Ahrefs Content Marketing Strategy: 5 Lessons From a $100M+ Strategy

Disclosure: When you buy something through one of the links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. We only recommend products we use and/or believe will deliver value to you.

Every day, thousands of SEOs go into their Ahrefs account to research keywords, track search rankings, and improve search marketing efforts.

On their own, Ahrefs features can convince any SEO that using the tool is the only right decision.

But beyond the outstanding SEO tool is a content engine that wins hearts and drives new users every day.

From every eyeball using the Ahrefs tool and binge-reading its blog, we can zoom into the Ahrefs headquarters in Singapore’s Central Business District.

And from here, we can zoom into the marketing section that puts Ahrefs in front of millions of eyeballs.

In a moment, I’ll explore what Ahrefs has achieved without investor funds and lessons you can draw from its content strategy to improve yours.

Why pay attention to Ahrefs content marketing strategy?

If you’ve worked in online marketing for a few months, you’ve probably heard of Ahrefs.

But let me go into a bit more detail.

Ahrefs was founded by Dmytro Gerasymenko in 2010 and has been bootstrapped to over $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

One of the keys to its success?

Ahrefs content marketing.

Unlike most companies in the SaaS space, Ahrefs didn’t have a sales team until recently (after 14 years of operations). So, it depends heavily on its marketing team to attract and convert customers with trustworthy content.

How successful has the marketing team been in driving people to Ahrefs?

Ahrefs drives 9.6 million visitors monthly at a value of $4.6 million from search engines alone.

Ahrefs achieved this without using fancy analytics tools that tracked 97 metrics.

Its focus is on having the best product and straightforward marketing to attract the people who need it.

Managing these numbers without investor funds means Ahrefs must be doing a lot right.

Here, I’ll go into five lessons I’ve learned from observing Ahrefs content and its marketing team.

5 lessons from Ahrefs content marketing strategy 

1. Spice content with experience and thought leadership to build authority

Some months back, I noticed a shift in Ahrefs blog posts. 

This shift includes:

• Showing the writer’s experience in content
• Publishing thought leadership content
• Featuring insights from subject matter experts (SMEs) in content

Here’s a blog post by Si Quan Ong about event marketing:

This blog post features a lot of information from Ahrefs’ experience running small events and the Ahrefs Evolve.

While Si Quan is a content marketer, he spoke to Ahrefs’ event marketer, Shermin Lim, to understand Ahrefs’ event marketing strategy.

What you’ll see in this blog post are practical steps and how Ahrefs approached each step.

Here’s another blog post by Si Quan:

This thought leadership piece goes into the risk of exploring something new in marketing.

He explained Ahrefs’ experience creating and selling an SEO book for children.

And finally, a blog post by Joshua Hardwick:

Addressing link building strategies is a core topic for Ahrefs as it ties strongly to the tool’s features.

But to spice it up for the readers, Ahrefs brings SEO experts to share their creative link building strategies.

In the post, the experts explain how they execute these strategies and examples.

When I search for “link building strategies” on Google, Ahrefs ranks in the top 3:

But beyond that, its headline is more clickworthy than other results.

If you have read the Ahref blog for years, as I have, it’s hard to miss this change in approach.

In my opinion, this new approach is better value for readers.

But why is this approach important?

Here’s what Ryan Law, Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs, said in a blog post:

“You can stand out from faceless AI content by proving to the reader that you dirtied your hands, and actually experienced the thing you are writing about.”

With AI stealing traffic from many websites (through AI Overviews, ChatGPT, etc.) and threatening to steal more, businesses have to create content that ChatGPT can’t spit out in 5 seconds.

And this includes content spiced with experiences.

Writing on a topic based on just research on Google may be insufficient going forward. 

Writers may also need to become subject matter experts about the topic they write. Or consult subject matter experts to get practical insights.

To do this on your website, find a way to weave your experience into SEO content.

This makes your content different from other results on the SERPs. And when searchers read your page, they trust you and look out for your page in their next search.

But beyond SEO content, draw from your experiences to create thought leadership content.

Rather than focus on search rankings, these content pieces focus on issues that customers face in the industry.

Will thought leadership content win your brand a Pulitzer prize?

No.

But it encourages visitors to bookmark your site and revisit for new content. 

As Tim Soulo, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Ahrefs, said in an interview:

“Thought leadership helps you get notoriety, links, and reputation. So it’s not enough to just publish the same content as everyone else. You also need to build a reputation for yourself that you’re a credible source with something unique to say.”

