Competitor analysis is a vital component of any SEO strategy. It shows you what your rivals are doing so you can learn from them both what is working and what you might want to avoid.

With our free competitor analysis tool, you’ll be able to uncover the following data about your competitors:

• Authority Score: A measure of the website’s authority, which essentially indicates how much ranking power they have
• Referring domains: The number of unique websites linking to the target domain
• Ranking keywords: The total number of keywords the website is ranking for
• Organic traffic: An estimate of the target domain’s monthly organic (unpaid) traffic 

You’ll also see useful information about their:

• Top pages: The pages on the target domain that have the most authority 
• Main organic competitors: The top competitors of the target domain (and therefore potentially more of your own competitors)
• Top ranking keywords: The keywords that drive the most traffic to the target domain 

Analyzing your competitors’ keywords helps you form your own successful content marketing strategy. And with our free competitive analysis tool, you’ll uncover key insights about the terms driving the most traffic to your rivals.

For each keyword, you’ll be able to see:

• Where they rank
• The proportion of their total traffic that keyword drives
• Search volume
• Keyword difficulty 
• Cost per click (important for PPC competitor research)
• The number of organic search results
• Search trend

Why SEO Competitor Analysis Is So Important

Competitor analysis can take time, especially if you have a lot of close rivals. But it’s worth it for a few key reasons.

It Shows You What Your Rivals Are Doing

The most obvious benefit of performing a competitor analysis is that you can keep tabs on your competitors’ activities.

For example, with our free competitor analysis tool, you’ll also see a graph of their referring domains and backlinks over the past year. 

This kind of data lets you instantly spot where your rivals might have implemented link building campaigns. Like this example, where there is a clear spike around April/May:

It Can Uncover Opportunities for Growth

By checking which pages and keywords drive the most traffic to your competitors, you can find opportunities to grow your own traffic. 

For example, if you see that a big chunk of a rival’s traffic comes from a page on a topic you don’t cover, that could be a missed opportunity.

You could then create content on that topic—one that you might not have discovered without analyzing your competitors.

You Can Make Data-Driven Decisions

The main benefit of performing competitor analysis is that it lets you make data-driven decisions. 

Competitor analysis can give you confidence that you’re prioritizing your resources the right way. Whether it’s understanding who your true competitors actually are or finding keyword ideas that are likely to truly drive meaningful traffic, 

For example, if you’re forming a content strategy, focusing on the right keywords is essential. Otherwise, you could end up wasting valuable time and money on keywords that never drive traffic—and never convert any readers into customers.

With a competitor analysis tool, you can see exactly what keywords are getting results for your competitors.

And because your target audience is likely similar to theirs, ranking for these keywords has the potential to drive results for your own website. 

Plus, you’ll see helpful data like search volume and search trends. So you can target keywords people are actively searching for and avoid wasting time targeting keywords with dropping search volumes.

Stay on Top of Your Competitors’ SEO Performance

Our free competitor analysis tool is a great starting point for gathering key data about your rivals. But just using it once isn’t enough—you need to constantly monitor your competitors or risk falling behind them in the search results.

Semrush offers a comprehensive suite of tools that’ll help you keep tabs on every aspect of your competitors’ performance. From their backlink profiles:

To their keyword rankings:

Analyze your competitors with these tools and 50+ more with a Semrush free trial.