Robbie Richards

Expert Digital Marketing Consultant

  • Hire Me
    • SaaS SEO Agency
    • SaaS SEO Consulting
  • SEO Course
  • My Tools
  • YouTube
  • Blog
  • Contact

How to Find High-Value Competitor Keywords (Actionable 5-Step Guide)

April 29, 2020 by Robbie 31 Comments

Looking to find your competitor's most valuable keywords? Use this simple 5-step process to uncover a trove of new opportunities.  

Keywords form the base of any successful SEO campaign. 

But, finding the right keywords that drive the right type of traffic to your business can often feel overwhelming, especially if youโ€™re strapped for time.

Luckily, it doesnโ€™t have to be this way:

What if you could reverse engineer the SEO success of others, and exploit their weaknesses to land higher rankings and more organic traffic?

Enter: competitor keyword research.

By finding all your competitorโ€™s top performing keywords youโ€™ll emerge with a proven blueprint for success. No more guessing which keywords drive the most traffic or conversions.

In todayโ€™s post, Iโ€™m going to walk you step-by-step through a series of competitor keyword research tactics you can use to quickly mine for keyword gold.

Specifically, weโ€™ll look at:

  • What is competitor keyword research
  • Why competitor analysis is the foundation of keyword research
  • How to identify primary (and secondary) organic search competitors
  • 5 actionable ways to find your competitors most valuable keywords
  • BONUS: How to mine competitors for featured snippet opportunities

Whether youโ€™re an established business or starting a new website, this guide will give your keyword research process a running start, while laying a rock solid foundation for all your future keyword research and content efforts.

Letโ€™s jump in...

Robbie headshot

Editorโ€™s Note: If you want to learn the exact keyword research processes I use to scale organic traffic for my clients, check out my premium training course, The SEO Playbook.

Youโ€™ll learn how to find, qualify, prioritize and map keyword data:

Keyword Research Playbook gif

Screenshots of the Aggregate and Keyword Mapping tabs in The SEO Playbook. 

Disclaimer๏ปฟ๏ปฟ: This article does contain affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.

What Is Competitor Keyword Research?


There are two methods of keyword research.

Traditional keyword research uses seed keywords to build a larger set of related search terms that can qualified, prioritized and mapped to posts/pages on a site. While this process works well, it requires some guesswork, and a lot of upfront legwork.

Competitor keyword research lets you reverse-engineer the keywords that are already driving traffic and conversions for your competitors. It allows you to quickly see where you're falling short, and spot critical gaps in your content strategy.

Editor's note:

Use a competitor-based keyword research tool like SEMrush (affiliate) to quickly discover which high-traffic keywords your competitors are already ranking for across each stage of the buyer journey.


Grab a free 30-day trial (affiliate) and follow along with the tutorial. 


Why Competitor Analysis Should Be The Bedrock of Your Keyword Research Process


Time and again you hear about marketers sweating over their content planning. They spend endless hours researching topics and keywords when all they had to do was look at what was already working for their top competitors.

When it comes to keyword research, thereโ€™s no need to reinvent the wheel. 

Itโ€™s much easier to discover whatโ€™s already working for your top competitors and do the same. Only better.

Here are seven ways you can use competitor keyword research to plan your content strategy:

  1. Find new keyword opportunities fast - Analyze your competitors to see what keywords theyโ€™re ranking for that you hadnโ€™t thought of yet.
     
  2. Find (and fill) important content gaps - See which keywords are driving targeted traffic to the competition that you are missing out on. . Then create or update your content so that it outranks them.

  3. Find where competitors are beating you - Analyze your competitors to find which common keywords theyโ€™re ranking above you.

  4. Find which terms competitors are bidding on - Keywords that your competitors have been bidding on PPC campaigns over an extended period likely have more commercial intent, so prioritize content creation around those topics.

  5. Find lower competition long tail keywords - Pages rank for more than one keyword. Drill down into your competitors content to discover low competition long tail keywords you can add to the content calendar.
     
  6. Find secondary keyword opportunities - One article can rank for hundreds or thousands of different search terms. Mine top ranking articles for secondary keyword variations/ topics that can help you expand the organic footprint (and traffic potential) of existing content.
     
  7. Find featured snippet opportunities - More keywords are triggering featured snippets. If youโ€™re able to pinpoint which topics are triggering them, you can optimize for placement, rank in position #0, and exponentially increase organic traffic potential.

