What is SEO competitor analysis?
SEO competitor analysis is the process of examining websites competing for visibility in relevant search results, comparing how they serve your audience’s needs, and using those findings to identify opportunities for your own website.
An analysis may examine competitors’ ranking keywords, pages, backlinks, website structure, and visibility in AI-generated search experiences.
Rather than replicating another website’s strategy, the goal is to understand the search landscape well enough to make informed decisions about your own.
Business competitors vs. SEO competitors
Your business competitors and your organic search competitors aren’t necessarily the same.
A business competitor offers similar products or services to a similar audience. An SEO competitor is a website competing for visibility in searches relevant to your audience, whether or not it sells anything similar.
Consider an online retailer selling home-office furniture.
Other furniture retailers are direct business competitors. But when someone searches for advice about choosing a desk for a small room, the results may also include interior-design publications, manufacturers, specialist blogs, and home-improvement websites.
Those websites compete for the searcher’s attention even though they serve completely different commercial purposes.
Your SEO competitors can also change by topic. A marketplace competing with your product collections may be relevant for product searches but less so for educational searches.
SEO competitor analysis vs. keyword research
Keyword research helps you understand what people search for, the language they use, how demand is distributed across related queries, and what those searches reveal about their underlying needs.
Competitor analysis shows who currently appears for those searches, which pages are visible, what those pages provide, and how your own search presence compares.
For example, keyword research might reveal searches such as small desk for home office, how to choose a desk for a small room, and what size desk do I need? It can also show that some queries are searched more often than others and may reflect different needs or stages of the same decision.
Competitor analysis then adds another layer: which websites appear for those searches, whether they serve the need with product pages, buying guides, or practical planning resources, and where your own website is stronger, weaker, or absent.
The two activities support each other. Keyword research helps you understand the demand and how people express it, while competitor analysis helps you understand how that demand is currently being served.
How to conduct an SEO competitor analysis in 5 steps
A useful competitor analysis answers five questions:
- Find your search competitors. Who competes for the searches that matter to your business?
- Compare keyword visibility. Where do relevant competitors have visibility that your website doesn’t?
- Understand competing pages. What do the ranking pages provide, and which search needs do they serve?
- Evaluate your opportunities. What does that evidence reveal about your own website?
- Turn your findings into action. What should you do first, and how will you measure whether it worked?
The five-step process turns each relevant search need into a simple decision chain:
Search need → Competitive evidence → Diagnosis → Decision → Intended outcome
The steps describe the research process. The decision chain describes what that research should produce.
Competitive data is still only evidence. Your job is to interpret it to make strategic decisions about your own website.
SEO competitor analysis in practice: Bronze & Birch
Brittney leads marketing at Bronze & Birch, an online retailer selling desks and home-office furniture.
She wants to attract more customers furnishing small home offices. Bronze & Birch's website contains product collections, individual product pages, and a buying guide about choosing a desk for a small room.
Brittney knows several competing furniture retailers, but she doesn’t yet know which websites actually compete for the searches her prospective customers use.
Before planning more content, she decides to investigate the competitive search landscape.
We’ll follow Brittney through the five steps as she identifies Bronze & Birch’s search competitors, compares keyword visibility, examines competing resources, evaluates the opportunities, and decides what the website should do next.
Brittney and Bronze & Birch are fictional. All business details, competitor observations, ranking positions, research findings, and decisions in this example are illustrative.
Step 1: Find your search competitors
Before comparing competitors’ keywords or backlinks, establish which websites are relevant to your investigation.
The objective isn’t to identify every website operating in your industry. It’s to find the websites competing for searches that matter to your audience and business.
Start with the searches relevant to your business
Choose a focused area you want to investigate.
That might be an important product or service category, an established content topic, or a group of questions your prospective customers frequently ask.
Useful starting points include:
- existing keyword research
- customer questions
- important products or services
- queries already bringing people to your website
If your website already has organic visibility, Google Search Console can help you identify the queries for which your pages appear. [1] If you’re entering a new topic, customer research and manual search exploration may be more useful.
You don’t need a complete keyword universe to begin. Select enough representative searches to understand the area you’re investigating.
Examine the current search results
Search your representative queries and record which websites and pages appear.
For example:
| Search | Website | Type of resource |
|---|
| small desk for home office | Retailer A | Product collection |
| small desk for home office | Retailer B | Category page |
| small desk for home office | Furniture publication | Buying guide |
| how to choose a desk for a small room | Retailer A | Buying guide |
| how to choose a desk for a small room | Home-office publication | Buying guide |
| what size desk do I need? | Workspace resource | Reference guide |
| what size desk do I need? | Planning website | Calculator or tool |
Look for websites that appear repeatedly across relevant searches, but don’t ignore specialist resources that appear for one particularly important need.
A website may be a significant competitor for one part of your topic without competing across the entire subject.
