How to set up automated SEO reports in Ahrefs for your marketing team

If your marketing team is tired of wrangling spreadsheets and manually pulling SEO data every week, you’re not alone. Automated reports free up everyone’s time and keep the focus on what actually matters—fixing issues and growing your site. This guide walks you through setting up automated SEO reports in Ahrefs—what to automate, what to skip, and how to get useful insights without drowning in data. If you’re a marketing manager, SEO specialist, or just the unlucky person stuck with reporting, this is for you.

Why bother with automated SEO reports?

Let’s be honest: nobody’s day is made better by copy-pasting keyword rankings into a Google Doc. Automated reports mean your team sees real changes—new issues, wins, and losses—without the tedium. Plus, when reports arrive on schedule, it’s a lot easier to spot trends and react quickly.

But automation only helps if the reports are actually useful. A 20-page PDF nobody reads helps no one. Let’s zero in on how to set up reports in Ahrefs that your team will actually use.

Step 1: Decide what you (actually) need to report on

Before you log in and start setting things up, pause and ask: what does your team really care about? Here are the usual suspects:

  • Keyword rankings: Which keywords are moving up or down?
  • Backlinks: Are you gaining (or losing) important links?
  • Site health: Any new technical issues?
  • Traffic estimates: Are you trending up or down?
  • Competitor moves: Is someone eating your lunch?

If you’re not sure, ask your team what they actually look at. There’s no sense automating reports that go straight to archive.

Pro tip: Start simple. You can always add more data later. Over-complicated reports just get ignored.

Step 2: Set up your project in Ahrefs

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to add your website as a project in Ahrefs. Here’s how:

  1. Log in to Ahrefs.
  2. Go to Dashboard.
  3. Click + New Project.
  4. Enter your domain and name your project. Double-check for typos—seriously, you don’t want to be tracking the wrong site.
  5. Verify ownership. You can do this via Google Search Console, DNS, or HTML file upload.

Once your project is set up, Ahrefs will start crawling your site and collecting data. Give it a bit—depending on your site size, it can take a few hours to a day to populate.

Step 3: Set up Rank Tracker for automated keyword reports

Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker is where you’ll monitor your keyword positions. Here’s how to get it rolling:

  1. From your project dashboard, click Rank Tracker.
  2. Add your target keywords—these should match what your team actually tracks. Don’t go overboard; 50-100 is plenty for most teams.
  3. Select the locations you care about (e.g., US, UK, or specific cities).
  4. Set your update frequency. Weekly is enough for most—daily updates are overkill unless you’re in a super-competitive niche.
  5. Click Start Tracking.

Now, let’s automate the reports:

  • Click Export > Scheduled Export (top right).
  • Set the frequency (weekly, biweekly, or monthly).
  • Choose the format—CSV or PDF. (CSV is best if you want to do any custom analysis.)
  • Enter the email addresses of everyone who should get the report.
  • Click Schedule.

What’s actually useful: Focus on top winners/losers, new keywords, and big drops. Ignore the “noise”—rankings move up and down daily, and obsessing over every blip is a waste of time.

Step 4: Automate Site Audit reports (for technical SEO)

Catching technical issues early saves headaches down the line. Here’s how to automate Ahrefs’ Site Audit reports:

  1. Go to your project, then click Site Audit.
  2. Click Settings (top right) and set up a crawl schedule—weekly is enough for most sites.
  3. Choose which pages and subdomains to include/exclude.
  4. Under Notifications, add the emails that should get alerts.

After each crawl, Ahrefs will email a summary—think of it as your early warning system. If you want the full crawl data, set up a Scheduled Export just like in Rank Tracker.

What matters: Pay attention to new issues, high-severity errors, and anything that’s changed since the last crawl. Don’t sweat low-priority warnings unless they’re piling up.

Step 5: Backlink monitoring—automate what’s worth knowing

Links still matter for SEO, but not every new or lost link is worth a meeting. Here’s how to automate the stuff that actually matters:

  1. In your project, go to Site Explorer > Backlink Profile.
  2. Click New/Lost Backlinks.
  3. At the top right, click Export > Scheduled Export.
  4. Choose the frequency (weekly or monthly) and enter the emails to notify.

You can also set up Alerts for new/lost backlinks:

  • Go to Alerts (in the main menu).
  • Click New Alert.
  • Pick your domain and set the type (new backlinks, lost backlinks, or both).
  • Choose daily, weekly, or monthly.
  • Add the right emails.

Honest take: Most teams only need a weekly summary of new/lost backlinks—daily is just noise unless you’re in a high-stakes link-building campaign.

Step 6: Competitor tracking—don’t overdo it

It’s tempting to track every move your competitors make, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Here’s how to keep it simple:

  1. Add main competitors as projects in Ahrefs (you don’t need to verify ownership for competitors).
  2. Set up Rank Tracker and Site Explorer reports for competitor domains—same steps as your own site.
  3. Schedule exports and alerts for major changes only: big ranking moves, sudden backlink spikes, or new top pages.

What to skip: Don’t try to track every keyword your competitors rank for—focus on your shared target keywords and major pages.

Step 7: Customize and share reports that actually get read

Automated reports are only useful if people actually look at them. Here’s how to make sure yours don’t get ignored:

  • Trim the fat: Remove extra columns and data nobody cares about. Less is more.
  • Add context: Include a quick summary or highlight key changes in your email—don’t just attach a file.
  • Set expectations: Let your team know what to look for in each report. If something’s urgent, flag it.
  • Share access: Instead of endless PDFs, give your team direct access to Ahrefs dashboards when possible. Live data beats out-of-date exports.

Pro tip: Spend 5 minutes each week actually reading the reports yourself, and flag anything unusual before sending to the team. Saves a lot of “Did you see this?” emails later.

What to ignore (and what to watch out for)

  • Don’t automate everything. Not all data needs to be tracked weekly. Stick to the KPIs your team acts on.
  • Avoid vanity metrics. Big numbers (like total backlinks or “domain rating”) might look nice, but often don’t move the needle.
  • Watch for alert fatigue. If people get too many notifications, they’ll start ignoring all of them.
  • Check report settings quarterly. As your strategy changes, so should your reports.

Wrapping up: Keep it simple, tweak as you go

Automated SEO reports in Ahrefs take a bit of effort to set up, but the time you save (and headaches you avoid) are worth it. Don’t obsess over getting it perfect the first time. Start with the basics, see what your team actually uses, and adjust from there. The best reports are the ones people read—and act on.

Now go automate some of that grunt work. Your future self will thank you.