How to Perform an SEO Competitor Analysis

What Is SEO Competitor Analysis?

A SEO competitor analysis is the structured process of evaluating the online strategies of sites that rank for your target keywords, with the goal of identifying what they are doing that earns those rankings and where gaps exist in their approach that you can take advantage of. It covers keyword coverage, content quality, backlink profiles, technical health, and SERP feature ownership.

The single most important distinction in SEO competitor analysis is one that most practitioners overlook when they start: your SEO competitors are not necessarily your business competitors. Consider two types:

• Business competitors are companies selling similar products or services to the same audience. These are the names you think of when asked “who do you compete with?”
• SEO competitors are websites that rank for the same keywords you are targeting. These may include publishers, comparison sites, industry directories, aggregators, or news sites that do not sell anything directly but occupy the same SERP positions you are trying to win.

In SEO strategy, your SEO competitors matter more than your business competitors. A Singapore industry blog ranking in position one for your core keyword is your real SEO competition, even if they are not in your market. Analysing the wrong sites, meaning your direct business rivals rather than the actual SERP occupants, makes the entire analysis useless. Getting this right from the start determines whether the rest of the process produces useful intelligence or noise.

Why SEO Competitor Analysis Matters

Running a thorough SEO competitor analysis produces five concrete outcomes that would take months to arrive at through trial and error alone.

Find keywords you are missing. Keyword gaps reveal search terms your competitors rank for that you do not. Each one represents direct traffic you could be capturing. A single keyword gap analysis often surfaces dozens of high-intent terms that should be on your content roadmap immediately.

Understand what content quality looks like in your niche. Reading a competitor’s top-performing page shows you how they structure depth, handle E-E-A-T signals, use multimedia, and address the topic. This is more useful than any content checklist because it is calibrated to your specific market and the standard Google has already validated with rankings.

Identify backlink opportunities with precision. Rather than prospecting for links in the dark, competitor backlink analysis shows you the exact domains that already link to sites in your space. These are pre-qualified targets that have demonstrated willingness to link to your topic area.

Spot SERP features competitors are already winning. Featured snippets, People Also Ask positions, image packs, and AI Overview citations are real estate your competitors may already occupy. Knowing which ones they hold shows you where to focus content optimisation efforts for the fastest visibility gains.

Set realistic SEO goals. Domain authority benchmarking shows the gap between your current authority and your competitors’ authority for specific keywords. If a competitor has a Domain Rating of 85 and you have 30, chasing their primary keywords head-on is a long-term play. The analysis shows you where to start and where to wait.

Step 1: Identify Your SEO Competitors

Before running any analysis, you need the right list of competitors to analyse. As noted above, these are the sites ranking for your keywords, not necessarily your direct sales rivals. There are two reliable methods for building this list.

Method 1: Google SERP Search (Free)

Search your five most important target keywords in Google. Use an incognito window to avoid personalised results skewing the SERP. Note which websites appear consistently in the top five positions across multiple searches. Any domain appearing in the top five for three or more of your target keywords is a primary SEO competitor. List them. The result often surprises people: for a Singapore B2B company, the list might include Vulcan Post, industry publications, or comparison directories rather than the direct sales competitors they expected.

Method 2: Organic Competitors Report in SEO Tools

Enter your domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and navigate to the “Competing Domains” report, or into Semrush’s Organic Research and click the “Competitors” tab. Both tools rank external domains by the number of keywords they share with your site. The result is a data-driven list of your actual SEO competitors, ordered by overlap. This method is faster and more complete than manual SERP searches for sites with large content sets.

When tracking competitors on an ongoing basis, three to five primary SEO competitors is the right scope for analysis. More than five becomes unwieldy and produces more data than you can act on; fewer than three risks missing important patterns, particularly if some competitors only own specific sub-topics rather than broad overlap.

Step 2: Benchmark Domain Authority and Traffic

Before going deeper, take a baseline reading of each competitor’s domain-level authority and organic traffic. This step sets realistic expectations for the entire analysis and determines which keyword gaps are achievable in the near term versus the long term.

