How does an SEO company perform competitor analysis?

The output of competitor analysis is a ranked list of pages to create or improve and sites to approach for links. To get there, an SEO company picks the domains that consistently rank for your priority keywords, runs keyword and backlink gap reports against them, audits their top pages’ content and technical performance, and tracks their rankings over time.

Start From Search Competitors

Your business rivals and your search rivals can be different sites. For example, imagine a regional accounting firm: its business competitors are three local firms, but the results for an informational query such as “how to choose a tax preparer” may be led by national tax software brands and personal finance publishers. The agency builds its working list from the domains that rank for the client’s priority keyword set and keeps the client’s own list of business rivals beside it. The search list drives the content and link plan; the business list matters for local results and brand searches.

Map the Keyword Gaps

A keyword gap report compares the client’s rankings with the competitors’. In Semrush’s Keyword Gap walkthrough, you enter your domain and up to four competitors’ domains and choose a location. The Missing tab lists keywords that all of the analyzed competitors rank for but you don’t, the Weak tab shows keywords where competitors outperform you, and the Untapped tab shows terms at least one competitor ranks for that you don’t.

None of these lists is a work plan yet. Each keyword is filtered by relevance to what the client sells, by intent and by realistic difficulty for the client’s site, using the qualification steps from how an SEO company performs keyword research for clients. A keyword that several competitors rank for but that brings little traffic or has weak commercial intent does not earn a content slot automatically.

Build the Outreach List From Backlink Gaps

Backlink analysis answers a different question: who links to content like this. Ahrefs’ Link Intersect help page describes the report: you add up to 10 domains or URLs and it shows the referring domains that link to your competitors but not to you, with a filter for how many of the competitors each domain links to. A site that links to three competitors and not to you has already shown it links to this kind of content, so it goes to the top of the list.

The list is then filtered before anyone writes an email. Editorial mentions, resource pages and partner or sponsor pages stay; paid placements and directories with no audience of their own go, because copying a competitor’s paid links copies its risk. Each remaining site gets a note on why it might link and which client page fits. Running the outreach itself is part of the link building strategies an SEO company uses.

Audit the Pages That Rank

For each priority keyword, the agency reads the top-ranking competitor pages against a short checklist:

• Headings. Whether they map to the questions searchers ask.
• Tables and comparisons. Whether the page compares options in a form a reader can scan.
• Sourcing. Whether claims rest on cited sources or original data.
• Questions answered. How deep and specific any FAQ section is.
• Freshness. When the page was visibly updated and whether its figures are current.

Word count is noted as context, not as a target. A page that is thin on two or three of these points is a candidate to outrank, but only if the domain behind it does not also hold a large lead in links; check the backlink gap for that URL before committing a content slot.

Check Technical Performance and Devices

The agency runs competitor URLs through PageSpeed Insights, which shows field data from Chrome users over the previous 28 days for a URL, or for the whole origin when the URL has too little data, and crawls their sites to see how deep key pages sit. Rankings are tracked on mobile and desktop separately: Google’s Performance report documentation notes that results depend on the time, place and device of a search and on the searcher’s recent history. A competitor that looks dominant in a desktop-only check may rank lower on phones, so the first openings to look at are the pages where the client already outranks a competitor on one device.

Track Competitors Over Time

A single snapshot misses movement. The agency adds the competitor set to rank tracking and investigates any sharp gain or loss: a content refresh, a batch of new links, a site migration or an algorithm update. We recommend a light monthly check (ranking movement, new content, visible link gains) and a full re-run each quarter of the keyword gap, the backlink gap and the page audit, because the competitor set can change as sites drop out and new ones invest. For priority queries that show an AI Overview, note which domains it cites, since those sources compete for attention on the results page too.

The same competitor set becomes the benchmark when results are judged; how an SEO company measures SEO campaign success shows how.

Turn the Findings Into a Priority List

The last step decides what the client does. For each priority keyword, the agency asks what the top-ranking page relies on (links, content depth, structure, technical performance) and which of those the client can match within its budget and timeline. A page that ranks on years of accumulated links is a different problem from a thin, recently published page that a better one could overtake; the test for when an authority gap is too big is in how an SEO company helps businesses rank for competitive keywords.

For example, imagine two rows of the priority list for the accounting firm above:

Keyword	Page ranking first	What it relies on	Beatable within budget?	Action and owner
how to choose a tax preparer	A national finance publisher	A large link lead, a comparison table, figures updated this year	Not this year	Target the local variant with a comparison page; content team
tax preparer for freelancers in the client's city	A local competitor's service page	Few links, no pricing, a page last updated years ago	Yes	New page with price ranges and a document checklist; agency writer, client review

Every row ends in an action with an owner. A row that ends in an observation is not finished.

Mistakes That Waste the Analysis

• Too many competitors. A long list of domains of mixed relevance produces noise; keep deep analysis for the few sites that consistently rank for the priority terms.
• Every gap keyword treated as equal. Gap lists can include terms with little traffic or weak intent.
• A one-time report. Without the monthly and quarterly checks, a competitor’s content refresh or link campaign shows up only when a stable ranking drops.

What to Check Before You Accept the Analysis

Check four things: it names the search competitors and why they were chosen, it shows gap keywords already filtered by intent and difficulty, it lists specific sites to approach for links, and it ends with a dated action list for the next quarter with an owner for each item. If you receive a raw export with no ranked actions, ask for the priority list. The tools behind these reports, and what to ask an agency about them, are compared in what tools an SEO company uses for SEO analysis.