How to Quickly Identify Your Top Primary (and Secondary) Organic Search Competitors

Before you can identify competitor keywords, you first need to know who your competitors are.

This includes both your primary and secondary competitors.

Primary Competitors

Primary competitors sell the exact products or services as you, to the same target audience. Start with them.

Here are two ways to find your primary organic search competitors using Semrush and Google search.

1) SEMrush

Using the Domain Overview report in SEMrush (affiliate), enter your domain in the search bar. For example, โ€œbeardbrand.comโ€:

Entering a domain into SEMrush


SEMrush displays all the top-level information for your site including Organic Search, Paid Search, Backlinks, and Keywords: 

Domain Overview report in SEMrush


Scroll down the page to find your Main Organic Competitors. In our example, the main competitors of Beardbrand are Beardoholic, Beard Resource, Beard Style, Zeus Beard, and Balding Beards:

Organic competitors report in SEMrush


Click on โ€œView full reportโ€ to see more details on the common keywords and total keyword/traffic metrics:

SEMrush organic search positions report data

SEMrush shows Beardbrand has 9,697 competitors. But weโ€™re most interested in sites that have similar or higher organic traffic (242K), plus a high number of common keywords as this tells us they have the highest degree of topical overlap and potential to highlight new opportunities.

Hereโ€™s how to quickly qualify the competition:

Qualify by traffic 

At first, exclude sites that have much lower traffic than yours. These sites have a lower probability of delivering any new keyword opportunities.
If youโ€™re a new site, this obviously doesnโ€™t apply.

In our example, Beardoholic (194.5K) and Balding Beards (268.3K) have similar traffic to Beardbrand:

Organic keyword competitors


Note: donโ€™t analyze hugely authoritative broad-scope domains in this step. I.e. sites selling loads of different products like Walmart or Amazon. Focus on the businesses selling the exact same products or services as you. Weโ€™ll come to the bigger players at a later stage in the process.


Qualify by keyword overlap 

Include sites with a high number of common keywords. This will help drill down to the sites with the highest degree of topical overlap.

In our working example, this is Beardoholic and Balding Beards: 

Common keyword report in SEMrush


Note: While GQ has the highest number of common keywords in this example, it is also a large broad-scope industry publication ranking for almost 2M different keywords. Weโ€™ll skip this site since weโ€™re mostly interested in direct competitors selling competing products.

Make a list of at least 3-5 primary competitors.

List of primary organic search competitors

Screenshot of the Competitors tab in the Master Keyword doc from my training program, The SEO Playbook. 


2) Google

You can also check your competition in Google by searching for your products and their alternatives.

Search your product in Google

For example, if you simply enter โ€œbeard oilโ€ you can see a potential competitor is Badass Beard Care:

Identifying organic search competitors in Google


Since the competitor is not a large publications, and is selling the exact same products, Iโ€™ll add them to my list of Primary competitors. 

Search for your product/brand + alternative

For example, if you search for โ€œwhat's an alternative to boars hair beard brushโ€ there are several potential competitors including Elegance Beard, Beard Resource, and Balding Beards:


Back in SEMrush (affiliate), you can use the Organic Research Overview report to look at the traffic and keyword position trends over time to get an idea on which competing sites have the best keyword and content strategies in place. 

From the four potential competitors found with the previous Google search, Balding Beards looks like another good site to analyze:

Competitor organic traffic and keyword trend reports


Organic traffic has been steadily increasing over the last 12 months, along with the number of keywords ranking in the top 10 positions. 

Secondary Competitors

In addition to researching primary competitors, itโ€™s a good idea to broaden your search to neighboring sites which have related content topics that your audience might be interested in.

These sites wonโ€™t sell a directly competing product or service, but they will produce content for a similar target audience.

For instance, beardstyle.net is an affiliate website that would be considered a secondary competitor since they donโ€™t sell competing products, but do produce a lot of top and middle funnel content (i.e. reviews, and โ€œbest ofโ€ articles) read by the same target audience:

Beard Style


In SEMrush, you can see that beardstyle.net ranks for a lot of the higher volume topics, as well as less competitive longer tail keywords including โ€œbeard style for curly hairโ€ and โ€œhow to style a long goateeโ€:

Example of secondary competitor keyword report in SEMrush


Depending on budget and resources, you can also broaden the scope of your secondary competitor analysis.