And in the long run, these people who love and trust your content are more likely to try your product.

2. Create product-led content to promote product naturally

The best way to convert prospects is to get them dreaming about all the problems they’ll solve with your product.

But how do you get them dreaming?

Through product-led content.

And it’s hard to find better examples of product-led content than Ahrefs.

Ahrefs focuses radically on providing the best data and product. But one of the best ways to give buyers a glimpse into the product is to show it in blog content.

If you read any of Ahrefs blog posts, you’ll see the tool interface and how the topic connects to its features.

And this is by design.

Ahrefs uses business potential scores to pick topics to write about.

This score ranges from 0 to 3, with 0 being the worst topic and 3 being the best topic to mention Ahrefs naturally.

For example, here’s a part of Ahrefs blog post on content gap analysis:

Ahrefs does an excellent job of showing its tool where relevant to the reader. 

This helps the brand promote its product without triggering alarm bells in the reader’s head.

Beyond identifying the right topics, how does Ahrefs nail product-led content?

According to Si Quan; 

“At Ahrefs, new marketing team members are expected to complete our academy courses (especially the Certification course). Plus, they don’t actually join the marketing team directly. They work in our customer support team for at least three months before ‘graduating’ to the marketing team.”

This ensures anybody writing for the Ahrefs blog understands Ahrefs like the layout of their own room when blindfolded.

To deliver product-led content to your ideal reader, find the most relevant content topics for your product.

Then, ensure writers and other content creators understand your product deeply to uncover as many use cases as possible.

While writing about each topic, identify problems your product can solve and show how.

Website visitors who have these problems now know that your product is a great option for them.

Tim Soulo said:

“Every article we publish on our blog is basically a sales page for our product.”

Even better, product-led content lets you sell your product without being salesy.

Apart from attracting customers, product-led content reduces the load on your customer support since many prospects understand your product before signing up.

The product-led content approach is a no-brainer for any SaaS company.

Pro tip: If possible, let writers work in customer support to understand how customers use your product and their common challenges. If that’s not possible, provide customer support transcripts to writers.

3. Conduct and publish research and studies to attract backlinks

Even if following research numbers can be like reading terms of service, marketers still run after research reports to uncover insights to improve their strategy.

Luckily, Ahrefs does a lot of research and studies. 

Since Ahrefs is essentially a research tool, the company forms research questions and uses its tool to find the answers.

Here’s a study by Ryan Law:

This study analyzed the top 50 bootstrapped SaaS companies according to their traffic growth between 2023 and 2024.

After listing the 50 companies and their traffic metrics, Ryan dove into the top 5 to explain the factors responsible for their traffic growth.

Here’s another study into AI Overviews keywords:

This study analyzes questions marketers already have about Google AI Overviews.

Not just that, it delivers insights into how marketers can adapt their strategy to AI Overviews.

And in just a few months, this page has racked up 250 backlinks from 77 referring domains.

This blog is one of those referring domains, as I linked to the page in a blog post about pivoting away from consensus content.

When marketers get insights from research and studies, they’re more likely to link to the research in their own content.

While talking about building links for Ahrefs, Tim Soulo said: 

“We noticed that when we do research and publish data, people are very likely to link to it.”

But beyond research with Ahrefs, the company also talks to experts to find out how they approach various marketing tasks.

For example, Ahrefs posted a survey about AI content on its website.

Marketers who take this survey will answer questions about the use of AI in their content creation process.

With such a study, marketers will see what fellow professionals are up to, and this can influence their content strategy.

Conducting research can be as simple as putting up an industry survey on your website and analyzing the responses.

You can also compile metrics and draw insights from how customers use your product.

For example, if you sell a landing page tool, you can analyze customers’ pages with the highest conversion rates. Then publish your findings about common elements in high-converting pages.

You may need to purchase some research tools to conduct research properly. But you’ll get healthy ROI in terms of brand awareness, backlinks, and traffic.

Publishing research and studies helps you deliver new insights and position your brand as an authority.

4. Experiment with multiple content formats to reach a bigger audience

Blog content is great.

But these days, people spend a lot of time outside blogs.

This means you can miss out on many potential buyers if you only write content on your blog.

Ahrefs solves this problem by creating content in multiple formats, such as:

• YouTube videos
• Podcasts
• Courses
• Events

Sam Oh, VP of Marketing at Ahrefs, says this about YouTube videos:

“If you have a blog that has a lot of traffic, you can very easily repurpose these into videos and reach an entirely new audience on YouTube.”

