Essential Tools For The pSEO Trade…
Ahrefs: Why It’s Awesome For Programmatic SEO
Ahrefs provides accurate, up-to-date data that’s crucial for making informed decisions. Its user-friendly interface might seem overwhelming at first due to the sheer volume of data, but once you get the hang of it, navigating through complex SEO metrics becomes second nature.
You don’t need hundreds of tools to do pSEO, but you do need a select few to do it properly. This one is one of those tools that you need – it just makes your life a whole lot easier…
— Thomas Anthony, OptimalSauce
Key Takeaways
What it Does:
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Why We Recommend This Tool
We recommend Ahrefs because it tackles the core pain points that SEO professionals face daily.
Struggling to find low-competition keywords? Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer has you covered.
Need to understand why your competitors are outranking you? Dive into their backlink profiles with Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.
Ahrefs excels in competitor analysis, allowing you to see what’s working for others so you can adapt and improve your own strategies.
The Content Explorer helps you identify high-performing content in your niche, giving you insights into topics that resonate with your audience.
From planning to tracking your rankings, Ahrefs literally does it all.
I’ve used it for over a decade and while it is expensive, it is an invaluable tool.
Personally, I’d rather downgrade my cable package than lose access to my Ahrefs account.
Benefits
Ahrefs offers a massive backlink index that’s invaluable for understanding your site’s authority and where you can improve.
It solves the age-old problem of not knowing where your backlinks are coming from or which ones are actually helping you rank.
Their Keywords Explorer doesn’t just spit out a list of keywords; it provides in-depth metrics like keyword difficulty, search volume, and even click-through rates.
This means you spend less time sifting through irrelevant keywords and more time targeting those that matter.
Ahrefs’ Site Audit feature is like having a personal site inspector.
It crawls your website for technical issues—broken links, duplicate content, crawl errors—you name it.
Fixing these issues can significantly boost your site’s performance and user experience.
Overall, Ahrefs consolidates all the essential SEO tools into one platform, negating the need to run multiple tools alongside one another.
Yes, it is pricey.
But if you’re in this for the long haul, it’ll pay dividends in the short, medium, and long term.
Uses & Applications
Imagine you’re looking to create thousands of landing pages targeting long-tail keywords.
With Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, you can generate a comprehensive list of these keywords based on real search data.
For example, if you’re in the travel industry, you could find keywords like “best budget hotels in [city]” and programmatically create pages for each city.
This scales your content creation without sacrificing relevance or quality.
And it completely removes guess work.
You have the data. You know the metrics.
And most importantly, with Ahref’s SERP feature, you know how hard it’ll be to rank for any keyword you’re going after.
Ahrefs’ API takes it a step further by allowing you to integrate their data directly into your own systems, if you want to get REALLY fancy.
This means you can automate tasks like updating keyword lists, tracking backlinks, or monitoring rank changes — all crucial for a successful programmatic SEO strategy.
Things To Keep In Mind / Practical Tips
Now, let’s keep it real. What about the downsides of Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is an investment – this is a nice way of saying it is BLOODY expensive.
If cash is tight, an Ahrefs subscription will hurt.
And it’s cheapest package, while serviceable, is a little too limited.
Before diving in, assess whether the depth and breadth of data provided align with your specific needs.
Maybe you could just start out with a cheaper keyword tool and Google Search Console.
There’s also a learning curve.
The platform is packed with features, and it can feel like information overload at first.
But don’t let that deter you.
Remember: data is KING.
Invest time in learning how to navigate the tool.
Best Programmatic SEO Tools 🤖
If you’re going to do programmatic SEO, you’re going to need tools – there’s just no way around it.
You don’t need all of them, but there are some essential tools that’ll make your life A LOT easier.
These are the tools we use at the agency. I’ve marked the most important ones “essential”, so you know what to start with…
All the essential and most useful tools you’ll need for your programmatic SEO adventures.