Using Ahrefs to Uncover B2B Lead Opportunities

Introduction

If you’re only using Ahrefs for keyword research and backlink checks, you’re leaving a lot of pipeline on the table.

In 2025, B2B buying still starts in search. Around 71% of B2B buyers kick off their research with a simple Google search, and 85% of decision-makers trust organic results more than paid ads. That means Google’s search results are one of the clearest windows into who’s actively playing in your market, what they care about, and where they’re winning or losing.

And Ahrefs is basically a live database of that behavior.

This guide is all about using Ahrefs as a B2B sales development weapon-not just a marketing dashboard. We’ll walk through practical workflows SDRs, BDRs, and sales leaders can use to:

• Uncover high-intent accounts that actually match your ICP
• Prioritize targets based on real buying signals (traffic, rankings, content gaps)
• Fuel cold calls and emails with specific, insight-led messaging
• Tie Ahrefs data back to meetings and pipeline, not vanity SEO metrics

We’ll also talk about how a partner like SalesHive operationalizes this at scale through outsourced SDR teams, cold calling, email outreach, and AI-powered personalization.

Grab a coffee-let’s turn that SEO tool into an outbound engine.

Why SEO Data Is a Goldmine for B2B Lead Generation

Before we get tactical with Ahrefs, it’s worth zooming out on why SEO data matters so much for outbound.

Organic search = real buying behavior

Organic search isn’t just “traffic.” It’s people raising their hands-anonymously.

• BrightEdge found that organic search drives about 44.6% of revenue across B2B, tech, and other major sectors.
• First Page Sage’s 2025 CTR study shows that the #1 organic result captures roughly 39.8% of clicks, and the top three get nearly 69%.
• Backlinko’s analysis of millions of results found that less than 1% of searchers click anything on page two.

Translation: if a company is ranking on page one for meaningful, commercial keywords, they’re almost certainly getting meaningful demand-and spending real money on capturing it. If they aren’t, they’re likely bleeding leads to competitors.

As a sales org, that tells you who is active in your space and where the pain/budget might be long before a form-fill or demo request ever hits your CRM.

B2B buyers trust organic over ads

The Sopro data is pretty blunt:

• 71% of B2B buyers start with Google
• 85% trust organic results more than paid ads
• 67% start with problem-based queries, not brand names

That last point is key for outbound: buyers are literally telling you the problems they care about in their queries-"reduce cloud costs," "manufacturing quality control software," "SOC 2 compliance automation"-and Ahrefs lets you see which companies are getting in front of those searches.

Cold outbound is starving for better data

Meanwhile, cold outbound is still mostly powered by spray-and-pray lists:

• A recent cold email benchmark report found less than 15% of cold email campaigns surpass a 20% open rate, and 49% fail primarily due to poor list quality.
• The same report shows 55% of cold emails get ignored because they aren’t personalized, while sending fewer but highly targeted emails can deliver 3x higher conversion rates.

So we have:

• Buyers broadcasting intent through search
• SEO tools indexing all of it
• And outbound teams still buying generic lists and writing generic copy

That’s the gap we’re going to close using Ahrefs.

Quick Primer: Ahrefs Through a Sales Lens

You don’t need to become an SEO to use Ahrefs effectively for B2B lead generation. You just need to know which parts of the platform map to your sales questions.

The Ahrefs data advantage

Ahrefs is not a tiny dataset:

• It tracks around 35 trillion external backlinks and 29.1 trillion internal backlinks, refreshing many metrics every 15-30 minutes.
• Its keyword index is about 28.7 billion keywords from 217+ locations and growing.

In other words, there’s more than enough intelligence in there to build incredibly focused B2B prospect lists.

