How to Use Ahrefs Free Tools for Real Estate Link Building

Why Ahrefs Free Tools Are Sufficient for Most Real Estate Businesses

Most real estate businesses starting a link building programme do not need a paid SEO tool subscription to complete the foundational research that determines their strategy. Ahrefs’ free tools provide enough data to run competitor backlink analysis, verify publisher quality, identify target searches, and track programme progress without any monthly cost.

The paid Ahrefs subscription, starting at $99 per month, provides unlimited access, historical data, and advanced features like the Link Intersect tool that identifies link gap opportunities automatically. For real estate businesses with active link building programmes managing multiple campaigns, the paid subscription pays for itself quickly. But for initial research, strategy setting, and monthly progress tracking, the free tools are genuinely sufficient.

Tool One: Ahrefs Website Authority Checker

URL: ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker

What it shows: Domain Rating (DR) and the number of referring domains and backlinks for any domain.

How to use it for real estate link building:

Enter your own domain first to establish your current DR and referring domain count baseline. Then enter each competitor’s domain for the three to five sites ranking above you for your most important target searches. Record each competitor’s DR and referring domain count.

The difference between your referring domain count and the average of your top competitors is your authority gap. This single calculation, which takes about ten minutes, gives you the most important number in your entire link building strategy.

Also use this tool to quickly check the DR of potential publisher sites before adding them to your outreach list. High DR combined with very low organic traffic (checked in Tool Three below) indicates metric manipulation.

Real estate use case: A Manchester estate agency checks the referring domain counts of the top five sites for “estate agents Manchester.” The competitors average 85 referring domains. The agency has 12. The authority gap is 73 referring domains, which defines the scale of the programme needed.

Tool Two: Ahrefs Backlink Checker

URL: ahrefs.com/backlink-checker

What it shows: The top 100 backlinks to any domain, with domain rating, anchor text, and dofollow/nofollow status for each.

How to use it for real estate link building:

Enter each competitor’s domain to see which sites are linking to them. Look for patterns in the types of publishers: are competitors getting links primarily from UK regional news sites, property investment blogs, finance publications, or local community sites? This tells you which publisher categories are most active in your specific real estate market.

Identify specific domains that appear across multiple competitor backlink lists. These are your link gap opportunities — sites that have already demonstrated willingness to link to real estate businesses in your market.

Check your own domain to see your current backlink composition. Are your existing links from topically relevant property sources, or from unrelated directories and low-quality sites? This assessment tells you whether your existing profile is healthy or needs cleaning up before building new links on top.

Real estate use case: A UK property investment platform checks three competitors’ backlinks and finds that Property Investor Today, Landlord Today, and This is Money appear in all three profiles. These three publications immediately become the highest-priority outreach targets.

Tool Three: Ahrefs Traffic Checker

URL: ahrefs.com/traffic-checker

What it shows: Estimated monthly organic traffic for any domain.

How to use it for real estate link building:

This is the most important quality verification tool for real estate link building. Always check organic traffic alongside domain rating for any site you are considering as a link source.

A site with DR 50 and 50,000 monthly organic visitors is a genuine editorial publication worth pursuing. A site with DR 50 and 200 monthly organic visitors has likely inflated its domain rating through redirect chain acquisition or link schemes and will pass no meaningful authority to your real estate website.

Use this tool to verify every publisher in your outreach list and every site proposed by a link building agency before accepting any placement. The thirty seconds it takes to check organic traffic prevents the majority of low-quality link building investments.

Real estate use case: A link building agency proposes a DR 45 “property blog” for a guest post placement. Checking the traffic checker reveals the site has 43 monthly organic visitors. This immediately disqualifies the site as a quality placement regardless of its domain rating.

Tool Four: Ahrefs Keyword Generator

URL: ahrefs.com/keyword-generator

What it shows: Keyword ideas with search volume and keyword difficulty scores based on a seed keyword.

How to use it for real estate link building:

Use the keyword generator to identify the specific searches your target audience uses that are achievable given your current authority level. Enter broad seed keywords like “estate agents Manchester,” “buy-to-let investment,” or “property management UK” to generate lists of related searches with volume and difficulty data.

Filter for keywords with difficulty scores below 30 as a starting point if your site has low domain authority. These are the searches where competitive link building targets are achievable within a six to twelve month programme.

Also use the keyword generator to identify content topics that earn links in your niche. Searches with high volume and informational intent represent the content your target publishers need, which guides your guest post topic ideas.

Real estate use case: A new Canadian REALTOR enters “real estate agent Calgary” and discovers several neighbourhood-specific variations with meaningful search volume and lower difficulty than the main city-level term, revealing the specific local searches to target first.

Tool Five: Ahrefs SERP Checker

URL: ahrefs.com/serp-checker

What it shows: The top ten search results for any keyword with domain rating and referring domain data for each result.

How to use it for real estate link building:

Enter your three to five most important target searches to see the current SERP landscape. The referring domain counts of the sites currently on page one for each search confirm the competitive benchmarks from Tool One and tell you the authority level required for each specific search.

Check whether the sites on page one are all major portals (indicating the search is dominated by platforms that cannot be displaced), established local businesses (indicating the search is winnable with local link building), or a mix. This SERP composition tells you whether a search is a realistic target for your link building programme.

Real estate use case: A US realtor checks “realtor Silver Lake Los Angeles” and sees that the top five results are all individual agents or small local brokerages with DR scores between 15 and 35. This confirms the search is highly winnable with a targeted local link building programme.

Tool Six: Ahrefs Broken Link Checker

URL: ahrefs.com/broken-link-checker

What it shows: Broken outbound links on any webpage.

How to use it for real estate link building:

Broken link building is a link building technique where you identify dead links on relevant property publications, create or identify replacement content on your own site that matches what the dead link was pointing to, and pitch the publisher with your replacement as a helpful fix.

Enter the URLs of high-authority property publications, UK regional news property sections, or Canadian property media to find pages with broken outbound links. When you find a broken link to a resource your own site covers, pitch the editor with the specific broken link, explain that it is no longer working, and offer your content as a replacement.

This approach earns goodwill with editors because you are providing genuine value by alerting them to a broken link, and the conversion rate on these pitches is higher than standard guest post outreach because the editorial need is immediate and specific.

Real estate use case: A UK estate agency checks the broken links on a major regional property portal’s buyer guide page and finds a dead link to a stamp duty guide that no longer exists. The estate agency has a current, accurate stamp duty guide on their own site and pitches the editor as a replacement. The pitch succeeds because it solves an immediate editorial problem.

Building a Monthly Research Workflow With Free Tools

Combining the six free tools into a monthly research workflow covers all the real estate link building research needs most property businesses have without any paid subscription.

At the start of each month, check referring domain counts for your own site and three competitors using the Website Authority Checker. Calculate whether the authority gap is narrowing as planned.

For each new publisher identified for outreach, check organic traffic using the Traffic Checker before adding to the outreach list. Any site with high DR and very low traffic is removed from the list.

When reviewing new link opportunities or agency proposals, check the proposed publisher’s DR in the Website Authority Checker and traffic in the Traffic Checker before accepting.

Quarterly, use the SERP Checker to review the competitive landscape for target searches and confirm whether the sites being outranked have changing authority levels that affect the programme’s competitive benchmarks.

Frequently Asked Questions