Competitor Content Analysis: The Proven Step-by-Step Guide for Bloggers

Have you ever asked yourself why your competitors are ranking higher than you? Chances are that all you have to do is look at what they are saying on their websites. But for that, you have to know how to interpret it.

Competitor content analysis refers to the process of analyzing content published by your competitors, structure and reasons why they rank well. Proper execution of this technique will reveal everything that you should be doing when creating content.

In this guide, you will learn the entire process from start to finish without spending much money on tools.

What Is Competitor Content Analysis?

Competitive content analysis involves conducting a systematic examination of the content being used by competitors to see what works for them and what they may be missing out on.

This does not involve copying but simply learning the competitive environment so that better-informed decisions about the types of content to produce can be made.

When carrying out competitive content analysis, one discovers what topics the competition uses to generate traffic, the keywords they rank for, their post structure, and what gaps they have missed that can be exploited with more thorough content.

As stated by Ahrefs, most websites are only able to rank for less than half the number of keywords their competitors do, which presents numerous opportunities waiting to be discovered.

Why Competitor Content Analysis Matters

The overwhelming majority of bloggers rely upon their knowledge, ideas, trends, or gut feelings when deciding what kind of content to create. Such approach leads to random content creation, lacking any strategy whatsoever – the fastest way to doom your blog in the future.

By studying your competitor’s ranking positions, you eliminate all risks connected with guessing and start creating content with knowledge in mind. Firstly, you see which topics are currently popular. Secondly, you understand how Google ranks sites on those topics. Thirdly, you know precisely what you should beat to rank on your own.

Random content publishing may damage your website’s authority within particular areas. Analyzing your competitors’ ranking positions will help you have a good plan of action beforehand.

Step 1: Identify Your Real Content Competitors

Your content competition does not have to be your business competition. Your competitors are those websites that rank high for the keywords that you wish to rank.

Begin by performing searches on Google using your primary keywords and recording which sites come up in the first five results. These are your true content competitors regardless of whether or not they operate in your industry or niche.

Compile a list of five to ten competitor websites. Concentrate on those sites that are of similar size and reputation as your site. It will be futile to compete with Forbes or Hubspot when you are a budding blogger. Choose those sites that are beating you using their website authority as your guide.

Some tools that can assist you with this task include:

• Google search to manually compile a list
• Ahrefs Site Explorer tool to find websites that share rankings with your site
• Semrush Domain Overview to compare organic traffic and keyword similarities

Step 2: Find the Topics Driving Their Traffic

Once you have identified your competitors, the next step is to figure out what particular content assets are driving the maximum traffic to their sites.

Ahrefs: Type your competitor’s domain into Site Explorer and navigate to Top Pages. Here you will see their best performing pages ranked by their estimated organic visitors. They are their top-performing content pieces.

Semrush: Navigate to Organic Research and click on Pages. You will see their best performing pages just like Ahrefs and also find keyword information here.

Without using any paid tool: Go to Google and search for site:competitordomain.com. This way you can check all the indexed pages from their site. Search their important topics manually and check which pages show up. Slow but effective nonetheless.

Patterns matter a lot here. For instance, if their top-performing articles all happen to be listicles then that means there might be an opportunity in writing listicles as well. Similarly, look for their strengths and weaknesses.

Step 3: Analyse the Keywords They Are Ranking For

Traffic alone does not tell the full story. You also need to know which keywords are driving that traffic and whether those keywords are ones you can realistically target.

In Ahrefs or Semrush, look at the keyword profile for each top-performing competitor page. Pay attention to:

Primary keyword and its search volume. Is this a keyword worth targeting?

Keyword difficulty. Can a site with your current authority realistically compete for this?

Secondary keywords the page ranks for. One page often ranks for dozens of related keywords. Understanding this helps you see the full scope of a topic before you write about it.

Make a list of keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not. These are your content gaps, and they represent your clearest opportunities.

Step 4: Identify Content Gaps

The term ‘content gap’ refers to a topic or keyword where your competitors are ranking, yet you are completely absent. The importance of such topics cannot be overestimated as there is proven interest and absolutely no competition for them.

With Ahrefs Content Gap tool: Input your domain as well as up to five of your competitors’. Ahrefs will display keywords on which you have no presence, but all of your competitors do have one. 

With Semrush Keyword Gap tool: It functions similarly. Enter your website along with its main competitors, then filter by the keywords in which they are ranking in the top 10 and you are not even close. 

Traditional approach: Go through your competitors’ top-performing pages, then check your website if you have any corresponding articles on the same topic.

This technique is strongly associated with content cluster because once you detect the gaps, you will know where to place them.

Step 5: Study How Their Top Content Is Structured

However, knowing what your competitors are ranking for only gets you halfway there. You also have to know how they build that content to produce something even better.

For every top-ranking competitor blog post, assess the following characteristics:

Word count. Is the post 800 words or a 3,000-word article? 