Core tools you’ll actually use in sales

Let’s strip this down to what matters for SDRs and sales leaders:

• Site Explorer, Shows you how a specific domain is performing:
• Estimated organic traffic & top pages
• Top keywords and positions
• Paid search spend and keywords
• Backlink profile growth
• Content Explorer, A search engine for web content that lets you:
• Find pages and domains publishing on specific topics
• Filter by traffic, domain rating (DR), language, country, and more
• Export lists of domains/pages for prospecting
• Keywords Explorer / Keyword Gap, For sales, the value here is:
• Seeing what pain- or solution-based queries exist in your space
• Comparing which keywords your prospect ranks for vs. their competitors
• Spotting “opportunity gaps” that can anchor your pitch
• Alerts, Email notifications when:
• A page earns/losses backlinks
• A domain publishes new content or gains new mentions
• Specific keywords move in rankings

That’s enough to build very real outbound motions.

Workflow 1: Use Content Explorer to Build Intent-Rich Account Lists

Most teams start with “companies by NAICS code” and wonder why reply rates are garbage. Content Explorer lets you flip that script.

Step 1: Start from the problems you solve

Instead of searching for your product category, search for problems and outcomes your buyers care about. For example, if you sell a cloud cost optimization platform, search for:

• "reduce AWS costs"
• "cloud cost optimization"
• "FinOps best practices"

In Content Explorer:

1. Enter your problem phrase (e.g., "reduce cloud costs").
2. Filter by Language, Country, and Published date (e.g., last 12-24 months).
3. Set a minimum organic traffic threshold (say 200+ visits/month) so you’re not scraping dead blogs.
4. Switch to “One page per domain” to avoid five hits from the same company cluttering the list.

What you get: a list of domains that are actively publishing content about the specific problems you solve and getting real traffic for it.

These companies are:

• Likely investing in content and SEO (budget signal)
• Aware of the problem space (pain signal)
• Attracting the exact audience you want to help (market signal)

That’s already a better starting point than “every SaaS company with 50-500 employees in North America.”

Step 2: Layer on ICP filters

Export the domain list and push it into your enrichment stack:

• Use a data provider or LinkedIn Sales Navigator to add:
• Headcount and growth
• Industry/vertical
• Funding/funding stage (if relevant)
• Tech stack
• Filter down to ICP-fit companies: for example, B2B SaaS, 50-500 employees, Series B+, HQ in North America.

Usually, this process shrinks a few thousand domains down to a few hundred extremely relevant accounts.

Step 3: Assign accounts and start targeted prospecting

Once that filtered list is in your CRM:

• Assign accounts to SDRs as part of named territories (“Ahrefs Content Explorer accounts”).
• Use Sales Navigator or your data provider to pull contacts by function and seniority (e.g., VP Marketing, CMO, Head of Demand Gen).
• Tag them with a source (e.g., "Ahrefs-CE") so you can track performance later.

Now, every cold email and call is going to a company you know is:

• Creating content about your problem space
• Earning organic traffic for it
• Big enough and well-funded enough to care

That’s a radically different starting point from a purchased list.

Workflow 2: Use Site Explorer to Qualify and Prioritize Accounts

Once you’ve got a set of candidate accounts, Site Explorer helps you figure out who deserves your time first.

Step 1: Pull high-level SEO and growth metrics

For each account (or at least your top 50-100 per rep), run their domain through Site Explorer and look at:

• Estimated organic traffic and its trend (last 6-12 months)
• Top pages by traffic (are these blog posts, product pages, comparison pages?)
• Top organic keywords (are they pain-based, solution-based, or branded?)
• Paid search activity (are they bidding on high-intent phrases?)

From a sales point of view, this tells you:

• Are they growing or treading water?
• Are they getting traffic for high-intent topics or fluffy thought leadership?
• Are they paying for clicks in your category (budget)?

Accounts with rising organic traffic, active paid spend, and lots of commercial-intent keywords are usually in market, or at least investing in their go-to-market engine.

Step 2: Turn metrics into a simple scoring model

You don’t need a PhD in scoring. Even a basic model helps your SDRs focus.

