks to a competing page about Google ranking factors

It claims that bounce rate, dwell time, and repeat visits are ranking factors.

Not true.

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Given that this link must be based on advice from the linked (competing) page, I decided to take a look myself. What I found was a page giving lots of dangerously bad advice: 

Many of the factors listed on the competing page are misleading
The highlighted ranking factors are not ranking factors at all.

I’m not sure how much linkers would care, but I think there’s an opportunity here to reach out to all worthwhile prospects, explain that they’re linking to an inaccurate post, and suggest linking to our list of ranking factors instead. 

Even if only a fraction of them care, we win a few links while combating misinformation. It’s a win-win. 

Final thoughts

Finding your competitors’ backlinks is easy. Getting the same ones to your site is less easy. 

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Start by replicating the easy ones, then find and copy the link building tactics that work for them, and finally take any links they no longer deserve for yourself.

Got questions? Ping me on Twitter.

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Time To Replace the Content Marketing Funnel (3 Alternatives)

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Time To Replace the Content Marketing Funnel (3 Alternatives)

You won’t read anything good about the content marketing funnel in this article. Only bad things. Like, it’s too linear and simplistic to address the complexities of customer journeys.

If you need a framework to build your content strategy on, it should probably be a no-funnel framework instead. And there are very good reasons for it.

A funnel in marketing is a multi-stage process that guides potential customers from first learning about a product to making a purchase.

Depending on the version, it has 3 – 6 stages, and it looks something like this:

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Traditionally, all content types have their designated place in each stage:

  • Top: product landing pages, ebooks, guides, most social media posts, etc.
  • Middle: webinars, case studies, lead nurturing programs, etc.
  • Bottom: success stories, white papers, sales enablement materials, etc.

Makes sense, right? Not entirely.

It oversimplifies literally everything important for a content marketer. And because of that, the model gets some things completely wrong and ignores others.

This isn’t just theoretical. I’ve applied the funnel approach at various companies. Initially, it was reassuring, providing a sense of structure and control. However, the deeper I got, the more confusing it became. It started to seem like the sense of order was purely imaginary, as there was no reliable method to verify if people were truly following the funnel.

1. Misunderstands consumer behavior

The funnel model assumes a perfectly linear path from awareness to purchase and tries to rush people through it. Or, actually, it makes you think you should rush people through it with your content.

However, consumer behavior is more complex and non-linear. People often jump between stages, revisit them, or take unique paths to purchase.

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So, the journey is not a funnel; it’s more like a maze.

Illustrative B2B Buying JourneyIllustrative B2B Buying Journey
Source

B2C customer journeys are even more peculiar. Remember that time when you saw an ad and bought that product immediately? Or conversely, how the journey from see to buy lasted for years. I know I can:

Short and long buyer journey examples.Short and long buyer journey examples.

But content marketers shouldn’t try to solve that maze, or cut a straight line through it just for their convenience. They should rather adapt to it.

2. Tries to fit round pegs in square holes

Not all content types can be, nor should be, fit into rigid stages of the funnel, as the model wants it.

Here’s an example based on one of our articles. Which stage(s) of the marketing funnel does our blog post about “How to find low competition keywords” serve?

Example of content fitting multiple stages of the funnel with explanation.Example of content fitting multiple stages of the funnel with explanation.

As you can see, the model can’t handle one of the basic forms of content marketing – a blog post. But take any type of educational content, and you’ll find the same problem. Many content types can serve multiple stages of the funnel or work across them. They can both attract and reengage a visitor or even bring them all the way from discovery to purchase.

Because of that, the content marketing funnel simply isn’t helpful for creating content that’s enjoyable for the user and effective for the business.

3. Neglects customer retention

Customer retention is how good you are at keeping your customers. It’s important because you don’t want customers to buy just once from you; you want to keep coming back so that you don’t need to attract a total stranger each time to make a sale — that’s both hard and expensive.

Here’s another way to look at it. According to the study by Bain and Company, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. And it makes total sense if you think about it — if someone asked you to generate an extra $1000 in sales in 24 hours, would you go to existing customers or try to find new ones?

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But if you’re practicing the old ways of the funnel, catering to your existing customers is very limited because the funnel ends at the purchase stage. There’s nothing a content marketer can do nor should do after a prospect becomes a customer.