Headings. What heading tags do they use? What topics do they break down?

Post type. Is the post a listicle, how-to article, comparison, or definition article? 

Introduction. How do they attract readers in the first paragraph? 

Visual elements. What types of visual content do they include – images, infographics, videos, etc.? 

Internal and external linking. What other pages on their site do they link to and from? What pages outside of their site do they link to?

All of the above gives you insight into what you’ll have to achieve with your own blog post to succeed. You have to meet or beat this bar in all categories for the post to rank. Knowing the bar before writing is key.

Step 6: Find What Their Content Is Missing

This is when the process of competitor analysis really comes into play. Each high-ranking post has flaws. Identifying these weaknesses and filling them in your own post will result in the creation of a post better than the currently ranking one.

While going through competitor posts, think of the following questions:

• What information are they failing to cover thoroughly?
• What topics do they mention casually without going deep on them?
• Has anything happened after they published their post making it obsolete?
• Have they failed to provide any relevant examples or statistics?
• Is their post difficult to read, or is its structure unclear?

Every time you find an answer to the above questions, you get a chance to create a more helpful post. The mission of Google is to display the most helpful post for any query entered.

Step 7: Analyse Their On-Page SEO

Learning how competitors manage on-page SEO can provide you with a technical benchmark that you will have to match or beat.

Consider the following on their high-ranking web pages:

Title tag – Which keyword are they optimizing for? How does it appear in the title tag?

Meta description – Are they writing good descriptions for these posts, or allowing the system to automatically generate them?

URL – Does the slug contain keywords? Is it brief?

Heading keyword usage – Are they optimizing the main keyword in H2 tags?

Image optimization – Do the images include relevant alt text?

Page speed – Measure their load times via Google PageSpeed Insights. It’s a good thing if they load slowly while you load quickly.

It isn’t important to replicate all of the technical elements here. Just know what they’re doing so that you can optimize your content equally or better.

Step 8: Check Their Internal Linking Patterns

The practice of internal linking is perhaps the most enlightening aspect of competitive research, giving insight into the way the website has arranged their content.

Pay particular attention to those pages that they link to most often on their best content pieces; those will be the pages they deem to be most valuable and probably their highest-ranking pages.

Another factor to pay attention to is the text used in their internal links, particularly when the same text is used in all internal links pointing to a page – that is a good clue to what they are ranking the page for.

Knowing their internal linking strategy will enable you to determine their method of distributing authority around their website.

Step 9: Build Your Content Plan From the Analysis

At the end of the analysis process, you will have a clear understanding of what to write and how to do it. Your results need to be organized into a content plan:

Priority 1: Gaps in content. It consists of topics for which your competitors are ranking, but you don’t have any posts on these topics at all. They come first in your content publication process.

Priority 2: Thin content opportunities. Topics you’ve covered but with thinner content compared to that produced by your competitors’ sites. Work on improving these first rather than adding new content.

Priority 3: Improved content opportunities. Topics for which your competitors have thin content that can be easily surpassed by yours.

Connect each topic to your content cluster format and allocate keywords for them before writing any piece of content.

How Often Should You Do Competitor Content Analysis?

Analysis of competitor content should not be done only once. Competitors continue publishing new content and updating their old posts while changing the keywords used in those posts.

• Some useful tips regarding when to conduct competitor content analysis:
• A thorough analysis once every three to six months
• Fast check for any gaps at the time of planning for a fresh batch of posts

Detailed analysis for each individual post when you plan to write on any competitive topic.

Free Tools for Competitor Content Analysis

You do not need a paid subscription to get started. These free tools cover the basics:

Once your site grows and the investment makes sense, Ahrefs or Semrush will dramatically speed up the process and reveal opportunities you simply cannot find manually.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does competitor content analysis mean copycats’ content?
Definitely not. Content analysis means understanding the reasons behind success. Your content must be unique, detailed, and more helpful than your competitors’. Otherwise, plagiarism will damage your rankings.

How many competitors do I need to analyze?
It would suffice if you focus on three to five competitors. It is better to concentrate on sites ranking in the top five for your target keywords instead of analyzing all your competitors.

What if my competitors have much higher domain authority?
Focus on low competition keywords where the top results are not dominated by high-authority domains. Look for topics where even your strongest competitors have published thin or outdated content. These are your entry points.

Can I do this without any SEO tools?
You can do everything manually. Conduct a search, read posts from the competitors, keep records in your spreadsheet – and that’s how you do it. It will take some extra time, but paid SEO tools will help you speed things up.

Final Thoughts

With competitor content analysis, content strategy moves away from being an educated guess and becomes a strategic move.

You stop posting content because you think you should and start posting what your audience is looking for based on what Google is rewarding. This means knowing who your competitors really are, identifying the topics that bring them their traffic, discovering where there are gaps, examining how their content is structured, and creating content that beats them.

This is how you stop asking yourself why your competition outranks you and start outranking them yourself.