SEO is a big field, and there are many tools you can use to enhance your site’s rank. Many businesses and companies operating online choose to work with professional SEO experts to harness the array of tools available properly. Others, especially those with small-to-medium ventures, try their hand at DIY SEO.

If you want to try doing some SEO on your own, the abundance of tools available can be overwhelming.

However, remember that a little can go a long way. Ahrefs offers tools that can be extremely helpful. One of the best for beginners is Site Explorer. You do not need to be an SEO expert to get a lot out of this tool. Here’s what it’s all about and what you can do with it.

What is Ahrefs’ Site Explorer?

Site Explorer is a tool offered by Ahrefs, which is a toolkit for search engine optimization. The tools are paid, but you can access many free resources to learn more about SEO. The tools included in Ahrefs allow you to do things like analyze SEO, create better backlinks, and find relevant keywords and trending topics.

Site Explorer is just one of these many tools. You can do several things with it, grouped under three primary tools:

  • Research organic traffic
  • Research paid traffic
  • Check competitor backlinks

These three basic functions let you find keyword opportunities, or opportunities to take advantage of high-ranking search terms related to your company on high-ranking pages. Use Site Explorer to find the topics getting the most traffic, find ranking PPC keywords relevant to your pages, find landing pages where ads point, find backlink opportunities, and more.

  1. Check for Backlinks

Good backlinks are great for raising your page rank, which drives more traffic to your site. A backlink is a link from another page to one of yours. These point traffic to your site, directly getting people on to your pages. They also tell the search engine that your page has good authority, which improves its rank.

It may seem that having more backlinks is always better, but there is such a thing as a good backlink and a bad one. Links from spammy or suspicious sites and links that violate Google’s terms can actually hurt your rank. You want as many high-quality links as you can get, and Site Explorer can help.

  • Use Site Explorer to find the sites already linking to your pages. This helps you analyze your current backlink status so you can make a plan for improvement.
  • You can also search for broken links to your site. These are references other pages have made to your site that no longer have working links. Replacing these is an easy way to up your number of backlinks.
  • The search tool can help you find the best keywords and anchor text phrases to use for your backlinks.
  1. Track Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is the number of people visiting a site naturally rather than through paid ads. Site Explorer can help you research this for yourself and your competitors. You can find the traffic going to a specific page, pages that refer to certain topics, and even pages that mention specific keywords.

This is valuable information because it shows you where people are going naturally. Use the information to strategize. It can help you choose the best keywords, and from there, you can select topics and build content that will divert some of that natural traffic to your pages.

  1. Consider Your Competitors’ Paid Ads

Natural traffic is excellent, and you should aim to get it, but paid ads also have a place in your SEO strategy. Use Site Explorer to find out what your competitors are doing with ads. You can find where and how they place ads, and the results, to choose similar sites or potentially even more effective sites for your own ads.

You can even use Site Explorer to find competitors you didn’t know existed. The Competing Domains function shows you competing sites with information about them, such as backlinks, search volume, domain ratings, and more.

The Benefits of Ahrefs’ Other Tools

Site Explorer is a valuable tool, but it’s just one that Ahrefs offers. Content Explorer lets you find the content with the most shares for any topic so that you can implement similar strategies in your own content. Keyword Explorer helps you find the most relevant keywords, with estimates for traffic.

Rank Tracker is an analytic tool that helps you keep track of your rankings with daily, weekly, or monthly reports. Site Audit is also suitable for analysis. It goes through your site, looking for typical SEO mistakes and issues over time.

Site Explorer is the Place to Start

If you’re just getting into SEO or want to play around with your site’s page ranks without taking things too seriously, this is the tool for you. Ahrefs offers a lot of tools and content, and Site Explorer is one of the most comprehensive and best for beginners. Use it to start learning and building up a strategy for increasing your site’s authority and rank.