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Ahrefs SEO Toolbar: Installation and Usage

Find out how to install the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, use its reports, and understand the limits it consumes.

Helen avatar
Written by Helen
Updated over 2 weeks ago

The Ahrefs SEO Toolbar provides valuable SEO data about the pages and websites you visit.

Its free features include:

  • On-page SEO report

  • Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers

  • Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker

  • SERP positions

  • Local search results simulator

  • Web vitals

  • Keyword ideas and People also ask

In addition, as a paid Ahrefs user you get:

  • SEO metrics for every page/site you visit and for Google search results

  • Keyword metrics, such as search volume and keyword difficulty, directly in SERP and in Google trends.

Installing the Toolbar

You can find the toolbar in the Chrome Web Store and the Firefox Add-ons Directory.

Logging into the Toolbar

To login with your account, click on any of the "Sign in" options.

Select the correct workspace to authorise logging into your toolbar with.

You can sign out of the toolbar by clicking this door in the toolbar dropdown:

Using the toolbar

💡 A full guide of how to use the SEO Toolbar can be found in our Academy: How to use Ahrefs Guide

Get SEO metrics for keywords and ranking results with SERP tools

  1. Search metrics. SEO metrics of the searched keyword (in this case "seo toolbar")

    1. Keyword Difficulty (KD)

    2. Search volume of the keyword, based on the set country (Volume)

    3. Global Volume (GV)

    4. Traffic Potential (TP)

    5. Estimated clicks made on the search results for the searched keyword each month (Clicks)

    6. Cost-per-click (CPC)

  2. Keyword ideas related to the searched keyword

  3. Results metrics. We provide metrics for both the Website (in this case Ahrefs.com), and the specific page ranking in that position (in this case https://ahrefs.com/seo-toolbar). The following SEO metrics are shown:

    1. Domain Rating (DR)

    2. Ahrefs Rating (AR)

    3. Referring pages (RP)

    4. Referring domains (RD)

    5. Organic Keywords (KW)

    6. Search Traffic (ST). The grey number below it is Traffic Value (TV)

You can hover over any of the metrics for more information about them:

Get On-page and SEO data with Page tools and reports

  1. Metrics bar shows the same Results metrics data mentioned earlier, for the page that is currently open. You can run Web vitals on the page to check its LCP, FID, CLS, and INP scores.

  2. On-page SEO report can be clicked from the extension icon. Here, you can find the following reports in tabs:

    1. Content tab displays the page's title, description, published and modified dates, word count, and H1-H7 subheaders.

    2. Indexability tab shows all things related to the page’s indexability and crawlability (canonical URL, Robots directives, hreflang links, etc.).

    3. Structure data tab displays the structured data available on a web page in JSON-LD format.

    4. Social tab shows the page’s Open Graph (OG) meta tags and Twitter cards.

    5. Images tab lists all images found on a web page with their alt texts and titles.

    6. HTTP Headers tab helps to trace redirects, and check HTTP header responses.

    7. Outgoing links tab highlights and categorises all outgoing links, and checks for broken backlinks.

  3. Other tools such as:

    1. Saved urls store the saved URLs of the pages you browse.

    2. User-agent switcher lets you mimic various devices, operating systems, and web crawlers directly from your browser.

  4. Search tools is where you can:

    1. Toggle on/off search settings and change the default country that the toolbar shows keyword metrics for.

    2. Configure Local search simulator to search on Google as if you were in a different country or device.

Get SEO metrics for keywords in Google Trends

Search metrics are shown for up to 5 keywords entered into Google trends at the same time.

SEO Toolbar Shortcuts

Ctrl+Cmd+A toggles the Metrics bar on/off

Cmd+Ctrl+S (MacOS) or Alt+S (Windows) opens/closes the On-page SEO report window:

You can change these key bindings in your browser settings.

Account limits consumption

To show you the SEO metrics, the Toolbar consumes 1 row per URL from your Export rows per month account limits:

This means it costs 1 "export row" to show page and website metrics for the URL you visit when the metrics bar is on, or when you request the metrics by clicking on the extension icon.

Getting SEO metrics for the search results on SERP also costs one export "row" per result. So, with the traditional 10-results SERP page, 10 "Export rows" will be spent.

Keyword metrics shown under the search bar also consume one “Export rows per month”. 

You can view your account limits in your Account Settings > Limits and usage page.

Toggle on/off search settings

No export rows will be spent if the metrics bar or specific metrics in the Search tools are disabled in the Toolbar settings.

This is also where you can change the default country used to show keyword metrics like search volume, global volume, CPC and more.

Where are the features that I can use for free?

You can check the following screenshots to see which features can be used without an Ahrefs subscription:

Related resources:

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