How Technical SEO Engineers at Search Navigators Use Ahrefs to Drive Real SEO Results

Ranking on Google isn’t just about keywords and backlinks anymore. The technical foundation of your website — how fast it loads, how search engines crawl it, whether pages are properly indexed — plays a massive role in whether your business gets found online or stays buried. At Search Navigators, our technical SEO engineers use Ahrefs as one of our primary platforms to diagnose issues, uncover opportunities, and build strategies that produce real, trackable improvements in organic performance.

This page breaks down exactly how we use Ahrefs to deliver technical SEO results — from the initial audit through ongoing monitoring — so you know what to expect when you work with us.

What Makes Ahrefs a Go-To Tool for Technical SEO?

There’s no shortage of SEO platforms out there. So why do our engineers reach for Ahrefs when it comes to technical work? It comes down to three things: speed, depth, and accuracy.

Ahrefs crawls at speeds of up to 170,000 URLs per minute. That means even large websites with thousands of pages can be audited quickly and thoroughly. But speed alone isn’t enough — what matters is what the tool finds and how it presents it.

Here’s why Ahrefs has earned a permanent spot in our workflow:

• It scans for 170+ technical SEO issues across crawlability, indexability, page speed, structured data, redirects, and more
• Its backlink index is the most frequently updated in the industry — refreshing every 15 to 30 minutes, which is critical when you’re monitoring link health
• The always-on audit feature runs continuous crawls so our team gets near real-time alerts when something breaks or changes on your site
• Every flagged issue comes with clear prioritization (errors, warnings, notices) and plain-language instructions on how to fix it
• The Page Explorer gives us access to over 250 data points per URL, so we can filter and analyze your site at a granular level most tools can’t match

For our team, Ahrefs is where we go when we need to understand the full technical picture — not just surface-level problems, but the underlying issues that quietly drag down performance over months.

How Do Search Navigators Engineers Build Technical SEO Strategies with Ahrefs?

We don’t treat Ahrefs as a one-click reporting tool. Our engineers work inside it daily, combining the platform’s data with hands-on analysis and years of practical experience. Below is a breakdown of how Ahrefs fits into each phase of our technical SEO work.

1. Always-On Site Audits and Technical Health Monitoring

The foundation of any technical SEO strategy is knowing exactly what shape your website is in. Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool crawls every page on your site and categorizes issues by severity — errors that need immediate attention, warnings that could become problems, and notices worth keeping an eye on.

What our engineers look for during a technical audit:

• Crawl errors — 4xx and 5xx status codes, broken internal links, and redirect chains that waste crawl budget
• Indexability problems — pages blocked by robots.txt, noindex tags applied incorrectly, or canonical conflicts that confuse search engines
• Core Web Vitals — real-user performance data (CrUX) combined with Lighthouse scores to identify pages that load too slowly or shift visually during load
• Duplicate content — identical or near-identical title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and body content across multiple pages
• Structured data issues — missing, invalid, or improperly implemented schema markup that prevents your pages from earning rich results
• Sitemap and robots.txt errors — misconfigurations that could block important pages from being discovered or indexed
• Orphan pages — published URLs with no internal links pointing to them, making them invisible to both crawlers and users

What sets our approach apart is that we don’t just run the audit and hand over a spreadsheet. We review every flagged issue manually, cross-reference it with Google Search Console data, and prioritize fixes based on what will move the needle most for your specific site. We’ve had clients come to us with audit reports from other agencies that listed 300 issues but never explained which 10 actually mattered — that’s not how we operate.

2. Backlink Analysis and Link Profile Management

Ahrefs was originally built as a backlink analysis tool, and it still leads the industry in this area. Its index covers over 35 trillion external links and refreshes every 15 to 30 minutes — which means we’re working with the freshest data available when evaluating your link profile or scouting competitor backlinks.

Here’s how our team uses Ahrefs for backlink work:

• Link profile auditing — identifying toxic, spammy, or irrelevant backlinks that could put your domain at risk of penalties
• Competitor backlink mining — using Link Intersect to find sites that link to your competitors but not to you, revealing outreach opportunities you’d otherwise miss
• New and lost link tracking — monitoring which sites are linking to you and catching dropped links early so we can act before they affect authority
• Anchor text distribution — ensuring your backlink profile looks natural and isn’t over-optimized with exact-match anchors
• Referring domain quality — evaluating not just the number of backlinks but the authority and relevance of the domains they come from

Backlinks are still one of the strongest ranking signals Google uses. We’ve worked on sites where cleaning up a handful of toxic links and building a few high-quality replacements led to visible ranking improvements within weeks — not months. Ahrefs makes that kind of precision possible because its data is close to real time.