What to Measure Per Competitor

Domain Rating (DR) or Domain Authority (DA): DR is Ahrefs’ metric; DA is Moz’s equivalent. Both score domains on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100 based on the quality and quantity of their backlink profiles. Enter each competitor’s domain into Ahrefs Site Explorer, Semrush Domain Overview, or Moz’s free DA checker. Record the score alongside your own domain’s score.

Estimated organic traffic: The total monthly visitors arriving from organic search. Available in Ahrefs Site Explorer (Organic Traffic column) or Semrush Domain Overview. This figure gives a sense of how much search presence each competitor has built and how far ahead of you they are on aggregate.

Top traffic-driving pages: In Ahrefs, go to Site Explorer and click “Top Pages” to see which pages attract the most organic traffic. In Semrush, this sits under “Organic Research” on the “Pages” tab. The result shows where each competitor’s authority is concentrated, which matters when you are deciding which of their topics to prioritise attacking.

What to Do with This Data

If a competitor has DR 70 or above and your domain sits at DR 30, targeting their highest-volume primary keywords head-on is a long-term play. The smarter starting point is lower-competition keyword gaps where their pages have few backlinks despite ranking. These represent the fastest wins available to you right now.

If competitors have similar DR to yours, you can compete more directly by out-executing on content quality, depth, and technical performance. In that case, the keyword gap and content quality steps below matter more than authority-building.

Note: DR and DA are directional metrics, not ranking guarantees. A page on a high-DR site can still be outranked by a better, more relevant page on a lower-DR site, particularly for long-tail and specific intent queries. Always pair domain-level benchmarking with keyword difficulty and SERP intent analysis before setting targets.

Step 3: Keyword Gap Analysis

Keyword gap analysis identifies the specific search terms your competitors rank for that your site does not. These are direct traffic opportunities. A single well-executed keyword gap analysis typically surfaces more content priorities than you can address in a quarter, so the filtering and prioritisation steps below matter as much as the discovery itself.

With Semrush Keyword Gap Tool

• Navigate to the Keyword Gap tool in Semrush.
• Enter your domain and up to four competitor domains in the comparison fields.
• Select your target country (Singapore or global, depending on your audience).
• Click Compare, then navigate to the “Missing” tab. These are keywords that all your competitors rank for but your site does not. This tab is where to start.
• Filter by monthly search volume above 100 to exclude negligible-traffic terms, and set keyword difficulty below 40 to surface the fastest achievable wins first. Adjust these thresholds based on your domain’s current authority.

With Ahrefs Content Gap

• Go to Site Explorer, enter your domain, and click “Content Gap” in the left navigation.
• In the “Show keywords that these competitors rank for” field, add your competitor URLs.
• The “But the following target doesn’t rank for” field is pre-filled with your domain. Click Show keywords.
• Review results and filter by volume and position. Keywords where multiple competitors rank in positions one to ten but you have no ranking at all are the highest-priority gaps.

Free Method (No Paid Tool Required)

• Search your ten to twenty target keywords in Google in an incognito window.
• Note which competitor pages consistently appear for terms your site does not rank for.
• Open those competitor pages and scan their H2 and H3 headings. Each sub-topic they cover that you do not is a content gap. Note the specific questions and angles their content addresses that yours ignores.

Bonus Method: Check Competitor Paid Search Keywords

Competitors do not bid on keywords speculatively. If a business is spending on a term in Google Ads, it has typically demonstrated commercial return first. Their paid keyword list is therefore a pre-qualified profitability signal: terms worth pursuing organically because someone in your space has already validated the conversion value.

In Ahrefs, go to Site Explorer, enter a competitor’s domain, and click “Paid Keywords” in the left navigation. In Semrush, use the Advertising Research tool and enter the competitor domain. In both cases, filter to exclude branded terms. What remains is a list of non-branded commercial keywords your competitor considers worth bidding on.

Cross-reference this list with your existing keyword gap output. Terms that appear in both, specifically competitor paid keywords that you also do not rank for organically, are the highest-priority additions to your content strategy. They combine gap status (you are not currently capturing the traffic) with paid validation (someone has proven the intent converts).

