How to do a competitor analysis in SEO?
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 3:29 am
⏲ Reading time: 15 minutes
Do you want your website to be visible on the Internet ? To achieve this, you'll naturally focus on SEO . But did you know that you can't achieve this by rushing into it?
Indeed, Google's algorithm adapts to different themes . What works for a subject other than yours will not necessarily be the best option for your domain . This is why you absolutely must do a competitive SEO analysis when you create or optimize your website !
I therefore suggest that you discover how to analyze your rivalry on the Web in order to have better organic referencing than your competitors .
6 steps to analyze your SEO competition
To be effective, SEO competitor analysis must be done methodically. This work is normally carried out by a natural SEO specialist. But so you can do it yourself, I'll provide you with all the essential steps to complete this task. This will allow you to define your sustainable content marketing strategy and implement all the necessary measures to be visible on search engines.
1. Find your competitors on Google
To find out your SEO rivals, the most logical thing to do is simply to start by doing a Google search . By entering several keywords that correspond to your field of activity, you can quickly discover the sites that are most often highlighted.
However, be careful not to make your searches too general , at the risk of only finding big brands or large resale sites (Amazon, Zalando, etc.). To illustrate this point, here are the organic results that appear when you search for the term "shoe".
Screenshot of Google search for shoe
On the other hand, if you focus on long tail or specific searches , you'll quickly find out who your direct competitors are. Continuing with the same theme as before, here are the sites that naturally rank at the top of the SERP with the query "best trail shoe."
Screenshot of Google search for best trail shoe
2. Study your rivals' keywords
Now that you've discovered your SEO competitors, you want to learn more about them. Your main goal, first, is to find out which keywords are attracting the most traffic .
To do this, you need to use analytics tools that will help you quickly understand the keywords your competitors are ranking well for. This way, you'll know the main queries you'll be optimizing for each page or blog post.
Here are the two tools I consider most effective for this keyword analysis task. Their features are more or less similar, so the choice mainly depends on personal comfort of use, needs, and pricing.
SEMrush : Getting started may seem a bit overwhelming, but it's a great tool. It has many features and is one of the most widely used SEO software programs among professionals. The starting monthly price is currently $119.95, with a 7-day trial period.
Screenshot from Semrush
Ranxplorer : Developed in France, this tool offers extremely accurate results. In addition to providing a detailed keyword list, it allows you (among other things) to compare traffic with your competition. The starting monthly rate is €9, which includes 10 analyzed sites and 100 keyword searches.
Screenshot of Ranxplorer
3. Dissect your competitors’ sites
Now you know your SEO competitors and which keywords are driving organic traffic. Now you can analyze how their sites have been optimized to appear at the top of the SERP.
To do this, you mainly focus on the following optimization factors: what is the architecture of the sites, how the user experience (UX) and technology have been worked on and what is the quality of the content of the pages.
Tree structure : You can see which tabs are available and how the internal networking has been established. Whether these are silos or semantic cocoons, you'll then understand which pages are most important for creating or updating your site.
Technical : Loading speed, popups, sitemap, CSS, etc. You compare the data obtained to adjust your settings as efficiently as possible. During this stage, user experience is also a key point to analyze.
Content : The most azerbaijan phone number data effective way to analyze your competitors' SEO content is to use the SEOQuantum tool . This will allow you to know exactly how many words you need to include in your text to outperform your rivals, how the content has been structured, how frequently each keyword appears, and how to position them in "hot zones" (especially the "Title" and "H1" tags).
Screenshot from SEOQuantum
You can then draw inspiration from each of them, trying to reproduce what seems most coherent and what suits you best. Your goal is to take everything that is best on each of your competitor sites and adapt it to your own website .
4. Analyze the reputation of your SEO competition
Knowing your competitors' SEO authority score is essential for establishing an effective netlinking strategy . Indeed, to be able to place your site at the top of search engine results pages, you must carefully work on its reputation.
At the same time, you can discover where your SEO competitors' links come from , what their link anchors are , and which pages they target . These are all useful elements for defining an optimal backlinking campaign.
There are two widely recognized and used tools for analyzing this type of data on any site. Once again, the choice of program will depend on personal affinity and specific needs.
Majestic : In the free version, you can already access the famous "Trust Flow," considered an extremely relevant value for a site's reputation. With the paid version, you can understand the overall strategy of your rivals. Another advantage is that the information is all detailed in French. Easy to use, you can even install the Majestic Backlink Analyzer extension on Google Chrome.