It’s having a party where you’re so focused on inviting new guests that you forget to entertain the ones already inside.

4. Ignores customer expansion

If you only chase new customers and forget about the ones you already have, you miss the chance to make more sales to them or get them to recommend your business to others. Happy customers can really boost your business by buying more and telling their friends about you.

How can content help with that? One good way is to create product-led content. This type of content is designed to show how your product can solve the customer’s problem.

The mechanism is simple: showing product features in action turns a regular user into a power user. They start to use more features and get better value from them, which builds loyalty and gives you a good ground for upselling.

And if that content is really good, people will share it with others, amplifying your brand’s reach.

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The best thing: good content will be recommended not only by your customers. People don’t really need to be your customers or know a lot about your brand to give your content a shout-out on social media.

The best solution to the shortcomings of the funnel is to have no funnel at all. Here’s why:

  • Adapting to consumer behavior, not forcing it. Focus on how consumers naturally interact with content rather than trying to dictate their journey. Make your content easily accessible without imposing how it should be consumed.
  • A more efficient use of content marketing. Content can work both pre-sales and post-sales. It doesn’t have to be useful in one moment in time. It can be designed to stay useful and relevant over time.
  • A more helpful way to create content. No time wasted on deciding whether that guide you’re about to write belongs to the top or middle of the funnel. You can simply focus on delivering value and delighting your audience.

Here are three different no-funnel models that share those advantages.

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This approach is about using your content to directly boost demand for your product, whether before or after a sale.

Instead of sorting content by stages of a sales funnel, you rate it based on how closely it relates to your product.

The Business Potential Framework.The Business Potential Framework.

So for example, for a content marketing tool, topics with high business potential would include content marketing metrics, “B2B content marketing”, “content ideation”, “content optimization”, and “content distribution” (and not an interview with content marketers or “history of content marketing”, etc.).

This scoring system makes planning your content strategy really easy. You can quickly decide how much of each type of content to make. Also, you can use it with other important metrics (we use it with organic traffic potential) to further prioritize content.

Ahrefs has been using this model for years, especially for SEO content, which is most of what we publish. It’s great for understanding which search terms are most valuable.

Take these two keywords below as an example. The first one has a lot more traffic potential but is too broad to easily include our product — it would get a “1.” Conversely, the keyword with less traffic but more focused on SEO would get a “3” because it’s more relevant to our customers and our product.

Traffic potential data via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.Traffic potential data via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.

The Business Potential Framework might be a good fit for you if you’re working in an established industry, where there’s already considerable demand for content directly linked to products like yours. This will make it easier to find topics with a score of 2 and 3. You can gauge that demand by looking at search volume in our free keywords generator.

Free keyword research with Ahrefs' Free Keyword Generator.Free keyword research with Ahrefs' Free Keyword Generator.

The Content Playground, devised by Ashley Faus, reimagines the buyer’s journey as an open, interactive space, akin to a playground, moving away from the traditional funnel’s linear path.

Content playground visualization. Content playground visualization.

It aims to cater to varied audience interests and learning styles by offering a mix of deep dives, strategic frameworks, and practical tips. To achieve this, it covers topics in three levels:

  • Conceptual: covering big ideas and their significance.
  • Strategic: outlining frameworks and processes.
  • Tactical: providing specific, actionable steps.

Staying with the content marketing tool example, topics you would create content about could look like this: “what is content marketing” (conceptual), “developing a content marketing strategy” (strategic), “how to promote content” (tactical).

To illustrate, this content hub on Agile from Atlassian is designed to be a content playground. There is a mix of all three types of content, and the user can start at any point, go as deep as they like, and jump to another topic at any time.

Example of content playground in practice.Example of content playground in practice.

Naturally, the content needs to be interlinked and ungated so consumers may access it however they want and navigate through it freely. The bonus of that is getting organic traffic from related keywords. According to Ahrefs, this one hub attracts over 591k organic visits every month, and it looks like it’s about to get more.

Organic performance graph via Ahrefs.Organic performance graph via Ahrefs.

But a playground doesn’t need to be confined to one site. As long as you tackle a topic with these three types and allow people to access them freely, you can have it scattered across a limitless number of sites and platforms: microsites, blog posts, social media, email, ebooks, etc.