When prioritising gaps, focus first on keywords where competitor pages ranking in the top ten have low backlink counts. A page ranking with ten referring domains is far more vulnerable to displacement than one with three hundred. For a full picture of how to evaluate keyword targets, see our guide on keyword difficulty.

Step 4: Content Gap and Quality Analysis

Knowing which keywords your competitors rank for is the first half of content analysis. The second half is understanding why their content ranks, so you can produce something that competes on quality, not just on keyword coverage.

Take each top-performing competitor page you identify and evaluate it across these seven dimensions.

Word count and depth. How complete is the content? Does it answer the full topic or leave obvious sub-questions unaddressed? Depth is not the same as length: a 3,000-word page that repeats itself is weaker than a 2,000-word page that addresses every relevant angle once and clearly.

Structure. What H2 and H3 headings are used? Is there a logical flow from definition to application to advanced considerations? A well-structured page is easier for both users and search engines to navigate, and the heading structure itself signals topical coverage.

Author and experience signals. Does the page name an author? Include credentials, a professional bio, or first-person accounts of applying the concepts? Does it cite primary sources or original research? These are Experience and Expertise dimensions of Google E-E-A-T, which Google uses explicitly in quality assessments. A competitor page with a named expert author, cited studies, and original examples is a stronger E-E-A-T signal than an anonymous overview.

Authority signals. Does the page link out to authoritative external sources? Is it linked to from other high-quality pages on the same domain? A page embedded in a strong internal link cluster is harder to displace than an isolated post with no internal links pointing to it.

Trust signals. Is there a clear publication date? Is the content visibly updated? Is it obvious who or what organisation is behind the content? Freshness and transparency are Trust signals in Google’s quality framework.

Multimedia. Does the competitor use original images, data visualisations, screenshots, or embedded video that you do not? Original visual content adds both engagement and ranking signals, particularly for image-pack and video-carousel SERP features.

Content freshness. When was the page last updated? Check the publication date and any “last updated” notation. Outdated competitor content is an opportunity: a fresher, more accurate version of the same topic is one of the most reliable ranking improvements available.

On the content gap side: scan competitor H2 headings for sub-topics they cover that your page does not. Prioritise gaps where multiple competitors cover the same sub-topic. That consensus signals genuine audience demand that your page is currently failing to address.

The goal of this step is not to copy what competitors are doing. It is to understand what quality looks like in your niche and then do it better on every dimension you can measure.

Step 5: SERP Feature Analysis

Organic blue links are no longer the only real estate on a Google results page. Featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, image packs, local packs, video carousels, and AI Overviews now occupy a significant portion of most SERPs. Competitors who own these features are capturing visibility and clicks that never reach the standard ranked results at all. Identifying which features your competitors hold and how they earned them is one of the highest-impact parts of a modern SEO competitor analysis.

SERP Features to Analyse Per Keyword

Featured snippets: Is a competitor owning the zero-position answer for any of your target keywords? If so, what format does it take: a paragraph answer, a numbered list, a table? Understanding the format tells you how to structure your own content to compete for that position. Featured snippets are typically won by pages that already rank in the top five and directly answer the query in a clear, concise format.

People Also Ask (PAA): Which related questions appear in the PAA boxes for your target keywords? Which competitors are answering them? PAA questions are a direct map to the specific angles and sub-questions your audience is searching for. Each one is a potential FAQ question, a content section heading, or a standalone article that could earn its own PAA position.

Image packs: Are competitors winning image results for visual searches related to your topic? If image packs appear for your keywords, original, well-optimised images with descriptive filenames and alt text could earn additional SERP real estate that your text-only competitors cannot access.

Local packs: For location-based keywords, which businesses appear in the Google Maps three-pack? If you are targeting location-specific queries, the local pack is often more valuable than a position-one organic result because it appears above it.

Video carousels: Are video results appearing for your target keywords? Competitors with YouTube content targeting those terms are capturing a traffic stream you cannot reach without video. If video carousels appear consistently, this is an investment signal worth factoring into your content roadmap.

AI Overviews: For informational keywords, Google increasingly displays AI-generated overviews above organic results. Auditing which competitors appear in these citations matters as much as auditing who holds featured snippets. AI Overviews can suppress organic clicks for informational queries while still driving brand familiarity through citation.