Create a simple rubric like:

• Organic Traffic Band
• 0-500 visits/month = 1 point
• 500-5,000 = 2 points
• 5,000+ = 3 points
• Paid Search Activity
• No paid search = 0 points
• Some paid on branded only = 1 point
• Paid on category / pain keywords = 2 points
• Content Focus (manual review of top 5-10 pages)
• Mostly company news = 0 points
• Some educational content = 1 point
• Strong educational + comparison / bottom-funnel content = 2 points

Total possible: 7 points. Prioritize 5-7 point accounts for your best reps and more aggressive cadences.

Step 3: Capture notes and triggers for personalization

While you’re in Site Explorer, jot down:

• Specific high-intent keywords they rank for (or don’t rank for)
• Comparison pages (e.g., "Competitor A vs Competitor B")
• Any sudden traffic drops (potential pain: algo hit, site migration gone wrong)

Store these as account-level notes or fields in your CRM. This data becomes fuel for cold email copy and call openers.

Workflow 3: Use Keyword & Content Gaps to Craft Insight-Led Outreach

This is where Ahrefs really starts paying off for outbound.

Step 1: Run a keyword/content gap analysis

Pick one or two leading competitors in your space, then:

1. In Site Explorer, open your prospect’s domain.
2. Use the Content Gap or Keyword Gap feature.
3. Compare your prospect against 1-3 competitors (ideally, the ones they care about).
4. Filter to keywords where competitors rank in the top 10, but your prospect doesn’t rank at all or ranks poorly.

The output is a list of topics where they’re losing visibility to known competitors.

Step 2: Translate gaps into business language

Don’t email them saying, “You have a content gap for KWs with KD < 30 and volume 200+.” Instead, use language like:

• "We noticed [Competitor X] is ranking on page one for at least 20 keywords around ‘cloud cost optimization,’ while you only appear for a handful of related terms. That likely means they’re capturing the majority of buyers earlier in the journey."
• "Our analysis shows you’re strong on top-of-funnel content, but you’re mostly absent for comparison and pricing queries where deals are decided."

Remember: you’re not selling SEO, you’re using SEO data to frame a growth, revenue, or efficiency problem.

Step 3: Drop these insights into cold emails and calls

Here’s how that might look in practice for a B2B SaaS rep:

Cold email angle:

> "I did a quick pass on how you show up in Google vs. [Competitor X]. They’re ranking on page one for 15+ ‘[industry] software pricing’ and ‘[category] alternatives’ searches, while your site barely shows up. That usually translates into hundreds of demo requests going to them instead of you. Would it be worth a 15-minute chat to walk through the numbers?"

Cold call opener:

> "The reason I’m calling is we ran your site through Ahrefs next to [Competitor X] and saw they’re outranking you for nearly all the high-intent searches in your space. When that happens, sales teams usually feel it as fewer inbound demos and more pressure on outbound-does that match what you’re seeing?"

This is data-driven personalization you simply can’t fake with generic templates.

Workflow 4: Mine Backlink Data for Partner & Referral Leads

Not every great lead is a direct prospect. Sometimes the real leverage is in partners and referrers who already influence your ICP.

Step 1: Find who links to your competitors (but not you)

In Site Explorer:

1. Open your top competitor.
2. Go to Backlink profile → Referring domains.
3. Export the domains.
4. Repeat for 2-3 additional competitors.

Now, create a combined list and remove:

• Spammy/irrelevant sites
• Obvious junk (scrapers, translated mirrors, etc.)

Then, cross-check which of these domains don’t link to you. These are potential:

• Integration partners
• Agencies and consultants
• Industry blogs and media
• Directories and review sites

Step 2: Segment by partner type

Tag these domains by type:

• "Potential Integration Partner"
• "Agency Reseller/Referral Partner"
• "Media/PR"
• "Community/Association"

For each segment, craft a specific outbound play. Example for agencies:

> "I saw you’ve worked with [Competitor A] and [Competitor B] on [topic] content and link campaigns. We’re solving a similar problem for mid-market SaaS, but many of our clients don’t have an agency partner they trust yet. Would it make sense to explore a joint play where we send qualified SEO projects your way in exchange for co-marketing?"