3. Keyword Research and Search Opportunity Discovery

Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer draws from a database of over 28 billion keywords across 217 locations. That’s a staggering amount of search data, and our engineers use it to find the terms that actually matter for your business — not just the ones with the highest volume.

What we focus on during keyword research:

• Traffic potential over raw volume — Ahrefs shows estimated traffic for the top-ranking page, not just the keyword itself, which gives us a more realistic picture of what a ranking can actually deliver
• Parent topic clustering — grouping related keywords under a single parent topic so we don’t waste resources creating separate pages for terms that should be covered together
• Search intent classification — distinguishing between informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional queries to match content format to user expectations
• Keyword difficulty analysis — Ahrefs calculates difficulty primarily based on referring domains needed to rank, giving us a concrete benchmark for how much link building a keyword might require
• SERP feature opportunities — identifying keywords where featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, or AI Overviews appear, so we can optimize content to capture those positions

One thing we’ve learned from years of doing this: the best keyword opportunities often aren’t the most obvious ones. Long-tail queries with moderate volume but clear buying intent have consistently driven more conversions for our clients than high-volume head terms with vague intent. Ahrefs helps us find those.

4. Competitive Gap Analysis and Market Positioning

You can’t build a strong SEO strategy in a vacuum. You need to know who you’re competing against, what they’re doing well, and where they’ve left gaps you can fill. Ahrefs’ Content Gap and Site Explorer tools make this kind of competitive analysis practical and data-backed.

Our competitive analysis process includes:

• Running Content Gap reports to find keywords your top 3-5 organic competitors rank for that your site doesn’t
• Analyzing competitors’ top-performing pages by traffic to understand which content formats and topics are driving their visibility
• Reviewing competitor backlink profiles to identify link sources that are both achievable and relevant for your domain
• Tracking Domain Rating trends over time to measure how your authority is growing relative to the competition
• Spotting declining competitors — pages losing traffic or rankings — to find opportunities where you can step in and capture that search demand

This isn’t about copying what others do. It’s about using data to make sharper decisions. When we see a competitor ranking for a term with thin content and a weak backlink profile, that’s a signal. When we see a high-authority site dominating a keyword with a comprehensive guide, that tells us something different. Ahrefs gives us the detail we need to tell one from the other.

5. Rank Tracking and SERP Feature Monitoring

Knowing where you rank today is useful. Knowing how your rankings change over time — and why — is what actually drives strategy. Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker monitors keyword positions across 190+ countries, on both desktop and mobile, with the ability to drill down to city or ZIP code level.

What we track for our clients:

• Share of Voice — a weighted visibility metric that shows how much of the total search landscape you own for your tracked keywords, compared to competitors
• SERP feature tracking — monitoring 19 different SERP features including featured snippets, local packs, image carousels, and AI Overviews
• Position history — visualizing ranking trends over weeks and months to distinguish between normal fluctuations and meaningful shifts
• Competitor overlap — seeing which competitors appear alongside you for the same keywords and how their positions are changing
• Mobile vs. desktop splits — understanding performance differences across devices, which is especially important since Google’s mobile-first indexing

We check rank tracking data weekly for every active client. If a page drops five positions overnight, we want to know about it before it affects traffic — and more importantly, we want to know why. Ahrefs’ historical data makes it possible to correlate ranking changes with specific events like algorithm updates, new competitor content, or technical changes on your own site.

6. Content Discovery and Link Prospecting

Ahrefs’ Content Explorer is something most other SEO platforms simply don’t have. It’s a searchable database of over 16 billion web pages that lets our team find content opportunities, unlinked brand mentions, and high-performing pieces in any niche.

How we use Content Explorer:

• Finding pages that mention your brand or products but don’t link to you — these are low-effort, high-value link opportunities
• Identifying top-shared content in your industry to understand what formats and topics resonate with your audience
• Discovering broken pages on high-authority sites that present broken link building opportunities
• Analyzing which authors and publications consistently cover topics related to your business, making targeted outreach more effective
• Filtering by organic traffic to focus on pages that actually get eyeballs, not just pages that exist

Content Explorer has been responsible for some of the most efficient link-building wins we’ve delivered. Finding an unlinked brand mention on a high-authority site and converting it into a backlink with a single outreach email — that’s the kind of opportunity this tool surfaces regularly.

7. Reporting and Actionable Insights

Data without context is just numbers on a screen. Our job is to turn Ahrefs’ data into decisions you can act on and results you can measure. Every month, we compile reports that connect the dots between what we’ve done, what’s changed, and what comes next.

