Fixing 403 Forbidden errors in Ahrefs: what to do?
When it comes to SEO, nothing is more irritating to SEO than suddenly hitting a technical wall. You’re just about to check a competitor’s backlink profile or audit your site’s health and everything stops dead in its tracks. The screen in front of you is filled with a “403 Forbidden” error.
This error code is a standard HTTP response status in which the server understands the request but rejects it The translation is this: You found the door, but the server refused to give you the key.
For an SEO tool user, this error appears in two distinct types of situation. You may find it reported by a site audit (which means that the Ahrefs bot cannot crawl your pages), or when you try to access the Ahrefs platform through a shared service, like Groupbuyseotools.
How to fix 403 errors viewed from ahrefs?
This guide explains the reasons these errors occur and offers practical ways to get your work done again.
What is the 403 error in terms of SEO?
Before you patch things up, it’s helpful to understand the (mechanism) behind an error of this type. A 403 Forbidden status is different from a 404 (Not Found). A 404 means that the page no longer exists. A 403 means that either the page exists or you’ve got some kind of access barrier in front of you.
This usually comes down to authorization settings, firewall rules or authentication issues. The solution will be very different depending on how you’re receiving this error.
Scenario 1: 403 error within an Ahrefs site audit
When you are carrying out a site audit on Ahrefs and your report comes back to you with a set of URLs all marked “403 Forbidden,” this is a crawl issue. It means the Ahrefs bot tried to visit your pages, but it was blocked by your server.
This is a real SEO headache. If Ahrefs can’t access your site, there’s a good chance Googlebot will face the same problem-at cost rankings. Nevertheless, because Ahrefs crawls the web so prolifically, it sometimes gets identified as a “bad bot” by rigid security protocols. If so, check your security plugins such as Wordfence, iThemes Security, or Cloudflare-along with those from managed web hosts.
Look for a “User-Agent” blocking list and make sure AhrefsBot is not on the blocklist. Look into Your.htaccess File The.htaccess file controls how a server run on Apache (which WordPress sites frequently use) responds to incoming requests. Sometimes, misconfigured code or overly strict rules within this file can trigger a 403 error with part of it. so forth If you are uncertain how to modify the code, contact your hosting provider.
Blocking AhrefsIPs
They can make a quick check to see whether the firewall is blocking AhrefsIPs. Inspect Server-Side Firewalls At times the block against Ahrefs is placed neither on your own site nor at the hosting level, but within the fully-secured environment of High Security Hosting, which frequently has ModSecurity rules. Should the Ahrefs crawler set off a specific rule – for example, requests at one second’s pace are excessive – server quickly severs connectivity.
Scenario 2: 403 Errors When Accessing Ahrefs in Groupbuyseotools This second common scenario dealt with users accessing SEO software through group buy services such as Groupbuyseotools. These services allow various individuals to pool resources and share the costs of expensive tools at dramatically reduced rates.
If a tool uses shared cookies and proxy servers to give many people access to it, then things like connection errors come with the territory. A 403 screen is likely to be encountered. Whither it direct the PC to remotely access Ahrefs through tool connection, not to ah.com itself.
Group buy platforms, in particular, suffer from a variety of access issues. Here are some tips to help you get around these problems.
Delete Everything You Have in Cache or Your Browser’s Stored Cookies
For group buy platforms, search engines use their cookies a lot to keep you logged in. Ahrefs will take one look at those ancient cookies, realize they’re all wrong and write down a 403 error.
Log out of the group buy extension(Inplug-in) or dashboard.
Go back to the settings in your browser. Then just delete all of the cache and cookies (only for the specific tool you were trying to use).
Start your browser over and log back in.
Upgrade Your Extension or Traveling “Web”
Most group buy service providers use a special Chrome extension or a mobile browser to manage session states. If they update their security, but you are still using an old version of the extension then trying to authenticate your session will fail.
Check the service provider’s dashboard to see if there are any notifications about “Update.” Usually, the quickest solution to consistent 403 errors is to download and install the access extension again in a new browser.
Change Servers or “Nodes”
Most shared SEO tools support connections from multiple waypoints-or access points- such as Server 1, Server 2, Node A, and Node B (usually named “A” “B”). When too many users crowd onto one server, it’s quite possible that Ahrefs may decide this traffic is foolish and shut off one of their own IP addresses directly -of which there are usually about twenty or so on any given node- thereby causing a 403 for everybody grouped on that node.
Go back to the Groupbuyseotools dashboard. If by any chance you were on “Server 1”, now click around a bit and try “Server 2” or “Server 3”. This is the easiest way of overcoming an immediate block–just get yourself a new IP address and they’ve got nothing on you anymore!
You’d be unwise to ignore them if you want to carry on have a healthy SEO strategy at all. If the error is your website’s (Scenario 1), not fixing it means being blind. You can’t get exact data on the health of your site and you risk Google dropping your pages from its index simply because it can’t read them.
Should the error come from the access to your tool (Scenario 2), it stops your productivity. SEO is all about consistency. A data interruption in the middle of your most important keyword research session or checking a competitor can set back projects and make you just miss opportunities.
Keeping Your SEO Workflow Smooth
Whether you are setting up server permissions from scratch or working with the limitations on shared SEO tools, maintaining access is key. Technical hitches are standard like the 403 Forbidden error, but they’re hardly ever fatal. They just need to be taken in a way that is methodical.
Of course, by making sure your server accepts the right bots and keeping your access tools up-to-date, your downtime can be considerably more limited. This provides the opportunity to concentrate on what really counts: improving rankings in search results. These are how the steps 404 and 410 redirect to another url will make sense later on.
Ahrefs 403 errors: how site audits and group buy tools may result in errors
Are you getting a 403 Forbidden error on Ahrefs? Find out why the site is failing to scan your pages and which server has the fault.
Related posts:
