How to Analyse SEO Competitors

Key Takeaways

Your real SEO competitors are whoever ranks above you for your target keywords — not necessarily your direct business rivals
Keyword gap analysis (finding terms competitors rank for that you don't) is the highest-ROI research activity in SEO, typically revealing dozens of addressable opportunities within hours
Backlink analysis reveals which third-party sites and directories trust your competitors, giving you a prioritised outreach list you wouldn't otherwise know to build
Competitor analysis is most valuable as a repeating quarterly activity, not a one-off exercise — rankings shift constantly

Knowing what your competitors are doing in search is one of the most valuable things you can do for your own SEO. Yet most small business owners either don't do it at all, or they do a superficial version — searching for their own keywords, noticing who ranks above them, and leaving it at that.

A proper competitor analysis goes significantly deeper. It tells you which keywords are driving traffic to competitor sites (including ones you haven't thought to target), what content is performing best for them, where their backlinks are coming from, and — critically — where they're weak. Every gap in a competitor's coverage is an opportunity for you.

This guide takes you through the process systematically: how to identify your real SEO competitors, what to analyse, and how to turn the findings into an actionable plan.

Why Competitor Analysis Matters: The Numbers

BrightEdge research consistently shows that organic search drives over 53% of all trackable web traffic — more than any other channel. Within that, the gap between ranking in position 1 versus position 5 for a given keyword is enormous in traffic terms. A competitor who has systematically identified and filled keyword gaps in your shared market is capturing traffic that could be yours.

Ahrefs data on referring domains shows a strong correlation between the number of unique referring domains a site has and its organic search visibility. Understanding how many linking domains your top competitors have gives you a concrete target to work towards in your own link building programme.

In our experience running competitor analyses across hundreds of UK SMEs, the average small business has 15–25 addressable keyword gaps in the top 20 results — terms where a competitor ranks but their content is thin, outdated, or poorly optimised. These are the fastest wins available in any SEO programme.

Step 1: Identify Your Actual SEO Competitors

The first mistake in competitor analysis is assuming your business competitors are your SEO competitors. They're not — or at least, not automatically.

Your SEO competitors are whoever ranks in positions 1–10 for the keywords you're targeting. Sometimes these will be direct business rivals. But often they'll include:

Aggregator sites — comparison websites like Checkatrade, Trustpilot, or Compare the Market that aggregate listings in your category
Informational sites — blogs, consumer guides, and editorial content that ranks for informational queries in your space
National chains — a local independent retailer will often find national brands appearing for their target local keywords

This matters because your competitive strategy will differ depending on who you're up against. Trying to outrank a domain authority 90 aggregator with a new website is futile without a long-term authority-building strategy. But finding gaps where only weak direct competitors rank — sites with poor content, thin pages, or low backlink counts — reveals where you can move fastest.

How to Find Your SEO Competitors

Open a private/incognito browser window (to strip personalisation from results)
Search for 5–10 of your most important target keywords
Note which domains appear consistently across multiple searches
Export this list — these are your primary SEO competitors

For local searches, also check who ranks in the local pack (map results) for location-specific queries. Local pack competitors operate under a slightly different ranking system than organic results.

Step 2: Keyword Gap Analysis — Finding What They Rank For That You Don't

Keyword gap analysis is the process of finding keywords that competitors rank for but your site doesn't. These represent traffic and visibility that exists in your market — someone is capturing it, just not you yet.

The Manual Method

For each competitor domain, use Google Search Operators to surface their indexed content:

site:competitordomain.com [your service keyword]

This shows you what content they have that's indexed and topically relevant. Pages that rank well for related keywords suggest content areas worth developing.

Using a Tool

Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz have dedicated keyword gap features. You enter your domain and up to four competitor domains, and the tool shows you which keywords each ranks for. Filter for keywords where competitors rank in positions 1–10 and your site ranks outside the top 50 — these are the highest-priority gaps.