Ahrefs’ YouTube channel has over 600K subscribers and 28 million views.

If you visit the channel, you’ll find many SEO and content tutorials. But beyond that, Ahrefs also creates thought leadership videos.

This way, the channel is useful for both beginners and industry experts.

Apart from posting videos on its channel, Ahrefs also embed videos in relevant blog posts.

These videos keep visitors on the blog page longer and improve user experience and the chances of better search rankings. The blog also exposes the YouTube videos to more views.

So, both channels can work off each other.

Beyond tutorials, Ahrefs invites experts to discuss their strategies on the Ahrefs podcast. This content can serve experts who want advanced tactics.

Then, Ahrefs has courses about SEO and content.

With events, Ahrefs takes its relationship with customers and prospects offline. 

And people who attend these events have closer relationships with the brand.

Ahrefs hosts SEO workshops and Ahrefs Evolve and supports other marketing conferences.

To use other content formats in your marketing strategy, research your customers’ and prospects’ favorite content formats.

You can ask them and experiment with various formats to see which ones work best.

Then, create content for those formats.

So, a great blog is only a start these days.

Your strategy should involve exploring other content formats. 

Pro tip: Sam Oh said if he had to start a YouTube channel, he’d first repurpose content for popular blog posts. This way, you’re leveraging content that’s already popular with your audience.

5. Build relevant free tools to promote paid plans

Many SaaS tools require substantial investments when buying their plans.

For example, Ahrefs’ cheapest plan, the Starter plan, costs $348 on an annual plan. The next plan costs $1,290 per year.

And the high-tier plans can cost as much as $14,990 per year.

With this level of investment, businesses need to understand the value of the product before throwing cash into it.

Ahrefs uses its free tools to give prospects a taste.

Tools like: 

• Website traffic checker
• Website authority checker
• Keyword rank checker
• Backlink checker
• Paraphrasing tool
• Paragraph rewriter
• AI humanizer
• Sentence rewriter

In terms of organic traffic, these free tools have been a successful strategy for Ahrefs.

When you look at Ahrefs’ top keywords, you’ll find many keywords driving traffic to these pages.

But when you visit the top organic pages, the amount of traffic these pages pull becomes more obvious.

These are tools Ahrefs’ ideal users can search for during their daily tasks.

Now, why am I including free tools as part of Ahrefs’ content marketing strategy?

First, these tools attract millions of qualified traffic to its website. Most people searching for these keywords on Google will likely need Ahrefs.

Second, these tools attract many backlinks, which can increase Ahrefs website authority and the chance of their content pages ranking higher.

For example, let’s consider the website traffic checker page:

This page has gained 11.3K backlinks from 511 referring domains. Another free tool, the free backlink checker, has 27.6M backlinks from 5.8K referring domains.

When you consider the other tool pages, these free tools attract millions of backlinks to Ahrefs.

Third, Ahrefs has content on its tools pages.

The company explains the metrics a tool measures and why they’re important to businesses.

Then, it shows even more vital metrics the visitor can access if they sign up for a paid plan.

For example, if you scroll down the website traffic checker page, you’ll see this:

Ahrefs explains the metrics you can get about competitors. This makes sense since most people use this tool to check competitors’ traffic numbers.

So, Ahrefs has adapted the copy to the visitor’s intent.

When you get to the bottom of the page, you’ll see Ahrefs plans:

You’ll notice a common trend for all the free tools:

They promote Ahrefs’ core features.

Even for prospects far from conversion, these pages keep Ahrefs on top of their mind.

How do you execute this for your business?

If you run a research or analytics tool, identify important metrics and create free tools to help visitors measure them.

If your product provides a service, identify a small feature you can turn into a free tool. For example, some social media management tools provide a limited version of their AI caption generators for free.

Another option is to build a calculator that helps your ideal audience calculate relevant metrics.

After creating these tools, write content to educate visitors about the usefulness of the tool and the extra value they can get if they sign up for a paid plan. You can also embed videos or interactive demos on this page.

Free tools provide immediate value and let you stay on top of your prospect’s mind.

Conclusion

Ahrefs is a gold standard of content marketing.

And the company has built a content engine that draws new users in while showing current users how to get more value from its product.

This type of content marketing supports the company’s reputation and bottom line.

Which of these lessons will you use for your SaaS content marketing strategy?