How to Do Competitive Analysis for SEO in 10 Easy Steps

We’ve seen this happen more times than we can count.

A marketing team sits in a quarterly review, pulls up the SEO dashboard, and discovers that a competitor is ranking for hundreds of commercial searches the company didn’t even know mattered.

The immediate question is usually, “How did they get there?”

That’s the wrong starting point.

The better question is, “What are they doing that we can learn from, where are they vulnerable, and which opportunities are worth pursuing for our business?”

That is what a proper SEO competitor analysis should answer.

A useful analysis goes beyond checking who ranks above us on Google. We need to understand the keywords competitors own, the pages driving their visibility, the content gaps between their site and ours, the websites linking to them, and the search intent behind the queries they win.

Semrush makes much of this analysis faster. Its current competitive research workflow covers organic rankings, keyword gaps, backlinks, content opportunities, and AI search visibility.

But the tool isn’t the strategy.

The strategy comes from knowing what the numbers mean and deciding what deserves investment.

Here’s how we approach it.

What Is an SEO Competitor Analysis?

An SEO competitor analysis is a structured review of the websites competing with us for valuable search visibility.

That distinction matters.

Our biggest business competitor isn’t always our biggest SEO competitor. A Nigerian fintech, for example, may compete commercially with another fintech but find that comparison sites, publishers, banks, software companies, and international platforms dominate the searches that matter.

One of the better practitioner explanations in a Reddit discussion on the subject put it this way:

“SEO competitor analysis is a methodical examination of the competitive environment within your industry.”

Reddit discussion on conducting an SEO competitor analysis

The goal isn’t to copy competitors page for page.

We’re looking for patterns.

Who consistently ranks for our commercial topics? Which competitors have built strong topic coverage? Which pages attract links? Where are they weak? Where are we already close to winning?

That information gives us a much stronger basis for an SEO roadmap than a generic list of keywords.

A good analysis usually covers:

• Organic competitors
• Keyword rankings
• Search intent
• Content gaps
• Technical and site structure
• Backlinks and referring domains
• SERP features
• Conversion opportunities
• AI search visibility
• Priorities and actions

Once we have those pieces, the analysis becomes useful to the business rather than another spreadsheet nobody opens after the meeting.

Before You Start, Define What “Competitive” Means

We need to define the competitive set before opening Semrush.

There are usually two groups.

Business competitors are companies selling a similar product or service to the same customers.

SEO competitors are websites competing for the same search demand.

They can overlap. They often don’t.

Imagine we’re running a B2B SaaS company in Lagos. Our direct competitors may be three software companies. But for searches around implementation, pricing, comparisons, regulations, or how-to questions, we might compete with HubSpot, Gartner, consultants, publishers, or specialist blogs.

That distinction changes the analysis completely.

We also need to decide which market we’re analysing. Search results can differ significantly by country, city, language, and device.

A company selling into Nigeria and the UK shouldn’t treat its global keyword database as one market. We need to separate the markets where revenue actually comes from.

With that foundation in place, we can move into the ten steps.

1. Identify Your Real SEO Competitors

The first step is finding the websites that already compete with us in search.

Start with our highest-value keywords. Search them manually and record the domains appearing repeatedly in the results.

Then use Semrush’s Organic Research and Competitors reports to expand the list. Semrush can identify domains with overlapping keyword footprints, which gives us a faster way to find competitors we may not have considered. Semrush’s competitor keyword research guide.

We usually want five to ten serious competitors for the first pass.

Don’t fill the list with every website that appears once.

Look for recurring competitors.

For each one, record:

This gives us a more realistic competitive landscape.

What to do next: pick three to five domains with meaningful overlap and use those as the core comparison set.

2. Compare Your Keyword Footprints

Now we need to see what competitors rank for that we don’t.

This is where you use Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool.

Add your domain and the competitor domains, select the relevant country and database, and compare the keyword profiles. The tool can surface keywords where competitors rank, and our site doesn’t.

But don’t download 50,000 keywords and call the job done.

That’s how analysis turns into noise.

Start with the Missing and Weak opportunities.

Missing means competitors rank for terms we don’t.

Weak means we rank, but competitors rank higher.

Then filter based on:

• Search intent
• Search volume
• Keyword difficulty
• Business relevance
• Current competitor position
• Commercial value

A keyword with 5,000 searches isn’t automatically better than one with 200.

If the 200-search keyword is used by people actively looking for the product we sell, it may be worth much more to the business.

This is where we separate SEO research from SEO strategy.

3. Find the Keywords That Can Actually Affect Revenue

Not every competitor keyword deserves a page.

We need to connect search demand to the buying journey.

A useful way to do that is to classify competitor keywords into four groups:

The strongest opportunities often sit close to a commercial action.

That’s especially important for companies with long sales cycles. A B2B SaaS company may generate fewer leads from a technical guide than from a comparison page, but the comparison page could influence a buyer already shortlisting vendors.

We should also look at whether competitors rank for searches around our actual products.

If a competitor dominates “business registration in Nigeria” while our website only ranks for the company name, the problem isn’t traffic.

