5 Step-by-Step Ahrefs Audits That Will Fix Your Site’s Traffic Leaks

Your site might be losing traffic right now and you don’t even know it. Pages that once ranked well are slipping. Organic visitors hit a page and bounce because it’s slow, irrelevant, or broken. These tiny leaks add up to a slow drain on your traffic—and your revenue. The problem isn’t a lack of effort; it’s that you’re fixing things you can see, while the real culprits stay hidden.

Ahrefs gives you the tools to find those leaks. Its crawler, backlink checker, Content Gap tool, and Site Audit feature can surface issues that Google Search Console alone might miss. This article walks you through five specific audits in Ahrefs, step by step. Each one targets a different kind of leak: technical, content, backlink, keyword, and competitive. By the end, you’ll have a clear list of actionable fixes—no fluff, just practical steps that move the needle.

1. Crawl Your Own Site Like a Search Engine Would

Most site audits skim the surface—broken links, missing title tags, maybe a few slow pages. But a search engine crawler sees your site as a web of interconnected pages. If that web has dead ends, redirect chains, or orphaned content, you’re leaking authority and confusing Google. Ahrefs Site Audit lets you crawl your entire domain the way Googlebot would, but with far more control over depth, segments, and reporting.

Set Up a Real Audit (Not a Quick Scan)

Head to Site Audit and create a new project. Set the scope to crawl every subdomain that matters. Use the full site crawl, not a sample. If your site has JavaScript-rendered content, enable JS rendering in the crawl settings. This is where many audits fall short—they skip the JS crawl and miss thousands of pages that rely on client-side rendering.

Limit crawl speed to avoid hammering your server, but don’t set it so low that the audit takes days. For most sites, 5–10 URLs per second works. Also, let it respect robots.txt unless you’re specifically testing staging or dev areas.

What to Watch for in the First Pass

Once the crawl finishes, skip the overall health score. That number is too broad to act on. Instead, go straight to these three reports:

• Internal pages with 4xx status codes. Every broken internal link is a leak. Fix the link or redirect the URL to a relevant page. Don’t blanket-redirect to the homepage—that’s lazy and it confuses visitors.
• Orphan pages (no internal links). Pages with decent content but zero internal links are invisible to crawlers. Either link to them from relevant pages, or if they’re thin, merge them into a stronger piece.
• Redirect chains and loops. A page that redirects to another page, which then redirects again, wastes crawl budget and dilutes link equity. Flatten those chains so each redirect points directly to the final destination.

Fix these before you touch anything else. They’re high-impact, low-effort wins that stop leaks you didn’t know existed.

Dig Deeper into Crawl Waste

Look at the “Crawl Budget Waste” section in the overview. You’ll often find pages Google spends time on that add zero value: old category pages with no products, tag pages in WordPress that list one post, or faceted navigation URLs that generate infinite duplicates. Decide which ones to noindex or block via robots.txt, but be surgical. Blocking too much can break discovery. Use the URL explorer to sample a few before making bulk changes.

2. Turn a Content Audit into a Traffic Recovery Plan

Content audits terrify people because they picture a massive spreadsheet and months of rewriting. That’s the wrong approach. A smart content audit in Ahrefs isn’t about grading every page—it’s about finding the pages that used to bring traffic and are now declining, then giving them a fast upgrade. These are your biggest leaks.

Export and Filter for Declining Pages

Go to Site Explorer, enter your domain, and open the Top Pages report. Choose “Last 6 months” and compare it to “Previous period.” Export the list as CSV. Now filter for pages that lost at least 20% of their organic traffic. Strip out any that are naturally seasonal (e.g., holiday gift guides in January). What’s left are pages losing ground to competitors, aging content, or intent shifts.

Don’t look at every page. Pick the top 10 by traffic lost. Those are your priorities.

