How to Find Competitors' Keywords

Before you open an SEO tool, define who counts as a competitor. There are usually three groups:

• Direct business competitors: companies selling a similar product or service to the same audience.
• Search competitors: sites that rank for the topics you care about, even if they do not sell the same thing.
• SERP competitors: individual pages that appear in Google for one target query.

For example, a local accounting firm may compete with nearby firms for clients, but its search competitors might include national tax blogs, government pages, and software companies. Those sites may not be business rivals, but they still take organic clicks.

Build an initial list of 5 to 10 domains. Include at least three direct competitors and three search competitors. If you only study direct competitors, you may miss informational searches that bring qualified visitors earlier in the buying journey.

The fastest way to find competitors' keywords is to use an SEO platform that shows the organic queries a domain ranks for. Tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, SE Ranking, Ubersuggest, and similar platforms all support this workflow.

The exact labels vary, but the process is usually:

1. Enter a competitor domain.

1. Open the organic keywords or ranking keywords report.

1. Filter by country or market.

1. Export the results.

1. Repeat for several competitors.

A useful export usually includes:

• Keyword
• Ranking URL
• Current position
• Search volume
• Keyword difficulty or competition score
• Estimated traffic
• Search intent or SERP features

Do not treat search volume as the final answer. A keyword with 200 searches per month and strong buyer intent can be more valuable than a broad phrase with 10,000 searches and low relevance.

If you are working on your own site at the same time, run a quick page audit in TrafficBud to see where your current pages are leaking traffic through weak titles, thin sections, missing internal links, or unclear metadata. Competitor keywords are most useful when paired with a realistic view of what your existing pages can be improved to capture.

A competitor may rank for thousands of terms, but many will be irrelevant, too broad, branded, or unrealistic. Your job is to cut the list down.

Start by removing keywords that are:

• Branded around the competitor’s company name
• Unrelated to your offer
• Too broad to match your audience
• Clearly outside your geography or market
• Served by page types you cannot reasonably create

Then group what remains by intent:

• Informational: the searcher wants to learn, compare, or solve a problem.
• Commercial: the searcher is evaluating options, vendors, pricing, or features.
• Transactional: the searcher is ready to buy, book, download, or sign up.
• Navigational: the searcher wants a specific company, product, or page.

For most small businesses and creators, the best opportunities sit between informational and commercial intent. These are searches like “best CRM for freelancers,” “how to optimize service pages,” or “email marketing checklist for coaches.” They bring people who are problem-aware but still open to choosing a solution.

A keyword export tells you what a competitor ranks for. It does not tell you why.

Open the ranking URLs for your best keyword candidates and study the page. Look for patterns:

• Is the ranking page a guide, product page, category page, tool, template, comparison, or listicle?
• How specific is the title?
• How deeply does the page answer the topic?
• Does it include examples, tables, screenshots, original data, or templates?
• What related questions does it answer?
• How many internal links point to it from the same site?
• Is the page fresh, or has it not been updated in years?

This step prevents a common mistake: targeting the right keyword with the wrong page type. If Google is ranking detailed tutorials and you publish a short sales page, you are probably fighting the search result instead of fitting it.

For more on matching keywords to page structure, see How to Do Keyword Research and How to Do SEO for a Website.

A keyword gap is a term that competitors rank for and your site does not. Most SEO tools have a keyword gap or content gap report where you enter your domain and several competitor domains.

A strong keyword gap candidate usually has three traits:

• At least two competitors rank for it.
• The topic is relevant to your product, service, or expertise.
• You can create a page that is meaningfully better or more specific.

Prioritize gaps by business value, not just ranking difficulty. A lower-volume keyword that naturally leads to your product, service, or email list often deserves attention before a high-volume term that attracts the wrong audience.

A simple scoring system works well:

• Relevance: 1 to 5
• Intent strength: 1 to 5
• Ranking realism: 1 to 5
• Existing asset fit: 1 to 5

Add the scores. Anything above 15 is worth reviewing closely. Anything below 10 is usually a distraction unless it supports a larger topic cluster.

Tools are useful, but the search result page is the source of truth. For each priority keyword, search it manually in an incognito window or use a rank-checking tool set to your target location.

Look for:

• The dominant content format
• The age and authority of ranking pages
• Featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, video results, maps, or shopping results
• Whether small or newer sites are ranking
• Whether the results are local, national, or mixed

If every top result is a government site, marketplace, or massive publication, the keyword may be hard to win directly. That does not mean you should ignore the topic. You may need a more specific angle, such as a niche audience, local modifier, use case, or comparison query.

Once you have a filtered list, assign each keyword cluster to one of three actions:

• Create a new page
• Improve an existing page
• Support another page with internal links or sections

New pages make sense when the search intent is distinct and your site does not have a close match. Existing pages should be improved when you already cover the topic but miss important subtopics, examples, title clarity, or metadata. Supporting content works when the keyword is too narrow for a full page but useful inside a broader guide.

For each priority page, write down:

• Primary keyword
• Secondary keyword variants
• Search intent
• Page type
• Competitor pages to beat
• Unique angle
• Internal links to add
• Update schedule

TrafficBud can help with the improvement side of this process by auditing pages and highlighting practical fixes such as title improvements, meta description gaps, content depth issues, internal linking opportunities, and structured data opportunities. It is not a substitute for strategic judgment, but it helps turn keyword research into page-level SEO work.

Competitor keyword research works best when it informs your strategy, not when it replaces it. If a competitor ranks with a generic “ultimate guide,” your advantage may be a more specific page for a narrower reader. If they have a broad comparison article, your advantage may be clearer pricing, real examples, or a better tool-specific workflow.

Do not copy headings, page structure, examples, or positioning. Besides being risky from a brand standpoint, it usually produces weaker content. Google already has the original. Your page needs a reason to exist.

A better question than “What keywords do they rank for?” is: “Which searches are they satisfying imperfectly, and what can we add that the reader would genuinely prefer?”

Competitor rankings change. New pages appear, old pages decay, and search intent shifts. For most small sites, a quarterly competitor keyword review is enough. For agencies, publishers, or competitive SaaS categories, monthly review may be justified.

Track:

• New competitor keywords entering the top 20
• Pages competitors recently updated
• Keywords where your page is stuck in positions 8 to 20
• Topics where Google is rewarding a different page format
• Internal links you can add from newer content

A practical SEO workflow is not just finding keywords once. It is using competitor data to keep improving the pages that matter. For next steps on making those pages more clickable in search, read How to Optimize Google Search Results.