A Beginner Guide to SEO Competitor Analysis

Published on 17.10.2025 by Chizoba T

With millions of websites competing for the same visibility on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), it is wise to have a strategy that keeps you ahead of the competition. Unlike in marketing, your SEO competitors aren't only the brands selling similar products to yours. It's about the sites outranking you on the SERPs.

While social media competitor analysis offers insights into the performance of your posts against the competitor, SEO competitor analysis provides insights into the sites outranking you. You can then analyze the sites by reviewing their content, keywords, backlinks, and other SEO factors. It offers a detailed map of the gaps in the competitor strategy and provides insights into emerging marketing opportunities. This article takes you through the steps of running a good SEO competitor analysis.

What is SEO Competitor Analysis?

SEO competitor analysis involves tracking and identifying competitors in search results to determine their rankings. During competitor analysis, you check their content, keywords, site structure, and technical SEO to see if you can exploit opportunities and gaps to rank higher on the SERPs.

However, you need to realize that you don't perform a competitor analysis to copy the competitor’s strategy. Instead, you aim to understand why they are ranking better than you whenever you launch a new product or website or make significant changes to your site.

Conducting a competitor analysis to see if this has improved your ranking is essential. For instance, when you discover that your competitors are getting backlinks from top authoritative websites or publishing topic clusters with good structures, you can use the information to improve your SEO strategy.

Why is it Essential to Monitor Competitor SEO?

Through SEO competitor analysis, you can understand your competitors' strategies that drive their ranking, find out their weaknesses, and discover opportunities for improvement and outperforming your competitors in search results. SEO competitor analysis will provide insights into:

  • Keywords you might have overlooked in your competitor research.
  • Format of content that is consistently doing well in your niche.
  • Sources of backlinks to help you rank higher in the SERPs.

Competitor monitoring can also help you uncover high-intent, low-difficulty keywords, improving your chances of ranking higher. It can also help you research high-domain-authority sites for backlinks that already link to your competitor.

How to Conduct an SEO Competitor Analysis

Here are the steps for an SEO competitor analysis:

Determine Your Competitors

If you don't know who your competitors are, then there is no way to analyze their sites. This is why the first step should be to determine your competitors. Here are a few  ways to assess your competitors:

  • Find them manually. You can find your competitors by entering their keywords on Google and noting down the final results. If you realize a domain keeps popping up, it shows they are your main competitor. Use a Google Sheet to enter the top-ranking domain for the target audience.
  • Use SEO tools. You can leverage SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to research competitors. Competitors refer to sites ranking for similar audiences and targeting the exact keywords.

Consider the Competitor Authority Score

Website authority refers to the authority that Google and other search engines consider your site to have. This is usually affected by different factors such as:

  • Creating high-quality and relevant content.
  • Having a strong backlink profile.
  • History and age of the site.
  • Providing better UX (user experience).
  • EEAT signals.
  • Social signals.
  • Positive user signal.

Remember that if a site is seen as highly authoritative, it can be hard to compete with. This is why one of the most critical steps in SEO competitor analysis is analyzing the score. Again, you can get the domain score from SEO tools.

Keyword Gap Analysis

After identifying your organic competitors, you need to conduct a keyword gap analysis. In this regard, the keyword gap is the set of keywords your competitors are currently ranking for but you aren't. You can then use these keywords to optimize your content or to create new pages for keywords you haven't covered on your site.

Social media content analysis ensures you create better content than your competitors. You will remain ahead of the competition when you identify these keyword analyses. When using the keyword research tools, you will see the keywords your competitors are ranking for and you aren't. However, you need to analyze these keywords further, as not all will work.

Track Your Competitor’s New and Lost Keywords

When you realize that your competitors are missing keywords, you can identify missed ranking opportunities. On the other hand, you also need to keep an eye on the keywords your competitors have started ranking for. This can be a good indicator of what your audience is looking for from your content, as well as target keywords. You can then use the insight to determine the direction for your content.

Content Analysis

When comparing your site with that of the keywords, one of the things you will see is the keywords you commonly rank for with them. You might be beating them in ranking for some keywords, while they might be beating you in others. This could result from several factors, including technical SEO, backlinks, and content quality. 

This is why you need to analyze your competitors' content, digging deep to determine what makes it stand out and where it is performing poorly. During the competitor content analysis, pay attention to:

Content Type

Consider the different types of content your competitors are creating, such as:

You will then need to consider whether the competitor is succeeding with this type of content. Look at the specific page metrics, such as keywords and traffic. Also consider whether your competitors add videos, images, or infographics to improve the page’s user experience. You can then use these insights in your own content strategy.

Content Quality

Consider also how well the content on the competitor’s site is written. Is it written by experts in the niche? Does it consist of in-depth research and factually correct information? Do they have cross-platform strategies for impactful campaigns? How good is the grammar and spelling of the content? How helpful is the content? If all the answers to these questions are yes, it indicates that your competitor is creating high-quality content.

On the other hand, there are sure signs of good quality content, such as:

  • Outdated content. This could be irrelevant due to out-of-date information.
  • Keyword-stuffed. If competitors overuse keywords in their headings and copy, it could put off readers and make the content look spammy.
  • Shallow content. If the web pages have thin content that doesn't add value to users.
  • Wrong text to image issue. If you add too many images, it can make it hard for users to read the content, resulting in a poor user experience.

If you realize that your competitor’s content falls into any of the above categories, you can focus on creating better content.

Content Meta Titles and Description

The meta title shows how your content will appear in the SERP, and the meta description appears below it. While these don't affect a page's ranking, they can help improve the clickthrough rate. 

Therefore, you must pay attention to how your competitors create meta titles and descriptions. If they are not doing these sections as well as you would, look for ways to outdo them. Check also if your competitors have optimized the meta descriptions and titles. 

Some of the areas to check include:

  • Do they have keyword-rich meta titles and descriptions?
  • Where have they put the meta title and descriptions? The closer to the front, the better.
  • How descriptive are the meta descriptions, and do they properly convey the article’s purpose? Do the meta descriptions and titles encourage readers to click through a page?

A good way to view your competitors' descriptions and titles is to Google the keywords and see how they appear in the SERPs. 

In Conclusion

SEO competitor analysis provides essential insights into content gaps, keyword opportunities, backlink strategies, and industry trends. This can ensure better resource allocation, benchmark performance, and indicate industry trends. It can also provide the desired results in search engine results. 

By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can perform an effective SEO competitor analysis. We also recommend that you read our guide to the best SEO, script-writing, and YouTube tools.