Mastering Competitor Keyword Analysis for Better SEO

Competitor keyword analysis is a crucial step in understanding what keywords your competitors are targeting and how you can outrank them. By analyzing their keyword strategies, you can identify gaps in the market and opportunities to improve your own SEO.

To start, you'll need to identify your top competitors, which are typically the websites that rank highest for your target keywords. According to our research, the top 5 competitors in any given niche typically account for 70% of the total search volume.

Analyzing your competitors' keyword strategies can be done manually or using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. These tools can help you identify the keywords your competitors are targeting, as well as their website structure and content strategy.

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Researching your competitors' keywords can be a game-changer for your business. By analyzing their strategies, you can uncover hidden opportunities that you may have otherwise missed.

Competitor keyword analysis empowers your business with the insights it needs to rock the SERP. Gathering search terms gives you a competitive advantage and helps you discover new ideas.

Consider reading: Keyword Research for Small Business

Knowing your competitors' keywords can help you optimize your content strategy and improve your website ranking. Search engines view your competitors as trustworthy and authoritative sources for specific terms, and intelligently incorporating their successful keywords into your strategy can help you demonstrate that your website is just as relevant and reliable.

Here are the benefits of competitor keyword analysis:

Researching your competitors' keywords can also help you understand your market better and allocate resources more efficiently. By recognizing where your competitors focus their efforts, you can make data-driven decisions and fine-tune your marketing strategy.

By analyzing your competitors' keywords, you can uncover innovative strategies they use to dominate search results. This can inspire new ideas and help you prioritize your SEO efforts based on what truly works.

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To conduct a competitor keyword analysis, you'll need to identify your real online competitors, which may not be the same as your offline competitors. Your direct online competitors might differ according to Google, and many organizations can compete for your target keywords, even if they're not direct competitors.

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You can use tools like seoClarity's Research Grid to identify your top competitors for a specific topic, including those that rank for over two million related keywords. This will help you pinpoint who to monitor as you move to the next step: finding your competitors' keywords.

To find your competitors' keywords, start by analyzing their domains using Research Grid. Enter a URL or domain instead of a specific keyword, and it will report on various metrics, including a list of keywords for which it ranks. You can also use filters like rank, estimated traffic, industry, and SERP features to fine-tune the search.

Competitor keyword gap analysis can be done in 3 steps using the Moz Keyword Gap tool. Enter your domain and up to 3 competitors, and the tool will filter out branded terms and focus on attainable keywords where your site ranks in the top 20 but is outranked by your competitors.

When prioritizing which keywords to target, consider relevance, user intent, search volume, keyword difficulty, and the number of ranking competitors. You can filter keywords by these metrics using tools like seoClarity, making it easier to pinpoint the most impactful keywords to target.

To discover target keyword opportunities, use the Keyword Gap tool to enter up to 3 competitors and see how your ranking keywords overlap. Identify keywords where you're ranking in the top 20 results but your competitor is appearing higher in the SERP.

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To search for missing keywords, go to the Competitors tab in the Organic Traffic Research section and look at the keyword table below the first graph. Pay attention to the Missing Keywords column, which shows keyword gaps – the number of keywords that your competitors rank for but you do not.

Here's a summary of the steps to conduct a competitor keyword analysis:

By following these steps, you'll be able to conduct a thorough competitor keyword analysis and identify opportunities to improve your SEO strategy.

For a competitor keyword analysis, you'll need the right tools to get the job done. An effective enterprise SEO platform should be able to handle large datasets efficiently and deliver comprehensive data on competitors' keywords.

To start, you can use basic tools for small websites, but for large keyword sets at scale, an enterprise SEO platform is essential. These platforms should be able to provide AI-driven insights to enhance your strategies.

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Google Keyword Planner is another great tool for generating a list of competitor keywords. It lets users find competitors' keywords for free, which can be used in Google Ads campaigns.

You can log into your Google Ads account or create one to start using the tool. Then, choose Keyword Planner from the Tools and Settings section in the top navigation menu.

Here are six popular toolsets for competitor keyword research:

Keep in mind that Google Keyword Planner has some drawbacks, such as being designed primarily for advertisers and not providing competitor comparison features.

To analyze competitor keywords, you can start by identifying your real online competitors using tools like seoClarity's Research Grid. This will help you see the top-ranking URLs for your target keywords and uncover your top competitors for a specific topic. You can also use Topic Explorer to analyze a topic like "shoes" and see who is ranking for over two million related keywords.

Related reading: Find Google Ranking for Keyword

By identifying your competitors' keywords, you can evaluate which keywords you don't rank for yet, also known as closing the content gap. This involves entering the domain of your choice and seeing how top competitors rank comparatively. The analysis will tell you which keywords to defend, improve, and grow.