For instance, Beardbrand targets men who want to groom their beards. But those same men are likely interested in other grooming products like hair styling products.

For example, searching for โ€œmenโ€™s hair productsโ€ brings up Fashionbeans:

Secondary organic search competitor


In SEMrush, you can see they rank for keywords including โ€œman bunโ€, โ€œlong hairstyles for menโ€, and โ€œmens haircutsโ€:

Competitor keywords report in SEMrush


All businesses will eventually hit a โ€œkeyword ceilingโ€. These shoulder topics provide an opportunity for Beardbrand to extend the scope of their content strategy to attract a wider audience.

Below, you can see they are already branching away from strictly beard-related topics:

Example of broader scope informational keyword topic


In a couple weeks, the article above has already jumped into the top 20 positions for its target topic:

Keyword ranking report for individual URL in SEMrush


And, over time it will likely crack the top 5 and start to drive a nice stream of targeted traffic to the site.

Ok:

Once youโ€™re done, make a list of at least 3-5 secondary competitors:

List of secondary keyword competitors

Screenshot of the Competitors tab in the Master Keyword doc from my training program, The SEO Playbook.  

Youโ€™ll be using the secondary competitors to blow out the keyword set in the section of the post.

Quick Summary:

By this point, you have:

  1. Established a keyword difficulty baseline across each of the relevant intent buckets (more on that below)
  2. Identified 3-5 primary and secondary organic search competitors

Now itโ€™s time to dive and find your competitorโ€™s highest value keywords. 


5 Actionable Ways to Find High-Value Competitor Keywords

Robbie headshot

Editorโ€™s Note:
We'll be using the SEMrush SEO Toolkit for each step in this process. If you don't already have an account, grab a free 30 day trial here (aff), and follow along step-by-step.


Before we jump into the tactics below itโ€™s important to note that the types of keywords youโ€™ll prioritize depends mainly on your site monetization model:

  1. AdSense sites will prioritize higher volume informational terms 
  2. Affiliate sites will prioritize more investigational terms
  3. Ecommerce sites will prioritize commercial intent terms 

Take a look at these three examples.

Healthline is an example of a site monetizing primarily through top funnel content:

Healthline organic search competitor


Theyโ€™re interested in ranking for high-volume informational keywords so they can get as many impressions and clicks on the Adsense ads.

The Top Pages report in SEMrush (affiliate) includes informational topics like The Ketogenic Diet 101, How to Lose Weight Fast: 3 Simple Steps, Based on Science, 6 Health Benefits of Apple Cider Vinegar, Backed by Science, etc.

For example, their top-ranking page on the Keto diet ranks for 1,700 different keywords and attracts 516K visitors per month:

Top traffic pages report in SEMrush filtered by keyword intent


The average monthly search volume for the โ€œketo dietโ€ keyword is a staggering 1M:

High volume competitor keywords


Wirecutter is an example of an affiliate site monetizing primarily through mid-funnel content:

Wirecutter


Theyโ€™re interested in ranking for investigational keywords with modifiers like โ€œbestโ€, โ€œreviewโ€, โ€œalternativesโ€, โ€œcomparisonsโ€, etc. so they can get as many visitors to click on the product review affiliate links.

Their top-ranking pages include The Best Humidifier, The Best Smart Doorbell Camera, and The Best Vacuum Cleaner.

Each piece of content ranks for thousands of different keywords:

Top ranking review pages for The Wirecutter


Many of these secondary keywords (more on this later) contain the โ€œbestโ€ modifier:

Keywords with the Best modifier


These โ€œbestโ€ keywords all rank in position 1 and drive a tonof targeted organic traffic to the site each month.

Traffic Safety Store is an example of a site monetizing primarily through bottom funnel content:

Traffic Safety Store homepage


Theyโ€™re interested in ranking for commercial intent keywords so they can drive visitors to their category and individual product pages in order to make a direct sale:

For example, top-ranking pages include the Traffic Cones, Traffic Barricades, and Parking Blocks categories:

Finding top ranking product categories in SEMrush


These type of pages typically rank for fewer keywords than the top and mid funnel examples above. But because they have commercial intent, they provide a ton of value for Traffic Safety Store.

For example, the Traffic Cone category includes โ€œsafety conesโ€, โ€œconstruction conesโ€, and โ€œroad conesโ€:

Product variation keywords


Remember the difference in intent as you analyze competitor keyword data. 