If you're evaluating your options on tooling, our comparisons of RnkRocket vs Ahrefs and RnkRocket vs SEMrush show exactly what each platform offers for competitor analysis at different price points. For small businesses, paying £300+/month for enterprise SEO tooling isn't necessary to get meaningful competitive intelligence.

Free vs Paid Tool Capabilities

Capability	Free Tools	Paid Tools (£50–£150/mo)
Keyword gap analysis	Limited (Google Search Console)	Full cross-domain comparison
Backlink data	Partial (Google Search Console)	Full referring domain analysis
Competitor rank tracking	No	Yes, daily positions
Content gap identification	Manual only	Automated suggestions
SERP feature tracking	No	Yes (featured snippets, PAA)
Historical data	16 months (GSC)	2–5 years

For most small businesses, a mid-tier paid tool provides the best balance of capability and cost. Free tools are sufficient for a basic gap assessment but won't surface the depth of competitor data that drives a full action plan.

Classifying the Gaps

Not all keyword gaps are equal. Prioritise gaps where:

Search volume is meaningful (even 20–50 searches/month in a niche B2B or local market can be commercially significant)
The keyword has commercial intent (transactional or investigational queries are worth more than pure informational traffic)
The current ranking content is weak — thin, outdated, or poorly structured pages are easier to displace than high-quality, regularly updated content from established domains

Step 3: Content Analysis — What's Working for Them

Once you have a list of keywords your competitors rank for, look at the pages that are ranking. You're trying to understand:

Content depth — how long are the ranking pages? A 400-word thin page that ranks for a competitive term is vulnerable to a more comprehensive piece. A 3,000-word, well-structured guide with clear headings, data, and examples is going to be harder to displace.

Content age — older content that hasn't been updated often declines in rankings after Google's freshness signals downgrade it. Pages last updated more than 2 years ago may be vulnerable.

Content type — is it a blog post, a service page, a landing page, a comparison guide? Understanding the content format that performs for each keyword type helps you create the right kind of content for each target.

On-page signals — is the keyword in the title tag, H1, and first paragraph? Are there internal links pointing to it? Does it have schema markup? Identifying weaknesses in their on-page optimisation tells you where you can do better.

For a deeper grounding in what makes on-page SEO strong, our on-page SEO essentials guide covers how search intent shapes the content format you should create. Our technical SEO guide also explains the structural signals (Core Web Vitals, crawlability) that affect ranking competitiveness.

Top-Performing Pages Analysis

Beyond individual keyword analysis, identify which pages drive the most estimated traffic to each competitor. In most SEO tools, you can sort by "estimated traffic" in the organic keywords report to find a competitor's highest-value pages. These are the pages doing the most work for them. Study them closely — they represent both the competitive ceiling you need to match or exceed, and a template for what works in your market.

Step 4: Backlink Analysis — Where Is Their Authority Coming From?

Backlinks are votes of trust from other websites. Analysing where a competitor's backlinks come from gives you a prioritised list of link-building targets — sites and organisations that have already demonstrated willingness to link to businesses in your niche.

What to Look For

Directory and citation links — if a competitor is listed in an industry directory or local business association that you're not, that's a straightforward gap to close.

Press and editorial coverage — regional newspapers, trade publications, and consumer guides that have covered competitors may cover you too, especially if you pitch a relevant story.

Guest posts and contributed articles — if a competitor has written for a trade blog or industry publication, approach the same outlet with your own pitch.

Supplier and partner links — manufacturers, trade associations, and professional bodies often list members or certified partners on their websites.

Resource page links — many websites maintain "useful resources" or "recommended suppliers" pages that link out to relevant businesses. If competitors appear on these pages and you don't, reach out to the linking site with a brief, relevant pitch.

Prioritising Link Targets

Not all backlinks are worth pursuing. Focus on links from:

Domains with genuine topical relevance to your industry
Sites with real traffic (a listing in a directory that nobody visits provides little value)
Pages that actually pass link equity (check that the linking page isn't noindexed or blocking crawlers)

Step 5: Technical Comparison

A competitor's technical SEO performance — site speed, mobile experience, structured data — affects their rankings. Comparing yours against theirs identifies technical areas where you may have an advantage to press or a gap to close.

