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How to Use Ahrefs’ Free Tools to Boost Your Website Traffic

You’ve built a solid website. It looks sharp. The content is great. But there’s one problem—your traffic isn’t growing. Here’s the thing, getting traffic isn’t just about publishing content and crossing your fingers. It’s about knowing what’s working, what’s not, and where the opportunities are hiding.

Enter Ahrefs. You’ve probably heard of it—one of the biggest names in SEO. But what you might not know is that Ahrefs offers a suite of free tools that can give you actionable insights and help you drive traffic without spending a penny. Let’s break it down.

Why Ahrefs? And Why Free?

Ahrefs is like the Swiss Army knife of SEO. You can track backlinks, analyze keywords, and monitor what your competitors are doing. Essentially, all the things that make Google sit up and take notice. Here’s the good news; you don’t need a premium subscription to start making progress. Ahrefs’ Free Tools give you just enough firepower to make smarter decisions and build a traffic-generating machine. If you’ve been wondering whether free tools can really move the needle, here’s a tip: they absolutely can, but only if you use them consistently and strategically. At Design Theory, we’ve seen firsthand how small, focused efforts can add up to big wins when you know where to look.

Step 1: Start with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT)

Let’s kick things off with the foundation—Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT). Think of this as Google Search Console’s more insightful cousin. It does everything GSC does, but with a sharper eye for SEO opportunities.

How to Set It Up:

Go to Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Sign up for a free account and connect your website
Verify your site ownership using DNS, HTML, or Google Search Console

Once you’re in, you’ll get access to critical data on:

Site Health: Identify technical SEO issues that might be holding back your rankings.
Backlinks: See who’s linking to you and which pages are driving the most authority.
Keyword Rankings: Find out where you’re showing up in search results, and where you’re not.

Our Theory: Set up AWT as soon as possible and schedule regular crawls. Even if everything looks great now, staying ahead of potential issues saves you headaches down the road. A quick monthly audit can reveal opportunities to improve and flag errors before they cost you traffic.

Step 2: Run a Site Audit and Fix What’s Broken

You wouldn’t drive your car without checking under the hood every now and then. The same applies to your website. A Site Audit through AWT gives you a clear roadmap of what’s working and what’s holding you back.

How to Run a Site Audit:

In your AWT dashboard, select “Site Audit.”
Crawl your website and review the results.
Pay attention to:
- 404 Errors: Broken pages that frustrate users and search engines.
- Slow Load Times: Google penalizes slow sites, and visitors won’t wait around.
- Duplicate Content: Competing pages that confuse search engines and dilute your rankings.

Our Theory: Don’t just fix errors—prioritize high-impact pages. If a 404 error or slow-loading page is on a critical service or product page, that’s where you focus first. Pro tip: Redirect or fix 404 errors immediately, and use canonical tags to consolidate duplicate content.

Step 3: Use the Keyword Generator to Discover Hidden Gems

Now that your site is running smoothly, it’s time to focus on getting in front of the right audience. Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator helps you uncover keyword opportunities you might have missed.

How to Use It:

Go to Ahrefs Keyword Generator.
Enter a broad keyword related to your business or niche.
Review the list of keyword suggestions along with search volume and keyword difficulty.

Here’s where the magic happens. Long-tail keywords (those 4 to 5-word phrases) might not bring massive traffic, but they attract highly targeted visitors who are ready to engage. For example, instead of chasing “digital marketing,” go after something more specific like “how to automate marketing for small businesses.”

Our Theory: Focus on long-tail keywords that align with your services and content strategy. These terms might have lower search volume, but they’re easier to rank for and often lead to higher conversion rates.

Step 4: Analyze Your Competitors with Site Explorer

If you want to win the game, you need to know what the competition is doing. Ahrefs’ Site Explorer gives you a backstage pass to your competitors’ strategies so you can learn from their wins (and their mistakes).