I had a brief chat with Ashley, the mind behind this framework, to understand where this framework fits best. I learned that the framework was developed and tested with B2B marketers in mind, and that’s where it’s most relevant. B2C marketers simply don’t have as big of a problem with customers “coming and going” and re-engaging them on different channels.

There is a way to cover all customer intents, topics, journey stages, and key marketing channels naturally by simply focusing on what matters to your audience and where they are willing to consume content. I call it the Cluster-Channel Network (CCN).

Two core elements of the framework are:

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  • Clusters: thematic groupings of content around a central topic, supported by a network of related subtopics. They represent things people care about.
  • Channels: platforms and mediums through which your message reaches your audience. They represent meeting places that bring you and your audience together to talk about things they care about. Think advertising, email, social media, Google, etc.

CCN ensures a multi-channel presence with content that both attracts your audience and makes your brand an authority in a carefully picked selection of topics.

What’s more, this is an efficient framework because it allows you to “squeeze out” the most of any topic. That’s an important benefit because there are only so many topics a brand can comfortably cover, without creating turning into a content farm spinning irrelevant content just for the sake of traffic.

The framework consists of five steps.

  1. Identify relevant clusters: choose clusters aligned with your brand’s expertise and audience interests.
  2. Define subtopics: within each cluster, pinpoint subtopics for comprehensive coverage.
  3. Produce core content: select a primary channel and format for in-depth content, making this your centerpiece to attract traffic from other platforms.
  4. Distribute across channels: repurpose the core content into smaller, channel-specific formats.
  5. Interlink clusters and subtopics: connect related clusters and subtopics. Chances are, people interested in more than one cluster (e.g. SEO and content marketing).

If we were to visualize this framework consisting of four clusters, it would look something like this:

Visualization of the Cluster-Channel framework. Visualization of the Cluster-Channel framework.
Content playground could be visualized as a fully connected network with 3 node sizes.

So if we used content marketing as a cluster, one of the subtopics could be AI content. For that subtopic, you could create a blog post about ethics in content marketing in the AI era and distribute it as a thread on X, offer that topic to podcast hosts, etc.

This framework will work best if you have the resources to be present on multiple channels and you’re committed to long-term goals (building trust and authority takes time).

Tip

You can find clusters and subtopics very fast using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Just plug a broad term related to your product (your cluster), and let AI do the brainstorming.

Using AI to aid keyword research process in Ahrefs.Using AI to aid keyword research process in Ahrefs.

From a bit over 10 keywords the AI found for me for the word “SEO”, Keywords Explorer found over 32k keywords which then organized into 3466 ready-to-target topics in a matter of seconds. All with traffic potential and keyword difficulty metrics to help with prioritization.

Clusters by Parent Topic report in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer. Clusters by Parent Topic report in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.

Final thoughts

On a final note, the topics you choose to cover are as important as these frameworks. Check out our guide to content ideation to never run out of ideas.

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Got questions or comments? Find me on X or LinkedIn.



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How to Avoid Ruining SEO During a Website Redesign

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How to Avoid Ruining SEO During a Website Redesign

It’s too easy to break your SEO during a website redesign. Here’s a foretaste of what can go wrong:

  • Loss of rankings and traffic.
  • Loses of link equity.
  • Broken pages.
  • Sluggish page loading.
  • Bad mobile experience.
  • Broken internal links.
  • Duplicate content.

For example, this site deleted about 15% of organic pages (yellow line) during the redesign, which resulted in an almost 50% organic traffic loss (orange line). Interestingly, even the growth of referring domains (blue line) afterward didn’t help it recover the traffic.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard to avoid these and other common issues – just six simple rules to follow.

Easily overlooked but could save the day. A backup ensures you can restore the original site if anything goes wrong.

Ask the site’s developer to be prepared for this fallback strategy. All they will need to do then is redirect the domain to the folder with the old site, and the changes will take effect almost instantly. Make sure they don’t overwrite any current databases, too.

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It won’t hurt to make a backup yourself, too. See if your hosting provider has a backup tool or use a plugin like Updraft if you’re using WordPress or a similar CMS.

Testing your site for Core Web Vitals (CWV) and mobile friendliness before it goes live is the best way to ensure that your new site will comply with Google’s page experience guidelines.

