How to Analyse Your Competitors’ SEO and Find the Gaps

Your competitors’ websites are one of the most valuable research tools available to you as you build your SEO strategy. By understanding what’s working for them — which keywords they rank for, where their traffic comes from, how their content is structured — you can identify opportunities they’ve missed and find smarter ways to compete.

Competitor SEO analysis isn’t about copying what others do. It’s about understanding the landscape so you can make informed decisions about where to focus your own efforts. The gaps you find are often the most valuable places to invest.

Identifying your real SEO competitors

Your SEO competitors are not necessarily the same as your business competitors. The sites competing with you in Google’s results may include industry publications, aggregator sites, directories, and national brands, even if none of those are direct business rivals.

Start by searching for the keywords most important to your business and noting which sites consistently appear at the top of the results. These are your SEO competitors. Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz can automate this process and give you a ranked list of sites that overlap most with your target keywords.

What to look for in a competitor analysis

Keyword gaps are the most actionable finding. A keyword gap is a search term your competitors rank for that you don’t. Tools like Semrush’s Keyword Gap or Ahrefs’ Content Gap can surface these automatically. Prioritise gaps where the keyword has decent search volume but isn’t fiercely competitive.

Look at their top-performing pages. Which articles or service pages drive the most organic traffic? What format do they use? How long are they? What questions do they answer? This tells you what your audience responds to and helps you plan content that could compete.

Examine their backlink profile. Where are their links coming from — local directories, trade publications, news sites? Some of those same sources may be willing to link to you too. Backlink gap analysis shows you link opportunities that competitors have taken advantage of that you haven’t.

Assess their technical SEO. Check their page speed, mobile usability, and site structure. If a competitor ranks well despite obvious technical weaknesses, it suggests that strong content and links can outweigh those issues — and that improving your own technical foundations could give you an edge.

Turning analysis into action

Prioritise your findings by potential impact and effort. Start with keyword gaps that are closely related to your core services and have clear search intent that matches what you offer. Write content that is meaningfully better than what’s currently ranking.

Don’t try to replicate everything your competitors do. Instead, look for the areas where you can outperform them — perhaps by going deeper on a topic, writing from genuine experience, or targeting a more specific local audience they’re not reaching effectively.