Using Ahrefs: Best Practices for B2B SEO

Introduction

Here is the uncomfortable truth about modern B2B sales: your buyers have usually formed an opinion about you long before they reply to a cold email or pick up the phone.

Roughly 71% of B2B buyers start their journey with a generic search query, and about 62% of B2B website traffic now comes from organic search. If you are not visible and compelling in those search moments, you are fighting uphill the second your SDRs get involved.

Ahrefs is one of the best tools on the market for understanding that organic buying journey. But most teams use it like a reporting dashboard for marketing, not a pipeline engine for the whole revenue org.

In this guide, we will walk through how to use Ahrefs as a B2B sales and marketing team to:

• Find high-intent keywords that actually create meetings and opportunities
• Reverse-engineer competitor SEO strategies and turn them into prospect lists
• Build content and topic clusters that map to the buying committee’s questions
• Use Ahrefs data to sharpen SDR scripts, cold email personalization, and outbound targeting
• Measure SEO success in terms of pipeline and revenue, not just rankings

We will keep it practical, with a focus on what a VP of Sales, SDR leader, or revenue-focused marketer can do with Ahrefs today.

Why B2B Sales Teams Should Care About Ahrefs and SEO

Organic search is already one of your biggest lead sources

Across industries, organic search accounts for more than half of all website traffic, and B2B sites in particular see around 62% of their traffic coming from organic search. Multiple studies show that SEO is perceived as the highest-ROI and highest-quality lead source by B2B marketers.

More importantly for sales leaders, organic visitors tend to be better prospects. One large benchmark study found that B2B SEO traffic converts at roughly 2.6% on average, versus 1.5% for paid search clicks. Those visitors are actively looking for answers or solutions; they are not just reacting to an ad.

If you ignore what is happening in organic, you are ignoring a channel that can quietly produce more pipeline than your paid campaigns and outbound sequences combined.

Almost all clicks go to the top 10 results

Ahrefs recently analyzed billions of Google Search Console clicks and impressions and found that around 97% of desktop clicks in the United States happen within the top 10 results. In other words, if you are not on page one, you are effectively invisible.

They also found that about 96.55% of pages in their index receive zero organic traffic from Google. The web is flooded with content, but only a tiny fraction earns attention.

For sales, that means two things:

1. You do not need to rank for everything. You need to win a focused set of high-intent, high-value keywords.
2. When you do win, it moves the needle. Ranking in the top positions for the right terms can meaningfully impact meetings and revenue.

Ahrefs is the control panel that lets you choose those battles wisely.

SEO and outbound are stronger together

There is a bad habit in B2B to think of channels in silos: SEO is a marketing thing, outbound is a sales thing, paid is a demand gen thing.

In reality, your buyer does not care how your org chart is arranged. They will google a problem, read a couple of guides, click a comparison article, maybe download a resource, browse LinkedIn, and eventually respond to a well-timed, well-personalized cold email.

If your SEO and outbound are aligned, that cold email references the exact problems, phrases, and competitors the buyer just saw in search. If they are misaligned, the email feels generic and disconnected from how the buyer is thinking.

Ahrefs is the bridge. It shows you:

• What topics your ideal accounts are searching for
• Which competitor pages they are likely seeing
• Which third-party sites they trust (based on links and mentions)

You can then feed those insights directly into SDR scripts, cadences, and content offers.

Setting Up Ahrefs for B2B: Foundations That Actually Matter

If you are new to Ahrefs or have only poked around occasionally, here is how to set things up so the tool supports real revenue decisions, not just vanity dashboards.

Step 1: Connect your site and run a baseline audit

Before you chase keywords, make sure Google can actually crawl, index, and serve your content efficiently.

1. Add your main domain to Ahrefs and verify ownership.
2. Run a full Site Audit to uncover technical issues like crawl errors, broken internal links, slow pages, missing canonical tags, and mobile usability problems.
3. Prioritize fixes that impact indexability and speed for key landing pages and top blog posts.

