Loading tutorials…
Loading tutorials…
Most teams 'do competitor research' by reading competitor blogs. The real workflow surfaces the keywords competitors rank for, the backlinks they earned, and the content gaps you can win — in about 4 hours. Here's the right sequence.
Who this is forFounders, content marketers, and SEO managers who pay for SEMrush Guru/Business and have a clear set of 3-7 competitors. If you can name your competitors but can't list 50 keywords they rank for that you don't, this tutorial is for you.
What you'll need
Step 1
SEMrush → Domain Overview → your domain → Main Organic Competitors. This is the data-backed competitor list, not your gut.
Open Domain Overview → enter your domain. Scroll to 'Main Organic Competitors.' SEMrush identifies domains with the highest keyword overlap with you.
Compare against your gut list. Often 3-5 of your data-backed competitors are companies you never thought of as competitors — they're competing for SERP space, not just market share.
Build the final list: 3-5 direct competitors (same product/service, same target customer) + 2-3 SERP competitors (different product, same SERPs).
Save the competitor list. You'll use the same list across Keyword Gap, Backlink Gap, and Position Tracking.
Step 2
Domain Overview → competitor.com. Note Authority Score, Organic Traffic, Top Pages, Top Keywords, and Traffic Trend.
For each competitor, run Domain Overview. Capture: Authority Score (your benchmark), monthly Organic Traffic, total Organic Keywords, top 10 traffic-driving pages, and trend direction (rising, flat, declining).
Trend direction matters more than absolute traffic. A competitor at 200K/mo and rising is a bigger threat than one at 500K/mo and declining.
Note the top 10 traffic-driving pages for each competitor. These are the URLs that make their SEO work. Most of your strategic intelligence is in those 10 URLs.
Click into the top traffic pages → see which keywords drive each one. Note the format: guide, listicle, comparison, definition. Your content needs to match the SERP-rewarded format.
Step 3
SEMrush → Keyword Gap → your domain + 4 competitors → analyze. Switch to "Missing" tab — keywords ALL competitors rank for that you don't.
Open Keyword Gap (left rail under SEO → Competitive Research → Keyword Gap). Add your domain in the first slot and 2-4 competitors in the other slots.
Set keyword type to 'Organic Keywords.' Set country to your target market.
Click 'Compare.' SEMrush returns a Venn-style overlap table.
Switch to the 'Missing' tab — keywords ALL competitors rank for that you DON'T rank for. These are the highest-confidence content gaps.
Switch to 'Weak' tab — keywords you rank for in positions 20-50 that competitors rank in 1-10. These are content rewrites/refreshes that move existing pages up.
Switch to 'Untapped' tab — keywords at least ONE competitor ranks for that you don't. Bigger pool than 'Missing,' but lower confidence.
Export Missing + Weak as CSV. Filter by KD (calibrated to your AS), Volume > 100, Intent matches your funnel goal. Top 50 keywords = your next content sprint.
Step 4
SEMrush → Backlink Gap → your domain + 4 competitors. Switch to "Best" tab — referring domains pointing to all competitors but not to you.
Open Backlink Gap (left rail under SEO → Competitive Research → Backlink Gap). Add your domain + 2-4 competitors.
Click 'Find prospects.' SEMrush returns referring domains, sorted by Authority Score, showing which competitors each domain links to.
Switch to the 'Best' tab — referring domains linking to ALL competitors but not to you. These domains have demonstrated willingness to link to your category — highest-conversion outreach targets.
Filter by Authority Score > 30 (skip low-AS spam domains), Topic relevance, and exclude any domain that's already linked to you.
Export the top 50 prospects. For each, identify the page on their site that links to the competitor (Click the linking count to see exact URLs).
Use the 'They link to' insight to craft your outreach: 'I noticed you linked to X — we have a more recent/comprehensive resource on the same topic, would you consider linking to it too?'
Step 5
SEMrush → Traffic Analytics (Guru tier+) → competitor.com. Returns traffic sources, top pages by traffic, and audience overlap.
Open Traffic Analytics (gated to Guru tier and above — left rail under .Trends).
Enter a competitor domain. Returns: total traffic estimate (organic + direct + referral + paid + social), top 100 traffic-driving pages, and traffic source breakdown.
Pay attention to the source mix. A competitor at 60% direct traffic has strong brand. A competitor at 80% organic is leveraging SEO disproportionately — they're easier to attack via SEO.
Click 'Top Pages' to see which pages drive the most traffic across ALL sources. Some pages may not rank well organically but drive huge traffic via paid or referral — that's strategic intelligence about their funnel.
Use 'Audience Insights' (Guru+) to see audience overlap with competitors. High overlap with a competitor you don't think you compete with often signals an unrecognized SERP rival.
Step 6
Position Tracking → Add Competitors → 3-5 competitors. Track ranking deltas alongside yours in the same SERP context.
Open Position Tracking (your existing project). Click Settings → Competitors → Add competitors.
Add the 3-5 competitors from your final list. Position Tracking will now show ranking deltas for each tracked keyword across you and all competitors.
Set up an alert: any competitor gaining 5+ positions on a tracked keyword within 7 days triggers an email. This catches new content launches you should respond to.
Weekly review: open Position Tracking → Competitors tab → sort by 'Position Difference' to see where competitors gained the most. Investigate those URLs to learn what they did.
Step 7
Consolidate Domain Overview + Keyword Gap + Backlink Gap + Traffic Analytics into one quarterly doc. Update every 90 days.
Once per quarter, repeat steps 2-5 across your full competitor list. Save snapshots: what changed in their AS, traffic, top pages, link velocity.