Search results can vary by location, device, and time. Use conditions that reasonably reflect your intended market and keep them consistent when making comparisons.
Manual research is a useful starting point, but an SEO tool can help identify competitors across a larger keyword set. Common options include Semrush, Ahrefs, and Similarweb.
Semrush’s Organic Rankings Competitors report, for example, identifies domains that rank for organic keywords in common with the website being analyzed. [2]
A practical workflow is to:
- Enter your website into an organic competitor research tool.
- Choose the relevant country or database.
- Review the domains with overlapping keyword visibility.
- Examine the shared keywords and associated pages.
- Keep the websites that compete for searches relevant to your audience.
If your site has little existing visibility, an overlap report may not reveal the full competitive landscape. In that case, start with competitors identified manually and use those domains to discover additional websites competing for similar searches.
While these tools help you find potential competitors, you still need to decide which ones are actually relevant to your analysis.
Example: Bronze & Birch identifies its search competitors
Brittney begins with three groups of searches:
| Search theme | What the customer may need |
|---|
| small desk for home office | Find and compare suitable products. |
| how to choose a desk for a small room | Understand which desk characteristics matter. |
| what size desk do I need? | Determine suitable dimensions and clearance. |
She initially expects to find mainly furniture retailers. Instead, her research identifies several types of competitors. Retailers appear for product searches, while specialist publications and workspace-planning resources appear for selection and measurement questions.
Brittney selects competitors according to the search needs they serve rather than treating every known furniture retailer as equally relevant.
Step 1 output: A focused set of search competitors and a clear reason for including each one.
Step 2: Compare keyword visibility
Once you’ve identified relevant competitors, the next step is to understand what searches they appear for and which pages contribute to their visibility.
A competitor may rank for thousands of keywords across product pages, guides, tutorials, and other resources. Some of those searches may be directly relevant to your audience; others may have little connection to your business.
Comparing keywords helps you see where your website and its competitors already have visibility, where competitors appear more prominently, and which relevant searches your website may be missing.
But the keywords alone tell only part of the story. You also need to identify the pages behind those rankings and group related queries by the needs they represent. Several keywords may lead to the same competing page and reflect the same underlying task.
The goal is to move from a large list of keyword differences to a focused set of search needs worth investigating.
How to find a competitor’s keywords
Paid SEO research tools make competitor keyword research much faster because they have already collected and organized large amounts of search-result data.
Semrush’s Organic Rankings Positions report, for example, shows the keywords for which a domain has recorded rankings, its position for each query, the ranking URL, and estimates of search demand. [3]
You can then filter thousands of results by topic, position, search volume, keyword, or URL to focus on the part of the competitor’s visibility that matters to your analysis.
A typical process is:
- Enter the competitor’s domain
- Select the relevant country and, where useful, device
- Open its organic keyword report
- Filter toward the search territory or topic you’re investigating
- Review the keywords, positions, ranking URLs, and available demand estimates
Pay particular attention to the ranking URL.
You may find that dozens of related searches are served by the same page. That helps you distinguish separate opportunities from multiple keyword variations around the same underlying need.
You can also analyze an individual competitor URL instead of the entire domain. This is useful when a specific guide, category page, or tool keeps appearing and you want to understand the broader set of searches that resource serves.
Yes. You won’t get the same breadth of data, but you can still conduct a useful analysis manually.
Start with your representative searches and record the pages that appear. Then inspect those pages for the terminology, questions, and related topics they cover, and use those findings to identify additional searches worth checking.
As you repeat the process, patterns begin to emerge: the same websites may appear across related queries, a single page may serve several variations of the same need, or different page types may appear as the search becomes more specific.
For your own website, Google Search Console can show which queries already generate impressions and clicks, giving you a measured view of your existing visibility to compare with what you observe in the search results. [1]
Manual research is slower and less comprehensive than using a commercial keyword database, but it can still reveal the central competitive picture: which searches matter, who appears for them, which pages contribute to that visibility, and where your own site may be weaker or absent.
Identify shared, missing, and weaker visibility
Once you have competitor keyword data, compare it with your own.
Keyword-gap tools make this faster by lining up the recorded rankings of several websites or URLs in one report. Instead of comparing exports manually, you can quickly see where visibility overlaps, where competitors rank and your site does not, and where one website appears more prominently than another.
Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool, for example, compares the keyword profiles of the websites or URLs you enter and groups the differences into categories such as shared, missing, weak, strong, untapped, and unique keywords. [4]
These labels are specific to Semrush rather than universal Google classifications, but the underlying comparison is still useful: where do your competitors have relevant search visibility that differs from your own?
A “missing” keyword, however, doesn't necessarily mean that your site is missing a page. It means the tool has not recorded a qualifying ranking for your site within that comparison.
Your website may already address the need on an existing page, several related keywords may belong to the same underlying need, or the search may not be relevant to your business at all.
The keyword gap gives you a place to investigate. The next step is working out what that difference actually means for your website.