Technical SEO is not glamorous, but if your foundation is shaky, every new piece of content gives diminishing returns.

Step 2: Identify your revenue pages

Not all pages are equal. Start by identifying the URLs that matter most to sales:

• Free trial, demo request, or contact-us pages
• High-intent solution or product pages
• Pricing and comparison pages
• Two to five top-of-funnel resources that typically precede conversions (for example, a buying guide or ROI calculator)

Tag these in your analytics and CRM so you can later measure how many opportunities and deals touch them.

In Ahrefs, add these URLs to a list and keep them in focus. You want to know what keywords they rank for, how much search traffic they get, and which competitors are beating you.

Step 3: Set up Rank Tracker for sales-critical keywords

Next, you want to track the keywords that are most closely tied to revenue.

If you already have a keyword list, start there. Otherwise, build one by:

• Interviewing sales to collect the phrases prospects use on calls
• Mining chat logs and call transcripts for recurring problems and phrases
• Looking at search terms that currently drive conversions in analytics

In Ahrefs Rank Tracker, create a project and add:

• Brand terms (your company and product names)
• Core category terms (for example, ‘B2B lead generation agency’ or ‘sales engagement platform’)
• Problem terms (for example, ‘how to get more sales meetings’)
• Comparison and alternative terms (for example, ‘X vs Y’, ‘best outbound agencies’)

Review this set weekly or monthly, not just to see rank changes, but to talk about what they mean in terms of traffic, leads, and pipeline.

Finding and Prioritizing High-Intent Keywords in Ahrefs

This is where most teams go wrong. They open Keywords Explorer, sort by volume, pick the biggest terms, and call it a day.

That is how you end up with a blog that gets traffic but not revenue.

Use customer language as your starting point

The most valuable keywords are usually not the ones with the highest volume; they are the ones that best match how your ideal buyers describe their problems and evaluate solutions.

Pull a sample of recent call recordings, proposals, and win stories. Write down:

• Problems: ‘Our SDRs are not booking enough meetings’, ‘Our CAC is too high from paid search’, ‘We have no predictable pipeline’
• Desired outcomes: ‘more qualified demos’, ‘better SQL to opportunity conversion’, ‘scale outbound without burning our domain’
• Product phrases: how they describe your product or category, not how you do in your pitch deck

Then go into Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and plug those phrases in.

Look beyond search volume: traffic potential and clicks

In Keywords Explorer, do not obsess over the monthly search volume number. Focus on:

• Traffic potential: how much total traffic the top-ranking page gets from all the keywords it ranks for. A keyword with 200 searches might lead to a page with thousands of monthly visits.
• Clicks: some queries get answered directly in the SERP, which reduces clicks. You want terms where people actually click through.

Ahrefs’ own training emphasizes that metrics like traffic potential and clicks give a more realistic picture of opportunity than raw search volume alone.

For example, a keyword might show 500 searches per month but have a traffic potential of several thousand because the top page ranks for many related queries. Conversely, a broad question with huge search volume may have low clicks because Google answers it directly.

Map keywords to the buying journey

Once you have a list of candidate keywords, group them into buying stages:

• Problem aware: ‘how to increase SDR productivity’, ‘outbound prospecting best practices’
• Solution aware: ‘B2B lead generation agency’, ‘sales development outsourcing’
• Comparison and selection: ‘SalesHive alternatives’, ‘best SDR outsourcing companies’, ‘X vs Y’
• Post-purchase and expansion: ‘how to scale outbound after series B’, ‘improve SDR ramp time’

Problem-aware content is great for educating the market and building retargeting pools. Solution and comparison terms are where your direct response landing pages and demo offers should live.

In Ahrefs, create separate keyword lists by stage. This makes it much easier to see where you are strong or weak in the funnel.

