Competitors Keywords Analysis

Competitor keyword analysis involves evaluating your competitors’ strategies and keywords for SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising. You discover which keywords your competitors rank for, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of top-performing pages, and identifying opportunities to improve your rankings. 

Ways to Use Competitor Keyword Research:

1. Steal your competitor’s keywords to compete for rankings in the same search results.
2. Find and begin targeting keywords that have not yet been targeted by competitors.
3. Discover long tail keywords used by your target market that you hadn’t thought of yourself.
4. Find out why your competitor’s website ranks above your specific keywords for broad search terms.

How to do competitor keyword analysis

There are several different strategies you can use for conducting competitor keyword research. Check out the following tips to learn how to do competitor keyword analysis.

1. Identify your competitors

No matter which approach you take to competitor keyword analysis, it’s essential to identify your competitors. In some cases, the competitors you focus on in your analysis will be your direct competitors — businesses that offer the same products or services as you to the same audience. Looking at these competitors is useful if you want to, for example, evaluate the overall search landscape in your industry or get ideas for your SEO strategy. At other times, you might be competing for rankings with businesses or websites you wouldn’t typically consider your competitors.

2. Use a keyword tool to identify the keywords for which your competitors rank

You can use various keyword tools to identify the keywords for which your competitors rank well. If you search a domain or URL in many of these tools, you’ll get a list of the top keywords for which they rank. In many of these tools, you can choose to explore either organic or paid keywords.

For example, to see a competitor’s keywords in Ahrefs, go to Site Explorer and input their domain. Then, click on ‘Organic keywords’ at the top of the page or in the left-hand sidebar for a list of the top organic keywords they rank for. You can also click on ‘PPC’ at the top of the page or ‘PPC keywords’ on the left side for a list of your competitor’s top paid keywords.

3. Analyze the keywords

Once you get a list of keywords, you’ll need to analyze them to determine which ones are the best ones for you to target. Some of the factors to look for include the following:

Search volume

Search volume refers to the number of users who search a given keyword, typically measured as an average amount per month. Ranking for keywords with high search volume results in more impressions and often more traffic to your website.

Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty, or ranking difficulty, is another important metric to consider. It tells you how competitive a keyword is and how hard it is to rank for. Keywords with higher search volume are often more challenging.

The more popular and well-established your site, the more likely you are to rank for difficult keywords. Ranking for highly competitive keywords often requires more SEO expertise and funding. A smart strategy is to look for keywords with a relatively high search volume compared to their keyword difficulty.

In most cases, relatively new websites or SMBs should focus on keywords with only moderate difficulty for the best chance of ranking. Once you rank for a large number of moderately difficult keywords, you can move on to more challenging ones.

Relevance

Not every keyword that your competitors rank for or that has a high search volume will be relevant to your business. Before investing in targeting a given keyword, think about who might search that keyword and what they likely hope to accomplish by searching it. That goal is called search intent.

If the user profile of a searcher matches your target audience and their search intent is relevant to your business, consider targeting the keyword. If not, that keyword likely isn’t the best choice for your business.

4. Determine which keywords competitors consider high-value

Evaluating search volume, relevance to your business, and other elements can help you identify which keywords might be worth a lot to your company. Another way to determine which keywords are high-value is to figure out which keywords your competitors view as high-value. One way to do that is to look at the paid search results for which your competitors appear.

You can use a keyword research tool to get a list of these paid keywords. You can also search keywords and look at the top of the SERP for PPC ads. If your competitors are paying to show up in search, they value that keyword.

Another thing to look for is content assets like webinars, ebooks, and whitepapers. These types of content take a considerable amount of time and money to make. So, if your competitors invest in creating these kinds of content for a particular keyword or topic, they consider that term high-value.

5. Use a keyword tool to identify keyword gaps

Another keyword tool feature that’s useful for competitor keyword analyses is the keyword gap feature, as it’s called in SEMrush, or the content gap feature, as it’s called in Ahrefs. These features show you keywords that your competitors are ranking for but that you’re not ranking for. To get this information, input your domain as well as those of several of your top competitors.

The tool then compares your keywords and shows you any gaps in your targeting.

6. Analyze the SERPs

Once you come up with a list of keywords to target, a crucial next step is searching those keywords and analyzing the SERPs. Look at the top-ranking pages and examine what they do well and where they’re lacking, as this can give you ideas on how to outperform them. It helps to have SEO knowledge when evaluating these pages.

However, if you don’t, just evaluate them as you do when using Google. Ask yourself questions such as:

• Does the page meet search intent?
• How quickly does the page load?
• Is the page user-friendly and easy to navigate?
• Is the page’s look and feel appealing?
• Does the page work well on mobile devices?