Ask yourself:

Where does my site fit in the matrix? What is my primarily site monetization model?

The answer to this question will dictate how you approach the rest of competitor keyword research process below. 

Letโ€™s jump in.


#1: Find High-Intent Keywords Using Subfolder Analysis

Using filters in SEMrush, you can find specific types of keywords.

For instance, you can use URL subfolders like โ€œ/collectionsโ€ or โ€œ/productโ€ to return all the commercial intent product-related terms for an ecommerce site. On the other hand, using a URL subfolder like โ€œ/blogโ€ would return all the informational keyword ideas.

Hereโ€™s how it works.

We said earlier that Beardoholic is a competitor of Beardbrand. When you check their site, you can see they use the โ€œshopโ€ subdomain to house all their products:

Beardaholic shop subdomain


In SEMrush (affiliate), when you use the Organic Research Positions report for Beardoholic, it returns 35K keywords: 

Unfiltered organic research report in SEMrush


But if you apply filters to the report, you can zoom in on the commercial intent terms and drastically reduce the number of keywords:

  • Include > URL > Containing โ€œshop.โ€
  • Include > Words Count > Greater than 1 (to eliminate single-term keywords)
Applying keyword filters in SEMrush

Iโ€™ve also restricted the query to keywords ranking in the Top 20 positions to maximize the relevancy of the results.

And now the results return only 3 high intent commercial keywords:

Using keyword filters in SEMrush


Each keyword comes from the โ€œshop.โ€ subdomain: 

Selecting competitor keyword targets in SEMrush


Use the Export Manager to save your selected keywords.

Editorโ€™s Note: if we look at the Beardbrand site, youโ€™ll notice they house all their products under the /collections subfolder:

Beardbrand product subfolder


If you enter the Beardbrand domain back into SEMrush, navigate to the Organic Search Positions report and use the /collections path in the URL filter youโ€™ll see only the product-related search terms driving organic traffic to their site:

Beardbrand product-related keywords


If Beardbrand was a primary competitor of mine, this is where I would start the competitor keyword research process. 

Inside the Organic Search Positions report you can view the individual URLs ranking for each keyword:

Analyzing URL structure inside SEMrush


Pay attention to how top performing competitors are organizing their URL structure. For ecommerce sites, pay attention to the way relationship between categories >> subcategories >> product pages.

Place a check next to potential keyword opportunities to add them to the master keyword list in the Export Manager.

Repeat the process for 3-5 primary search competitors.

Note: if you owned a beard blog monetizing primarily through AdSense, youโ€™d be more interested in looking at all the high volume informational topics BeardBrand was ranking for.

BeardBrand houses all its blog content under the /blogs/urbanbeardsman/ subfolder:

Beardbrand blog URL string


So, youโ€™d add that string as a URL filter in SEMrush (affiliate):

Filtering keyword results by URL string in SEMrush


Youโ€™ll be left with thousands of new high-volume informational keyword opportunities to consider. 


#2: Find High-Traffic Keywords with the Top Pages Report

When youโ€™re researching keywords, it's important not to obsess over search volume. Instead, focus on finding pages and topics that drive traffic.

To do that, you can use the Top Pages report in SEMrush to reveal all the top traffic generating pages on a site.

For each page, you can check the primary topic that is driving the traffic. And then drill deeper to view all the other keywords the page is ranking for.

Similar to the subfolder analysis, you can use URL, Position, and Traffic filters to find the best keyword opportunities for your site monetization model.

Letโ€™s take a look at a couple examples.

1) Informational Intent Keywords

Healthline uses different categories to separate their blog content:

  • Health Topics
  • Symptoms
  • Nutrition
  • Health News
  • Diabetes Mine
  • Human Body Maps
Informational content categories


In the Top Pages report, apply a URL filter to select pages in the โ€œ/symptomโ€ subfolder with traffic greater than 50,000: 

Filtering keyword data by URL inside SEMrush


Now you can see the top pages in that category, in descending traffic order:

Keyword data broken down by URL inside SEMrush


The top page gets 83.5K organic visitors per month and ranks for 2.7K keywords!

Click on the โ€œ2.7Kโ€ link to see the complete list of keywords the page is ranking for:

High traffic competitor keyword targets


You can see loads of related keywords rank in the Top 10 positions and bring significant amount of traffic to the article each month.