Prioritize by expected pipeline impact

For each keyword or cluster, estimate its potential pipeline contribution using a simple model:

1. Monthly search volume × estimated click-through to your listing when you reach target position (use Ahrefs’ SERP overview and common CTR curves).
2. Multiply by the conversion rate of similar pages (start with your current conversion rate from organic, then adjust up or down for intent).
3. Multiply by your average opportunity rate and close rate.

You will not get perfect numbers, but you will get an ordered list where some topics clearly have 10x the upside of others.

Focus your content and link-building efforts on the top of that list. For everything else, good enough is fine.

Using Ahrefs for Account-Based and Outbound Sales Intelligence

Here is where things get fun for sales development leaders.

Ahrefs is not just a keyword tool; it is a massive database of which sites link to and talk about which topics. For B2B, that is a goldmine of potential prospects and partners.

Mine competitors’ traffic for intent signals

Open Ahrefs Site Explorer and plug in a direct competitor.

Look at these reports:

• Top pages: which pages bring them the most organic traffic
• Top keywords: which queries those pages rank for
• Newly discovered pages: what they have started publishing recently

Ask yourself:

• Which of these pages speak to the same problems we solve?
• Which ones are comparison or ‘best tools’ type pages that our prospects are likely reading?

Then, for those high-intent pages, click through to see the page content and URL structure. You will often spot:

• Industry-specific landing pages (for example, ‘lead generation for cybersecurity companies’)
• Use-case pages (for example, ‘book more software demos’)
• Case studies organized by vertical or company size

Those are clues about where your competitor sees the most traction. You can:

• Build your own, better versions of those pages
• Hand that intelligence to SDRs targeting the same verticals or use cases
• Adjust your talk tracks and email copy to address the same pains more convincingly

Turn referring domains into prospect lists

Referring domains are not just SEO assets; they are potential buyers, partners, or influencers.

In Site Explorer, go to the Referring domains report for your competitors or for big players in your category. Filter for:

• Domain Rating (DR) above a threshold that indicates serious companies and publications in your space
• Sites that have linked recently (last 6-12 months)

Export that list, then:

• Have marketing evaluate which sites are good targets for guest posts, co-marketing, or sponsorships
• Have SDRs or an outsourced team like SalesHive enrich those domains into company and contact lists for outbound sequences

If a site is writing about your category or linking to tools like yours, they are warmer than a random cold account. Treat them like a mini ABM tier and personalize your outreach around the content that shows up in Ahrefs.

Use Content Explorer for thought-leader and partner discovery

Ahrefs Content Explorer lets you search the web by topic and see which pages are getting traffic and links.

For a given topic (say, ‘B2B outbound sales’ or ‘sales development outsourcing’):

1. Search in Content Explorer.
2. Filter for:
• Recency (for example, last 12 months)
• Language and region, if relevant
• DR and traffic ranges that match your ICP
3. Sort by referring domains or organic traffic.

Now you have a list of:

• High-traffic blogs and media outlets covering your space
• Individual authors and influencers who repeatedly write on your topics
• Potential integration or channel partners that care about the same audience

Feed this to your marketing and SDR teams:

• Marketing can pitch guest posts, joint webinars, or content swaps.
• SDRs can run targeted outreach to the companies behind these sites, referencing the specific article that shows up in Ahrefs.

This is where an agency like SalesHive shines: give them a clean list of domains and topics pulled from Ahrefs, and let their SDRs and AI-powered email platform turn it into meetings.

Content and Link Strategies in Ahrefs That Feed Your SDRs

Ranking for good keywords is only possible if you have the right content and links. The key is to build those assets in ways that help your SDRs, not just your traffic charts.

Build topic clusters around sales conversations

Instead of pumping out random blog posts, organize your content into clusters that mirror how buyers think.