How to Use It:

Go to Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Enter a competitor’s URL.
Analyze their:
- Top Pages: Identify their highest-traffic content and spot opportunities to create something better.
- Backlinks: See which sites are linking to them and explore opportunities to build similar links.
- Organic Keywords: Discover gaps in your own content strategy by targeting keywords they’re ranking for that you’re missing.

Our Theory: Don’t just copy what your competitors are doing, make the extra effort to improve on it. If their “5 SEO Tips for Small Businesses” is getting traction, create a more detailed version like “10 Proven SEO Strategies to Double Your Website Traffic.” Then, reach out to the websites linking to your competitors and offer your upgraded content as a valuable resource.

Step 5: Build Backlinks with Broken Link Building

Most people ignore broken links, but smart marketers see them as opportunities. Broken Link Building is one of the most effective (and underutilized) ways to gain high-quality backlinks.

How to Do It:

Use Site Explorer to analyze websites in your niche.
Look for broken outbound links on high-authority pages.
Reach out to the site owner and suggest your content as a replacement.

Why does this work? Website owners want to maintain a high-quality user experience, and fixing broken links is part of that. You’re not just asking for a favor—you’re helping them improve their site.

Our Theory: Aim for relevance. A backlink from a niche-relevant site will do far more for your SEO than a generic one. When you offer a solution to broken links, make sure the content you’re suggesting is closely aligned with the original link.

Step 6: Track Your Progress and Refine Your Strategy

SEO is not a one-and-done game. The beauty of using Ahrefs is that it allows you to monitor your progress and refine your strategy based on real data.

How to Track Progress:

Use AWT to schedule regular site audits.
Monitor keyword rankings to see where you’re gaining (or losing) ground.
Analyze which pages are driving the most traffic and focus on doubling down on successful content formats.

Our Theory: Make tracking a habit. Set a monthly review date to assess your SEO health and make adjustments. Small, consistent improvements will compound over time and lead to sustainable growth.

Video Highlight | New features recently released

Closing Theory: Why This Matters for Your Business

Using Ahrefs’ free tools isn’t just about fixing broken links and finding keywords, it’s about understanding how search engines see your site and positioning yourself to win. The insights you’ll uncover with these tools give you a clear path to making your website a high-performing, lead-generating asset.

With us here at Design Theory, we’ve helped many business owners transform their websites from digital brochures into powerful growth engines. The truth is, most of them started with small tweaks that led to big gains over time. If you’re ready to take the guesswork out of growing your website traffic, it’s time to dive into Ahrefs and let the data guide your next move.

Ready to make your website work harder for your business?
Schedule a consultation with either Jean or Nicole and let’s talk strategy.

Providing User Access to Your MailChimp Account

All Posts, Email Tips, How to

There’s another option for giving access to your MailChimp account without needing to provide your account username and password. In our agency we prefer the following approach because we’re able to gain access to our client accounts at different levels, and access is relatively instant.

Follow These steps:

Log into your MailChimp account and click on your profile icon that is located at the top right of your screen

On this next screen you’ll see a menu listed under your account/profile name. Click on Settings and it will drop down a sub-menu, and then you can click on Users.

This next screen you may see a list of users if there was previous access already provided. So it’s a good time to check to ensure the right people should still have access and revoke access to any that no longer need it.

You’ll see a Invite User button on the right of your screen, click on that.

Now you’ll enter in the email address for whom you’d like to invite to your account to have access. You’ll see a list of options below for: Viewer, Author, Manager, and Admin. For most cases providing Author access will be sufficient. Enter the email address of the person you want to grant access to, then choose an option in the User type section. Add an optional message to share instructions or other information for that person. Once you’re done with your selections you can click on the Send Invite button located just below the entries.

The email invitation asks the recipient to join your account under the user level you selected. The recipient can create a new username and password, or log in with their existing Mailchimp account. To better protect accounts with multiple users, add 2-factor authentication to your Mailchimp account.

How To Get Your Google My Business Page Review Link

How to, Marketing

Having your customers and clients leave you positive reviews is a fantastic way to organically grow your business profile on Google. Getting them to engage and leave you a review sometimes may be include a bunch of steps and this short video will show you how to make the whole process super easy and frictionless.

