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How-to guide · 5 steps

How to Do a Competitor Analysis for SEO

Competitor analysis gives you a proven roadmap for what works in your niche — without starting from scratch. You're not copying your competitors; you're learning from their data. Here's a structured process for extracting useful insights from a competitor's site.

Four angles of an SEO competitor analysis

Who actually competes with you in search?

  • Keywords

    • Top organic terms
    • Overlap with yours

  • Links

    • Referring domains
    • Link-earning content

  • Content

    • Formats and depth
    • Publishing pattern

  • Technical

    • Speed
    • Site structure
Search competitors can differ from business competitors, so the analysis starts with who ranks, then compares these four areas.

  1. Step 1: Identify who your real SEO competitors are

    Your SEO competitors are the sites occupying the top 10 for your most important keywords — not necessarily the businesses you compete with commercially. A small blog can be an SEO competitor to a major brand if it ranks for the same terms.

    Tool for this stepSemrush

    from $139/mo

    Semrush's Organic Research shows your top organic competitors ranked by keyword overlap. Enter your domain and it identifies who you're actually competing against in the SERPs.

    Semrush plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Serpstat (from $69/mo)

  2. Step 2: Analyse their top organic keywords

    Find the keywords driving the most traffic to each competitor. Look for: their highest-volume rankings, keywords they rank in positions 4-10 (where content improvements could push them up — and where a new entrant could appear), and any commercial intent keywords they dominate.

    Tool for this stepAhrefs

    from £23/mo

    Ahrefs' Site Explorer shows a competitor's top organic pages alongside estimated traffic — not just keywords. This reveals which content types drive the most value for them.

    Ahrefs plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Semrush (from $139/mo)

  3. Step 3: Review their backlink profile

    Check their Domain Rating, total referring domains, and which pages earn the most backlinks. The pages with the most backlinks reveal what content earns links in your niche. Note the types of sites linking to them — these are your outreach targets.

    Tool for this stepAhrefs

    from £23/mo

    Ahrefs focuses heavily on backlink data. The 'Best by Links' and 'Best by Link Growth' reports are particularly useful for spotting what content types attract links in your niche.

    Ahrefs plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Moz Pro (from $99/mo)

  4. Step 4: Assess their content strategy

    Look at how often they publish, what topics they cover, the average length of their top pages, and whether they use structured data. Count how many pages they have indexed. This tells you the investment required to compete.

    Tool for this stepSemrush

    from $139/mo

    Semrush's Organic Research shows a competitor's top pages and how their rankings change over time, which gives you a picture of how actively they are investing in content.

    Semrush plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Seobility (from €59.90/mo)

  5. Step 5: Run a technical comparison

    Use a site audit tool to crawl your competitor's site (if allowed) and compare their technical health to yours. Note their site speed, use of structured data, and internal linking patterns. Technical advantages are hard to see from the outside but often decisive.

    Tool for this stepSemrush

    from $139/mo

    Semrush's Site Audit can crawl a competitor's domain as a separate project (crawl allowances depend on your plan). The comparison shows whether their technical foundation is stronger or weaker than yours, an often-overlooked competitive factor.

    Semrush plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Seobility (from €59.90/mo)