In today’s highly competitive digital landscape, staying ahead of the curve is critical for businesses looking to succeed. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by tracking your competitors’ keyword positions. By doing so, you can identify new opportunities, optimize your own content, and gain a deeper understanding of your industry’s trends and patterns.
According to a recent study, over 80% of businesses actively track their competitors’ online activities. Of those, nearly 60% cite keyword tracking as one of their top priorities. With so much at stake, it’s essential to have a reliable, step-by-step guide to help you get started.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of tracking your competitors’ keyword positions from start to finish, so you can stay one step ahead of the competition.
Tracking your competitors’ keyword positions can provide you with valuable insights that can help you improve your own content and stay ahead of the competition.
Here are some steps you can follow:
Step 1: Identify Your Competitors
Identifying your competitors’ keyword usage is an important step in developing a successful SEO strategy. By analyzing your competitors’ use of keywords in their blogs, backlinks, and or social media content, you can gain insights into their overall SEO approach and identify opportunities to improve your own.
Another way to identify your competitors’ keyword usage is to analyze their backlinks. Backlinks are links to your competitors’ websites from other websites. By analyzing these backlinks, you can identify the keywords that are being used to link to your competitors’ websites. This can give you insights into the types of keywords that are driving traffic to your competitors’ websites.
Here are some tools you can use to find competitor keywords and its position:
- Google Search: The most obvious tool is Google Search. You can search for your product or service and see who else is offering something similar in the search results.
- SEMRush: SEMRush is a comprehensive tool that allows you to research your competitors’ online strategies. You can see their organic search traffic, paid search traffic, backlinks, and more.
- Ahrefs: Ahrefs is another powerful tool that allows you to analyze your competitors’ backlinks, organic search traffic, and paid search traffic.
- SimilarWeb: SimilarWeb allows you to see your competitors’ website traffic and engagement metrics. You can also see what other websites their users visit.
- SpyFu: SpyFu is a tool that allows you to research your competitors’ online advertising strategies. You can see what keywords they’re bidding on, their ad copy, and more.
- Alexa: Alexa is a tool that provides website traffic data and other metrics for your competitors. You can see their website rankings, audience demographics, and more.
- Google Keyword Planner: is a free tool that allows you to see the search volume and competition level for keywords.
These are just a few of the many tools available to help you research your competitors. Using them can give you valuable insights into their online strategies and help you improve your own.
Step 2: Identify Competitor Keywords
Competitor analysis is an essential aspect of any successful marketing strategy. One of the most crucial parts of competitor analysis is identifying competitor keywords.
Competitor keywords are the keywords that your competitors are targeting in their marketing campaigns. By identifying these keywords, you can gain valuable insights into what your competitors are doing, and you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Say for example you use Google Keyword Planner to identify your competitor’s keywords SERP rankings and utilization.
By entering your competitors’ websites into Google Keyword Planner, you can see which keywords they are targeting and get ideas for keywords to target in your own marketing campaigns.
Once you have identified your competitors’ keywords, it is essential to analyze them to determine which keywords are worth targeting.
Look for keywords that have high search volume and preferably low competition and in what type of content it is utilized. You should have clear direction on your next move after gathering data from this information.
Step 3: Track Their Keyword Positions
Tracking your competitor’s keyword positions is an essential part of any SEO strategy. By keeping tabs on where your competitor’s keywords rank on search engine results pages, you can better understand how their website is performing and the strategies they are effectively using.
Using several online tools that can help you track your keyword positions, such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Google Search Console. These tools allow you to monitor your website’s search engine visibility, identify keywords that are performing well, and pinpoint areas that require improvement.
By tracking your keyword positions, you can stay ahead of the competition and ensure that your website is ranking as high as possible on search engine results pages.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to track keyword position, let us use an example keyword “outsource marketing“:
- Add competitor website and keyword: Depending on the chosen tool, add your competitor’s website URL and/or the keyword you want to track. In this case, the keyword is “outsource marketing.”
- Check current rankings: After adding your competitor’s website and/or keyword, the tool will show you their current ranking for that keyword. Make a note of this ranking so you can track any changes over time.
- Analyze competitor’s ranking: As you track your competitor’s keyword position, try to identify what actions may have contributed to this improvement. That may be contributed by their high-quality backlinks, helpful content, or paid ads. Take note of this and this valuable information.
Finally, you can formulate “better” if not similar strategies to outrank them.
Step 4: Analyze the Data
Analyzing data related to your competitors’ keyword ranking strategies can provide valuable insights into their SEO tactics. By examining the keywords that your competitors are targeting and the ranking positions that they hold for those keywords, you can gain a better understanding of the strategies they are using to achieve those rankings. However take note of its target audience, they may target certain areas in that you are not targeting.
One important metric to look at is the organic traffic volume for each page. If a competitor is ranking highly for a page with its keyword with a high search volume, it suggests that they have likely invested significant time and resources in optimizing their content for that keyword. They may have a good connection with their target audience with a good and engaging topic. Make sure your chosen topics for your content should be the target of an audience search intent.
Similarly, if a competitor is ranking well for a keyword with a low search volume, it may indicate that they are targeting a niche area that others are overlooking.
If you’re using Semrush, use the Keyword Difficulty tool to determine how difficult it will be to rank for your chosen keyword. This tool uses a scale from 0 to 100 to rate the level of competition for a particular keyword. Generally, the higher the score, the harder it will be to rank for that keyword.
Analyze your competitors’ keywords using the Domain Overview tool. This will show you which keywords your competitors are ranking for and how much traffic they are receiving from those keywords.
Use the Keyword Gap tool to identify keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you are not. This can help you identify gaps in your own keyword strategy and find new opportunities to improve your rankings.
Use the Keyword Magic tool to find related keywords and long-tail keywords that you can use to optimize your content. This tool will suggest new keywords based on your target keyword and provide important data such as search volume and competition level.
Conclusion
Tracking your competitors’ keyword positions is an essential aspect of any successful online marketing strategy. By keeping a close eye on their rankings, you can gain valuable insights into their SEO tactics and adjust your own strategy accordingly.
Knowing which keywords your competitors are targeting can also help you identify new opportunities and stay ahead of the curve in your industry.
Now that you have the tools to track your competitors’ keyword positions, how will you use this information to improve your own SEO strategy?
Will you focus on optimizing for the same keywords or explore new ones?
The possibilities are endless, and it’s up to you to use this knowledge to your advantage.
