How to add and use portfolios

Now that you’ve added your first project, it’s time to add your first portfolio.

A portfolio is a list of target URLs that you can group together to further analyze their metrics in bulk.

Depending on your plan, you can group up a list of URLs from up to 10 different domains and analyze their aggregate metrics on the Dashboard.

To add your first portfolio, click on the Create button on the Dashboard and choose Portfolio.

Create button

Here, you can define the scope of each target URL—much like you would with a project. Then you can name the portfolio and share it with the appropriate team members.

New portfolio modal

Once saved, the portfolio will be shown on your dashboard along with top-level metrics. Clicking on any of the metrics will take you to the corresponding report in Site Explorer.

New portfolio

Here are some actionable use cases.

Track the performance of your competitors

Add your competitors’ websites to a portfolio to get extensive competitive intelligence insights:

See the top winners and losers in terms of their top pages and keywords: (Top pages report > Traffic filter: Improved)

Top pages report

Check out the pace at which they acquire new links and referring domains: (Backlinks report > Dofollow > New backlinks > Status: Newly published)

Backlinks report

Study their paid ads and paid keywords to understand which ones resonate with your target audience: (Paid pages report > Keywords and Ads nested tables)

Paid pages report

Track the performance of your content writers

If you have an internal content team, create a portfolio for each content writer and track their performance over time.

For example, our content lead, Joshua Hardwick, has written 147 articles, which rank for 46,000 keywords that generate close to 250,000 organic search visits a month.

Performance of your content writers

Track the performance of the published content on your client’s website

If you’re an agency, create a portfolio of your published content on your customer’s website and track the percentage (%) of organic traffic and backlinks it has generated compared to the rest of the website.

The ROI of your content should be more transparent this way.

For example, if we were to group our free tools into a portfolio, we’d notice they generate close to 1 million organic search traffic a month.

That’s 30% of our total traffic of 3 million search visits.

Performance of the published content
KEEP LEARNING

Check out some of the articles on the Ahrefs blog to learn about portfolios:

About this course

How to use Ahrefs

64 lessons
3h 24m
Learn practical ways to use Ahrefs' SEO tools and reports to improve SEO.

What you’ll learn

  • How to analyze yours and your competitors’ websites with Site Explorer

  • How to master keyword research with Keywords Explorer

  • How to improve your on-page and technical SEO with Site Audit

  • How to track and improve your Google rankings with Rank Tracker

  • How to discover untapped keyword and link building opportunities with Content Explorer

  • How to get keyword and link building opportunities on autopilot with Alerts

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Andrei ȚițAndrei Țiț is a product marketer at Ahrefs. He develops content to help you make the most out of Ahrefs.
Sam OhSam Oh is VP of Marketing at Ahrefs. He incorporates his commitment to education and love for entrepreneurship into actionable and easy-to-digest tutorials.