Group keywords by search need
Once you've identified meaningful keyword differences, group related queries by the underlying needs they represent.
Several keywords may express the same need in different ways. For example, searches about choosing a desk for a small room may use different wording while still reflecting the same underlying decision. Other queries that look similar may represent distinct needs and require different resources.
This matters because keyword reports can make an opportunity look larger or more fragmented than it really is. A competitor may rank for dozens of closely related phrases through a single page. At the same time, two similar-looking queries may lead to different kinds of resources because the searcher is trying to accomplish something different.
Grouping keywords by search need gives you a more useful unit of analysis. Instead of deciding what to do about every individual keyword, you can investigate how each underlying need is currently being served and whether it represents a meaningful opportunity for your website.
Identify the gaps worth investigating
You don't need to investigate every difference with the same depth. Narrow the list by considering:
- Audience and business relevance: Does the search need relate to people you want to reach and something your organization can meaningfully provide?
- Search demand: Is there enough evidence that people are looking for help with this need?
- Existing visibility: Does your website already appear for related searches, or is competitor visibility substantially different?
- Competitive evidence: Does the pattern appear across several relevant queries or competing pages, or is it based on an isolated result?
- The search need itself: Does it appear distinct enough from the other needs already identified to warrant separate investigation?
Search volume, keyword difficulty, and other SEO metrics can add context, but they should be read alongside these factors rather than used as automatic filters.
At this stage, you are not deciding what to create or change. You are narrowing a large set of keyword differences into a smaller group of search needs worth examining more closely.
Understand competitor traffic estimates
Third-party SEO platforms also estimate how much organic traffic competing websites or pages receive.
These estimates can help you compare pages and identify resources worth investigating, but they aren't measured traffic.
Ahrefs explains that its Organic Traffic metric is estimated using recorded rankings, search volume, and estimated click-through rates, and notes that the figure cannot show exactly how much organic traffic a website receives. [5]
Other platforms use their own datasets and methodologies.
Treat estimated traffic as directional evidence. A high estimate may make a competing page worth a closer look, but it can't tell you exactly how many people visit, how valuable those visitors are, or how much business the page generates.
Example: Bronze & Birch’s keyword-gap report
Brittney compares Bronze & Birch’s visibility with the relevant competitors in her analysis.
A simplified extract from her research looks like this:
| Keyword | Competing page’s rank | Bronze & Birch’s rank |
|---|
| best desk for small home office | 3 | 12 |
| how to choose a desk for a small room | 5 | 18 |
| desk dimensions for small rooms | 4 | — |
| how much space do I need for a desk | 6 | — |
| standing desk converter | 2 | — |
A dash means no Bronze & Birch ranking was recorded within this example’s comparison scope. All rankings are illustrative.
Viewed individually, the five keywords appear to represent five separate differences in visibility. Brittney groups them by what the customer appears to be trying to accomplish:
| Search need | Related keywords |
|---|
| Choose a desk for a small room | best desk for small home office; how to choose a desk for a small room |
| Plan desk dimensions and workspace requirements | desk dimensions for small rooms; how much space do I need for a desk |
| Find a standing-desk converter | standing desk converter |
The five keyword differences now represent three broader search needs.
For choosing a desk for a small room, Bronze & Birch already has visibility, but competing pages rank more prominently. That suggests an existing area worth investigating further.
For planning desk dimensions and workspace requirements, competing pages appear while Bronze & Birch has no recorded visibility. That may indicate a distinct need the website is not currently serving well.
The standing-desk converter search is different. Bronze & Birch does not sell standing-desk converters, so Brittney flags the gap as potentially irrelevant rather than treating it as an automatic opportunity.
Step 3: Understand the competing pages
Keyword data shows where visibility differs. The pages behind those rankings help you understand what searchers are actually being offered.
For this step, put your own website aside for a moment. The goal is to understand the search landscape as it exists before deciding what any of it means for you.
Look at the pages behind the keywords
For each search need you carried forward, inspect the ranking pages and identify the kinds of resources appearing.
| Page type | What it may help someone do |
|---|
| Product page | Evaluate or purchase a specific product. |
| Category page | Browse and compare a group of products. |
| Buying guide | Understand selection criteria and choose between options. |
| Comparison page | Evaluate alternatives against relevant criteria. |
| Tutorial | Complete a task or solve a problem. |
| Calculator or tool | Produce an answer using the user’s inputs. |
| Reference resource | Find specific information or understand a subject. |
These are descriptive categories, not ranking rules.
What matters is the pattern across the results.
A search dominated by product and category pages may suggest that people are primarily trying to browse or buy. A results page filled with guides and tutorials points toward a need for explanation or instruction. A mix of page types can indicate that the search supports more than one interpretation.
The useful question is: What does the mix of ranking page types suggest about what the searcher is trying to accomplish?