The thing is, a website redesign can seriously affect site speed, stability, responsiveness, and mobile experience. Some design flaws will be quite easy to spot, such as excessive use of animations or layout not scaling properly on mobile devices, but not others, like unoptimized code.

Ask your site developer to run mobile friendliness and CWV tests on template pages as soon as they are ready (no need to test every single page) and ask for the report. For example, they should be able to run Google Lighthouse on a password-protected website.

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An SEO audit uncovers SEO issues on your site. And if you do it pre-and post-launch, you will easily spot any potential new problems caused by the redesign, especially those that really matter, such as:

  • Unwanted noindex pages.
  • Sites accessible both as http and https.
  • Broken pages.

So before the new site goes, click on New crawl in Site Audit and then again right after it goes live.

Starting a new crawl in Site Audit.Starting a new crawl in Site Audit.

Then after the crawl, go to the All issues report and look at the Change column – new errors found between crawls will be colored red (fixed errors will be green) .

Change column in All issues report. Change column in All issues report.

You might want to give some issues higher priority than others. See our take on the most impactful technical SEO issues.

Tip

You can access the history of site audits by clicking on the project’s name in Site Audit.

How to access crawl history in Site Audit (1).How to access crawl history in Site Audit (1).
How to access crawl history in Site Audit (2).How to access crawl history in Site Audit (2).

By URL structure, I mean the way web addresses are organized and formatted. For example, these would be considered URL structure changes:

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  • ahrefs.com/blog to ahrefs.com/blog/
  • ahrefs.com/blog to ahrefs.com/resources/blog
  • ahrefs.com/blog to blog.ahrefs.com
  • ahrefs.com/site-audit to ahrefs.com/site-audit-tool

Altering that structure in an uncontrolled process can lead to:

  • Broken redirects: redirects leading to non-existing or inaccessible pages.
  • Broken backlinks: external links pointing to deleted or moved pages on your site.
  • Broken internal links: internal site links that don’t work, hindering site navigation and content discoverability.
  • Orphan pages: pages not linked from your site, making them hard for users and search engines to find.

Naturally, you should keep the old URL structure unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. In this case, you will need to put some redirects in place. On top of that, make sure to submit a sitemap via Google Search Console to help Google reflect changes on your site faster.

Tip

Google also advises submitting a new sitemap if you’re adding many pages in one go. You may want to do that if that’s the case in your redesign project.

Redesigns often include some kind of content pruning or simply arbitrary deleting of older content. But whatever you do, it’s crucial that you keep the pages that are already ranking high.

Traffic is one reason, but since these pages are already ranking, chances are they’ve got some backlinks you risk losing.

To make sure you’re not cutting out the good stuff, use two reports in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer: Top pages and Best by links.

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Top pages report is a list of all the pages on your site ranking in the top 100, appended with SEO data and sorted by traffic by default. So, just one click on your left-hand side, and you’ll see a list of your best “traffic generators”.

Top pages report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.Top pages report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.

The Best by links report follows the same logic, but the focus is on links (both external and internal) and it shows all crawled pages on your site (not only the ones ranking in top 100).

Best by links report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.Best by links report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.

You can also plug in any page in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and see whether it can be cut without any damage to the site’s organic performance.

Looking up single page organic performance in Site Explorer. Looking up single page organic performance in Site Explorer.

Recommendation

If part of the redesign is an inventory cleanup, you can still get traffic to products you don’t offer anymore if you create an “archive” page and link to a place where visitors can find more similar products. E-commerce sites and hardware brands do that regularly.

Example of an archive page. Example of an archive page.

This way, you can still rank for related terms, and the user experience is better than simply redirecting old products to new products.

Lastly, if you find yourself in a situation where the new design imposes significant changes to your top-ranking pages, take extra caution when altering these elements:

Final thoughts

While an overall site redesign might sound like a good moment to introduce some SEO, you need to think about the traffic and backlink equity the site has already earned. If you change too much in one go, you won’t know what worked and why, and maybe more importantly, what didn’t work and how to fix it.

Truth is, SEO is always about experimentation. You can have a well-educated guess, but you can never really know what will happen.

Want to share your SEO story here? Let me know on X or LinkedIn.