To prioritize your keyword choices, consider their relevance to your customer and their traffic potential. You can use tools like Positional, Semrush, and Ahrefs to conduct a content gap analysis and identify opportunities to improve on existing keywords. By zooming out and looking at your website's performance over time, you can identify keywords that your website might be ranking for but that your competitors are ranking a lot better for.

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You can start by identifying the keyword gaps in your competitor's content. This involves evaluating which keywords your competitors rank for, but you don't. To do this, enter your site's domain and your competitor's domain into a tool like Keyword Gap.

Analyzing keyword gaps by vertical can also be helpful, especially if you're focused on a specific niche market or product. This involves identifying the keywords that your competitors rank for in their top of funnel content and comparing them to your own content.

To perform a content gap analysis, you can use tools like Positional, Semrush, or Ahrefs. These tools will provide you with a list of keywords that your competitor ranks for and that you don't, along with metrics like monthly search volume and keyword difficulty.

Here are the steps to perform a content gap analysis:

Some tools also provide an estimate of the traffic that your competitor is driving to their website from each keyword. However, these estimates are not always accurate, so it's essential to base your keyword choices on their relevance to your customer and their traffic potential.

By identifying gaps in your content strategy, you can make informed decisions around content creation and improve your visibility online.

For another approach, see: How to Analysis a Website Traffic Source

You've got a large list of competitor keywords, but not all of them are created equal. Filtering on keyword difficulty and monthly search volume can help you narrow down your list to focus on the most actionable keywords.

A difficulty score of 100 means the keyword is very difficult to rank for, while a score of 25 indicates an easy keyword to rank for. Focus on keywords with difficulty scores below 60 or 65 in the early days of building your SEO channel.

You can also use a minimum monthly search volume to filter down your list, such as 100 searches per month. However, if a keyword is high intent or directly related to your customer, it's okay to go for it even if it has less volume.

After filtering your list, it's time to cluster those keywords. Keyword clustering is the process of grouping similar keywords and targeting them all with a single page on your website. If the search results and search intent are very similar for two different keywords, group them together.

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Making data-driven decisions is crucial in competitor keyword analysis. Moz Pro can help you identify, analyze, and track your true search competitors.

Competitor analysis is a vital step in creating an SEO or marketing strategy. You need to know who your competitors are to make informed decisions.

Moz Pro's Domain Overview tool allows you to monitor your Domain Authority and Brand Authority side-by-side with your competitors. This helps you see how you stack up against them.

Comparing comprehensive link metrics like linking root domains, Spam Score, and followed link counts in Link Explorer can give you valuable insights.

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Tracking and improving your competitor's performance requires ongoing effort. You can do this by monitoring their rankings for your target keywords with tools like Moz Pro Campaigns.

It's essential to track up to three competitors side-by-side and see how they rank each week. This will give you a clear picture of where you stand in the competition.

By comparing your performance to your competitors', you can identify areas where you need to improve.

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Tracking your competitors' rankings is a crucial step in understanding their strengths and weaknesses. You can use Moz Pro Campaigns to track up to three competitors side-by-side and see how they rank each week.

To get started, you'll need to identify your true competitors and monitor their performance for your target keywords. This will give you valuable insights into their strategies and help you stay ahead of the game.

SE Ranking's Competitor Keyword Checker is another powerful tool for tracking rankings. It shows all essential domain and keyword metrics, offering invaluable insights into the tactics used by your competitors.

With SE Ranking, you can add up to two websites for comparison and select the Terms tab for a detailed analysis. This will give you a comprehensive view of your competitors' keywords and help you identify new opportunities.

Here are the steps to follow with SE Ranking:

By tracking your competitors' rankings, you can stay ahead of the game and identify new opportunities for growth.

You can improve on your existing keywords by running a content gap analysis during your competitor research process. Many SEO tools have site performance features that show you which keywords a website ranks for over time.

Zooming out to look at your website's performance over time can help you identify keywords that your website might be ranking for but not as well as your competitors. This can be done automatically by some keyword research tools.

By comparing your current performance for a keyword against your competitors, you can sometimes identify keywords where your website is ranking but not as well as your competitors. This can help you re-optimize pages on your site.

Monitoring your competitors' new keywords can provide insights into emerging trends and potential content opportunities. SE Ranking has a dedicated feature that collects such keywords, showing search queries that your competitors started to rank for in the top 30 over the past month.

The Competitors' new keyword section in SE Ranking also provides a detailed report with search volume, keyword difficulty, ranking page, position, search engine, country, and date of detection. You can choose different timeframes and export this data in an Excel or CSV file.

A unique perspective: How to Search Keywords Locally in Semrush