Do you want your website to be visible on the Internet ? To achieve this, you'll naturally focus on SEO . But did you know that you can't achieve this by rushing into it?
Indeed, Google's algorithm adapts to different themes . What works for a subject other than yours will not necessarily be the best option for your domain . This is why you absolutely must do a competitive SEO analysis when you create or optimize your website !
I therefore suggest that you discover how to analyze your rivalry on the Web in order to have better organic referencing than your competitors .
6 steps to analyze your SEO competitionTo be effective, SEO competitor analysis must be done methodically. This work is normally carried out by a natural SEO specialist. But so you can do it yourself, I'll provide you with all the essential steps to complete this task. This will allow you to define your sustainable content marketing strategy and implement all the necessary measures to be visible on search engines.
1. Find your competitors on Google
To find out your SEO rivals, the most logical thing to do is simply to start by doing a Google search . By entering several keywords that correspond to your field of activity, you can quickly discover the sites that are most often highlighted.
However, be careful not to make your searches too general , at the risk of only finding big brands or large resale sites (Amazon, Zalando, etc.). To illustrate this point, here are the organic results that appear when you search for the term "shoe".
Screenshot of Google search for shoe
On the other hand, if you focus on long tail or specific searches , you'll quickly find out who your direct competitors are. Continuing with the same theme as before, here are the sites that naturally rank at the top of the SERP with the query "best trail shoe."
Screenshot of Google search for best trail shoe
2. Study your rivals' keywords
Now that you've discovered your SEO competitors, you want to learn more about them. Your main goal, first, is to find out which keywords are attracting the most traffic .
To do this, you need to use analytics tools that will help you quickly understand the keywords your competitors are ranking well for. This way, you'll know the main queries you'll be optimizing for each page or blog post.
Here are the two tools I consider most effective for this keyword analysis task. Their features are more or less similar, so the choice mainly depends on personal comfort of use, needs, and pricing.
SEMrush : Getting started may seem a bit overwhelming, but it's a great tool. It has many features and is one of the most widely used SEO software programs among professionals. The starting monthly price is currently $119.95, with a 7-day trial period.
Screenshot from Semrush
Ranxplorer : Developed in France, this tool offers extremely accurate results. In addition to providing a detailed keyword list, it allows you (among other things) to compare traffic with your competition. The starting monthly rate is €9, which includes 10 analyzed sites and 100 keyword searches.
Screenshot of Ranxplorer
3. Dissect your competitors’ sites
Now you know your SEO competitors and which keywords are driving organic traffic. Now you can analyze how their sites have been optimized to appear at the top of the SERP.
To do this, you mainly focus on the following optimization factors: what is the architecture of the sites, how the user experience (UX) and technology have been worked on and what is the quality of the content of the pages.
Tree structure : You can see which tabs are available and how the internal networking has been established. Whether these are silos or semantic cocoons, you'll then understand which pages are most important for creating or updating your site.
Technical : Loading speed, popups, sitemap, CSS, etc. You compare the data obtained to adjust your settings as efficiently as possible. During this stage, user experience is also a key point to analyze.
Content : The most azerbaijan phone number data effective way to analyze your competitors' SEO content is to use the SEOQuantum tool . This will allow you to know exactly how many words you need to include in your text to outperform your rivals, how the content has been structured, how frequently each keyword appears, and how to position them in "hot zones" (especially the "Title" and "H1" tags).
Screenshot from SEOQuantum
You can then draw inspiration from each of them, trying to reproduce what seems most coherent and what suits you best. Your goal is to take everything that is best on each of your competitor sites and adapt it to your own website .
4. Analyze the reputation of your SEO competition
Knowing your competitors' SEO authority score is essential for establishing an effective netlinking strategy . Indeed, to be able to place your site at the top of search engine results pages, you must carefully work on its reputation.
At the same time, you can discover where your SEO competitors' links come from , what their link anchors are , and which pages they target . These are all useful elements for defining an optimal backlinking campaign.
There are two widely recognized and used tools for analyzing this type of data on any site. Once again, the choice of program will depend on personal affinity and specific needs.
Majestic : In the free version, you can already access the famous "Trust Flow," considered an extremely relevant value for a site's reputation. With the paid version, you can understand the overall strategy of your rivals. Another advantage is that the information is all detailed in French. Easy to use, you can even install the Majestic Backlink Analyzer extension on Google Chrome.