When analysing AI Overviews for a target keyword, note which sources Google cites and whether any of your competitors appear among them. AI Overviews draw from pages with strong topical authority and clear structure: comprehensive coverage, logical heading hierarchy, direct answers near the top of the page, and cited sources. If competitors are cited and your pages are not, the gap is usually in content completeness or structural clarity rather than in domain authority alone.

Extend this audit to other AI search surfaces. Check whether competitors are cited in answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode by running the same queries manually or using an AI search visibility tool. These citations influence brand perception and consideration even when they do not generate a direct click. A competitor consistently cited in AI-generated travel or financial advice, for example, builds implicit authority with readers who never visit the traditional SERP. The relationship between traditional rankings and AI citations is not coincidental: pages with strong organic positions for a topic are significantly more likely to be cited by AI search engines, which means the most reliable path to AI citation is the same as the path to organic ranking: depth, authority, and structure.

A practical method: run each target keyword as a prompt in ChatGPT and Perplexity. Note which sources are cited, whether any are your competitors, and what makes the cited content appear authoritative. This takes around 15 minutes per keyword cluster and gives you a direct view of which content is being validated by AI search, independent of your own SERP position.

How to Run This Analysis

Search each target keyword in Google in an incognito window. Take a screenshot of the full results page. Note which features appear and which competitors occupy them. For each feature a competitor owns, ask: “Can I create or optimise content to earn this position?” If yes, it becomes a content optimisation priority.

Step 6: Backlink Gap Analysis

Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals in Google’s algorithm. A backlink gap analysis identifies the specific domains that link to your competitors but not to you. These are your highest-priority link outreach targets because they have already demonstrated willingness to link to content in your topic area.

The Link Intersect Method

In Ahrefs: Go to the Link Intersect tool. Enter three to five competitor domains in the “Show domains that link to” fields. Enter your domain in the “But don’t link to” field. The results show every domain that links to at least one competitor but not to you. Domains appearing in multiple competitor rows are the most valuable targets because they clearly link to multiple players in your space.

In Semrush: Go to Backlink Gap. Enter your domain alongside your competitor domains. Filter for “Unique to competitors” to see the referring domains you are missing. Export this list and sort by domain authority to prioritise the highest-value targets first.

What to Evaluate in Competitor Backlinks

Source authority: Prioritise referring domains with DR 40 or above for meaningful link equity. Links from low-authority domains move rankings less and dilute your profile if acquired in volume.

Topical relevance: A link from a domain in a related industry carries more ranking weight than a generic directory link. Relevance signals to Google that the link is editorially earned rather than paid or manipulative.

Link type: Editorial links placed within the body of relevant content are the strongest type. Footer links and sidebar links, particularly those appearing site-wide, carry less individual weight.

Anchor text patterns: Review what anchor text your competitors receive from their strongest links. The patterns reveal which keywords link-builders and editors naturally associate with their content, and feed directly into both your content positioning and your outreach messaging.

Bonus Method: Broken-Page Reclamation

Beyond finding sites that link to live competitor pages, there is a parallel tactic that consistently delivers higher outreach conversion rates: finding competitor pages that have died and targeting their remaining backlinks.

When a page returns a 404 error, the sites linking to it typically do not notice. Those links continue pointing to a broken URL, passing potential equity to nothing. The sites involved usually have no reason to update their links until someone contacts them with a better destination.

To find these opportunities in Ahrefs: open Site Explorer, enter a competitor’s domain, go to “Best By Links” in the left navigation, and set the HTTP filter to 404. The resulting list shows every dead competitor page ranked by the number of referring domains pointing to it. Sort by referring domains descending.

In Semrush, use Backlink Analytics on the competitor domain and apply the broken backlinks filter to surface the same data.

Once you have identified a high-link dead page, open the URL in the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) to retrieve the original content. Build a more complete and current version of that content on your own domain. Then reach out to each site linking to the dead URL, explain that the original page is gone, and offer your replacement as a relevant resource.

The outreach conversion rate for broken-link reclamation is meaningfully higher than cold link outreach because you are solving an existing problem for the linking site (a defective link that damages their user experience) rather than making a speculative request. The tradeoff is that it requires more research work upfront per target than standard Link Intersect outreach.