It’s market visibility.

The keyword gap is showing us where demand exists without our brand being present.

4. Analyse What Their Best Pages Are Doing

Keywords tell us what competitors rank for.

Their pages tell us why they rank.

Open the competitor’s strongest URLs and study the page itself.

Look at:

• Page type
• Search intent
• Content depth
• Heading structure
• Internal links
• Original data
• Images and video
• FAQs
• Product calls to action
• Author information
• Location-specific information
• Supporting pages

Don’t ask, “How can we make our article longer?”

Ask, “What job is this page doing for the searcher?”

That’s a much better question.

We saw this clearly while working on Sidebrief’s SEO-driven content strategy. Their site had limited search visibility and a relatively weak starting position. We studied competitor coverage, customer questions, search demand, and the actual workflows customers needed help with before building the content plan.

The result was a +1,631% increase in organic traffic in seven months, with the site reaching more than 1,000 monthly organic visits. The project also generated 461 backlinks and more than 100 indexed SEO pages.

The lesson isn’t “publish 100 pages.”

The lesson is that competitor research becomes valuable when it changes what we build.

5. Turn Competitor Content Into a Content Gap Map

A content gap is bigger than a missing keyword.

It can mean we don’t have the right page, our existing page doesn’t answer the full question, or competitors are covering an important part of the customer journey that we’ve ignored.

Semrush’s current content gap framework separates these opportunities into topic, intent, quality, and originality gaps. Semrush’s content gap analysis guide

We can turn that into a simple working map.

Topic gap

Our competitors cover a subject we don’t cover.

Action: create a new page.

Intent gap

We have a page about the topic, but it answers the wrong question.

Action: restructure or create a better-matched page.

Quality gap

We cover the subject, but competitors provide more useful detail, stronger evidence, or better explanations.

Action: upgrade the existing page.

Originality gap

Our page repeats what everyone else says.

Action: add original research, examples, data, expert insight, tools, or a stronger point of view.

This last category is becoming more important as search expands into AI-generated answers. Simply rewriting the ten pages already ranking isn’t a strategy.

If every competitor says the same thing, repeating it in different words gives us very little reason to be cited or remembered.

6. Analyse Their Backlinks and Authority

Content doesn’t operate in isolation.

We also need to understand which websites are helping competitors earn authority.

Use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics to examine competitor referring domains, backlinks, linked pages, and anchor text. Then use Backlink Gap to find websites linking to competitors that don’t currently link to us.

This is where we start seeing patterns.

Perhaps competitors consistently earn links from:

• Industry publications
• Government or professional bodies
• Business directories
• Research organisations
• Universities
• News websites
• Specialist blogs
• Podcasts and interviews

The important question isn’t “How many backlinks do they have?”

It’s “Why are these websites linking to them?”

A competitor may have 10,000 backlinks, but only 150 referring domains may matter to our strategy.

If five respected industry publications have linked to a competitor’s original research report, we shouldn’t respond by publishing another 1,500-word blog post.

We should ask whether we can create something genuinely useful enough to earn similar coverage.

That may lead us into digital PR as part of our organic growth strategy, especially when a content gap and authority gap appear together.

7. Compare Their Site Structure and Technical SEO

Competitor analysis shouldn’t stop at content.

We need to understand how competitors have organised their websites.

Look for:

• Main navigation
• URL structure
• Category pages
• Product and service pages
• Location pages
• Blog architecture
• Internal linking
• Breadcrumbs
• Indexable pages
• Canonicalisation
• Mobile experience
• Page speed
• Structured data

We don’t need to rebuild our website because a competitor has a prettier navigation menu.

We’re looking for structural advantages.

For example, a competitor might have separate pages for every high-value service and location, while our entire offering sits on one generic services page.

That isn’t a design issue.

It’s a search architecture issue.

We saw a version of this problem with Sidebrief. Their starting website was relatively static, with limited service-specific and location-specific landing pages. Competitor analysis helped reveal where search demand existed and where the site needed stronger page coverage.

For larger companies, technical SEO can become even more important because the site may contain thousands of URLs, multiple markets, product categories, or regional versions.

That’s where SEO and organic growth strategy needs to work alongside development rather than being handed to the content team alone.

8. Study the SERPs, Not Just the Competitor Websites

This is the step teams skip most often.

We shouldn’t analyse competitors without analysing the search results themselves.

Search our highest-value terms and record what Google is showing.

Look for:

• AI Overviews
• Featured snippets
• Videos
• Image results
• People Also Ask
• Local results
• Product results
• Forums
• Comparison pages
• Review sites

The SERP tells us what type of answer Google believes the searcher wants.

If the results are dominated by product pages, writing a 3,000-word educational article may be the wrong move.

If the results are mostly comparison pages, a generic service page probably won’t compete.

If video results dominate, we should consider whether video needs to become part of the content plan.

The same applies to AI search.

Current Semrush research notes that ranking well in Google doesn’t automatically guarantee visibility in AI-generated answers, which means competitive research increasingly needs to examine where competitors are being surfaced beyond the traditional blue links.