Diagnose Why Each Page Is Leaking

For each page, ask three questions using Ahrefs data:

• Is the Content Gap growing? Open the Content Gap tool, plug your page’s URL against two or three competitors ranking above you. Look for subtopics they cover that you don’t. If their headers mention “pricing factors” or “contract terms” and yours skips it, that’s your fix.
• Are backlinks age-weakening? Use the Backlinks report for that URL. Filter for links from referring domains that have lost traffic themselves. If a big source went offline or removed your link, your authority dips. You can’t always recover them, but knowing why helps you adjust expectations.
• Has intent shifted? Look at the SERP for your target keyword. If the top results are now comparison posts instead of single reviews, your guide-style page might be outdated. Refreshing means matching the current intent, not just updating the date.

One common mistake is refreshing content by adding an intro paragraph and calling it done. That won’t recover traffic. You’re competing against fresh, intent-matched pages. Match their depth, update stats, swap outdated examples, and kill fluff. If the page can’t be salvaged because the topic is dead, merge its strongest points into a related page and 301 redirect the old URL.

Avoid the “Delete Everything” Trap

Some SEO advice says to delete thin content. Be careful. That page might have a handful of quality backlinks or serve a small but loyal audience. Before deleting, check the Backlinks report and the organic keywords it ranks for, even in positions 11–30. If it has a few decent links or ranks for long-tail queries you care about, improve it instead of trashing it. Deleting blindly can create new leaks.

3. Find Hidden Backlink Leaks Before Google Counts Them Against You

Backlink audits often focus on disavowing spam. But the real leak isn’t toxic links—it’s lost or broken backlinks that once passed value. Ahrefs can surface these faster than any manual check. Recovering a handful of strong lost backlinks can restore rankings almost overnight, while chasing toxic ones rarely moves the needle.

Set Up the Lost Backlinks Alert

In Site Explorer, go to the Backlinks profile and click “Lost.” Filter by “Dofollow” and sort by Domain Rating (DR) high to low. These are the links that dropped off recently. Don’t panic at the count—some losses are normal. Focus on links from domains with DR above 30 that are relevant to your niche.

Now scan the “Anchor and Target URL” column. If the link pointed to a page that now 404s, you’ve found a direct leak. Redirect that old URL to the most relevant live page. If the content was moved, 301 it. If the page was deleted and has no replacement, create a short custom page that addresses the topic and redirect there. Then email the linking site to let them know the resource is live again. A short, polite note often works: “Hey, I noticed you linked to our article on X, which we recently updated and moved. Here’s the new URL in case you want to update it.”

Spot Unlinked Brand Mentions

Go to Content Explorer, search for your brand name, and filter by “One page per domain.” Exclude your own site. You’ll find articles, forums, and news pieces mentioning your brand but not linking. Export the list and sort by page traffic. Pick the top 20 pages where a mention sits without a link. Reach out with a simple, human email. Don’t demand a link; thank them for the mention and suggest that adding a link would help their readers find the referenced resource. This tactic recovers authority you already earned, rather than begging for new links.

What About Disavowing?

Ahrefs will flag domains with low DR and spammy patterns. If your site has a clear history of paid links or comment spam you didn’t control, do a selective disavow. But for most clean sites, Google ignores the junk. Your time is better spent recovering lost good links than worrying about bad ones.

4. Plug Keyword Gaps That Send Traffic to Competitors

Your content ranks for certain terms, but your competitors outrank you on dozens of related queries you’re not even targeting. These keyword gaps are silent traffic thieves—visitors searching exactly for what you offer, but landing elsewhere. Ahrefs Content Gap tool makes this comparison dead simple.

Run a Content Gap Analysis (The Smart Way)

Open Content Gap, enter your domain and three competitors that consistently outrank you. Choose “Keyword” mode, not “URL” mode. Set the filter so a keyword must be in the top 10 for at least one competitor, but not ranking at all for you (or ranking below position 30). This narrows the list to terms you should be targeting but aren’t.

Sort by volume high to low, but don’t blindly chase high-volume keywords. Scan for terms where the SERP shows informational intent and you can genuinely answer the query better than what’s ranking. For example, if you sell email marketing software and competitors rank for “email deliverability audit checklist,” but your knowledge base/article section doesn’t cover it, that’s a leak.