What to Do with This Data

Identify ten to twenty high-value referring domains that link to two or more of your competitors. Research each domain: do they accept guest posts, editorial contributions, or resource page listings? Develop targeted outreach for each based on the specific content angle most relevant to that publication. The goal is link-worthy content: original research, complete guides, or tools that give editors a genuine reason to link. Focus on earning links from relevant, high-quality sources rather than volume from low-authority directories. For more context on evaluating link quality, see our guide on backlink quality.

Step 7: Technical SEO Comparison

Every step so far has focused on what competitors publish and where it ranks. This final step looks at how their sites perform technically, because a competitor with slow load times, poor mobile experience, or crawling issues is sitting on a vulnerability you can exploit through technical superiority alone.

All of the tools in this step are free.

What to Check Per Competitor

Page speed: Go to Google PageSpeed Insights and enter a competitor’s key ranking URL. A mobile score below 70 is a technical weakness. If their pages that rank above yours have poor mobile performance and yours do not, that is an active opportunity. Google’s mobile-first indexing means mobile performance matters more than desktop for most rankings.

Core Web Vitals: PageSpeed Insights also shows Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP, which replaced First Input Delay), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). These are the three Core Web Vitals Google uses as ranking signals. If a competitor fails one or more of these metrics on pages that currently outrank yours, your page has a technical path to overtaking them without requiring additional content or links. For a full breakdown of what these metrics mean and how to improve them, our technical SEO service team addresses Core Web Vitals as a standard component of every audit.

Mobile-friendliness: Enter the competitor URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. A page that fails the test is disadvantaged by mobile-first indexing and represents a ranking position that is vulnerable to a well-optimised mobile alternative.

HTTPS: Check whether the competitor site runs on HTTPS. Most modern sites do, but legacy domains and recently migrated sites sometimes retain HTTP pages that receive no security-signal benefit from Google.

Crawlability and indexing: Run a site:competitor.com search in Google to get a rough count of indexed pages. If a large site shows unusually few indexed pages, it may have crawling or indexing issues that reduce its effective footprint. This is a broad signal, not a precise measure, but significant discrepancies are worth noting.

What to Do with This Data

Before benchmarking competitors, confirm your own site has no technical weaknesses. Use Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report, the Coverage report, and the Page Experience report as your own baseline. If your site has unresolved technical issues, fixing those comes before targeting a competitor’s weaknesses.

Once your own technical health is confirmed, any competitor page with technical weaknesses on a keyword you are targeting is a signal that its ranking is vulnerable. Technical improvements on your side require no new content and no new backlinks, and their effect on rankings can appear within weeks of implementation. This makes technical gap-closing one of the fastest ROI actions in the SEO competitor analysis toolkit.

How Often to Run an SEO Competitor Analysis

SEO competitor analysis is not a one-time task. Competitor strategies, keyword rankings, and backlink profiles change continuously. A single analysis gives you a snapshot; ongoing monitoring gives you an edge.

The cadence I recommend is:

• Full 7-step analysis: Every three to six months. This aligns with the typical pace at which competitor strategies shift meaningfully and keyword ranking changes accumulate enough to warrant a complete review.
• Light monitoring (keyword rankings and new content): Monthly. Set up Google Alerts for competitor brand names or use Semrush’s Position Tracking to monitor competitor ranking changes on your target keywords. When a competitor publishes a new piece of content that ranks, you want to know about it quickly.
• Trigger-based: Run a focused analysis any time your rankings drop significantly, a competitor launches a major new content piece that overtakes yours, or you are planning a new content campaign and need fresh gap data before setting priorities.

A simple habit: set a quarterly calendar reminder to rerun your keyword gap analysis and check each competitor’s top pages report for any new content that has overtaken yours since the last review. This takes around two hours with the right tools and keeps the analysis current without requiring a full seven-step cycle every time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between SEO competitor analysis and competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis is a broad business strategy exercise covering pricing, product, sales, and market positioning. SEO competitor analysis is specifically focused on search: which sites rank for your target keywords, what content and backlinks earned those rankings, and where gaps exist for you to compete. SEO competitor analysis uses different tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Search Console), operates on different data (rankings, backlinks, traffic), and produces outputs directly applicable to content and link strategy rather than business strategy.

