How to Run an SEO Competitor Analysis Step by Step

Picture this: you've been publishing content for six months, your site is technically clean, and you're still sitting on page two. Meanwhile, a competitor you know is thinner on expertise is sitting comfortably in position three. That gap isn't random. It's a signal. A proper SEO competitor analysis turns that signal into a roadmap — one that shows you exactly what's working for them, what they're missing, and where you have a real shot at breaking through.

This isn't about copying what the other team does. It's about understanding the playing field well enough to make smarter moves. Let's walk through the process step by step.

Step 1: Identify Your Real SEO Competitors

Here's where most people go wrong right out of the gate. Your SEO competitors are not always your business competitors. The company you lose deals to at the proposal stage might not be ranking for any of the same terms you care about. And some random publisher you've never heard of might be eating your lunch on your most valuable keywords.

Start with your core money terms — the five to ten keywords closest to what you actually sell or do. Plug them into Google manually and note who shows up consistently across the first page. That's your actual competitive set for SEO purposes.

Then use a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz to do it at scale. In Semrush, the Organic Research tool has a "Competitors" tab that spits out a list of domains ranked by keyword overlap with your site. Ahrefs has a similar view under Site Explorer. Pull that list, cross-reference it with your manual Google check, and you'll have a working shortlist of four to six true SEO competitors.

A Quick Tip on Competitor Tiers

Not every competitor deserves equal attention. I usually split them into two groups: direct competitors (same audience, same intent, overlapping product or service) and aspirational competitors (bigger domains with stronger authority that rank for terms you want eventually). Studying both teaches you different things. Direct competitors show you what's beatable now. Aspirational ones show you where the ceiling is and what it takes to get there.

Step 2: Analyze Their Keyword Strategy

Once you have your competitor list, it's time to find out what they actually rank for. You're looking for three things: terms where they rank and you don't, terms where you both rank but they outrank you, and terms neither of you rank for yet that represent a shared opportunity.

In Semrush, run a Keyword Gap analysis. In Ahrefs, use Content Gap. Both tools let you drop in multiple competitor domains and your own, then surface keywords the competitors hold that you're missing. Export that list and filter for keywords with decent volume and a keyword difficulty you can realistically compete on given your current domain authority.

What to Look For Beyond Volume

Volume is a vanity metric if you're not also looking at intent. A keyword with 500 monthly searches that signals purchase intent is often worth more than one with 5,000 searches from people doing casual research. Look at the SERPs for each term. What's the mix of results — blogs, product pages, listicles, comparison pages? That tells you what format Google thinks satisfies the query and what you'd need to produce to compete.

Also flag any branded keywords your competitors rank for that you're being left out of — things like "[competitor name] alternative" or "[competitor name] vs." pages. Those comparison queries convert well and they're winnable.

Step 3: Audit Their Backlink Profile

Backlinks are still one of the heaviest ranking signals Google uses. I've watched sites with mediocre content outrank genuinely better pages simply because they had stronger links pointing to them. Understanding where your competitors' authority comes from is non-negotiable.

Pull their backlink profile in Ahrefs or Semrush. You want to see three things. First, their total referring domain count versus yours — that's the raw authority gap. Second, their highest-quality links by Domain Rating or Domain Authority, so you understand what kind of sites are vouching for them. Third, any patterns in anchor text that reveal how their link equity is distributed across their site.

Finding Link Opportunities You Can Actually Win

Sort their backlinks by referring domain quality and look for sites linking to two or more of your competitors. Those publishers clearly cover your industry and are willing to link out. That's your warm outreach list. A site that's already linked to three competitors is far easier to pitch than a cold contact with no context.

Also look for links coming from resource pages, roundups, and "best of" lists. Those are often evergreen placements that keep sending authority for years. According to Ahrefs' study on link building, the vast majority of pages with backlinks earned them passively — meaning the content itself attracted the link. That's a useful reminder that great content and link building aren't separate strategies.

Step 4: Reverse-Engineer Their On-Page Strategy

Now go read their actual pages. I know that sounds obvious, but most SEOs skip straight to tools and never open the competitor's website with fresh eyes. Spend time on their top-ranking pages. What's the headline structure? How long is the content? Do they lead with a definition, a question, a table, a product feature? What's the page doing to earn the click and hold the reader?

Run their highest-traffic pages through a tool like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to check title tags, H1s, meta descriptions, schema markup, and internal linking patterns. You're not looking to copy — you're looking to understand what the bar is, then figure out how to clear it.

Schema and Structured Data

Check whether your competitors are using structured data that you're not. FAQ schema, HowTo schema, Product schema, Review schema — these can expand a SERP listing visually and improve click-through rates. If competitors are implementing schema you've ignored, that's a quick win. Use Google's Rich Results Test to check what structured data they're getting credit for.

