Competitor keyword analysis is essential if you want to rank above your competition in the search engine results pages (SERPs). But how do you find competitors’ keywords? And what tools can you use? In this post, we’ll define what competitor keyword analysis is, explain how to conduct it, and recommend high-quality tools that you can use to create a successful content strategy around your and your competitors’ keywords. Competitor keyword analysis is the process of uncovering the keywords your competitors are ranking highly for in an attempt to create content that outranks them in search results. Keywords are a crucial part of any SEO strategy. They help you stay focused on what you create and ensure that your audience knows that you have the content they’re looking for. While keyword research can help you uncover the keywords you should use when creating your business content, it’s also important to have an understanding of how your industry competitors are using these same keywords and the successes they’re achieving with their own strategy. You can get this understanding through competitor keyword analysis. The keywords that you conduct competitor analysis for should be relevant to your business and related to the content you already create. This analysis also helps you understand how difficult it will be to outrank a competitor that is doing better than you in the SERPs and pinpoint opportunities for high ROI where it wouldn’t be too difficult to outrank a competitor for a relevant keyword. But first, how do you find competitors’ keywords? Before you actually conduct an analysis of your competitors’ keywords, you have to find their keywords first. Luckily, you can use free and paid tools to find their keywords and identify content gaps in your strategy. We’re going to start with free tools first, then share a few paid tools to take your competitor keyword research to the next level. WordStream is a simple, easy-to-use tool that gives you an instant list of your competitors’ keywords. Unlike other tools, it’s completely free to use, and you’ll get plenty of information without creating an account. All you need to do is provide your email. The tool doesn’t provide your competitors’ actual rankings, which can inform you how well they’re doing for those terms. Because it was created by a marketing agency, not a software company, WordStream is only what you see; it doesn’t offer an upgraded version of its tool with additional features. We're committed to your privacy. HubSpot uses the information you provide to us to contact you about our relevant content, products, and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For more information, check out our Privacy Policy. Build your SEO strategy with this free template. Loading your download form Click this link to access this resource at any time. Access now Learn more Google Keyword Planner is a powerful tool for seeing your competitors’ top keywords with impressive filtering and sorting capabilities. Unlike WordStream, you can filter and sort the keywords in any way you’d like: by average monthly searches, by three-month change, by year-over-year change, by level of competition in the SERPs, and more. In addition, you can choose which columns you’d like to include in your report, then download it as a CSV or Sheets file. Google Keyword Planner does not offer information on your competitors’ rankings, which won’t tell you where they perform best. Knowing how well they perform is critical for you to compete (and win) in organic search results. Spyfu is a fantastic tool for more holistic competitive research, even at its free level. You not only get a list of your competition’s top keywords, but also your competition’s top competitors, inbound links, top pages, and page-one keywords. You can even do a surface-level comparison between your domain and your competitor’s domain. In its free version, Spyfu is a limited competitive keyword research tool, offering only the first 5-10 keywords that your competitor ranks for and gating specific information behind a subscription paywall. The good news is that you can easily snag a subscription starting at $33/month (paid annually), which will help you access all of Spyfu’s features. As the first fully paid tool on our list, Ahrefs offers all the premium competitive keyword research features you’d expect at a premium price tag. You have full access to your competitor’s full keyword profile and competitor traffic, including ranking gains, ranking losses, and rich snippet wins. The tool also offers impressive filtering capabilities to find or exclude certain keywords, and you can export up to 500,000 rows of keywords for safekeeping. Ahrefs lacks an introductory competitive research tool that you can use without digging deep into your team’s budget. Some businesses don’t necessarily need position changes or even the entirety of their competitors’ keyword profile. Knowing the basics is sometimes enough to create an initial SEO strategy against competitors. Semrush is an impressive premium tool that offers you plenty of information for free. You have full access to your competitors’ keyword profile, including position changes, top changes, and top competitors. You can even create a keyword gap analysis between you and your competitors by tapping Keyword Gap on the sidebar, even if you’re not yet subscribed. Semrush offers everything you need to carry out a comprehensive competitor keyword analysis for free. However, you’re limited to 10 requests on a free account, so if you expect to analyze more than 10 competitors, expect to upgrade to a paid subscription starting at $119.95/month. The good news is that you can try it for seven days for free. There are tons of more Semrush reviews with more pros and