The SERP is the brief.

We just need to read it properly.

9. Find Their Weaknesses and Build a Priority List

At this point, we should have far more data than we need.

Now comes the part that actually requires judgement.

A competitor may outrank us for 500 keywords. That doesn’t mean we should chase all 500.

Create a priority score based on four questions:

• Does the topic matter to our customers?
• Can we realistically compete?
• Does the search lead toward a commercial action?
• Do we have something useful to say that competitors don’t?

Then group the opportunities.

Quick wins

We already rank on page two or three and need better content, internal links, or on-page optimisation.

Content investments

We don’t have the right page and need to create a strong resource.

Authority investments

The opportunity is attractive, but competitors have a major backlink or brand-authority advantage.

Strategic bets

The search demand is valuable, but winning it will require several supporting pages, technical work, or sustained authority building.

This prevents the SEO team from presenting leadership with a spreadsheet of 4,000 keywords and asking, “Which ones should we do?”

We should already have an answer.

Our own client results show why prioritisation matters. Oxgital’s SEO programme produced +3,500% organic traffic growth in seven months, while MainSqueeze grew organic traffic by +4,800% in eight months. Those outcomes came from strategic SEO work, not from treating every available keyword as equally important.

10. Turn the Analysis Into an SEO Roadmap

An SEO competitor analysis isn’t finished when the spreadsheet is complete.

It’s finished when we know what happens next.

We recommend turning the findings into a 90-day roadmap with clear owners and commercial priorities.

The roadmap should connect SEO metrics to business metrics.

Track rankings and impressions because they’re useful leading indicators.

But also track organic leads, qualified opportunities, sign-ups, demo requests, sales-assisted conversions, and revenue where attribution allows.

That is the approach behind our SEO growth strategy services. Rankings matter, but they need to connect to the business outcome we were hired to improve.

What SEO Competitor Analysis Can Teach Us That Keyword Research Can’t

Keyword research tells us what people search for.

Competitor analysis tells us what the market is already doing with that demand.

That’s a major difference.

A competitor may rank for a keyword because they have stronger content. Another may win because they have hundreds of relevant referring domains. Another may have built a better site architecture years before we entered the market.

We need to know which situation we’re facing before deciding what to invest in.

One Reddit practitioner described the practical value simply:

“Identifying and emulating the successful strategies of competitors. Detecting and capitalizing on the vulnerabilities of competitors.”

Reddit discussion on SEO competitor analysis strategies

That gets close to the real purpose of the exercise.

We’re not trying to become our competitor.

We’re trying to understand the rules of the search market well enough to make better decisions.

Don’t Copy Your Competitors. Understand Why They’re Winning.

There’s a trap in competitor analysis.

We find a competitor ranking above us and immediately decide that we need the same blog post, the same keywords, and more backlinks.

That’s a lazy strategy.

One practitioner in the Reddit discussion captured the temptation:

“It’s easy to copy. You don’t have to think as hard and shoot in the dark.”

Reddit discussion about copying competitor SEO strategies

We agree with the first half of the observation and disagree with the conclusion.

Competitors are useful because they’ve already revealed where demand exists.

But copying the surface doesn’t give us the underlying advantage.

If a competitor’s comparison page ranks because it has original pricing data, expert commentary, strong internal linking, and 30 relevant referring domains, producing a similar article won’t recreate those conditions.

The better approach is to reverse-engineer the advantage.

Then build something stronger.

That’s also why SEO Next Door’s case studies focus on actual growth outcomes rather than isolated ranking screenshots. We want to understand what changed, why it changed, and whether the result mattered to the business.

Build Your Competitive Analysis Around Decisions, Not Data

The best SEO competitor analysis doesn’t produce the biggest spreadsheet.

It produces the clearest decisions.

By the end of the process, we should be able to answer:

• Who actually competes with us in search?
• Which valuable searches do they own?
• Where are we already close to winning?
• Which topics are missing from our site?
• Which competitor pages deserve closer study?
• Where does their authority come from?
• Which SERP features are changing the opportunity?
• Where are their weaknesses?
• Which opportunities can affect pipeline or revenue?
• What should we do in the next 90 days?

That’s the standard we would use before asking a team to spend a quarter producing content, fixing technical SEO, or funding digital PR.

The analysis should make the investment decision easier.

If we can’t explain why a keyword, page, competitor, or backlink opportunity matters to the business, it probably doesn’t belong in the roadmap.

We’ve seen what happens when competitive research feeds a focused SEO system. Tayo Aina’s website grew organic traffic by +2,800% in six months, while The Hospital Book reached 40K monthly organic traffic. The numbers are different because the businesses and search markets are different. The principle is the same: strategy comes before scale.

If your team already has the data, the next useful move isn’t another competitor report. Pull your last two quarters of organic performance, choose your five most important competitors, and map the gaps against revenue-driving search demand.

If you want help turning that analysis into a practical SEO roadmap, book a strategy call with SEO Next Door. We can look at where your organic channel is leaking demand and identify the opportunities worth funding next.