These relationships don’t just drive links-they drive warm referrals and co-sell opportunities, which are often easier to close than cold accounts.

Workflow 5: Use Ahrefs Alerts as Trigger Events for SDRs

The best time to reach out is when something just changed inside the account. Ahrefs Alerts are a simple way to detect those changes without building a giant revops project.

Smart alerts to set up

Consider creating alerts for:

• New content mentioning key topics (e.g., "ERP migration," "SOC 2 readiness," "warehouse automation") across your target countries.
• New backlinks to competitor feature pages or comparison posts.
• Ranking changes for a handful of core category keywords.

Every alert that hits your inbox is a potential trigger for outreach:

• New guide on “X best practices”? They’re likely in a campaign or initiative you can support.
• New backlinks to a competitor’s "vs" page? They might be amping up competitive marketing.
• Sudden ranking drop? They may have just shipped a redesign or migration that hurt them.

Turning alerts into sequences

Don’t just read these alerts-pipe them into a simple SDR playbook:

• Create Snippets in your email tool like:
• "Saw your new guide on [topic]; many teams publish that right when they’re [specific initiative]."
• "Noticed you’re getting more mentions for [keyword cluster]-are you planning to ramp demand gen in that area this quarter?"
• Build a specific cadence called something like “Ahrefs Trigger, New Content/Links” with 3-5 touches over 10-14 days.

Now your SDRs are not just “following up”-they’re reaching out because something meaningful happened.

Workflow 6: Use Site Audit Insights to Open Consultative Conversations

If you sell anything related to digital performance-dev tools, infra, CRO, analytics, or marketing services-Ahrefs’ Site Audit can surface highly tangible talking points.

Spot quick technical wins

While Site Audit is mostly a marketing/SEO feature, you can steal just enough to anchor a conversation:

• Slow load times on high-traffic pages
• Broken or redirect-heavy key flows
• Mobile usability issues

Then, instead of lecturing them about Core Web Vitals, you frame it in sales language:

> "When your product page takes ~4 seconds to load on mobile while [Competitor X] loads in under 2 seconds, you typically see 10-20% of visitors drop before they ever see your value prop. Given how much you’re spending to drive traffic, that’s an easy leak to plug."

If you’re a services or software provider, these insights are instant credibility builders in cold outreach.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

All of this is great in theory, but let’s talk about what it looks like for a real sales org.

For SDR / BDR teams

• Prospecting: Each SDR sources 10-20 new accounts per week via Content Explorer, then enriches and loads them into their territory.
• Research: For top-tier accounts, they spend 5-10 minutes in Site Explorer before big sequences, capturing a few specific insights.
• Outreach: Every sequence includes at least one email and one call that references concrete Ahrefs findings-keyword gaps, content initiatives, or competitive shifts.

Because personalized outreach can more than double reply rates (7% to 17%) and deliver 41% higher click-through rates, this added research time tends to pay for itself quickly.

For AEs and enterprise reps

• Use Ahrefs data to prep for multi-threaded discovery: show up with a POV on how your prospect stacks up against competitors.
• Use keyword and content gaps as proof points when selling bigger, strategic initiatives (market expansion, category creation, inbound buildouts).

When discovery conversations include specific, external data, you instantly position yourself as a consultant, not just another vendor.

For sales leadership

• Track an “Ahrefs-sourced” segment in your CRM and monitor:
• Reply rate
• Meetings per 100 contacts
• Pipeline per account
• If you see a consistent lift vs. your baseline lists, double down by:
• Expanding Ahrefs seats
• Codifying workflows into formal playbooks
• Training new hires on “how we use SEO data in outbound” as part of onboarding

Remember: the goal is not to turn your SDRs into SEOs. It’s to give them better targets and sharper angles so they can do what they do best-start conversations and book meetings.