Examine what the competing pages provide
Page type tells you something about the task a searcher may be trying to complete. Now look more closely at how the ranking pages help them complete it.
Go beyond titles, headings, and word count. Consider:
- which questions the page answers
- which decisions or tasks it helps someone complete
- what explanations, examples, comparisons, calculations, or tools it provides
- how clearly the important information is presented
- what the reader can naturally do next
The goal is to understand the substance of the existing results. What information or functionality keeps appearing? Where do pages take different approaches? What seems important to serving the search need well?
Google’s people-first content guidance recommends considering whether content provides original information or analysis, sufficiently covers the subject, and offers substantial value compared with other search results. [6] Those are useful questions when examining what searchers already have available.
Keep observations separate from explanations, though. A competing page may be longer, include a comparison table, or have a stronger backlink profile. You can record those differences, but they do not tell you on their own why the page ranks where it does.
Investigate other competitive signals when relevant
The ranking pages themselves may tell you most of what you need to know. In some cases, though, other signals can add useful context.
| Signal | What to investigate | When it may help |
|---|
| Backlinks | Which websites link to competing resources, and why | When references from other sites appear to be an important part of the competitive landscape |
| Site structure | How related resources are organized and connected | When competitors serve a broader topic through several linked pages |
| Technical conditions | Observable differences in how pages are made accessible, rendered, or structured | When content alone does not explain meaningful differences between competing resources |
| AI-search visibility | Which resources appear as linked sources in AI-generated search results | When AI-search visibility matters for the search territory you are analyzing |
These signals should support the analysis, not become separate audits by default.
Backlink gaps: A backlink-gap analysis looks for websites or pages that link to competing resources but not to yours.
Ahrefs’ Link Intersect tool, for example, can surface referring domains or pages that link to competitors but not to the website or URL being analyzed. [7]
The useful question is not simply how many links a competitor has. Look at who is linking and why. A resource may attract references because it includes original research, a useful tool, a strong data point, or a particularly clear explanation.
That context is more useful than treating the difference as a backlink quota to match.
Site structure: A site-structure review looks at how competing resources are organized and connected across the website.
A buying guide may connect naturally to product collections. A broad guide may lead to more focused tutorials. A reference page may sit within a larger group of related resources.
Google’s SEO Starter Guide emphasizes clear site organization and useful links that help people and search engines discover related content. [8]
The useful observation is often the relationship between the pages, not the competitor’s exact navigation or number of internal links.
Technical conditions: A technical review looks for observable differences in how competing pages are structured, rendered, made accessible, or otherwise supported technically.
Record those differences when they appear relevant, but avoid assuming that any one technical characteristic explains a ranking difference.
The goal is to recognize when the competitive picture may involve more than content alone.
AI-search visibility: An AI-search visibility review looks at which competing resources appear as linked sources in AI-generated search experiences.
Google states that its established SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode and that there are no additional technical requirements or special optimizations required for eligibility. [9]
Treat those appearances as another observation about the search landscape. They can show which resources are being surfaced, but not why a particular source was selected.
Example: Bronze & Birch examines the competing pages
Brittney now examines the pages appearing for each of the three search needs she identified.
1. Choosing a desk for a small room
The competing buying guides do more than recommend products. They help readers work through the practical considerations involved in choosing a desk for a limited space.
| What the searcher needs | What competing guides provide |
|---|
| Understand desk dimensions | Explain width, depth, and usable workspace in practical terms. |
| Account for the room | Discuss available floor space, chair clearance, and movement around the desk. |
| Choose an appropriate desk | Connect those constraints to suitable desk sizes and configurations. |
Brittney records the pattern: the ranking guides consistently help readers connect the dimensions of the room with the dimensions and configuration of the desk.
She does not yet compare this with Bronze & Birch’s own guide. She will do that in the next step.
2. Planning desk dimensions and workspace requirements
The pages ranking for the second search need are more focused on measurement and planning.
They explain how to measure the available space, account for clearance, and work out what desk dimensions the room can accommodate.
That suggests a more specific task than simply choosing between desk styles or products. The searcher is trying to establish what will fit before deciding what to buy.
Again, Brittney records the distinction without yet deciding whether Bronze & Birch needs a separate resource.
3. Finding a standing-desk converter
The pages appearing for standing-desk converter searches are primarily commercial resources: product pages, category pages, and buying guides designed to help shoppers compare and purchase that type of product.
Brittney now understands what the search need represents and how competing pages serve it. Whether that need is relevant to Bronze & Birch is a separate question for the next step.
Step 3 output: A clear picture of the search needs being served, the types of resources appearing, and the competitive signals worth carrying into your own-site evaluation.
Step 4: Evaluate your opportunities
You now understand what competitors rank for, the needs behind those searches, and what the competing pages provide.
Now bring your own website back into the picture. The fundamental question in this step is: What does our website actually need?