Decide What to Create, Update, or Ignore

For each gap keyword, decide what to do:

SERP intent	Your current content	Action
Informational	Nothing relevant	Create a dedicated blog post or guide
Informational	Outdated piece covering part of topic	Update and expand that page
Commercial / comparison	No page	Create a comparison landing page or pillar content
Transactional	Product page exists	Optimize your commercial page for the query; add relevant section
Low volume, high difficulty	N/A	Skip unless it’s strategic for your brand

Don’t produce a new page for every gap. If a gap keyword is closely related to an existing high-authority page, add a short section there and update the title/headings. You’ll rank faster by borrowing existing equity than starting from scratch.

Monitor the SERP Features

While looking at gap keywords, check if the SERP has a featured snippet, “People also ask,” or a video carousel. If a competitor owns the snippet and you can provide a more concise, direct answer, you can steal that position without needing the #1 blue link. Structure part of your new content as a clear, bulleted answer, then use H2/H3 tags to target the fragment.

5. Fix Internal PageRank Flow to Strengthen Your Key Pages

Most site owners treat internal linking as an afterthought—a “related posts” widget or a site-wide sidebar. That approach bleeds authority across your site, diluting the power of the pages that matter most. Ahrefs Site Audit has an “Internal Link Opportunities” feature that finds places where you can pass more equity to underperforming pages, and the Link Explorer helps you visualize how PageRank flows across your domain.

Find Pages That Deserve More Internal Links

In Site Audit, go to “Internal pages” and sort by “Organic traffic” descending. Look for pages with decent traffic but very few internal links (the “Incoming internal links” column). These pages are isolated—Google sees them as less important because your own site doesn’t link to them often. A service page buried three clicks deep, or a detailed guide orphaned after a site restructure, is a classic leak.

Pick five to ten pages with solid traffic or conversion potential and low internal link counts. Then use the “Internal link opportunities” report to find pages on your site where adding a contextual link to those pages makes sense. The tool suggests source pages and target URLs based on topical relevance. Don’t add links mechanically. Read the source page context and weave the link naturally into a sentence.

Reinforce the Hub-and-Spoke Flow

Map your core pages—pillar posts, top-level category pages, main service pages. Use the “Link Explorer” in Site Explorer to see which pages link to them. If your most important page only has links from your blogroll and footer, it’s starved. Add contextual links from subpages that relate tightly. For example, if your main page is about “small business tax software,” every blog post about tax deductions or quarterly filing should link back to it with varied, natural anchor text.

Varied anchor text matters. Don’t link every time with “small business tax software.” Mix in “tax filing tools,” “software for self-employed taxes,” and other natural variations. Ahrefs won’t write those for you—you’ll need to audit manually—but the site structure charts help you spot the gaps fast.

Avoid the Sidebar Link Trap

Site-wide sidebar or footer links pass minimal value compared to in-content links. If a page only gets linked through site-wide elements, it’s barely getting any authority. Move those links into relevant body copy where possible, and cut excessive site-wide links that dilute the equity flowing to your money pages.

Putting the Audits Into Action: A Weekly Cadence

You can’t run all five audits in one afternoon, nor should you try. That leads to shallow fixes and burnout. Instead, build a rotating schedule:

• Week 1: Technical crawl audit (broken links, redirects, orphaned pages, crawl waste). Fix the most critical 10 issues.
• Week 2: Declining pages audit. Pick three pages, diagnose the cause, and update or redirect.
• Week 3: Backlink leak recovery. Reclaim 5–10 lost links, send out 5 unlinked mention emails.
• Week 4: Content Gap + Internal linking sweep. Create or update two gap-targeting pages and add at least 15 contextual internal links to key pages.

After a month, repeat the cycle. Traffic leaks aren’t a one-time fix; they open up as you add content, change URLs, and as competitors evolve. The cadence keeps your site’s foundation tight.

What makes this approach work is that it’s diagnostic, not prescriptive. Every action you take comes from a specific data point in Ahrefs: a 403 in the crawl report, a traffic drop on a top page, a broken link from a DR 50 domain. That means you’re not guessing—you’re plugging real leaks.

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