What our monthly reports cover:

• Site health score progression and technical issues resolved since the last report
• Keyword ranking movements — gains, losses, and new keyword entries
• Backlink profile changes — new links acquired, toxic links disavowed, and overall domain authority trends
• Organic traffic trends tied to specific pages and keyword clusters
• Competitive benchmarking — where you stand relative to your tracked competitors
• Clear, prioritized action items for the coming month

We walk through these reports with every client personally. If something in the data needs explaining, we explain it. If a number looks off, we dig into why. Our clients have told us that one of the things they value most is that we don’t just show them what happened — we tell them what it means and what we’re going to do about it.

Which Ahrefs Tools Do Search Navigators Rely On?

Our engineers use different Ahrefs tools depending on where we are in the engagement. Here’s a breakdown of the core tools and the role each one plays.

How Does Ahrefs Compare to Other SEO Platforms for Technical Work?

Clients sometimes ask us why we use Ahrefs for certain engagements and other platforms for others. The honest answer is that no single tool does everything best. Here’s how Ahrefs stacks up in the areas that matter most for technical SEO.

The takeaway isn’t that Ahrefs is “better” across the board — it’s that for the specific technical and link-focused work our engineers do, it provides depth and data freshness that’s hard to match. We choose tools based on what the project demands, not brand loyalty.

What Does a Technical SEO Engagement Look Like at Search Navigators?

Every client’s situation is different, but our process follows a proven structure that ensures nothing gets overlooked. Here’s what a typical technical SEO engagement looks like when Ahrefs is part of the toolkit.

Phase 1 — Technical Discovery and Baseline Audit

We start by running a comprehensive Ahrefs Site Audit alongside a manual review of your Google Search Console data. This gives us a full picture of your site’s technical health — from crawl errors and indexation gaps to page speed issues and mobile rendering problems. At the same time, we pull baseline data on your current keyword rankings, backlink profile, and organic traffic levels so we have a clear starting point to measure against.

Phase 2 — Issue Prioritization and Strategy Mapping

Not every issue in an audit report deserves the same level of urgency. A broken link on a low-traffic archive page isn’t the same as a noindex tag accidentally applied to your homepage. Our engineers score and prioritize every finding based on potential traffic impact, crawl budget implications, and business relevance. This phase produces a clear, sequenced action plan — not a generic list of problems.

Phase 3 — Implementation and Optimization

With the plan in place, we get to work. Critical technical fixes come first — things like resolving redirect chains, fixing canonical conflicts, removing crawl blocks, and addressing Core Web Vitals failures. From there, we move into keyword-driven on-page optimization, internal linking improvements, and structured data implementation. Throughout this phase, Ahrefs’ always-on audit runs in the background, confirming that each fix is holding and no new issues have been introduced.

Phase 4 — Continuous Monitoring and Iteration

Technical SEO is never “done.” Websites change — new pages get published, developers push code updates, plugins get updated, CMS configurations shift. Without continuous monitoring, small issues compound into major problems. We keep Ahrefs’ always-on audit active for every client, review rank tracking data weekly, and reassess the strategy monthly based on what the data tells us. In our experience, the clients who see the strongest long-term growth are the ones who stay engaged through this phase rather than treating SEO as a one-time fix.

What Are the Key Benefits of Using Ahrefs for Technical SEO?

Which Businesses Benefit Most from Ahrefs-Powered Technical SEO?

Technical SEO with Ahrefs is particularly valuable for businesses that face specific challenges where the platform’s strengths align with their needs:

• Businesses with large websites — sites with hundreds or thousands of pages need fast crawling and granular filtering to isolate issues. Ahrefs’ speed and Page Explorer handle this better than most alternatives
• Companies in competitive industries — if your competitors are actively building links and optimizing content, you need a tool with real-time backlink data and Content Gap analysis to keep pace
• E-commerce stores — product catalogs create unique technical challenges like duplicate content, faceted navigation, and crawl budget waste. Ahrefs’ 170+ issue scan catches these efficiently
• Businesses recovering from link penalties — cleaning up a toxic backlink profile requires the freshest data possible. Ahrefs’ 15-minute index refresh means we’re never working with stale information
• Sites undergoing redesigns or migrations — always-on auditing is invaluable during these transitions, catching broken redirects and lost pages in near real time rather than after the damage is done
• Local and multi-location businesses — Rank Tracker’s ZIP-level location tracking gives visibility into performance at a hyper-local level, which broader tools often lack

We’ve worked with businesses across all of these scenarios. Whether it’s a law firm that needed to recover from a bad link-building campaign, an online retailer with 5,000 product pages that had never been audited, or a service business that simply couldn’t figure out why their competitors kept outranking them — Ahrefs has been a consistent part of how we found answers and delivered results.

Frequently Asked Questions About Technical SEO with Ahrefs

What technical SEO issues can Ahrefs detect on my website?

Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool scans for over 170 types of technical issues. These include broken links, redirect chains, duplicate content, missing or incorrect canonical tags, slow page speed, Core Web Vitals failures, mobile rendering problems, structured data errors, and indexability issues like pages accidentally blocked by robots.txt. Each issue is classified as an error, warning, or notice so our team can prioritize fixes by impact.

How is Ahrefs different from other SEO tools for technical work?

Ahrefs was built from the ground up as an SEO-focused platform, which means its tools are deeper in areas like backlink analysis and technical auditing compared to broader marketing suites. Its backlink index updates every 15 to 30 minutes — significantly faster than most competitors that update daily or weekly. The always-on Site Audit feature runs continuous crawls, which is especially useful for catching issues as they happen rather than during a scheduled monthly audit.

How often does Search Navigators run technical audits using Ahrefs?

We run a comprehensive manual audit at the start of every engagement and enable Ahrefs’ always-on audit for continuous monitoring from that point forward. This means your site is being checked constantly, not just once a month. Our engineers review the audit dashboard weekly and investigate any new issues that appear between scheduled reporting periods.

Can Ahrefs help identify why my website lost rankings?

Yes. When rankings drop, there are usually a few possible causes — a technical issue, an algorithm update, a lost backlink, or a competitor gaining ground. Ahrefs allows our team to cross-reference ranking changes with backlink activity, site audit findings, and competitor movement data. This layered analysis usually points us to the root cause faster than looking at any one data source in isolation.

Does Search Navigators use Ahrefs for link building?

We do. Ahrefs is one of the strongest tools available for link building research. We use Link Intersect to find sites linking to competitors but not to you, Content Explorer to identify unlinked brand mentions, and Batch Analysis to evaluate large lists of link prospects efficiently. All of our link building follows white-hat practices — we earn links through outreach, content value, and genuine relevance, not paid placements or link schemes.

How does Ahrefs’ rank tracking work for local businesses?

Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker supports location-specific tracking down to the city or ZIP code level across 190+ countries. For local businesses, this means we can monitor how your keywords perform in the exact geographic areas where your customers are searching. It also tracks 19 SERP features including local packs, which is essential for understanding your local search visibility beyond just organic position numbers.

What is the difference between a site audit and a technical SEO strategy?

A site audit is the diagnostic step — it tells us what’s wrong with your website from a technical standpoint. A technical SEO strategy is the full plan that incorporates audit findings along with keyword research, competitive analysis, content optimization, link building, and ongoing monitoring. Think of the audit as the checkup and the strategy as the treatment plan. Both are necessary, but one without the other doesn’t deliver lasting results.

How soon can technical SEO improvements affect my search rankings?

It depends on the issue. Some technical fixes — like resolving a noindex tag on an important page or fixing a redirect chain that was blocking crawlers — can lead to ranking improvements within days or weeks. Broader improvements like site speed optimization and link profile cleanup typically take one to three months to fully reflect in rankings. We set realistic expectations from the start and track progress continuously so you can see momentum building.

Will I receive regular reports on what Ahrefs data shows about my site?

Absolutely. We provide detailed monthly reports covering your site health score, keyword ranking changes, backlink profile updates, competitive benchmarking, and organic traffic trends — all sourced from Ahrefs data combined with Google Search Console and Analytics. Your dedicated account manager walks through every report with you, explains the key takeaways, and outlines the plan for the coming month.

Can Search Navigators help if my previous SEO agency caused technical problems?

Yes, and we’ve done this more times than we’d like to count. Whether it’s a toxic backlink profile from aggressive link buying, botched site migrations, or technical configurations that were set up incorrectly, our engineers use Ahrefs to diagnose exactly what went wrong and build a recovery plan. The always-on audit and real-time backlink data are especially valuable in these situations because they let us track the cleanup process and confirm that fixes are actually working.

Related Services from Search Navigators

Technical SEO with Ahrefs is one part of a broader set of services we offer. Depending on your needs, these related services may also be relevant:

• SEO Services — our full suite of organic and local search engine optimization solutions
• SEO Audits — in-depth technical evaluations to uncover hidden optimization opportunities
• SEO Consulting — strategic guidance from our experienced team for businesses that want expert direction
• Local SEO Services — targeted strategies for businesses that depend on local search visibility
• E-Commerce SEO — specialized optimization for online stores with complex product catalogs
• Link Building Services — white-hat backlink acquisition to strengthen your domain authority

Ready to Fix What’s Holding Your Website Back?

If your website isn’t performing the way it should in search, there’s a good chance the answer is buried in the technical details. Our engineers at Search Navigators use Ahrefs to surface those issues, prioritize the fixes that will actually move your rankings, and build a strategy that compounds growth month after month. We’ve been doing this since 2005, and the approach works.

Book Your Free Consultation or call us at 905-431-9550 to get started.