How To Conduct a Competitor Keyword Analysis

Competitor keyword analysis is one of the most important yet underutilized aspects of search engine optimization (SEO). Any digital marketing service worth its salt prioritizes this analysis when providing clients keyword research reports. 

If you want to rank on Google, you need to know what your competitors are targeting — both to redirect their traffic to your site and to find untapped potential.

This guide outlines tips for successful competitor keyword research, including how to do keyword research,  how to use competitors' keywords to your advantage, and how to improve your keyword rankings.

What Is Competitor Keyword Analysis?

Competitive keyword analysis is the process of discovering the keywords for which your competitors rank highly — and the secrets of their success.

It's related to keyword competition analysis, but there is a difference. In keyword competition analysis, the search terms themselves are the focus of your research. The primary goal is to find relevant keywords that provide opportunities and understand the challenges behind ranking for a given term.

Competitor keyword analysis puts the focus on your business rivals to learn:

• What is their strategy for using keywords?
• What terms do they target, and how? 
• What’s driving traffic to their site?
• What are they overlooking?

Both strategies aim to help you rise in Google search results for the keywords most likely to drive business your way.

Understanding what your competitors are doing is crucial for a business to compete effectively. It helps you replicate their strategies, recognize opportunities for improvement, and take advantage of weaknesses. Keyword research competitor analysis lets you see what’s driving their success online and customers to their business.

This is especially important for SEO. An analysis of some four million Google search results from Backlinko found that nearly 40% of all Google users click on the site that ranks first for the keyword. Second and third places attract 18.7% and 10.2%, respectively. These aren't victories you want to cede to the competition.

Does all that clicking around the world lead to business in the community? Yes. Google reports that 74% of shoppers search online before purchasing or visiting a store to shop.

7 Steps To Conduct Competitor Keyword Research

Regular competitor keyword research is essential to a successful SEO strategy. It can provide valuable insight into what your competitors are targeting and how successful they have been in their efforts.

1. Identify Your Direct Competitors

You should begin by identifying businesses that offer similar services or products in your niche. Look for businesses that target the same types of customers. Finding the three to five major competitors you compete with is a great place to start.

2. Find Your Organic Competitors

Creating an organized list of your search engine results page (SERP) competitors is critical to SEO management. Identify those websites that appear near to or above you. Note that keyword competitors and general business competitors aren't the same thing. Someone who isn't a rival might outrank you, and fellow businesses might neglect their SEO — but don't count on it.

Make a detailed list for each of your most important terms, highlighting websites that appear on multiple lists. Integrate them into a master list. You can even rank competitors in order of their prominence or importance as direct rivals.

Suppose you own a hair salon in Saint Paul, Minnesota. You might search Google for: “best hair salons in Saint Paul.” Check where you fall on the SERP and who appears ahead of you. You might also search “haircut in Saint Paul” and the names of other services you provide.

If you are a service-oriented business like a hair salon that attracts customers from a specific geographic area, you may want to limit your keyword analysis to within your service area.

You should also analyze your keywords and corresponding ranking positions as a baseline to compare with the keywords you uncover from your competitor analysis.

Think about how people search. You want to define the broad-match and long-tail keywords representing your products or services. Broad-match keywords are more general and used for a range of searches, while long-tail keywords are specific phrases with lower search volume but higher conversion rates.

For our hair salon example, the broad match keywords might be salon, hair stylist, haircut services, beauty salon, or hair coloring. Your long-tail keywords might target specific high-intent keywords. These are the types of keywords people search when they are ready to purchase, such as evening appointments for haircuts, bridal hairstyling, and kids haircuts near me.

3. Use Competitor Research and Analysis Tools

While you may have some ideas about what people are searching for, using a competitor keyword analysis tool is how you make up for not being psychic. It would be pretty darn impressive if you could peek inside the collective psyche of your industry or community, magically listing all the search terms that ultimately direct them to your competitors.

Fortunately, you don't have to do that.

Instead, you can use keyword research tools to check competitor keywords. What brings them traffic? 

