When analyzing websites, we often use third-party tools. We analyze keywords, search volume, competition, and backlinks. I use Ahrefs for this, for example.
However, it’s very important to understand that this tool has no direct connection to your rankings in Google. For example, people ask me: “I bought backlinks on a certain marketplace, but Ahrefs hasn’t indexed them or doesn’t show them.”
My question is: why do you need Ahrefs to show your backlinks? Ahrefs is a third-party tool with its own link discovery logic, algorithms, and so on. For various reasons, it simply doesn’t see half—or even more—of the backlinks you build. In my case, it doesn’t detect half of my outreach links, even though each one costs between $500 and $1,000.
Whether a backlink appears in Ahrefs has no effect on your rankings. If the link actually exists, has been indexed, and appears in Google Search Console a month later, for example, that’s enough.
Experienced gambling SEOs deliberately hide their PBN backlinks from crawlers so that competitors can’t see them.
The same applies to competition metrics. Ahrefs may show KD = 0 for a keyword even though the search results are packed with major websites with DR 70, review sites, and their internal pages. Ranking at the top for such a keyword is practically impossible 🙂 And that’s despite there being no backlinks pointing directly to the URL ranking for that keyword.
At the same time, I may find it much easier to rank for another keyword with KD = 70 because the competing websites are weaker. The ranking URLs simply have a lot of low-quality backlinks pointing to them, so Ahrefs assumes the keyword is highly competitive. In reality, that isn’t necessarily the case.
My point is that no third-party tool is a silver bullet. You shouldn’t blindly trust its metrics. You need to think for yourself, analyze things more deeply, and use several tools at once to identify trends and patterns.
And finally, a few words about Ahrefs keyword search volume:
Website 1. Search volume: 9,000 per month. I rank in the top 1 and receive more than 1,000 clicks per day. A keyword that generates real traffic.
Website 2. Search volume: 20,000 per month. I rank in the top 2 and receive only 20 clicks per day. A completely worthless keyword.
That’s how it goes 🙂
Wishing everyone backlinks and top rankings 🙂
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Need backlinks? Send me a private message on Telegram: https://t.me/andrey_soroka
CIS and international markets (gambling, casinos, dating, crypto, and white-hat projects)
My channel about SEO, link building, and iGaming: https://t.me/info_site