For each search need you carried forward, compare the competitive evidence with what you already have. You may find a missing resource, an existing page that could serve the need better, a discoverability problem, or no meaningful gap at all.
Check your existing coverage
For each relevant search need, start by identifying whether your website already has a resource intended to serve it.
If a suitable page exists, evaluate it using the same diagnostic lens you would use for content optimization:
| Area | Question |
|---|
| Intent | Is this the right page for what people actually need? |
| Coverage | Does it answer the important questions sufficiently? |
| Quality | Is the information accurate, useful, credible, and specific? |
| Usability | Can people find and understand what they need? |
| Search signals | Can search systems clearly understand the page and its purpose? |
| Site relationships | Is the page connected appropriately, or competing with another resource? |
| Freshness | Has the information, product, market, or search environment changed? |
| Next step | Can the reader do what naturally comes next? |
Not every page will have a problem in every area. The point is to establish what, if anything, is weak about the existing resource before deciding how to respond to the competitive evidence.
If no suitable resource exists, ask whether an existing page could reasonably serve the need or whether the task is distinct enough to deserve its own resource.
Bring in the competitive evidence where it matters. Competing pages may reveal missing information, useful page relationships, relevant backlinks, technical differences, or a different interpretation of the search need. Compare those observations with your own website rather than treating them as instructions to follow.
For a deeper page-level diagnosis and the process for improving an existing resource, see our Content Optimization guide.
Turn the evidence into a diagnosis
Once you understand your existing coverage, work out what the competitive difference actually means for your website.
| Competitive evidence | What you find on your website | Diagnosis |
|---|
| Competitors serve a relevant search need | No suitable resource adequately serves it | Possible missing-resource opportunity |
| Competing pages answer important questions | Your existing page serves the same need but leaves important gaps | Existing-content weakness |
| Results consistently serve a different task | Your page is designed for another purpose | Mismatch between the page and the search need |
| Competitors connect related resources effectively | Relevant content exists but is difficult to discover or poorly connected | Site-relationship or discoverability problem |
| Content differences alone do not explain the visibility gap | Your page has indexing, accessibility, or unclear search-signal issues | Search or technical problem |
| The results consistently treat the search need as one coherent task | Several of your pages substantially overlap around that same task | Overlapping page roles |
| Competitor visibility concerns an unrelated need | The search falls outside your audience or offering | No meaningful opportunity |
| Competitors have stronger visibility | Your resource already serves the need well | Further investigation or monitoring may be enough |
Not every diagnosis will be obvious on the first pass. If the evidence does not explain the difference well enough, record the uncertainty and investigate further rather than forcing a conclusion.
By this point, you should be able to describe the situation plainly. For example:
- The right page exists, but an important part of the searcher’s task is missing
- This is a distinct need that none of our existing resources serves well
- The information exists, but people and search engines may struggle to discover how the resources fit together
- Several of our pages are trying to do essentially the same job
- The competitor is visible for something that is not relevant to our business
- Our page already serves the need well, and the evidence does not yet justify changing it
You are establishing what needs attention, not yet deciding which opportunities should be prioritized.
Identify what you can contribute
For the opportunities that appear genuine, ask what your organization can contribute that would help someone complete the task better.
That might come from:
- relevant expertise
- original information or research
- clearer explanations
- practical examples
- useful comparisons or decision criteria
- a calculator, worksheet, or other useful functionality
- a clearer path to the next appropriate step
The form should follow the need.
Someone trying to understand a concept may need a clear explanation. Someone making a choice may benefit from practical criteria and comparisons. Someone trying to work something out may be better served by a calculator, worksheet, or worked example.
The goal is to determine how your website could serve the need well using knowledge, evidence, or capabilities your organization can genuinely provide.
You don't need to invent a novel format simply to look different from competitors. A clearer, more useful answer may be the strongest contribution.
Example: Brittney evaluates Bronze & Birch’s website
Brittney now brings Bronze & Birch back into the analysis and compares its existing resources with the competitive evidence she has gathered.
The three search needs lead to three different diagnoses.
Finding A: The right page exists, but the answer is incomplete
Bronze & Birch already has a guide about choosing a desk for a small room, so Brittney compares it with the needs she observed in the competing guides.
| What customers need | What competing guides provide | What Bronze & Birch provides |
|---|
| Understand desk dimensions | Explain what width, depth, and workspace mean in practice | Lists dimensions with limited explanation |
| Evaluate available space | Discuss room layout, chair clearance, and movement around the desk | Offers little space-planning guidance |
| Choose a suitable desk | Connect practical constraints to suitable desk sizes and configurations | Focuses mainly on styles and general recommendations |
Bronze & Birch’s guide serves the right basic purpose. The problem is coverage: it does not fully help someone use their room dimensions to choose a suitable desk.
Diagnosis: existing-content weakness.
Finding B: A distinct planning need is not adequately served
The second search need is more specific.