Some unique ways you can use this:

Add your link to your email signature
Automate your “Thank You” email to your clients and include a call to action using this link
On the part of your register that faces your customers during checkout
As part of a repeat customer plan where after providing a 5 Star Review, your customers get a special discount on their next purchase
Create a custom QR code with your companies brand colors and even your logo and place it on a sticker or back of your physical marketing materials

If you would like some ideas or ways to create a marketing strategy to customize your review process, be sure to contact us.

How to Add a New User Access in Google Analytics

All Posts, How to, Marketing, SEO

Google Analytics is a powerful tool for tracking website traffic and user behavior. However, sometimes you need to share access to your Google Analytics account with other people, such as team members or clients. In this quick blog post, we’ll show you how to easily add a new user and provide specific access for Google Analytics, so you can collaborate and share data with others. Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or developer, this will help you quickly perform this process.

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What Is A Conversion, and Why Are They Important?

All Posts, Marketing

You may have read headlines or seen references to lead conversions and if you’re not sure what this means or even where to start, this article is for you.

What is a Conversion

A conversion is when a potential customer has engaged with your brand or business in some form, and then proceeded to take an action. That action may be signing up for a mailing list, purchasing an item, followed you on a social platform, or even subscribed. The end result is whatever outcome you’d like for your potential customers to do. So take a minute and consider any marketing efforts you’re currently doing, like maybe you have a special deal on your website? A recent social media post? An email newsletter with links to videos or a survey? The options are endless, but still there is a measurable metric that will ultimately be calculated for the amount of potential customers/leads that you’ll be looking to attract.

What is a Lead

Simply put, a lead is a person who has interest in your product or service that can make a decision about buying. There’s a difference between people looking to kick tires, but don’t have authority to actually make a purchase. The conversation or content to those information seekers should differentiate them from their counterparts or management who are able to make purchasing decisions. A lot of times we create content that’s like spaghetti on the wall with the hopes that something speaks to the right person amongst all the mess on the wall. Truth be told, no one likes a mess, let alone want to eat off a wall.

How to Calculate Your Conversion Rate

Every business is different with regards to their prices for their products and/or services. So while we’re going to talk about conversion rates, I would suggest that you sit with your team and decide what is an acceptable goal that is something your business isn’t complacent with but is within attainable number.

Ok so essentially to the formula for calculating your conversion ratio is: Conversion Ratio = Number of Confirmed Sales/Action, Divided by the Total Number of Leads Multiplied by 100. A common conversion rate is anywhere from 10-20%. When you step back and think about it, it’s a numbers game. The more leads you have the more potential sales you should have which ultimately boosts your bottom line.

If in a week you are able to attract 200 leads and 20 of them convert, that gives you a 10% Conversion Rate. The other piece to this with your business is to see how consistent you are with your metrics. Are you consistently getting 200 leads? What are the marketing methods your using to attract those leads? If you were to double those efforts or marketing budget, would that also double the amount of leads? Could there be other marketing efforts through other channels and platforms that you can also track and measure to perform the same?

One last thing to point out here is that by doing this exercise, you can also calculate your cost per customer. This is called Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Since you know how many customers or leads you’re getting from the above equation, you’ll need to know how much it costs for your marketing efforts. This includes but isn’t limited to cost for flyers, business cards, ad-spend on social media platforms, Google Ad campaigns, article boosting and promoting, and more. Count all of your marketing costs up and divide that by the number of confirmed customers/sales. For example, if my monthly marketing costs is $1,000, and our business is averaging 100 customers a month, well my CAC is $10 or every new customer costs me $10. Now if each new customer purchases a product or service at least say $200, then my average sales for those same 100 customers will gross us $20,000. And again, if it only costs me $10 for each new customer, wouldn’t you say that’s a worthwhile budget and spending plan?

If you or your business needs help with formulating your conversion rate or you’d like ways to boost your metrics, feel free to contact us because we’d love to help.

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