For example, if you sell B2B outbound services:

• Core pillar page: ‘B2B outbound sales: the complete guide’ (long-form, covers the landscape)
• Problem posts: ‘Why your SDRs are not booking enough meetings’, ‘How to fix low reply rates in cold email’
• Solution posts: ‘How to evaluate an SDR outsourcing partner’, ‘Outbound vs inbound: which drives more predictable pipeline?’
• Comparison pages: ‘In-house SDR team vs outsourced SDRs’, ‘Top 10 B2B lead generation agencies’
• ROI content: ‘Outbound sales benchmarks and ROI for B2B SaaS’

Use Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and Content Gap reports to:

• Identify missing pieces in your cluster
• See which competitor pages rank for related queries
• Find long-tail questions to answer inside your content

Each cluster should map to a specific sales narrative. That way, your SDRs can:

• Link to specific posts in their follow-up sequences
• Use cluster content as pre-call education
• Send targeted resources by persona or vertical

Create “door-opener” assets for SDRs

Not every SEO asset has to be a blog post. In fact, some of the best-performing pieces for sales are:

• Industry benchmark reports
• ROI calculators or templates
• Short buying guides tailored to specific roles

Use Ahrefs to validate demand for these assets by checking:

• Are people searching for ‘[your category] benchmarks’, ‘[role] playbook’, or ‘[tool] template’?
• Which competitor or third-party pages already rank and get traffic?

When you build these assets, optimize them for the relevant keywords so they pull in organic traffic, then arm your SDRs with direct links and short blurbs they can use in outreach.

Use link-building campaigns that also serve outbound

Traditional link-building often involves pitching bloggers or webmasters for guest posts or resource links. In B2B, you can align that with sales.

Examples:

• Customer stories and case studies: Ask customers if they will link from their site’s resources page. That link helps SEO and also signals a stronger partnership.
• Integration partners: Create joint pages or marketplace listings that earn links from both sides and give your SDRs a reason to reach out to the partner’s customers.
• Vendor roundups: If you get mentioned in a ‘best tools’ article, have SDRs prospect the other vendors listed and pitch partnerships or cross-promotions.

Track these referring domains in Ahrefs so you can see which relationships drive both links and deals.

Measuring What Matters: Ahrefs SEO KPIs for Sales Leaders

It is easy to drown in Ahrefs metrics. For a sales-oriented view of SEO, you only need a few simple KPIs.

1. Organic traffic to revenue pages

Using Ahrefs Site Explorer, monitor estimated organic visits to your key conversion pages:

• Demo and trial pages
• High-intent solution pages
• Pricing and comparison pages

You do not care about absolute accuracy; you care about trend and relative performance.

If a landing page’s organic traffic doubles and your CRM shows a corresponding lift in demo requests and pipeline from organic, you know your Ahrefs-driven work is paying off.

2. Rankings for sales-critical keyword sets

Instead of a giant rank report, focus on three small lists:

• Brand and category terms
• Core ‘money’ terms that map to buying intent
• Strategic future bets (new categories, new ICPs, or new use cases)

In Rank Tracker, monitor:

• Average position for each list
• Share of top three and top ten rankings
• Movements for your top ten most valuable terms

Overlay this with sales performance data. When you see a rise in rankings for ‘outsourced SDR agency’ and a spike in opportunities with that source, you have a story leadership understands.

3. Content-assisted pipeline and revenue

This metric does not come directly from Ahrefs, but Ahrefs tells you which pages to watch.

Take the URLs that Ahrefs shows as your top organic traffic pages and:

• Tag them in your analytics as ‘content assists’
• Track how many leads, opportunities, and deals interacted with them in their journey

Share a quarterly report: top ten pages by assisted pipeline and revenue. Then use Ahrefs to figure out how to get more traffic and links to those winners.

4. Competitor share of voice on key topics

For your top topics, use Ahrefs to estimate:

• How much traffic competitor pages get
• How many referring domains they have earned

You are not going to get a perfect market share number, but you will see patterns like ‘Competitor A dominates content around SDR outsourcing’ or ‘Competitor B is quietly winning the sales operations topic’.

That helps you decide where to focus

5. Health of your link profile

Ahrefs’ backlink data is particularly valuable in B2B, where authority and trust matter. Their research also shows that a large share of links on the web decay over time, in one big study, they found at least 66.5% of links in the last nine years had effectively rotted.