Someone asking what size desk do I need? is trying to work out what their space can accommodate before choosing a particular desk.
Brittney checks Bronze & Birch’s existing resources:
- product pages provide individual product dimensions;
- the buying guide offers general selection advice;
- neither explains how to measure the available space, account for clearance, and determine suitable desk dimensions.
The competitive research suggests that this is a distinct task, and Bronze & Birch does not currently have a resource that serves it well.
Diagnosis: possible missing-resource opportunity.
Brittney has not yet decided that Bronze & Birch should create a new page. That decision comes in the next step, when she weighs the opportunity against its relevance, value, feasibility, and effort.
Finding C: The apparent gap is not relevant to Bronze & Birch
The keyword-gap report also showed competitor visibility for standing desk converter.
Brittney checks the business context: Bronze & Birch does not sell standing-desk converters, and the search need does not align with Bronze & Birch’s current offering or the market Brittney is trying to grow.
There is a difference in search visibility, but no meaningful problem for Bronze & Birch to solve.
Diagnosis: no relevant opportunity.
Brittney began with three competitive differences. She leaves with three much more useful conclusions:
- An existing resource has an identifiable weakness.
- A distinct search need may not be adequately served.
- One apparent gap does not matter to the business.
Step 4 output: A clear diagnosis of what, if anything, your website needs before you decide which opportunities deserve investment.
Step 5: Turn your findings into action
You now know what, if anything, your website needs. The next decision is which opportunities deserve investment, what to do about them, and how you will know whether the work helped.
This is where the analysis becomes a plan.
Prioritize the opportunities
Evaluate each diagnosis against six questions:
| Consideration | Question |
|---|
| Audience relevance | Does this address a meaningful need for the people we want to reach? |
| Business contribution | How could serving that need support our objective? |
| Strength of evidence | How confident are we in the diagnosis? |
| Existing coverage | Can we build on something useful that already exists? |
| Competitive feasibility | Do we have a credible path to becoming useful and competitive for this search need? |
| Value and effort | Is the likely contribution worth the work required? |
These are not a universal scoring formula. A high-volume search may have little strategic value. A smaller opportunity may matter much more if it reflects an important customer need, supports the business, and gives your website a realistic chance to contribute something useful.
The strongest opportunities usually make sense across several of these dimensions rather than winning on a single metric.
Consider how realistic the opportunity is
Relevance alone does not make every search equally worth pursuing.
A newer or less established website may be competing with domains that have much stronger search visibility, broader topical coverage, and stronger backlink profiles. That does not make the opportunity impossible, but it changes the investment required and may affect its near-term priority.
Look at the competitive landscape you have already examined and ask whether your website has a credible path to becoming meaningfully useful and competitive.
Sometimes that path is direct. In other cases, a narrower need, a less contested part of the topic, or an area where your organization has distinctive expertise may be a better place to start.
Competitive strength should shape the decision without becoming an automatic reason to abandon a relevant opportunity.
Choose the appropriate action
Once you know which diagnoses deserve attention, choose the response that fits the problem.
| Decision | When it may fit |
|---|
| Create | A relevant, distinct need is not adequately served by an existing resource |
| Keep | The existing resource already serves its job and the evidence does not justify changing it |
| Update | Important information has become stale or inaccurate |
| Expand | The right resource exists, but an important question or part of the need is unanswered |
| Simplify | The answer exists but is buried, confusing, or harder to use than necessary |
| Reposition | The page is serving the wrong need or trying to do the wrong job |
| Consolidate | Multiple resources substantially serve the same need |
| Remove | A resource no longer serves a useful purpose and cannot reasonably be improved or consolidated |
| Investigate further | The evidence does not yet support a confident diagnosis or intervention |
| Do not pursue | The competitive finding falls outside your relevant audience, offering, or objectives |
The intervention should follow the diagnosis.
An incomplete guide may need expanding. A genuinely distinct need may justify a new resource. A technical problem needs a technical fix. An irrelevant keyword gap may need nothing at all.
Turn the decisions into a work plan
For each opportunity you decide to pursue, record the chain that led to it:
Search need → Competitive evidence → Diagnosis → Decision → Intended outcome
Then add the practical details needed to carry out the work:
- what will change
- which page or resource is affected
- why the action deserves priority
- what outcome the work is intended to support
- how you will evaluate the result
This keeps the plan connected to the evidence that produced it.
A short report with a handful of justified decisions is more useful than a spreadsheet containing hundreds of competitor metrics with no clear next step.
Establish the baseline and measure the result
Before implementing the work, record what is happening now.
The baseline should reflect the diagnosis and intended outcome. Then use the same lens when you evaluate the result.
| Example change | What to evaluate |
|---|
| Expand an existing guide | Relevant search visibility, use of the improved information, and appropriate next actions |
| Create a new resource | Visibility for the intended search need, use of the resource, and relevant next steps |
| Strengthen site relationships | Discovery and movement between the intended resources |
| Fix a technical problem | Whether the issue was resolved and how the affected resource subsequently performs |
| Consolidate overlapping resources | Whether the intended destination now serves the need more clearly and coherently |
Search Console and Google Analytics answer different parts of this measurement problem.