Key technical signals to compare:

Core Web Vitals — use Google's PageSpeed Insights to score both your site and competitor sites. A significantly faster site has a ranking advantage, all else being equal
Mobile usability — with Google's mobile-first indexing, any site that performs poorly on mobile is leaving rankings on the table
Schema markup — do competitors have structured data that generates rich results (review stars, FAQs, breadcrumbs) in the search listings? If so, implementing equivalent schema on your pages can increase your click-through rate even without changing your position
Site architecture — are their category and service pages well-structured with clear internal linking? Weak internal linking is a common gap in competitor sites that you can exploit with a strong internal linking strategy

For a full grounding in the technical signals that affect rankings, our technical SEO guide covers Core Web Vitals, structured data, and crawlability in detail.

Step 6: Building Your Competitive Action Plan

Analysis without action is just data collection. Once you've completed the analysis, translate findings into a prioritised plan:

Quick wins (next 30 days)

Close the citation/directory gaps identified in backlink analysis
Optimise existing pages for keyword gaps where your content exists but isn't optimised for the specific query
Fix technical issues (Core Web Vitals, mobile usability) that competitors don't have

Medium-term (1–3 months)

Create new content targeting keyword gaps where competitors have thin or outdated pages
Begin outreach for editorial and press links identified in competitor backlink analysis
Develop or improve location pages if competitors have stronger local page coverage

Long-term (3–12 months)

Build topical authority in areas competitors have neglected
Develop linkable assets (original research, tools, definitive guides) to attract backlinks naturally
Monitor competitor progress quarterly and adjust based on what's moving

Using Tools to Automate Competitor Monitoring

Manual competitor analysis is time-consuming if done properly. RnkRocket's competitor analysis features automate the tracking layer — monitoring competitor keyword rankings alongside yours, alerting you when a competitor moves into positions above you, and surfacing keyword gaps as they emerge rather than requiring you to run a fresh analysis manually every quarter.

This is particularly valuable for small businesses that can't justify large agency retainers or enterprise tool subscriptions. You get the intelligence without the overhead.

FAQ: SEO Competitor Analysis

How many competitors should I analyse?

For most small businesses, 3 to 5 competitors is sufficient. Choose 2–3 direct business rivals who rank well for your target keywords, and 1–2 sites that appear consistently in search results even if they're not direct competitors (aggregators, informational sites). Analysing more than 5 adds diminishing returns and creates an overwhelming volume of data.

Should I copy what my competitors are doing?

No — and not only for ethical reasons. Your goal is to identify gaps and weaknesses in their strategy, not replicate their content. Duplicate or near-duplicate content rarely outranks the original. Instead, use competitor analysis to understand what's working in your market, then do it better: more comprehensively, more accurately, more recently updated, or targeting a slightly different angle that they've missed.

How often should I run a competitor analysis?

A full competitor analysis is worth running quarterly. Between full analyses, set up keyword ranking monitoring that tracks both your positions and your key competitors' positions simultaneously — this gives you a real-time view of competitive shifts without requiring manual research. When a competitor suddenly jumps 10 positions for a term you care about, that's your signal to investigate what changed.

SEO competitor analysis is most valuable when treated as a repeating system rather than a one-time project. The businesses that consistently outrank their competitors are not those who ran a thorough analysis in year one — they are those who monitor competitor movements monthly, spot gaps as they open up, and respond with targeted content and link building before those gaps close. A quarterly analysis cycle combined with continuous rank tracking for competitor keywords gives small businesses the same competitive intelligence capability that large brands get from dedicated SEO teams. The difference is process, not budget.

See Your Competitive Position Clearly

Understanding where you sit relative to competitors — for every keyword you care about — is the foundation of an effective SEO strategy. RnkRocket's competitor analysis tools give you that visibility from £9.95/month, without the complexity or cost of enterprise platforms.

See pricing plans →

How to Analyse Your SEO Competitors (And Beat Them)