Another high organic traffic page can be found in the โ€œ/nutritionโ€ subfolder. โ€œHow to Lose Weight Fastโ€ ranks for 11.2K (11,211) different keywords and brings in 449.2K (449,221) visits a month:

Article ranking for thousands of different keywords


The primary keyword โ€“ โ€œhow to lose weight fastโ€ โ€“ brings in 94,700 visitors โ€“ thatโ€™s 21% of the pageโ€™s overall monthly organic traffic. The remaining 79% comes from the other 11,210 semantic and long tail secondary keywords:

Organic traffic breakdown by keyword

2) Commercial Intent Keywords

Beardbrand uses the subfolder called โ€œcollectionsโ€ to list all their products. (Tip: โ€œCollectionsโ€ is the standard naming for product categories on Shopify ecommerce stores.)

In the Top Pages report, apply a URL filter to only include the top traffic pages housed under the โ€œcollections/โ€ subfolder.

Note: Traffic volumes and keywords are lower for commercial intent pages, so thereโ€™s no need to filter on traffic.

Filtering keyword data by subfolder


Click on the โ€œ56โ€ keywords link to see the complete list of keywords that the page โ€œbeard oilโ€ is ranking for:

Branded keyword data


Youโ€™ll notice a few branded keywords, like โ€œbeardbrand beard oilโ€, so letโ€™s apply a filter to exclude those terms and another one to only include keywords in the Top 10 positions:

Exclude branded terms from competitor keyword reports


That leaves 14 keywords in the list. But notice how traffic drops after the main keyword:


Check the boxes next to the keywords you want to save to your list in the Export Manager.


#3: Find Keyword Gaps (And Low-Hanging Fruit)

Strapped for time?

The SEMrush Keyword Gap tool (affiliate) lets you make direct comparisons with your competitors. For instance, you can discover:

  • What keywords are unique to your competitor
  • What keywords you have in common
  • What common keywords you are being outranked for by the competition
  • What keywords you outrank the competition for
  • What secondary keywords your content is missing
  • What keywords competitors are bidding on that you don't rank for

And you can do it at the Root Domain, Subdomain, Subfolder and URL level:

Competitor keyword analysis at the various levels in SEMrush

In these examples, Beardoholic is analyzing its competitor Beardbrand.

Start by entering the two domains you want to compare; e.g. Beardbrand and Beardoholic:

Entering competitor domains into SEMrush


Make sure you select Organic Keywords and enter your domain in the first You-Domain field.

Now, to make the competitor keyword list more relevant, add advanced filters; e.g. find the keywords in positions 11-20 that you could target:

Finding competitor keywords into the top 20


Add an Advanced Filter to only return keywords with a high monthly search volume:

Using advanced search volume filters in SEMrush


Note: the minimum Volume threshold will depend on your niche. It could be a lot lower or higher depending on the number of competitor keywords that are returned.

Next - navigate down to the Keywords table and select the Missing tab

Finding keyword gaps in SEMrush


Now you have a list of high-volume keywords that your competitor ranks for in positions 11-20, that you could target.

In our example, those are keywords unique to Beardbrand that Beardoholic could target:


You can also look at the keywords your competitor is ranking for in the top 10 positions, but you are not even targeting yet:

Competitor keywords ranking in the top 10


This will return a different set of keyword opportunities:


Play around with the filters to find all the content gaps you need to fill.

Robbie headshot

Editorโ€™s Note: As weโ€™ve discussed in previous sections, not all keywords are created equal. While ecommerce businesses will prioritize transactional intent keywords, an affiliate site might focus on keywords with โ€œbestโ€ and โ€œreviewโ€ modifiers as they have higher investigational intent.

As a result, youโ€™ll want to focus your keyword gap analysis on the sections of a competitorโ€™s site that will return the highest-value opportunities.

For example:

Letโ€™s pretend Bearaholic is only interested in transactional intent keyword gaps.

Instead of running a Domain vs. Domain gap analysis, it could enter beardbrand.com/collections/ and select the Subfolder option from the dropdown:

Analyzing competitor keywords at the subfolder level


This will return all the Product-related keywords that Beardbrand is ranking for, but Beardaholic is not:

Finding high intent competitor keyword targets


These are great keyword opportunities to target with new Category or Product pages. 


