How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis [+ Template]

What Is SEO Competitor Analysis?

An SEO competitor study is the process of researching rival websites’ hunt motor optimization strategies and results to stitchery insights you tin usage to amended your ain results.

In SEO, competitor websites are those that often show higher than you for applicable hunt motor queries. And those higher positions successful hunt results tin divert postulation distant from your website.

Why Is an SEO Competitor Analysis Important? 

Doing an SEO competitor study is important because it provides insights that thief you outrank (appear higher than) rival websites successful hunt engines for illustration Google.

Specifically, analyzing rival websites allows you to:

• Discover winning SEO strategies and replicate them
• Uncover rivals’ SEO weaknesses and capitalize connected them
• Benchmark your existent SEO capacity and measurement really your capacity changes

Ultimately, doing an SEO competitor study tin thief you boost marque awareness, make much traffic, and summation your market share.

How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis

We urge that you do an SEO competitor study each 3 to six months, truthful you tin quickly place immoderate changes successful your marketplace and accommodate your strategy.

We besides urge that you analyse competitors’ SEO efforts:

• Before launching caller products aliases services, truthful you tin study astir the marketplace you’re entering
• After a rankings decline, truthful you tin get a amended knowing of imaginable issues

Here’s really to do an SEO competitor analysis—step by step:

1. Identify Your SEO Competitors

To place your SEO competitors, hunt for your target keywords (search position you want to show for) successful Google to spot which websites commonly appear. 

Or, participate your domain into the Organic Research instrumentality and spell to the “Competitors” tab.

The instrumentality will hunt our database to spot which domains person the astir keyword rankings successful communal pinch your domain.

It’s important to statement that SEO competitors aren’t ever business competitors. 

For example, an manufacture publication mightiness not waste the aforesaid products aliases services arsenic you. But the publication could divert hunt postulation distant from your website.

2. Find Keyword Gaps

Keyword gaps are keywords that competitors rank for but you don’t, and filling these gaps tin thief you pull much postulation to your website.

You tin find keyword gaps pinch Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool.

Enter your domain and up to 4 competitors’ domains. Then, scroll down to the array and use the “Missing” filter.

You’ll spot keywords that each analyzed competitors rank for but you don’t.

Use these filters to refine your results:

• Position: The ranking position of analyzed sites. You mightiness want to select for keywords that each competitors rank successful the apical 10 results for, arsenic these keywords are much apt to beryllium applicable to you.
• Volume: The mean number of monthly searches for the keyword. Generally, higher-volume keywords tin thrust much marque consciousness and traffic.
• KD: The keyword trouble score, which measures really difficult it’ll beryllium to unafraid a top-10 Google ranking. You whitethorn wish to attraction connected keywords successful the “Very easy” to “Easy” range.
• Intent: The wide intent down the search. Transactional keywords thin to beryllium champion astatine driving sales, while informational keywords thin to activity champion for blog posts.
• Advanced filters: Here, you tin select for keywords that see 1 aliases much circumstantial words. This is adjuvant if you want to attraction connected a peculiar topic.

Look for relevant, high-potential keywords you want to target and prevention them to a keyword list.

Then, you tin create a scheme to target these keywords.

3. Identify Competitors’ Sitewide Strengths and Weaknesses

Identify competitors' sitewide strengths and weaknesses to pinpoint wherever your SEO efforts could person the top impact.

You tin find these strengths and weaknesses by evaluating your rivals’ contented capacity and method SEO health:

Content Performance

Analyze your competitors’ contented capacity to spot what contented useful for them, and past effort to replicate their results.

You mightiness beryllium capable to spot which pieces of contented pull the astir comments connected their website. Or pull the astir engagement connected societal media.

But you tin get amended insights pinch an SEO competitor study tool.

For example, the Organic Research instrumentality tin show your competitor’s top-performing pages based connected the estimated magnitude of unpaid hunt postulation they bring in.

Make judge to analyse your competitors’ top-performing pages to look for patterns. 