The format: one slide per competitor with their last quarter snapshot vs this quarter, plus 'what they did' (new content clusters, new backlink campaigns, redesigned pages).
Top section: 'What we're stealing from them' (Keyword Gap Missing + Weak targets for the quarter).
Bottom section: 'What they're stealing from us' (keywords where YOU lost positions and a competitor gained them).
Share with the content team and the founder. This becomes the input to next quarter's content + link-building plan.
Common mistakes
Picking competitors by gut instead of data
What goes wrong: You analyze the 5 companies you think of as competitors. SEMrush's data-backed competitor list shows 3 of those don't even share SERPs with you. You spend 6 weeks chasing the wrong benchmarks. ~$3,000-6,000 of misallocated content and link-building effort.
How to avoid: Always start with SEMrush's Main Organic Competitors list. Override with your judgment only when you have evidence (revenue overlap, customer interviews) — not just opinion.
Only running Keyword Gap "Missing" tab
What goes wrong: Missing is the smallest pool. You miss the 'Weak' opportunities — pages you already own that just need a refresh to outrank competitors. Refreshes have 3-5x the ROI of new content but require more discipline to surface.
How to avoid: Always run all four tabs: Missing, Weak, Untapped, Shared. Weak is usually the highest-ROI category. Set up a monthly content-refresh sprint targeting the Weak list.
Treating Traffic Analytics estimates as precise
What goes wrong: You build strategy assuming competitor.com has exactly 247,000/mo organic traffic. Real number is 180,000-310,000. Your hiring decisions, content velocity assumptions, and link-building budgets are calibrated to a fiction. ~$5,000-15,000 of misallocated headcount or budget.
How to avoid: Treat Traffic Analytics as directional (which is bigger, who's growing, what mix). Don't make budget decisions on absolute numbers within ±30%.
Running competitor research once and never again
What goes wrong: Six months later, your competitor map is wrong. New entrants you ignored have stolen 15-30% of your SERP positions. The 'gap' you thought you had has been closed by them. You're playing chess from a snapshot that's 6 months out of date.
How to avoid: Quarterly cadence minimum. Set a calendar reminder. 4 hours of competitor research per quarter pays for itself in better content prioritization.
Researching competitors without an action list
What goes wrong: You spend 8 hours building a beautiful competitor intel doc. Nobody on the team ships content based on it because there's no 'what to do' section. The intel rots. Next quarter you do it again. ~$1,500-3,000 of repeated wasted effort.
How to avoid: End every research session with: '10 keywords we'll write content for this month' + '20 backlink prospects we'll outreach to this month.' If the action list isn't there, the research didn't happen.
Copying competitor content instead of beating it
What goes wrong: You see a competitor article ranking #1 with 1,800 words. You write 1,850 words on the same topic. The SERP rewards differentiation, not parity. Your article ranks #15.
How to avoid: Use competitor content as a floor, not a ceiling. Beat it on: depth, recency, unique data, original quotes, better internal linking, schema, page speed. Same length is not enough.
Recap
Done — what's next
SEMrush keyword research workflow with Keyword Magic Tool
Read the next tutorial
Hand it off
Running competitor research once teaches you the workflow. Running it quarterly across 5-10 competitors, translating findings into a content + link-building sprint plan, and tracking the wins back to revenue is a job. EverestX SEO specialists own this cycle — typically $400-800/mo at $14-16/hr for ongoing competitive intelligence.
See specialist rates
Within ±30% for sites above 50K monthly traffic, less accurate below that. SEMrush models traffic from clickstream data + crawl frequency. Treat estimates as directional — good enough to compare competitors against each other, not precise enough for absolute budgeting.
3-5 in deep detail (Domain Overview, Keyword Gap, Backlink Gap every quarter). 10-15 in light monitoring (Position Tracking competitor view, alerts on ranking changes). Beyond 15, you can't act on the data fast enough to matter.
Re-run Main Organic Competitors quarterly. If a competitor falls out of the top 10 overlap, demote them to light monitoring. If a new entrant jumps into the top 5, promote them to deep tracking. The list should evolve every 2-3 quarters.
Yes. The point isn't to copy them — it's to see when they gain ground on YOUR keywords. Position Tracking with competitors enabled flags ranking shifts in your SERP context, which is the early-warning signal that you'd otherwise miss.
SEMrush has more PPC competitor data (Ad History, PLA Research) — useful for blended SEO + paid teams. Ahrefs has cleaner backlink data and faster freshness. For pure SEO competitor analysis, both tools work. SEMrush wins for agencies needing white-label competitor reports.
SEMrush
Keyword Magic Tool returns 30,000 keywords from a single seed. Most teams export the first 200, dump them into a spreadsheet, and never ship a piece of content from the list. This is the workflow specialists actually use — from seed to ranked content brief in under 5 hours.
SEMrush
Backlink Audit returns 50,000 backlinks with toxicity scores. Most teams export them, panic, and disavow half the list — including links that were helping them. This is the workflow specialists use to actually clean a backlink profile.
SEMrush
Position Tracking is SEMrush's most-used module — and the most misconfigured. Wrong location, mixed device targets, untagged keywords, and missing competitors mean the dashboard becomes noise. This is the right configuration.
Ahrefs
Content Gap shows you keywords your competitors rank for but you don't. The trap is treating it as a write-list. This walks through the qualification + prioritization that separates good briefs from bloated content roadmaps.
SEMrush
You're paying $139-$500/mo for SEMrush. The question isn't whether the tool is worth it — it's whether you have the time and skill to actually use what you're paying for. This is the honest framework.