Google Search Console shows how your website performs in Google Search, including the queries that surface your pages, impressions, and clicks. Google Analytics helps you understand what people do after arriving on your website, such as navigating between pages and completing important actions.
The two tools measure different parts of the user journey, so their figures should not be expected to match exactly. [10]
And keep the measurement connected to the original diagnosis. A content improvement should not be judged only by whether total traffic rises. If the goal was to answer an important question better, look at visibility for that need, how people use the improved information, and whether they reach the intended next step.
Revisit the analysis when something meaningful changes
You do not need to repeat a full competitor analysis every time a ranking moves.
Revisit important areas when:
- search results change substantially
- competitors introduce meaningful new resources
- audience needs change
- your own performance changes enough to challenge an earlier assumption
- a previously unrealistic opportunity becomes more achievable.
The purpose of ongoing analysis is to keep your decisions informed, not to create work every time a competitor changes something.
Example: Brittney turns the findings into action
Brittney started with five keyword differences across Bronze & Birch and its search competitors. By grouping the keywords by search need, examining the competing pages, and evaluating Bronze & Birch’s existing resources, she narrowed those differences to three distinct findings.
She can now connect each finding to a decision.
| Search need | Competitive evidence | Diagnosis | Decision and rationale | Intended outcome |
|---|
| Choose a desk for a small room | Competing guides explain how to use room dimensions, clearance requirements, and practical constraints to choose a suitable desk. | Bronze & Birch has a guide serving the right need, but its practical selection guidance is incomplete. | Expand the existing guide. Add the missing guidance to the resource customers already use for desk selection. | Help customers make informed choices and find suitable products. |
| Determine desk dimensions and workspace requirements | Competing resources provide focused guidance on measuring available space and determining suitable desk dimensions. | Bronze & Birch lists product dimensions but does not adequately help customers work out what their own space can accommodate. | Create a focused planning resource. Address the distinct measurement task before customers move on to selecting a desk. | Help customers determine what fits their space and identify appropriate products. |
| Find a standing-desk converter | A competitor ranks for searches related to standing-desk converters. | Bronze & Birch does not sell this product category, and the search falls outside its current offering. | Do not pursue the gap. It does not represent a relevant opportunity for Bronze & Birch. | Keep resources focused on the customers and search needs Bronze & Birch intends to serve. |
All findings and decisions are illustrative.
Brittney now has two justified projects: expanding Bronze & Birch’s existing buying guide and creating a resource for the distinct space-planning need. She also has a clear reason to leave the standing-desk converter searches outside the plan.
The original keyword report helped her identify where to look. The completed analysis gives her something more useful: a focused set of decisions grounded in what customers need, what competitors provide, and what Bronze & Birch can contribute.
Step 5 output: A prioritized set of decisions, a clear work plan for the opportunities you choose to pursue, and a baseline for evaluating what happens next.
Can SEO competitor analysis be automated?
Yes, and how much you automate depends on the tools you use.
Traditional SEO tools can automate much of the research involved in competitor analysis. They can identify competing domains, collect ranking keywords, compare keyword visibility, analyze backlinks, and surface the pages appearing across relevant searches.
Other platforms go further by combining that research with strategic analysis. They may evaluate competitive evidence against your existing website, identify and prioritize opportunities, recommend what should happen next, and turn those decisions into a work plan.
At the more automated end, some systems can carry that process through to execution and measurement, reducing much of the manual work between discovering an opportunity and acting on it.
The level of automation may change, but the underlying logic should not:
Search need → Competitive evidence → Diagnosis → Decision → Intended outcome
Whether you work through those steps yourself or use software to assist with some or all of them, the result should still be grounded in your audience, website, objectives, and competitive reality.
Your SEO competitor analysis template
Use the completed Bronze & Birch report as a model for your own analysis. Start with a focused search territory and organize your findings around the search needs worth investigating.
A document or spreadsheet is sufficient. What matters is that someone reviewing the report can understand what you found, what it means for your website, and what you decided to do.
Define the scope
Start by recording the context for your investigation:
- Search territory: The topic, product, service, or audience need you’re investigating.
- Market: The relevant country, language, device, and other search conditions.
- Competitors: The websites you selected for comparison and why they are relevant.
- Date of analysis: When you collected the competitive evidence.
This provides context for interpreting your findings and revisiting them later.
Record your findings and decisions
For each meaningful search need, document:
- Search need and representative keywords: What is the searcher trying to accomplish, and which queries express that need?
- Competitive evidence: Which competing pages appear, what do they provide, and where does their visibility differ from yours?
- Existing coverage: How does your website currently serve the need, if at all?