For instance:

• Is the contented mostly long-form aliases short?
• Do they usage tons of videos aliases images?
• Are they mostly merchandise pages, blog posts, aliases thing different?

Let your answers to these questions guideline your contented production. To return the guesswork out. And recreate what’s already working—in a amended way. 

Technical SEO 

Analyzing your website’s technical SEO wellness and comparing it against your rivals’ is simply a cardinal measurement successful doing a competitor analysis, because method wellness tin make each the quality successful rankings.

You tin study astir your site’s method wellness for free done Google Search Console.

The instrumentality provides various reports, including:

• Page indexing: Discover which pages person and haven’t been added to Google’s index (database of imaginable hunt results)
• Core Web Vitals: See really your tract scores connected 3 page acquisition metrics, collectively known arsenic Core Web Vitals
• HTTPS: Check that each the pages connected your tract usage the unafraid HTTPS protocol, arsenic recommended by Google

Alternatively, usage Semrush’s Site Audit instrumentality to reappraisal your method SEO.

You tin tally regular audits to cheque your progress.

And get proposal connected really and why to hole each issue.

If you utilized Google Search Console to reappraisal your method health, do the pursuing to measure your competitors:

• Review competitors’ Core Web Vitals pinch the PageSpeed Insights instrumentality (just cognize that this only shows metrics for the specified page)
• Manually cheque if competitors’ webpages usage the HTTPS protocol
• See really competitors’ websites execute connected a mobile device
• Inspect competitors’ XML sitemaps to spot which pages they’ve flagged for indexing

If you utilized Site Audit to crawl your website, usage the aforesaid instrumentality for your competitor analysis. 

Then, comparison your results.

Try to lucifer competitors successful areas wherever they’re strong. And hit competitors successful areas wherever they’re lacking.

4. Analyze Competing Sites connected a Page-by-Page Basis

There are galore on-page SEO factors that power a page’s capacity successful hunt results, truthful it’s adjuvant to reappraisal circumstantial pages arsenic portion of your SEO competitory analysis. 

Here are the circumstantial elements you should analyse connected each page:

Title Tags 

A title tag is an HTML constituent that indicates the title of a webpage and is commonly displayed successful hunt motor results, societal media posts, and browser tabs. 

Like this:

Title tags thief awesome to Google what your pages are about. And optimizing them is 1 of the easiest ways to amended your rankings. 

Which is why you should look astatine your competitors’ title tags. Especially the ones connected pages that outrank you. 

When you do, inquire yourself:

• Do competitors merge keywords amended than you?
• Do the target keywords look adjacent the opening of the title tags? At the end?
• Do competitors see special, click-enticing modifiers for illustration “easy,” “best,” and “free”?

The answers to these questions should springiness you an thought of really to trade your title tags—so you tin boost your rankings. 

Meta Descriptions 

A meta description is simply a short snippet of matter that summarizes a webpage’s contented and tin look successful hunt motor results pages.

Like this:

Meta descriptions aren’t a nonstop ranking factor. But they tin impact (and improve) click-through rates. 

Meta descriptions are often overlooked, peculiarly connected ample sites. So, don’t make that mistake.

Instead, spot really your competitors usage meta descriptions. Notice what’s moving and what isn’t. And set yours accordingly. 

URL Structure 

URL structure is the order, compartmentalization, and grouping of webpage URLs wrong a website. 

Like this:

Your URL building affects really easy users tin navigate a site, find circumstantial pages, and find circumstantial contented types.

Ideally, a URL building is intuitive, clear, and organized.

Study your competitors’ URL structures connected their pages that outrank your pages. And inquire yourself:

• Do competitors merge keywords successful their URLs? If so, how?
• Do competitors usage shorter URL slugs?
• Do competitors’ URLs picture the page content? 

If you announcement thing you tin improve, enactment connected it truthful your URLs are arsenic bully as—or amended than—your competitors’.