When to Build In-House vs. Partnering with SalesHive

You’ve got two realistic options:

1. Build all of this yourself
• Pros: Full control, tightly tailored to your motion.
• Cons: Requires internal SEO savvy, ops resources, and ongoing training so it doesn’t die the next time pipeline gets tight.

1. Partner with a specialist that already lives in this world
• Pros: Faster to launch, proven processes, and access to specialists (research, copy, SDRs, ops) you don’t have to hire.
• Cons: You need a partner that actually understands both SEO data and outbound-not just one or the other.

That’s exactly where SalesHive fits.

How SalesHive Uses Ahrefs-Style Intelligence to Drive Meetings

SalesHive is a B2B lead generation agency that’s been in the outbound trenches since 2016. They’ve booked 100,000+ meetings for 1,500+ clients across SaaS, manufacturing, professional services, and more, using a blend of human SDRs and an AI-powered outreach platform.

Here’s how a SalesHive engagement typically maps to the workflows we’ve covered:

• Research & list building: Strategists use tools like Ahrefs plus their own platform to identify high-intent accounts based on content activity, keyword footprints, and competitive dynamics. They then layer in firmographic and contact data to build laser-focused target lists.
• Messaging & personalization: Their in-house AI engine, eMod, takes those insights and generates hyper-personalized cold emails at scale. Instead of generic pitches, prospects get messages referencing their actual content, search presence, or competitive gaps.
• Execution: U.S.-based and Philippines-based SDR teams run full outbound programs-cold calling, email, and LinkedIn touches. Scripts and talk tracks draw directly from the research (e.g., "You’re ranking #9 for [keyword] while [Competitor] is #2; that’s usually a sign you’re overspending on outbound to hit pipeline targets.").
• Optimization: Because SalesHive runs everything through their AI-powered platform, they can see exactly which Ahrefs-informed angles drive the most opens, replies, and meetings, then iterate quickly.

On top of that, SalesHive operates with month-to-month contracts, flat-rate pricing, and risk-free onboarding, so you’re not locked into a year-long science project. You can pilot an "Ahrefs-powered" outbound pod, compare its results to your internal motion, and scale up if the numbers justify it.

If you like the idea of using Ahrefs to uncover B2B lead opportunities but don’t want to build the plumbing yourself, letting SalesHive handle the research, personalization, and SDR work is a pretty efficient shortcut.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Ahrefs isn’t just for SEOs. For B2B sales teams, it’s a live map of who matters in your market and what they’re doing to win.

Used right, it helps you:

• Find better accounts by seeing which companies are investing in content around your buyers’ real problems
• Prioritize intelligently based on traffic, rankings, and competitor dynamics
• Personalize at a higher level with specific, verifiable insights that make your outreach stand out
• Create trigger-based outreach flows that fire when your prospects publish, rank, or get links

Given that almost half of cold email campaigns fail on list quality alone, and that advanced personalization can more than double reply rates, using a tool like Ahrefs to upgrade both who you target and what you say is no longer optional-it’s the cost of staying competitive.

If you’re ready to put this into practice, here’s a simple roadmap:

1. Get sales into Ahrefs. Give at least one SDR leader access and run a joint workshop with marketing.
2. Launch a pilot list. Build one Ahrefs-sourced ICP list via Content Explorer and Site Explorer, and track it separately in your CRM.
3. Train on insight-led messaging. Arm reps with snippets that translate Ahrefs data into business language.
4. Measure like a scientist. Compare reply, meeting, and pipeline rates for Ahrefs-sourced accounts vs. your usual lists.
5. Decide whether to scale or outsource. If it works, either expand the program internally or plug into an outsourced specialist like SalesHive to scale it up fast.

Using Ahrefs to uncover B2B lead opportunities isn’t about turning SDRs into SEOs. It’s about giving them better prospects and sharper conversations so every dial and every send has a higher chance of turning into real pipeline.

Do that consistently, and your outbound won’t just feel better-it’ll finally start performing like your board has always expected it to.