How to Conduct a YouTube Competitor Analysis

Published on 07.04.2026 by Chizoba T

Growing YouTube channels takes a lot of hard work and a bit of luck. You create a video post, analyze, and hope for the best. But in the end, you have only a couple of viewers. You reach a point where you feel the results don’t match the effort you put in. When that happens, it’s time to conduct a YouTube channel audit.

When conducting a YouTube channel audit, one step is competitor analysis. This is a key step, as it can provide insights into what your competitors are doing right, the opportunities they are missing, and whether the content your target audience receives is well-received. In this article, we will walk you through the steps to conduct a competitor analysis.

What is a YouTube Competitor Analysis?

A YouTube competitor analysis is the process of researching, analyzing, and comparing your competitors’ channels, content, keywords, and tags to see how they stack up against yours. The process enables you to see where your competitors are shining and what they may be missing. It can, therefore, be a key step for driving your marketing strategies and focusing on the value proposition to position yourself uniquely on YouTube. It is an important step when using YouTube for lead generation.

Conducting a YouTube competitor analysis can provide insights to help you grow your brand in different ways, such as:

  • Identifying your top-performing formats and contents. This will provide important insights into what is working in your niche and help to inspire your content strategy.
  • Reveal any gaps in your competitor strategy. You already have competitors performing better than others, while others may be performing worse. These insights can help you discover new opportunities and any underexplored topics.
  • Discover visibility hacks. When you analyze your competitor’s YouTube content, you can identify the keywords, thumbnail strategies, and SEO tactics. You can then use these techniques to improve your own research.

Steps in Conducting a YouTube Competitor Analysis

When conducting a YouTube competitor analysis, you should follow these steps:

Set Your YouTube Analysis Goals

In any form of social media marketing, it is always important to begin by setting goals, and this isn’t any different in a YouTube competitor analysis. Therefore, start by asking yourself what you want to achieve with the competitor analysis. Is it to get inspiration for your content? Do you want to benchmark your growth to see how well your channel is performing compared to others? Remember that the YouTube metrics you track will be defined by your goals.

Create a List of YouTube Competitors

The next step should be to determine who you are actually competing with. You can divide your competitors into different categories, such as:

Direct vs. Indirect Competitors

These are the competitors who offer the same products or services as yours. They are in the same industry, selling to the same audience, and targeting the same target audience. On the other hand, indirect competitors sell different products but target the same audience as you. That means your audience overlaps with theirs, and they also impact what the potential customers are watching or expecting.

Aspirational Brands

These refer to the YouTube channels you look up to for inspiration, even though they are in a different space. You look up to them because they are crushing it. You may be drawn to these channels for their creative formats, engaging editing styles, and outstanding storytelling. You are admiring whatever they do as it’s working for them, and you would like it to work for you. Even if these aren’t your direct competitors,  there are some great lessons to learn from them.

Set Your Key Data Points to Track

Conducting a YouTube competitor analysis doesn’t mean you need to track every move your competitors are making. Instead, you want to pick a few data points you can focus on. Some of the key ones include:

Audience Growth Rate and Patterns

You want to pay attention to whether your subscriber growth rate and count are growing. For instance, you might find that your competitors’ subscriber base is growing by 5% each month. This is a clear indication that their channels are growing healthily. You can, therefore, use the number as a benchmark for your own performance.

Engagement Patterns

YouTube rewards channels and videos that keep people on the platform longer. Watch time and views are among the top metrics people track in their competitor analysis. By looking at the engagement metric, you can get insights into how well a channel holds people’s attention. After watching a video, do the viewers click on another video? Once you get the insights, you need to understand how to boost your YouTube watch time.

Remember to monitor engagement data, such as likes, shares, and comments, as these can reveal audience reactions. It’s important to pay attention to the correlations and patterns between engagement and other metrics, such as view counts and growth rates.

Content Approach

The performance of your channel will be heavily influenced by your content choices. While the algorithm and the thumbnail also matter, the content is what matters most. When you find that something is already working for your competitor, you want to find out why and perhaps give it a try.

When conducting a content analysis, you want to check which of their videos are performing better than others. Pay attention to your competitor’s content pillars and whether they are using memes, testimonials, how-tos, case studies, or interviews. You can then compare the performance of different content formats to determine which is driving the highest engagement.

Pay attention to the video format and whether they are using long-form or short-form videos. While long-form videos are good for driving higher watch time, shorts are great for top-of-funnel clicks. Therefore, check the content formats your competitors rely on most and whether they deliver the desired results.

Check Qualitative Insights

When analyzing your competitors on YouTube, don’t just focus on the numbers. Check how they present these numbers, the structure of their content, and how they talk to their audience. The qualitative data will provide insights into why your videos are getting more views and why your channel is growing fast. You can categorize your qualitative insights into different categories, such as:

Content Presentation

This tracks the structure of the top-performing content, such as:

  • Video framing/storytelling methods. Are the videos using storytelling, emotional pull, or jump cuts? Pay attention to how the story unfolds and how they keep the audience hooked.
  • Title and keyword formula. Do they use descriptive, specific titles or ambiguous, clickbait-y ones? Are your competitors using viral hooks? Number of questions? Understanding these patterns will help you understand what brings the clicks.
  • Thumbnails. Check the colors, facial expressions, branding, and text use.

Pay attention to the best-performing videos and see if you can identify any patterns.

SEO Strategy

This involves identifying what makes your competitor’s content more discoverable and searchable. Pay attention to:

  • Descriptive optimization. Check how your competitors write their channel and video descriptions. Are they going heavy on keywords, or are they focusing on context or tone? Check if they are using hashtags, links, and timestamps.
  • Call to action placement. The CTA is usually displayed in different ways, such as at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end. This could be verbal, appearing as an overlay or a pinned comment.

In Conclusion

YouTube competitor analysis can provide important insights into what is working and what isn’t. It will also give you ideas for what to try and areas for content improvement. If you are getting started with YouTube competitor analysis, the steps above can be a good place to start.