cons of the tool. SE Ranking is a solid tool that will give you a 360 view of any competitor’s keyword strategy. You will not only get a complete list of keywords it ranks for but also every keyword’s search volume and difficulty, search intent and SERP features it triggers. You will see how well a competitor ranks for that keyword and how positions changed over the last month. If necessary, you can tap into deeper historical data as well. There are granular filtering options and the list can be further exported. There is also an option to take your research one step further and analyze how your target keywords overlap with several competitors to find keyword gaps. SE Ranking has it all, but you’ll need to subscribe to tap into the wealth of data. On the bright side, their pricing model is affordable and starts at $55 per month. Now that you have your competitors’ keywords, how do you analyze them and put them to action? Let’s take a look. We're committed to your privacy. HubSpot uses the information you provide to us to contact you about our relevant content, products, and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For more information, check out our Privacy Policy. Build your SEO strategy with this free template. Loading your download form Click this link to access this resource at any time. Access now Learn more Competitor keyword analysis is similar to but different from standard keyword analysis. Below, we’ll explain the steps that go into the process. Completing a keyword analysis on your competitors can be a time-consuming process, and keeping all the information you find in one place can be a challenge. For that reason, we recommend using a competitive analysis template to organize your efforts and keep your findings in one place. In this template, you’ll get: What you’ll find most useful is the Content Marketing Analysis Template, where you can list multiple competitors and the number of keywords each one ranks for. After you download your template, it’s time to create a list of your top competitors. You can add a tab on your competitive analysis template and simply add one competitor per row. Knowing who your main competition is makes it easier for you to create a more targeted and effective SEO strategy. Keep in mind that your product competitors may not be the same as your SERP competitors. It’s likely that many businesses out there offer the same products and services that you do, but they may not all be viable SERP competitors. You should only include the competitors that consistently rank for the same keywords you’re trying to rank for. You can find out who that is by using Spyfu. Here’s how: These are the brands that compete the most with you on the SERPs. Once you’ve identified your top competitors, find the keywords that they rank for and outrank you for, and understand how difficult it would be for you to outshine them. Add a separate tab for each competitor in your competitive analysis template. We’ve already discussed how you can find those keywords. To summarize, we recommend the following tools: Once you have your competitors’ keywords, the fun part begins: Actually vying for a better spot on those keywords’ SERPs and beating your competition. First up, you need to identify which keywords your competitor ranks for that you don’t rank for, and which of their pages are ranking for those terms. You can go by gut feeling — for instance, you may know already that you don’t rank for X term — or you can use a tool. We recommend the latter option. Spyfu, Ahref, and Semrush all offer this information. There, you’ll see an initial list of the keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t rank for. You’ll be able to filter, too, but to see the full list, you’ll need to upgrade. You’ll see the keywords that your competitor ranks for, as well as their highest positions for those terms. If you want to see all missing or weak keywords, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid account. One of the most important factors of competitive keyword research is to understand your audience and what they’re interested in. You also need to understand your competitors’ audience. Ideally, these would be one and the same, but there may be some instances where you may want to capture your competitors’ audience because of good product-fit. During this stage, create well-rounded buyer personas that explain your audience members at all levels of the buyer’s journey, from the awareness to the post-decision stage. This information will help you come up with a wide range of keywords that relate to your business and additional opportunities to outrank your competitors with well-targeted content. For example, if you’re running a software company, you should optimize your site to attract users who are browsing for different software options, but also for those that have purchased your products and want to understand how to further engage with it. We're committed to your privacy. HubSpot uses the information you provide to us to contact you about our relevant content, products, and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For more information, check out our Privacy Policy. Build your SEO strategy with this free template. Loading your download form Click this link to access this resource at any time. Access now Learn more You have your competitors, their keywords, and the keywords they rank for that you don’t rank for. You also have an understanding of your audience. It’s time to create content that will help you outrank your competition. This content may include: You should create a strong SEO strategy and content plan to organize your content creation efforts and get ahead of your competitors. Source ideas from their website and blog and document these potential