How do I find my SEO competitors for free?

Search your five most important target keywords in Google in an incognito window. The websites that consistently appear in the top five positions across multiple searches are your primary SEO competitors. You can also use Google Search Console’s Performance report to see which queries you rank for, then search those queries to see who else ranks. This manual method is less thorough than tool-based approaches but requires no paid subscription and produces a working competitor list within an hour.

What tools do I need for SEO competitor analysis?

A full analysis uses a combination of free and paid tools. Free tools that cover the fundamentals: Google Search Console (your own performance baseline and link data), Google PageSpeed Insights (technical competitor benchmarking), and Google’s incognito SERP (competitor identification and SERP feature analysis). Paid tools that add significant depth: Ahrefs or Semrush for keyword gap analysis, backlink gap analysis, domain authority benchmarking, and organic competitor identification. Both tools offer trial access. Moz has a free DA checker that handles domain authority benchmarking without a subscription.

How often should I do an SEO competitor analysis?

Run a full seven-step analysis every three to six months. In between, monitor competitor rankings and new content on a monthly basis using Google Alerts or a position tracking tool. Run a focused, trigger-based analysis any time your rankings drop unexpectedly, a competitor launches a major new piece of content, or you are starting a new content campaign. Most industries shift fast enough that analysis older than six months is likely to have material gaps.

What should I look for in a competitor’s backlink profile?

Focus on four factors. First, source authority: referring domains with Domain Rating 40 or above pass meaningful link equity. Second, topical relevance: links from sites in a related industry carry more weight than generic directories. Third, link placement: editorial links within body content are stronger than footer or sidebar links. Fourth, anchor text patterns: the anchor text competitors receive tells you which keywords link-building activity has reinforced and how their content is being contextually positioned by third-party editors.

Can I do an SEO competitor analysis without paid tools?

Yes, for the core steps. Use Google’s incognito SERP to identify competitors and check SERP features. Use Google Search Console for your own keyword and link baseline. Use PageSpeed Insights for technical benchmarking. For keyword gap analysis, manually compare competitor H2 headings and content against your own pages. The free approach is less efficient and less thorough than paid tools, particularly for backlink gap analysis and large-scale keyword overlap, but it produces real, useful insights and is the right starting point for sites that cannot yet justify a paid subscription.

How long does an SEO competitor analysis take?

A full seven-step analysis typically takes 6 to 10 hours with paid tools, or 12 to 20 hours using the free manual methods throughout. The most time-intensive steps are the keyword gap analysis (filtering and reviewing a large list of gaps) and the content quality audit (reading and evaluating multiple competitor pages in depth). Light monthly monitoring (checking competitor rankings and scanning for new content) takes 30 to 60 minutes once the initial analysis is set up.

Should I share my SEO competitor analysis with my team?

Yes, and it is worth structuring the handover before you share it. Export the key findings to a shared document and split the output into quick wins (low-effort keyword gaps, technical fixes, content updates to existing pages) and longer-term plays (new content to build from scratch, link acquisition campaigns, structural changes). Schedule a brief kickoff to align on which gaps to action first, who owns each workstream, and how you will track progress. An analysis that stays in a single person’s notes produces no results. The value is in the prioritised action list that comes out of it.

Run Your SEO Competitor Analysis With First Page Digital

A rigorous 7-step SEO competitor analysis takes time, the right tools, and the experience to separate useful signals from noise. When you are running this process for the first time or managing a competitive, fast-moving market, the gap between a surface-level review and a thorough analysis is often the gap between an SEO strategy that works and one that does not.

Want a team to run it for you?

At First Page Digital, competitor analysis is a core component of every SEO campaign. We map your competitor set, identify keyword and content gaps, benchmark backlink profiles, and assess technical vulnerabilities before building your strategy. You can learn more about our SEO services in Singapore or book a free Revenue Growth Strategy Session, valued at SGD 2,000, to get a personalised competitor analysis for your site.