If you are working on expanding your product or business, you might be used to the competition. You must know about all your competitor products which they offer. You also might have checked their digital marketing strategies. It is important to note how much time one has to spend on analyzing the keyword to rank for in paid and organic search. 

Competitor Keyword Analysis in SEO can help you in –

Understanding your place in the digital marketplace.

• Get the data on competitors.
• Benchmark success.
• Find gaps and improve strategy.

Ranking high in search engines with paid and organic listing is quite competitive. The Competitor keyword analysis can help one learn about the competitors, the tactics they are using to rank high in the search engine, and how one can out-rank them and drive extra leads to their site.

What is Competitor Keyword Analysis in SEO?

Competitor Keyword Analysis in SEO is the process of identifying the keywords for which your competitors are ranking higher. By focusing on such keywords, you compete to achieve search engine ranking. Keyword analysis uncovers these keywords, driving traffic to the competitors' site; this provides insight into their user interest and helps you choose the best keywords for your website. 

Here are some of the crucial points to consider –

• Keywords should be valuable, i.e., related to your business, high volume, etc.
• Keywords should be the ones you can easily rank for.
• You can get rich analysis by comparing two or more competitors' keywords. 

Why is it essential to conduct a competitor's keyword analysis?

Performing a competitor keyword analysis can benefit you in your SEO ranking and out-perform your website competitors in search. 

Competitor analysis helps you to make out how you are doing in contrast to your competitors. You can use this data to uncover the areas of your SEO strategies that you can enhance. This can also help in revealing new opportunities, offering you motivation for your SEO efforts to stay competitive. For instance, discover the popular keywords which your competitors are not targeting; moreover, you might also find several keywords for which your competitors are ranking, but you have not tried to target them yet.  

Explore the top rank pages, which can help offer the skills that inform your strategies for obtaining the top position in the SERPs. You can also evaluate what top-performing websites are doing; this can tell you what you are required to do to rank high from them. 

Keyword analysis in SEO also provides you ideas about the keywords which are worth targeting. If your competitor’s website focuses or bids on a specific keyword for Pay per click ads and their bid is high, then it is a sign that the keyword is valuable. 

Some primary Competitor keyword analysis tools

A competitor keyword analysis tool makes the competitor analysis process more manageable and helps you to collect more data. Here are some of the top Competitor keyword analysis tools –

SEM Rush

SEMRush is one of the most competitive intelligence tools. It is an attractive suite of competitive keyword research tools that help identify competitive keywords easily and quickly. You can easily search URLs or keywords, filter the keyword results by the country or geographical area, specify different matches for pay per Click keywords, and also examine domain analytics for the entire website. 

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the popular SEO tools which offer several useful characteristics for keyword analysis. One can also search for competitors' websites to get the list of keywords they are ranking for, and then compare your ranking keywords with your competitor's keywords, and much more. Ahrefs is the developer keyword explorer; it is not a free tool and flexes many muscles. Keyword explorer user number of data and functionality that is invaluable to SEOs and advertisers. This tool takes a different approach to keyword research, which is gaining traction in SEO. 

MOZ

MOZ provides many features that can assist you in analyzing your competitor’s ranking keywords. It is a domain SEO tool that can give you the keywords you and your competitor are targeting; for example, you can use MOZ to check your keyword ranking with your competitors. 

SpyFu

SpyFu is one of the keyword research tools that offer important data of your competitors. With this tool's help, one can discover a lot of information about search volume, ranking, advertisement spent, backlinks, CTR, ranking history, etc. Using its combat feature, you can easily check and compare the keywords for which several domains rank for. This tool is mainly dedicated to competitive intelligence research. 

AdWords Auction Insights

Our one more tool for discovering competitors' keywords is very platform-centric. Using AdWords Auction Insights data to find out who your top-performing competitors are and what keywords they are ranking. 

How to perform Competitor Keyword Analysis in SEO?

There are a number of different tactics or ways to perform Competitor Keyword Analysis in SEO. Here are some points which can help you to perform Keyword Analysis in SEO effectively –

Identify competitors

Whatever procedure you take for Competitor Keyword Analysis, it is crucial to recognize your business competitors. There are cases where the competitors or websites you focus on are your direct competitors, such as businesses that provide the same services and products to the same users. 

Use a Competitor keyword analysis tool to identify keywords.

You can make use of different Competitor keyword analysis tools to check out the keywords for which your competitor’s website is ranking. If you look for a URL or domain in these tools, you will easily get a directory of top keywords for which your competitors are ranking. You can also explore paid or organic keywords in these tools. 

For instance, to check competitors' keywords in SEM Rush, visit website explorer and type the domain name, then click on paid keywords on the top of the page, and you will get a list of paid keywords for which they rank for. 

Analyze keywords

After getting keywords, you need to examine these keywords thoroughly to check which keyword will work best for your website. Here are the main components to look for –

Search volume

When a user searches for a specific keyword, then it is known as search volume. It is mainly calculated as an average amount every month. If you rank for a keyword that has a high search volume can offer more traffic and impressions on your website. 

The difficulty of a keyword

Ranking difficulty or keyword difficulty is one more component to consider. Keyword difficulty tells how hard it is to rank for a competitive keyword. Keywords that have high search volume are more challenging than others. The more well-established and popular your website is, the more difficult it will be to rank for a keyword. Ranking for a highly competitive keyword requires more funding and SEO experts. 

Relevance

It is not necessary that every keyword for which your competitors rank has a higher search volume that will be good or relevant for your product or business. Before targeting a keyword, it is essential to check for the keyword and what it is likely to achieve by searching it. This is known as search intent.

If the audience profile matches your targeted users and the search volume is relevant for your website, you can consider targeting that particular keyword. 

Which keyword has high value?

Evaluate relevance, search volume, and other components to identify which keyword is worth your company. One more way to check which keyword has higher value is to check out which keyword your competitor viewed as high value. One of the easiest ways to do this is to check paid search results for which your competitor appears. You can also make use of keyword research tools to get a list of paid keywords. 

One more thing to determine is a content asset like eBook, whitepaper, and webinars. This content takes a reasonable amount of money and time to make. If your competitor has invested in creating such content for a specific topic or keyword, they are considered high value. 

While creating good SEO tactics, one of the important and reliable sources of information is your competitors’ website. It is crucial to conduct a competitor keywords analysis, which can help you decide what you need to do to drive good traffic and rank good in SERPs. 

Competitor Keyword Analysis in SEO enables you to understand your online competitors and what keywords drive their success. Such findings will allow you to plan better and ensure that you target the most relevant keywords.