projects in your competitive analysis sheet. Since creating content can be overwhelming at first, you should leverage special tools to speed up the learning and creation process, such as: Track your competitors’ monthly search volume, backlinks, domain authority, and factor all of this information into your plan. If you realize that it will be extremely difficult to outrank for certain keywords, it’s still worth considering making content for them, as you’ll be providing your audience with the information they’re looking for. All in all, these strategies will help you stay focused and ensure that you outperform your competitors for business development and lead generation. During the analysis process, you can opt to use a wide variety of tools to keep track of your competitors’ performance. The best part? Most of these are free. Google Alerts is a simple, free tool that you can use to monitor the web and keep an eye out for content related to you, your competition, and your shared (or not shared) keywords. You can set it up to receive email alerts whenever a keyword you target is mentioned online, and you can even track mentions of your competitors to understand where they get backlinks from. Pricing: Free Social Mention, as the name suggests, monitors social platforms and compiles reports of all the platforms where your keywords are mentioned. Simply type a keyword into the search bar, and you’ll get instant analytics on the number of mentions, users, sentiments of those mentions (positive, negative, or neutral), as well as previews of the mentions that people have made. Pricing: Free Moz’s Link Explorer functions as a search engine for links, backlinks, and mentions. You can use it to research your competitors’ linking strategy and see how they’re building their web presence. If one of your competitors has a particularly high search ranking, you’ll be able to see exactly how they got there. The tool requires signup and comes with 10 link queries and 50 rows of data per query every month. If you want more powerful capabilities, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. Pricing: Free; $99/month (Standard); $179/month (Medium); $299/month (Large); $599/month (Premium) Semrush offers powerful tools for analyzing keywords, traffic, rankings, and URLs. You’ll get an overview of on-page SEO standing for the links you enter, analyze a domain’s backlink profile, and track your own SERP positions. You’re required to create an account, and there are both free and premium options. Pricing: Free (10 requests/day); $199.95/month (Pro); $229.95/month (Guru); $449.95/month (Business) Ahrefs is an all-in-one tool for competitive analysis. You’ll need to make an account, but you have the ability to analyze your competitor’s backlinks and referring domains, organic traffic, and the number of organic keywords they rank for. You can also use the tool to study what your customers are searching for and to conduct general keyword research. Pricing: $99/month (Lite); $199/month (Standard); $399/month (Advanced); $999/month (Enterprise) SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO tool for all-around competitive research. With a paid subscription, you will be able to check your competitor’s organic traffic and keywords they rank for, evaluate their backlink profiles, and assess their technical health by running a comprehensive audit. When you use SE Ranking to optimize the on-page parameters of your pages or create new content from scratch, it will give recommendations based on the parameters of your top-ranking competitors. Pricing: $55/month (Essential); $109/month (Pro); $239/month (Business). Similar to keyword research, competitor keyword analysis helps you be more focused during the content content creation process. You’ll know which keywords your audience is looking for, which competitors are creating keywords for that content, and how hard it will be to outrank your competitors when you create competitive content. Once you’ve completed your competitor analysis, you’ll be able to create a content strategy that will help you build your authority and dominate the SERPs. Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. What is competitor keyword analysis?
How to Find Competitors’ Keywords
1. How to Find Competitors’ Keywords Using WordStream
What WordStream Does Best
What WordStream Lacks
Keyword Research Template
You're all set!
2. How to Find Competitors’ Keywords Using Google Keyword Planner
What Google Keyword Planner Does Best
What Google Keyword Planner Lacks
3. How to Find Competitors’ Keywords Using Spyfu
What Spyfu Does Best
What Spyfu Lacks
4. How to Find Competitors’ Keywords Using Ahrefs Site Explorer
What Ahrefs Site Explorer Does Best
What Ahrefs Site Explorer Lacks
5. How to Find Competitors’ Keywords Using Semrush
What Semrush Does Best
What Semrush Lacks
6. How to Find Competitors’ Keywords Using SE Ranking
What SE Ranking Does Best
What SE Ranking Lacks
Keyword Research Template
You're all set!
How To Do Competitor Keyword Analysis
1. Use competitive analysis templates.
Download Your Templates Here2. Create a list of your top SERP competitors.
3. Find your competitors’ keywords.
4. Identify keyword gaps and content gaps.
To find keyword gaps in Spyfu:
To find keyword gaps in Ahrefs:
To find keyword gaps in Semrush:
To find keyword gaps in SE Ranking:
5. Understand your and your competitors’ audience.
Keyword Research Template
You're all set!
6. Create audience-centric and SEO-optimized content to fill content gaps.
7. Track your competition’s performance.
Competitor Keyword Analysis Tool
1. Google Alerts
2. Social Mention
3. Moz’s Link Explorer
4. Semrush
5. Ahrefs
6. SE Ranking
Use competitor keyword analysis to guide your content decisions.
Topics: Web Analytics