Monitor in Ahrefs:

• New referring domains over time
• Lost referring domains and why they dropped
• Link growth compared to core competitors

Focus on winning and keeping links from:

• Customers and partners
• Reputable industry publications
• High-value communities and review sites

These are the links that help you rank and look credible when a prospect does a deep evaluation.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

Let us bring this down from strategy to day-to-day life for SDRs, AEs, and sales leaders.

Give SDRs better context on every account

Instead of giving reps just a name, title, and LinkedIn profile, give them:

• The top two or three topics the prospect’s company writes about (from Content Explorer and Site Explorer)
• The key keywords and pages your own site ranks for that match that prospect’s world
• A short note on which competitor pages the prospect is likely seeing for those topics

That information helps reps:

• Reference relevant topics in their openers
• Link to the most appropriate content in follow-ups
• Anticipate and preempt common objections

If you work with a partner like SalesHive, this kind of Ahrefs-driven context can be baked directly into their cold calling scripts and AI-personalized email templates.

Sharpen your outbound messaging

Use Ahrefs data to upgrade your outbound playbook:

• Pull the H2s, FAQs, and pain points from the top-ranking pages for your main keywords.
• Analyze which angles seem to resonate based on organic traffic and backlinks.
• Turn those into messaging pillars for emails and calls.

For example, if top-ranking content around ‘B2B lead generation agency’ emphasizes transparency, month-to-month contracts, and US-based SDRs, that is a strong hint those themes matter to buyers. Not coincidentally, those are exactly the things SalesHive highlights in their own positioning.

Align marketing sprints with sales campaigns

When marketing plans new SEO content based on Ahrefs, loop sales in early.

• If sales is targeting a new vertical, marketing can use Ahrefs to identify vertical-specific keywords and build content around them.
• If SDRs are running a big campaign around a new offer, marketing can create supporting SEO content and comparison pages to catch follow-up searches.

Over time, this creates a flywheel:

1. SEO content brings in new organic leads and deals.
2. Sales learns from those deals and shares insights back.
3. Marketing uses Ahrefs to find more opportunities around the winning topics.
4. Outbound references the content that is already proven to work.

Report SEO in language sales leadership actually cares about

Finally, when you bring Ahrefs data to the revenue table, translate it:

• Instead of ‘we increased organic traffic by 30%’, say ‘we added X meetings and Y pipeline from organic search pages we optimized using Ahrefs’.
• Instead of ‘we built ten new links’, say ‘we won links from these three industry sites that are now among our top referral sources for demo requests’.

Use Ahrefs charts as supporting evidence, not the headline. The headline is always pipeline and revenue.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Ahrefs is one of the most powerful tools in the B2B SEO stack. But its real value only shows up when sales and marketing treat it as a shared revenue engine rather than a marketing toy.

Used well, Ahrefs helps you:

• Find and win the small set of keywords that actually move pipeline
• Understand what your buyers see before they ever talk to a rep
• Reverse-engineer competitor strategies for content, links, and partners
• Feed SDRs and AEs a steady stream of context, messaging insights, and warm accounts

If you are serious about turning SEO into a predictable, compounding pipeline channel, here is a simple starting plan for the next 90 days:

1. Run a Site Audit and fix the top technical issues that block or throttle your key pages.
2. Build and prioritize a revenue-focused keyword map in Ahrefs.
3. Launch or optimize a handful of high-intent landing pages and topic clusters.
4. Set up Rank Tracker for your sales-critical keywords and review them weekly.
5. Use Site Explorer and Content Explorer to build prospect and partner lists and feed them to your SDRs or an outsourced team like SalesHive.
6. Tie everything back to meetings, opportunities, and revenue in your CRM.

Do that consistently and Ahrefs stops being just another tool on your marketing stack. It becomes the shared intelligence layer your entire go-to-market team uses to win more deals from the buyers already searching for what you do.