Finally, select all the competitor keywords you are interested in targeting and add them to your list:

Building your competitor keyword list in SEMrush



#4: Expand Your Organic Footprint with Secondary Keyword Analysis

Itโ€™s possible to get a single article ranking for hundreds or even thousands of different keywords relative to the industry, niche, and type of content.

In the examples above, youโ€™ve seen some wide variations:

  • Healthlineโ€™s top-ranking informational page on the Keto diet includes 1.7K keywords.
    Wirecutterโ€™s vacuum cleaner review page ranks for 4.6K keywords.
  • But the parking blocks category page on Traffic Safety Store ranks for 500 keywords.

You can expand the keyword footprint on your pages by finding and adding otherrelated keywords to the primary topic.

For example:

The top-ranking page for Beardbrand is โ€œHow to Grow a Thick Beard Fast: The Only Guide Youโ€™ll Needโ€. And it ranks for 3.5K keywords:

Beardbrand article ranking for 3,500 different keywords


It ranks in the top position in the SERPs for the topic โ€œhow to grow a beardโ€:


Beardoholic is in second position in the SERPs for their article โ€œ5 Simple but Effective Steps To Grow Your Beard Fasterโ€. But it only ranks for 1.6K keywords:

Beardaholic article ranking for 1,600 different keywords


So, it looks like Beardoholic could add more keywords to their content.

Hereโ€™s how to find additional keywords in SEMrush.

Click the keywords link in the Top Pages report:

Viewing all the keywords a page ranks for in SEMrush


You can see the primary topic for that page is โ€œhow to grow a beardโ€:


Scan down the list and place a check next to any other secondary keyword ideas you could add to your article.

Note: one thing to keep in mind here is that as you scan the list, keep an eye out for keywords that you could target with a new section in an existing article.

Once youโ€™ve selected keywords from the list, click Add to Export Manager.

Next, enter the primary topic - โ€œhow to grow a beardโ€ - into the Keyword Magic Tool:

Expanding keyword list with SEMrush


From the results list, you can find additional long tail variations:

Finding long tail keyword opportunities in SEMrush


Note: The โ€œRelated %โ€ tells you how closely related the keyword is to the primary topic so you can keep your content relevant.

On the left-hand side are groups of keywords. For example, you could click on โ€œfasterโ€ to show all the keywords related to growing your beard faster:

Grouping keyword topics in SEMrush


Scan the list and check the new keywords you want to add to your list in the Export Manager:

Building a keyword list with the Export Manager inside SEMrush


Finally, export the keywords your article is already ranking for from SEMrush, and use conditional formatting in excel to highlight all the duplicate values from the list you just built by analyzing the competition.

Find a way to naturally infuse the unique secondary keyword opportunities into your page/post.

This is the fastest way to expand the keyword footprint and organic traffic potential of your existing content. 

Robbie headshot

Editorโ€™s Note: You can use the Keyword Gap tool to quickly find new secondary keyword targets.

Hereโ€™s how to do it:

Enter two competing pages or posts and select Exact URL from the filter dropdown:

Youโ€™ll learn how to find, qualify, prioritize and map keyword data:

Using the Keyword Gap tool to find secondary keyword ideas


To help find only those secondary keywords that you could be ranking for with the same article, add a filter to return only the keywords that your competitorโ€™s article is ranking for in the Top 10 positions:


Scroll down to the Keywords table and select the Missing tab. Youโ€™ll now see a list of secondary keywords that your competitorโ€™s page/post ranks for in the Top 10, but yours does not:

Competitor keyword gaps


Select any relevant terms and add them to your SEMrush keyword list.

Note: Analyze the competing article and look for ways to fill the keyword gaps. Often, this is as easy as weaving the terms through key on-page elements - headings, body copy etc, But, other times it may require adding a new section of content, or expanding an existing one. 


#5: Mine โ€œMoneyโ€ Keywords from Competitor PPC Reports

Competitors often bid on keywords that have more commercial intent.

Think about it.

If theyโ€™re prepared to spend money on these keywords, they must be valuable search terms.And that means itโ€™s probably worth prioritizing those keywords in your content strategy.

Using the Keyword Gap tool (affiliate), you can find the paid keywords that your competitors are bidding on that you donโ€™t yet rank for.

Hereโ€™s how:

Note: In this example, Traffic Safety Store checks the paid keywords of their competitor Traffic Safety Warehouse.