There are many solid competitor research tools you can explore. That said, one of the best is Semrush, and it’s only made more attractive because you can access a limited version for free. However, there are several others on the market, including:

• Moz keyword explorer
• SpyFu
• Google keyword planner
• Ahrefs keyword explorer

4. Collect Competitor Keyword Research and Analysis Tools

You can use these keyword research tools to analyze every element of your competitors' online presence, including their website traffic analytics, marketing tactics, and SEO objectives. This is how you find competitor keywords and determine how difficult it would be to outrank them for those terms.

Analyze Organic Keywords

You want to identify the top-performing keywords for your major competitors, noting positions, search volumes, and difficult scores.

The top competitor for our fictional hair salon is Accolades Salon. Running it through Semrush can uncover the complete list of keywords for which they rank. The spreadsheet shows us how much traffic each term generates. In addition to versions of their brand name, there’s a long list of salon and Minnesota-related words.

Most of the tools we've mentioned will also tell you how difficult it would be to rank for each keyword. It assigns each keyword a difficulty score, color-coding them from more accessible terms in green to bigger challenges in red. This level of detail is critical to knowing where your best opportunities are and prioritizing your work. 

This information is also valuable if you are investing in search ads because it tells you which keywords offer the highest return on investment (ROI). As you can see in this example, “hair salon St. Paul” is potentially within reach.

Examine Paid Keywords

Another smart strategy is to identify the keywords used in paid campaigns. Besides looking at competitor pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, you can analyze the copy on landing pages. Monitoring bid amounts and ad positions can also give you an idea of the costs if you decide to invest in PPC.

5. Identify Keyword Gaps

Keyword gap analysis dives deeper into your keyword competitor analysis. You’re looking for organic keywords with a high search volume that your competitors aren't strong in. Seize these untapped keyword opportunities to improve your overall SERP performance, gaining ground on your direct competitors by developing content with these keywords.

Keyword gap analysis also requires you to investigate competitor strengths. Assuming that they aren't the only website targeting that keyword, why does Google identify them as the authority? Why is their content ranked more highly than yours?

Potential factors include:

• Domain authority
• Page authority
• Content quality
• Backlink profile
• Topical relevance
• Content freshness

As you can see from this list, keywords are one component of your SEO strategy. Google has more than 200 ranking signals — and they evolve constantly — that impact SERP. You need a holistic approach to SEO to succeed.

Even if you discover that a particular keyword may be out of reach for the foreseeable future, you've built a map to capture it eventually.

Discovering Opportunities in Low-Competition Keywords 

When you’re conducting competitor keyword analysis, one thing you’re looking for is areas where there are keyword gaps. While you want to know what your competitors rank highly for, low-competition keywords can often drive substantial traffic.

Evaluating Competitors’ Highest-Ranked Keywords

At the same time, finding out your competitors' highest-ranking keywords also provides insight. To be truly competitive, you must also play in this arena. Compare these keywords to the list of keywords you generated for your site.

When you see shortfalls, this comparison can help you find areas to improve your SEO practices.

Considering Cost-per-Click

By finding the keywords your competitors are missing, you find the long-tail opportunities that will be easier to rank for and less expensive if you buy search ads. The best bargains are those with higher traffic and low difficulty scores that your competitors are not using.

6. Evaluate Search Intent

People search for different reasons, and understanding search intent is essential to a successful keyword strategy.

Four main types of intent can impact your SEO strategy:

• Informational: Searching for answers to questions or general information
• Transactional: Looking for specific products or services for purchase
• Commercial: Seeking information about products or services or comparing options
• Navigational: Looking for specific websites, pages, or locations

You should categorize the keywords you find by intent and analyze the ranking of each. For our hair salon example, you might classify search intent for these keywords as:

• Informational: Hair care tips for curly hair, what is balayage vs highlights, trending hairstyles
• Transactional: Book hair appointments near me, hair coloring cost, salon appointment [CITY NAME]
• Commercial: Best hair salon in [CITY NAME]. hair salon reviews near me, hair salon price comparison
• Navigational: [SALON NAME] hours, [SALON NAME] [CITY NAME], [SALON NAME] appointment

Seeing how your competitors approach these keywords can help you decide how you want to manage them.

7. Prioritize Keywords Based on Relevance

After you finish your competitor keyword analysis, start building a list. This is another area where a keyword research tool can help. Identify all relevant topics and the most popular, up-to-date phrases used to describe them.

