Ahrefs - Keyword research

George Apostolov
Updated 05 Oct 2026
- ▣ Ahrefs

Ahrefs - Keyword research: step-by-step guide

Google Search your category/niche.
Find a competitor that offers the same services that you do and copy their domain name.
Go to Ahrefs>Site Explorer
Search for the domain you copied. (your competitor's domain)
You can see their Ahrefs stats like Domain Rating, Backlinks, Traffic etc.
You can see the number of their organic keywords here. Click on it.
These are your competitor's keywords.
Click on position to sort the keywords based on their ranking on Google. These are their top ranking keywords.
Click on Traffic to sort the keywords based on their page traffic. These keywords have driven the most traffic to their website.
Hit the Export button
Export it as CSV so you can select the most relevant keywords for your product/service.

Quick answer: To research keywords in Ahrefs, search for a competitor's domain in Site Explorer, view their organic keywords, and sort them by position or traffic. Finally, export the keyword data as a CSV file to select the most relevant keywords for your product or service.

About this Ahrefs tutorial

Find top-performing competitor keywords using Ahrefs Site Explorer, sort by position and traffic, and export to CSV for your strategy. This guide covers ahrefs - Keyword research in 11 steps, starting with "Google Search your category/niche" and finishing with "Export it as CSV so you can select the most relevant keywords for your product/service". The interactive demo above is a click-through copy of the real Ahrefs interface, so you can rehearse each step before doing it in your own account.