Enter โ€œPaid Keywordsโ€ for your competitorโ€™s domain, and then โ€œOrganic Keywordsโ€ for your site:

Checking keywords that competitors are bidding on that you don't rank for


Now, you can see all the โ€œmoneyโ€ terms your competitor is bidding on that you donโ€™t rank for organically:


Add any relevant terms to your SEMrush keyword list. 


These are high-value terms that youโ€™ll want to prioritize in the content queue, and consider bidding on too, at least until you get visibility in the SERPs for those keywords.

Robbie headshot

Editorโ€™s Note: Want to dive deeper? Check out the video below showing the simple 4-step process I use to reverse engineer competitor PPC campaigns:


Bonus: Find Featured Snippet Opportunities

Featured snippets offer one of the fastest ways to steal traffic from the #1 position. 

Since they occupy so much valuable real estate at the top of SERP, they get a lot more impressions and clicks:

Average CTR for featured snippets


Using SEMrush, you can find your competitorsโ€™ Featured Snippets, and then optimize your content to steal Position 0 from them: 

Ranking in the featured snippet for how to get a featured snippet


Even if you donโ€™t rank #1, you can still land a Featured Snippet and increase your traffic:

Average rankings for featured snippets


Hereโ€™s how to do it:

Enter a competitor in the Organic Research Positions report:

Organic Research report in SEMrush


Use the โ€œAdvanced filtersโ€ to find โ€œFeatured snippetโ€ opportunities: 

Competitor featured snippets


Now you have a list of all your competitorโ€™s featured snippets: 


Click the SERP icon to see how each Featured Snippet looks in the SERPs: 

Featured snippet example


Next - use the tactics outlined in this guide to better understand how the content landed the snippet placement, and then optimize your content and steal it from your competitor.


Next Steps

  1. Export keyword data from the SEMrush Export Manager
  2. Qualify and prioritize the terms
  3. Map them to pages
  4. Move them into a content calendar
  5. Upload to the SEMrush Position Tracker to monitor ranking performance
Robbie headshot

Editorโ€™s Note: If you want to learn the exact keyword research processes I use to scale organic traffic for my clients, check out my premium training course, The SEO Playbook.

Youโ€™ll learn the data-driven approach I use to qualify keyword targets and map them to pages/posts:

Keyword Research Playbook gif

Screenshots of the Aggregate and Keyword Mapping tabs in The SEO Playbook. 


Ready to Level-Up Your Competitor Keyword Research Process?

Competitor keyword research lets you find the terms that are already working in your niche. Whether youโ€™re targeting terms with informational or commercial intent, you can quickly analyze competitors and use their best performing keywords to build a proven blueprint to quickly scale your own organic traffic and conversions..

How do you find competitor keywords? Do you use any tactics not covered above? Which ones are you going to try?

Let me know in the comments below ๐Ÿ™‚

Filed Under: SEO

Comments

  1. Michael Pozdnev says

    February 26, 2019 at 11:30 am

    Great article, Robbie! Spying on competitors can always save a lot of time avoiding the same mistakes and form a winning strategy from the very beginning.

    I have one question:

    What advice would you give to establish a keyword difficulty baseline for a brand new blog?

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      March 11, 2019 at 1:21 am

      Thanks Michael! If you’re starting from scratch, I’d recommend looking for opps with a max KD between 10-15.

      Reply
  2. Eki Ayemenre says

    February 26, 2019 at 11:44 am

    Hi, this is a deep guide on how to find competitors high value keywords to rank for. I have been using SEMRUSH for sometime now, and I’m always amazed what it can do. Without doubt, SEMRUSH is worth the investment..

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      March 11, 2019 at 1:20 am

      Thanks Eki!

      Reply
  3. prolifichr says

    March 5, 2019 at 10:07 am

    Hey Robbie,
    This is really an outstanding technique for profitable and knocks down the competitors. thank you for sharing this valuable information.

    Reply
  4. Caelan Cheesman says

    March 6, 2019 at 5:53 pm

    What a great post, many thanks. Very detailed and covering loads of actionable information mainly focusing on SEMrush which is a great tool but expensive for the paid options.

    The alternative I use in order to find competitor keywords is Ubersuggest which is totally free and may be of interest to your other readers. Using it I can tell that you are currently the third best performing website on Google for the keyword “tools for keyword” – well done!