Content and Keywords 

This measurement successful your SEO competitor investigation involves taking a deeper look astatine the pages that outrank your pages and analyzing their content. 

As you do, inquire yourself questions like:

• How are competitors utilizing keywords passim the page? 
• Are location applicable secondary keywords you could adhd to your content? 
• Is the penning of precocious quality?
• Do competitors screen topics successful a akin level of item arsenic you? 
• How does the contented show Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)?
• What makes the contented unique?
• How do competitors usage images, videos, data, etc.?

Answering these questions helps you place ways to amended your ain content.

5. Find Backlink Gaps

If a reputable tract links to a competitor but doesn’t nexus to you, you person a backlink spread that’s worthy addressing.

Closing backlink gaps tin beryllium important successful SEO because Google uses backlinks to gauge the authoritativeness of websites and webpages.

You tin cheque your ain backlinks successful Google Search Console. And find competitor backlinks by searching competitors’ names successful Google and checking the results that show up. 

But it’s quicker and much reliable to usage Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool.

Enter your domain and your rivals’ domains, and the instrumentality will show your “Best” prospects by default.

These are websites that nexus to each your rivals but not to you.

You tin study much astir competitors’ backlinks by clicking the arrows successful the corresponding rows and columns.

Like this:

To place the champion backlink prospects, see factors like:

• The authoritativeness of the website and webpage: Backlinks from much charismatic websites and webpages thin to beryllium amended for SEO. Semrush’s Authority Score (AS) measures authoritativeness retired of 100.
• The relevancy of the website: Backlinks from topically applicable sites thin to beryllium amended for SEO. So, look for websites that are charismatic successful your niche.
• The discourse of the backlink: Prominent backlinks connected relevant, high-quality pages thin to beryllium champion for SEO. You besides want your marque to beryllium mentioned successful a affirmative context.
• The nofollow position of the backlink: If you spot that the backlink has a nofollow attribute, this intends Google whitethorn disregard the nexus for SEO purposes

There are galore link building tactics you tin usage to get links from your chosen prospects. But it’s smart to mimic the maneuver that worked for your competitor.

For example, the competitor mightiness person sewage their merchandise featured successful a applicable round-up. Or allowed the website to question and reply their CEO.

6. Monitor Competitors’ SERP Features 

When competitors look successful SERP features (non-traditional hunt results) for target keywords, they whitethorn pull much attraction connected the hunt results page. 

If you optimize for the aforesaid SERP features, you whitethorn beryllium capable to switch your competitors and seizure the attraction for your ain site.

You tin hunt Google manually to spot if your competitors look successful immoderate SERP features.

Like this, which is an illustration of a featured snippet:

Alternatively, analyse a competitor successful Semrush’s Organic Research tool. And spell to the “Positions” report.

The icons successful the “Position” file correspond SERP characteristic rankings for the corresponding keywords.

You tin attraction connected circumstantial types of SERP characteristic rankings by utilizing the select astatine the top.

There are chopped ways to optimize for different SERP features. And you tin find proposal astir galore of them (e.g., sitelinks, AI Overviews, and the local pack) connected the Semrush blog.

Here are immoderate speedy tips for success:

• Use schema markup to thief Google understand the contented connected your page
• Provide clear, concise answers to commonly searched questions
• Add high-quality images to your contented and optimize them for search

Try Our SEO Competitor Analysis Report Template

Semrush’s My Reports instrumentality provides a competitor study study template that makes it speedy and easy to compile cardinal accusation astir rival websites.

Enter your competitors’ domains and the instrumentality will coming elaborate accusation astir their:

• Website traffic
• Market share
• Keywords
• Backlinks
• Paid hunt ads
• Brand mentions
• Social media performance

(Assuming you person the basal instrumentality subscriptions.)

The competitor study study is afloat customizable and easy to stock pinch your team.  

Plus, you tin schedule the study to tally each month.

Start your free proceedings to usage the template and create your first SEO competitor study report.