It’s hard sometimes to build links, especially for smaller businesses, and that’s where Ahrefs comes in. Built for data and linkbuilding, it’s a fascinating tool. Clare Hoang was recently kind enough to speak with us about building links and connections on the web, and we learned a lot from her.
Hi, Clare! What are some of the problems Aherfs works to solve for site owners?
We collect comprehensive link data to help website owners understand exactly where the site links are coming from, to identify spam penalty risk by assessing problematic backlinks or unnatural links, as well as to conduct backlink cleanup for link disavow on Google Webmaster Tool if needed.
We also provide 60-day data of newly acquired and lost backlinks and referring domains. This is important not only for website owners to obtain a full picture of how many links or referring domains are earned or lost, and answer the question of why there is such an increase or decrease, but also for SEOs and marketers to measure their earning link efforts within a specific time frame.
We also make things easier for website owners when it comes to assessing anchor text type, its quality, as well as what kind of linkbuilding practices are implemented by competitors by simply reverse engineering competitors’ link profiles.
Why is data so important for websites?
Data helps websites to better understand their targeted customers’ online behaviors so that website owners can give customers what they want. There will be surely no business to be done if customers come to your websites and they quickly exit because they fail to get what they want. Therefore, it is extremely important for any website to understand where their users are coming from, time spent on the page by user, bounce rate, what makes users stay, etc., so that website owners can build the user journey that actually can convert.
Can data do more than just drive users to a site?
Data helps to streamline business processes. Data collected over time helps website owners to build a predictive model that will allow them to be able to predict with certain accuracy about future customer behavior and demands; then they can work on streamlining their business processes toward more successful initiatives. Imagine the critical amount of money, time and efforts business owners can save if they know exactly what their customers want in the future.
Backlinks in particular are a focus for Ahrefs. Why?
It is because we have been experimenting with web search and identified that links are still the best factor to rank pages in search results.
What do you wish every website knew about SEO?
Backlinks are not the only way to increase your ranking on the search engine result pages. If your website doesn’t contain contents that are relevant and useful to users’ search queries, there is no way for you to rank (not to mention rank high) on any SERP.
What does it take to have a successful SEO strategy?
SEO requires dedication and consistency throughout the whole process. First, you need to clearly define your SEO goals. Then, you need to come up with a detailed SEO plan and consistently deliver work to support that plan.
Tracking key performance indicators, or KPIs, on a regular basis is a must to ensure that you are on the right track or whether there is an implementation needed to the plan. Last but not least, don’t forget to keep yourself updated on Google’s algorithm changes to ensure that your SEO work won’t violate Google guidelines.
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