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There’s No Such Thing as “Accurate” Search Volume

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There’s No Such Thing as “Accurate” Search Volume

I often post my favorite new Ahrefs features on X. And last time I announced our newest addition to Keywords Explorer, someone replied with this:

Which was not the first time I saw us being criticized for the accuracy of our search volume metric.

But here’s the kicker…

There’s NO SUCH THING as an accurate search volume:

  • The volumes in Google Keyword Planner aren’t accurate.
  • The “Impressions” in GSC aren’t accurate either.
  • And the metric itself is just an average of the past data.

I already published a pretty detailed article about the search volume metric back in 2021. But I don’t think too many people have read it.

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

André Gide

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So let me address this topic from a whole new angle.

First of all, what do SEOs even mean when they ask for search volumes to be “accurate?”

Well, the less experienced folks just want the metrics in third-party tools to match what they see in Google Keyword Planner (GKP).

But the more experienced ones already know all Google Keyword Planner’s Dirty Secrets:

  • The numbers are rounded annual averages.
  • Those averages are then assigned to “volume buckets.”
  • Keywords with similar meaning are often grouped together and their search volume summed up.

In other words, the search volume numbers that you see in GKP are very imprecise. And once SEOs learn that, they no longer use GKP as their baseline of accuracy.

They use GSC.

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Ok. So the numbers in GKP are rounded and bucketed and clustered together and all that. But Google Search Console (GSC) shows you the actual impressions for a given keyword, right?

Well, did you know that a simple rank-tracking tool can easily pollute your GSC impressions?

Think of how many different “robots” might be scraping the search results for a given keyword, and therefore giving you a fairly inaccurate impression of its real (human-driven) search volume.

And besides, in order to see the actual monthly search volume your page has to be ranking at the top 10 for thirty days straight. And it should rank nationwide, just in case the search results might differ based on the location.

On top of that, I’m sure GSC is no different from any other analytics tool in the sense that it might have certain discrepancies in “counting” those impressions. I mean, go compare the “Clicks” you see reported by GSC with your server log files. I bet the numbers won’t match.

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How much time do you think would pass between you selecting a certain keyword to rank for and actually having your page rank at the top of Google for it?

According to our old research, it could be anywhere from two months to a year for a newly published page to get to the top. Don’t you think the monthly search volume of a given keyword will change by then?

That’s actually the exact reason why we’ve added search volume forecasting to our Keywords Explorer tool. It uses past data to project what would likely happen to search volume in the next 12 months:

Is it accurate? No.

But does it help to streamline your keyword research and make better decisions? Absolutely.

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Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that there was an SEO tool which would give you a highly precise search volume for any keyword. What would you use it for? Would you be able to accurately predict your search traffic from that keyword?

No!

You can’t know for sure at which position your page will end up ranking. Today it’s #3, tomorrow it’s #5, the day after is #1. Rankings are volatile and you rarely retain a given position for a long enough period of time.

And even if you did: you can’t get precise data on the click-through rate (CTR) of each position in Google. Each SERP is unique, and Google keeps rolling out more and more SERP features that steal clicks away. So even if you knew precisely the search volume of a keyword and the exact position where your page would sit… you still would not be able to calculate the accurate amount of search traffic that you’ll get.

And finally…

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Pages don’t rank for a single keyword! Seven years ago we published a study showing that a typical page that ranks at the top of Google for some keyword would actually rank for about a thousand more related keywords.

So what’s the point of trying to gauge your clicks from a single keyword, when you’ll end up ranking for a thousand of them all at the same time?

And the takeaway from all this is…

Here at Ahrefs we spend a tremendous amount of time, effort and resources to make sure our keyword database is in good shape, both in terms of its coverage of existing search queries, and the SEO metrics we give you for each of these keywords.

None of our SEO metrics are “accurate” though. Not search volume, nor keyword difficulty, nor traffic potential, you name it.

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But none of them can be.

They’re designed to be “directionally accurate.” They give you an overall idea of the search demand of a given keyword and if it’s a lot higher (or lower) compared to some other keywords which you are considering.

You can’t use those metrics for doing any precise calculations.

But hundreds of thousands of SEO professionals around the world are using these exact metrics to guide their SEO strategies and they get precisely the results that they expect to get.



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