Internal Linking Patterns

Pay attention to how they link internally. Strong SEO sites funnel authority deliberately — pushing link equity to the pages they most want to rank. If a competitor has a cluster of content all pointing to one pillar page, that's telling you what terms they're prioritizing. You can study that architecture without any tool — just follow the internal links manually on their five most important pages.

Step 5: Identify Content Gaps and Opportunities

Content gaps are the spaces where your competitors rank and you don't have a page at all. That's different from ranking below them on the same term — this is a topic they cover that you've simply never addressed. These gaps are often the fastest wins because you're not trying to displace an existing page, you're filling a void.

Run the Content Gap tool in Ahrefs with your domain versus two or three competitors. Filter for keywords in the 100 to 2,000 monthly search range — that's usually where the competition is lower and a strong new page can rank within a reasonable timeframe. Build those into your content calendar.

What They're Missing That You Can Own

Go a level deeper and look for topics your competitors are covering poorly. Not absent — just weak. Shallow content, outdated statistics, no expert voice, no original data. That's where you can produce something genuinely better and give Google a reason to prefer you. The Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines are explicit about rewarding content with demonstrable experience and depth. If their page on a topic is a 600-word overview and you can produce a comprehensive, expert-driven answer, you have a real shot.

Step 6: Assess Their Technical SEO Footprint

You don't need to do a full technical audit on a competitor's site — you don't have access to their server logs or Search Console. But you can look at surface-level signals that tell you whether they've got their technical house in order.

Check their Core Web Vitals using Google's PageSpeed Insights on their top pages. Look at their site structure — how deep are pages from the homepage? Is their blog paginated in a way that buries older content? Do they have a clear XML sitemap? Are their most important pages indexable and crawlable? These are quick checks that might reveal technical advantages you can exploit or at least match.

Site Speed as a Competitive Signal

If their pages load measurably slower than yours, that's a real advantage you should document and protect. If they're faster, that's a gap worth closing. Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor, and even if the effect is modest at the individual-page level, across an entire site the cumulative impact matters — especially in competitive verticals.

Step 7: Build Your Prioritized Action Plan

Data without action is just a report. Once you've run through the analysis, you need to translate findings into a ranked list of moves. I think about it in three buckets.

1. Quick wins — Content gaps on lower-difficulty keywords you can publish fast. Schema you're missing that they have. Internal links you can add today to support priority pages.
2. Medium-term plays — Pages where you rank but they outrank you, where improving content depth and earning a few targeted links could flip the positions within 90 days.
3. Long-game moves — Building the domain authority to compete for high-difficulty terms. Earning links from the same high-quality publishers that vouch for them. Developing original research or data that earns citations naturally.

Prioritize by impact and effort. A keyword that sends you five qualified leads a month matters more than one with higher volume but lower intent. Keep the business goal visible when you're stacking the plan.

What to Copy, What to Beat, What to Ignore

Not everything a competitor does is worth replicating. And yes, this happens more than most agencies want to admit — teams spend energy chasing tactics that are working for a competitor in a completely different context. Here's a simple filter.

• Copy: Their content structure on high-performing pages (format, depth, media type). Their schema markup. Their internal linking logic.
• Beat: Their content quality on topics where their coverage is thin. Their page speed if they're lagging. Their topical authority by going deeper into subtopics they've ignored.
• Ignore: Tactics that are clearly working because of domain age, brand authority, or a backlink profile it would take years to replicate. Compete on what you can actually move in the next six to twelve months.

Where to Start: Your First Week of Competitor Analysis

You don't need to boil the ocean. Here's how to get moving without getting stuck in analysis paralysis.

1. Pick your top five money keywords and Google them manually. Note the domains that appear consistently. That's your starting competitor list.
2. Run a keyword gap analysis against your top two to three SEO competitors. Filter for keywords with realistic difficulty and strong intent. Flag 10 to 20 that match topics you could publish or improve on.
3. Pull the backlink profiles of those competitors. Find two to five sites linking to multiple competitors that haven't linked to you. Add them to a prospecting list.
4. Open the top-ranking pages for your most important keywords and read them. Note what they do well. Note what's missing. That gap is your brief for a better piece of content.
5. Map three quick wins — a schema addition, an internal link cluster, a content gap page — and get them on the calendar within the next two weeks.

If you're running this process regularly for clients or your own site, having competitor analysis tools that pull rankings, keyword overlap, and visibility data in one place speeds the process up considerably. Aergos builds that kind of side-by-side competitor tracking into its reporting suite, so it's worth a look if you want the analysis to become a repeatable workflow rather than a one-time project.

The goal of an SEO competitor analysis isn't to become your competitors. It's to understand the field well enough to outmaneuver them. Run this process once and you'll have a cleaner strategy than most sites ever build. Run it quarterly and you'll stay ahead of the shifts before they cost you rankings.