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      March 11, 2019 at 1:12 am

      Thanks Caelan! Glad you enjoyed the post, and thanks for the suggestion ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  5. Jan Ranostaj says

    March 12, 2019 at 12:21 pm

    How long does it take to write such a long in-depth article? Thank you!

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      April 30, 2020 at 6:28 am

      This one – about 8 hours or so.

      Reply
  6. Paul Leary says

    March 12, 2019 at 2:05 pm

    Great post as usual Robbie!
    Everybody reading this post that thinks this is good, you should see Robbie’s course “The SEO Playbook” absolutely mind blowing content….

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      April 30, 2020 at 6:28 am

      Thanks Paul! Glad you’re enjoying the course ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  7. Gaurav Jain says

    March 19, 2019 at 7:42 am

    Hey Robbie,
    It is a great share..
    You have nicely explained the importance of competitor’s keyword search in depth. Moreover, I’ve also been using SEMrush and it does provide good analytic results. I appreciate the efforts you have put in this blog. Great work!

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      March 28, 2019 at 4:33 am

      Thanks Gaurav! Appreciate the feedback.

      Reply
  8. bhadul bharkade says

    March 19, 2019 at 9:45 am

    Hi Robbie,

    Without any doubt, I would like to say that this one is the best article for the keyword search. I have been using SEMRUSH for a while, and after reading your article I am very clear about SEMRUSH.

    Thaaank Yooou!

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      March 28, 2019 at 4:33 am

      Thanks Bhadul! Much appreciated ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  9. Parth says

    March 25, 2019 at 10:50 am

    Great post. Very insightful and detailed explanation about competitor keyword. Thoroughly enjoyed and learned something new. Thanks.

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      March 28, 2019 at 4:26 am

      Thanks Parth!

      Reply
  10. Neeraj Sharma says

    March 26, 2019 at 12:16 pm

    Hello Robbie,

    You have given the exact information on competitor research. I am doing keyword Research for my website and this strategy will be effective to my site.

    Thanks again

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      March 28, 2019 at 4:23 am

      Awesome – thanks Neeraj!

      Reply
  11. Paw says

    April 3, 2019 at 12:55 pm

    Yet another great article, thanks. But, damn, so many free tips in one article? Save some …. ๐Ÿ˜€

    Reply
  12. Elena Peter says

    June 15, 2019 at 6:39 am

    Hi Robbie, I don’t know how you come up with a detailed post like this every time. It is really good to read a detailed research on a topic that is so important for every kind of business. It is true you can not get success unless you leave your competitors behind. And to do this you need to keep an eye on every activity. Again, an excellent post from your side.

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      June 20, 2019 at 12:54 am

      Thanks Elena ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  13. Krishna Kumar says

    November 7, 2019 at 4:06 am

    Great article, Robbie! Spying on competitors can always save a lot of time avoiding the same mistakes and form a winning strategy from the very beginning.

    I have one question:

    What advice would you give to establish a keyword difficulty baseline for a brand new blog?

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      November 10, 2019 at 2:11 am

      Thanks Krishna! For a new site, I’d add the pages/posts that are critical to the product/service you are selling. i.e. sales enablement materials. Next, I’d approach the keyword difficulty buckets in ranges of 20-30. So, start off with terms that fall into the 0-20 bucket. Again – don’t use this metric as gospel. You still need to look at content type, intent, link metrics etc to get the full picture.

      Reply
  14. Ravi Kumar Bandaru says

    April 30, 2020 at 12:35 pm

    Great lengthy article. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the competitor is always good. This article explains in-depth Robbie.

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      May 7, 2020 at 7:14 am

      Thanks Ravi!

      Reply
  15. Saayad says

    May 1, 2020 at 8:40 am

    Awesome post on Keyword Research, Robbie!

    I use SEMRush to find my competitors keywords.

    Your detailed guideline will help me to get the keywords more easily now.

    Thank You,
    Saayad

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      May 7, 2020 at 7:13 am

      Thanks Saayad! Glad you found it helpful ๐Ÿ™‚

      Reply
  16. Jacob Jack says

    May 5, 2020 at 1:18 pm

    An extremely useful blog for marketers and business owners! Great job with this one!

    Reply
    • Robbie says

      May 7, 2020 at 7:10 am

      Appreciate it, Jacob!

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms of Use

Copyright © 2025 ยท Genesis Sample on Genesis Framework ยท WordPress ยท Log in