When prioritizing keywords discovered through competitor analysis, focus first on their direct relevance to your business goals and target audience. Rather than just going by search volume, consider how ranking for particular keywords will enhance your brand or drive conversions. Prioritize those with the greatest relevance.

Pay attention to keywords that directly match your product or services — these are more likely to lead to conversions. However, you must be realistic about the resources required to rank for each keyword. For example, if your website has low domain authority or you’re relatively new, it can take considerable time to rank for high-volume keywords against established competitors.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to use these keywords, but you might have more success in the short term with relevant keywords your competitors aren’t using.

You can also use Google Trends to identify relevant, trending topics in your target demographic. These will be the freshest keywords — but try to highlight topics that show sustained growth rather than a brief spike. You’re investing time and effort into your keyword strategy, so you want the impact to be long-term.

How To Use Your Competitors' Keywords

Let’s look at how we implement the information you’ve gathered. After you’ve identified and prioritized your list of keywords, let’s discuss their application.

Categorize Keywords in Topics and Clusters

Examine your list for similarities. In content marketing, an especially effective tactic is to create topic clusters. Pillar pages typically focus on main themes, while supporting subtopics and related keywords link to the pillar page. These work together to provide topic authority.

Evaluate Your Competitors' Content

Go beyond just the keywords and analyze your competitors’ content for quality and depth. By identifying content gaps, you can often uncover areas where you can outperform the competition. 

For example, if they have a short page on their website comparing “balayage vs. highlights” covering the basics, you could create more comprehensive coverage that could include:

• Expert insights and recommendations
• Maintenance and aftercare tips
• Before and after photos
• Client testimonials
• Pricing information 

By providing greater depth, you can demonstrate greater expertise, build topic authority, and improve your odds of discovery.

Implement Targeted Content Creation

Writing blog posts is an excellent way to engage potential customers and target your keywords. It’s also one of the easiest ways to ensure fresh content on your website. Search engines tend to rank static sites lower in many cases.

Single blog posts and backlinks won't cut it — no matter how strong they are and how well you conduct competitor keyword analysis. A well-crafted content strategy unifies your message, drives traffic, and builds trust in your brand. A clear direction also helps you stay on track with on-theme content that respects any time or budget constraints.

Staying on topic is essential. Google delists sites that use content unrelated to a site’s core mission to manipulate rankings. For example, adding content about cryptocurrency or sports betting to try to improve your site ranking will hurt you.

To reap the SEO gains you want, use SEO best practices.

A few reminders:

1. Integrate keywords strategically. Place target keywords in your title, headings, and subheadings; incorporate them into the body of your blog post, too, but space them out naturally.
2. Add a meta description. Using the keyword, write a short blurb to introduce your article. This will appear under the title in SERPs. Limit to 160 characters. After that, descriptions tend to get truncated.
3. Link to reputable external sites. Citing authoritative sources makes your piece more attractive to search engines and readers.
4. Include internal links. By linking to other pieces of content on your website, you help search engines index it appropriately. You also may drum up some referral traffic as readers want to read more of your work.
5. Supplement text with rich media. Add images or even videos to your blog post.

It’s a good idea to create a short SEO checklist for yourself that you can refer to before publishing.

Track Keyword Rankings To Evaluate Performance

As you publish content, monitor each piece's performance. Regularly tweak your content strategy based on audience feedback and SERP performance. 

When you find content that performs well, make sure to update it regularly to keep it fresh.

Remember that things don’t happen in a vacuum. Keyword performance constantly evolves as competitors adjust their strategies, new competitors emerge, and search engines tweak their algorithms. Monitoring is critical to long-term performance improvement.

Outrank Your Competitors With Compose.ly

Competitor keyword research takes time and practice. So does successful content strategy and creation. Remember that you can always hire experienced professionals to handle these chores for you.

Compose.ly makes it easier than ever to find high-quality SEO-friendly content that reaches your target audience. Our writers and SEO experts can produce everything from one-off blog posts to full, executed content strategies. They'll craft compelling copy that charms search engines and customers alike.

Hone your competitive edge with Professional SEO Services from the experts at Compose.ly, including:

• Site audits and keyword rankings
• Competitive analysis
• SEO content briefs
• Keyword recommendations
• Original, keyword-optimized content

Let’s talk. Connect with the SEO pros at Compose.ly today.