- Diagnosis: What, if anything, needs attention?
- Decision and rationale: What have you decided to do, and why?
- Priority: How important is this opportunity relative to the other work you could pursue?
- Intended outcome: What should improve for your audience or business?
- Success measures: What baseline and subsequent results will help you evaluate the work?
Keep the relevant competitor URLs and supporting data with each finding so you can trace decisions back to their evidence.
Group related keywords under the same search need where appropriate, and include findings that justify no action. Those decisions are part of the analysis too.
Before you finalize your report
Use this checklist to make sure the report is complete:
Your finished report should provide a clear record of the opportunities you identified, the work you chose to pursue, and the reasoning behind those choices. If you can't explain how the evidence supports a decision, investigate further before adding it to your plan.
Common SEO competitor analysis mistakes
Comparing only business competitors
Your direct commercial rivals may not be the websites competing for your audience’s searches.
Include publishers, marketplaces, and specialist resources when they appear for relevant search needs.
Turning keyword gaps into a page list
Several missing keywords may represent the same underlying need.
Group related queries before deciding whether to create a new resource, improve an existing one, or leave your content unchanged.
Copying competing pages
A competing page can show you how a search need is currently being served, but its headings, length, structure, and examples are not a blueprint for your own content.
Focus on what would help your audience accomplish the task.
Treating estimates as measurements
Third-party traffic estimates and proprietary SEO metrics can help you identify patterns and opportunities. They do not reveal a competitor’s actual traffic, conversions, or business results.
Use them as directional evidence.
Assuming visible characteristics explain rankings
A competing page may have more backlinks, more content, or a different format.
Those differences are worth investigating, but they do not establish why the page ranks where it does.
Ignoring your existing website
Before planning new content, check whether your website already has a resource that serves the need.
The appropriate response may be to improve an existing page, clarify its purpose, strengthen its connections to related content, or address a technical problem.
Frequently asked questions
How do you find your SEO competitors?
Start with searches relevant to your audience, products, services, or content topics. Identify the websites that repeatedly appear, then use an organic competitor research tool to discover additional domains with overlapping keyword visibility.
Include websites that compete for relevant search needs, even if they aren't direct business competitors.
How can you see which keywords competitors rank for?
Enter a competitor’s domain or individual URL into an organic keyword research tool. You can typically review its recorded ranking keywords, positions, ranking pages, and estimated search demand.
You can also investigate manually by searching representative queries and recording the competitor pages that appear.
Yes. You can conduct a focused analysis using search results, competitor pages, and your own Search Console data.
Paid tools make large-scale keyword, backlink, and historical comparisons faster and more comprehensive, but you can still identify relevant competitors, investigate their pages, and evaluate opportunities without them.
What is a keyword gap?
A keyword gap is a difference between the recorded search visibility of your website and competing websites.
For example, a competitor may rank for a relevant query that your website doesn't appear for, or rank more prominently for a search where both websites have visibility.
The significance of that difference depends on the search need and what your website already provides.
What is a backlink gap?
A backlink gap identifies websites or pages that link to competing resources but not to yours.
Analyzing those links can reveal relevant publications, reference opportunities, and reasons why other websites find competing resources useful.
How many SEO competitors should you analyze?
There is no universal number. Start with a manageable set of websites that compete for the searches you're investigating.
Include enough competitors to understand the relevant search landscape, and expand the comparison when additional websites offer meaningful evidence.
How often should you conduct SEO competitor analysis?
Review important competitive areas when search results, audience needs, competing resources, or your own performance change meaningfully.
You can also establish a regular review schedule for important search territories. The appropriate frequency depends on your market and the scope of your search program.
What should an SEO competitor analysis report include?
A useful report should connect each search need to its representative keywords, relevant competitors, competitive evidence, your existing website coverage, diagnosis, decision, and intended outcome.
Include the rationale behind each decision, its priority where appropriate, and the measures you'll use to evaluate the results.
Google Search and Search Console can help you investigate current search results and your own search performance. Platforms such as Semrush and Ahrefs can support competitor discovery, keyword comparisons, ranking research, and backlink analysis.
Some platforms also combine competitive research with strategic analysis, prioritization, planning, and execution. Google Analytics can help you evaluate what visitors do after arriving on your website.
The right tools depend on how much of the process you want to conduct yourself and how much you want software to handle.
Final Thoughts: Learn From Competitors. Decide for Yourself.
SEO competitor analysis helps you understand where your website stands and where it has room to improve.
By examining the searches that matter to your audience, the pages competing for those searches, and the resources you already have, you can identify opportunities worth pursuing.
Some findings may lead you to improve an existing page. Others may reveal a need that deserves a new resource. And some may show that your time and resources would be better spent elsewhere.
The value of the analysis lies in the decisions that follow.
Use competitive evidence to understand what your audience needs, identify where your website can contribute, and focus your efforts on the opportunities that matter.
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