The Ahrefs Mentions Tracker is perhaps one of the lesser known tools alongside their site explorer. You may be forgiven for missing it thus far, but now it’s about time you take a look and learn how powerful it can be as a link building tool.

You can easily find Mentions Tracker on Ahrefs.com

Using the Mentions Tracker

The Mentions Tracker gives you the opportunity to check the Ahrefs index for search specific mentions or queries and it plots them against time – giving an indication of brand hype or product mentions historically. In addition to plotting them on the graph it also lists each mention by the page it was found on, along with page and domain level metrics. What this does mean is that you have a good snap-shot of who it is, what they’re saying and roughly what that mention is worth. So it’s good for any brand to have an awareness of what’s being said about your brand or your competition in order to keep on top of any PR disasters waiting to happen, this also gives a great opportunity to look for missed linking opportunities.

The search itself is simple to operate, especially if you’re familiar with Google’s own search operators. You can use quotation marks (“”) for Exact Match searches, “|” for “OR” queries, “site:” search for searching within a domain and more besides.

Search Operators

For this example we’re going to just settle for the brand name and URL for simplicity as it’ll illustrate what even a basic query can return. This is the brand mentions over time:

Mentions over time

And below this data you’ll have the detail behind each of those mentions above, arranged by crawl date with some useful metrics alongside for reference:

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Feed Rank: The rank given for the RSS feed which contains the link. A strong RSS feed shows a potentially wider audience.

Domain Rank: The authority/power of the domain, generally speaking, higher is best!

Crawl Date: When the page was discovered by the ahrefs crawlers – note this isn’t the same as publication date of the page itself; it was when it was found.

Social Metrics: The social media buzz around it, those with the most buzz have already been picked up and are likely to gain the most benefit.

What Now?

Once you have your list of mentions there are two ways you can go about checking them. Firstly, if you’ve got a big brand and a lot of mentions you want to work your way through, the easiest and probably quickest option is to export the entries to CSV – this will give you some top-level metrics to get yourself started. Then, if you want to get a better look at the sites, you can export a list of the domains to the Batch Analysis tool to compare those sites you’re going to want to prioritise for outreach later on.

The Batch Analysis tool is very useful if you want a quick comparison over a large list of links (depending on your subscription level) and their top-level metrics.

Batch Analysis is under ” Other Tools” tab

Whilst you can paste in your list of URLs, it’s worth noting that the mode of analysis (domain, subdomain and URL) which the tool runs is based on what you input. For example a list of URLs direct from the Mention Tracker export will return page-level metrics. Whereas if you wanted to gain some top-level domain stats you’ll need to extract the domains from the URLs and paste those in instead.

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Once the Batch Analysis has run you can either filter the links based on any of the (above) metrics, or you can export this as CSV for some additional number-crunching. The main goal really is to prioritise by authority or social noise, depending on what your outreach focus is.

The second option, maybe if you really only want to cherry pick the top entries, or don’t have so many is to go through and check the links in the site explorer (by clicking on the page and magnifying glass image) next to them. That way you can get a good look at the page and domain level metrics including anchor text and the link graph as a whole.

Search option is available at page level

For all those who are used to using Ahrefs, the Site Explorer will be a familiar sight, as this is there the true power of the index can be used. By default if you navigate from the Mention Tracker you’ll be viewing a URL-level report, however, if you check the “domain” box under the main search field you can view the detailed stats for the site as a whole.

If you’re really being meticulous with your outreach efforts you can dig into the link profile of each site, from link velocity, anchor text usage, Ref Domains/IPs/Subnets and more.

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Whichever way you’re doing it, what you’re doing is working out which sites you’d happily chase a link for and which you wouldn’t. Trust me, there’ll be some gems and some trash, you just need to sort through them to focus your attention for chasing each one down.

Spotting Linking Opportunities

In my time using the tool I’ve seen examples of news items with no source referenced, members of staff quoted and not linked back to and images used with a brand mention, but no link. Whilst no one HAS to link back to you, it’s generally seen as good practice, especially if they’ve seen fit to use your brand’s resources. Next it’s time to reach out to the website and request a link be added.

In the sample search I conducted it didn’t take long to find some prime linking opportunities, examples where the company in question had spent the time and effort doing some effective PR, however, some bloggers whilst featuring their press events/products didn’t provide a link back. This is expected, but it doesn’t mean we should have to settle for it, right?

Link Opportunity

The blog which contains this mention (without a link) has a clear contact us page inviting input – it’s just begging for some outreach!

Again, the following example is a promotion which has gained some great exposure, but without a link back. The blogger here seems excited about the offer so there’s a good chance that she’ll include a link if you ask nicely enough.

Another Link Opportunity

Assuming that you are polite, professional and patient with the site, most people will be happy to add the link in – although success rate is generally higher the more recent the mention is (especially if you offer to contribute more or add something else to the story). Within a few minutes looking we already have two good quality and reasonably good chances for links back – and that’s only just a search for the brand itself!

You can also search for products, events, URLs and even members of staff (for example if you have some recognised bloggers working for you) in order to look for opportunities for some insightful and high-success outreach and relationship building. I know guest blogging has started to wear thin for a lot of blog owners, however, if the outreach is meaningful and based on more tangible PR efforts (rather than just the offer of some free content) you have an opportunity to make contact in a way which actually adds value – the most crucial part of the outreach process.

So there you have it, a good way of chasing down good linking opportunities – or, without wishing to be clichéd, picking “low hanging fruit”.