SEO Competitor Analysis Checklist
A complete checklist to analyze your SEO competitors, uncover ranking gaps, and build a winning strategy to outrank them.
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Identify & Benchmark Core Competitors
Identify Your True SEO Competitors
Search your target keywords in Google and note domains that consistently rank in top positions. These are your real SEO competitors (not always your business competitors).
Compare Domain Authority / Strength
Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush to check each competitor’s domain rating, authority score, or equivalent. This gives a baseline of how “strong” they are from a link & trust perspective.
Monitor Their Change Over Time
Track changes in competitor rankings, backlink growth, content updates. This lets you spot when they make moves and helps you respond.
Keyword & Intent Analysis
Map Overlapping Keywords (Keyword Gap)
Find keywords your competitors rank for that you do not. Use a “keyword gap” or “keyword overlap” tool to list those gaps, then pick the most relevant ones to target.
Analyze Search Intent for Each Keyword
For every keyword competitors rank for, identify whether the search intent is informational (learning), commercial (comparing), transactional (buying), or navigational (finding a brand). Matching your page type, format, and call-to-action (CTA) to this intent helps you outrank them by better serving what users actually want.
Content & On-Page Optimization Review
Check Their Top Performing Pages
Identify which pages on competitor sites get most organic traffic. Study their layout, structure, content type, and topics to see patterns.
Audit Their Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Visit top-ranking pages from your competitors. Check how they craft title tags and meta descriptions: do they include power words, intent phrases, or keywords early?
Review Their Heading Structure & Content Depth
On competitor content, examine H1, H2, H3 usage. See how deep their content goes (word count, subtopics, examples). Compare where they go further than your own content.
Compare Their Content Formats & Media Use
Check whether they use videos, images, infographics, interactive tools, charts, etc. Formats that engage may help them stand out.
Check Their Content Update Frequency
Track how often competitors refresh existing content or publish new posts. Fresh content can help maintain rankings in competitive niches.
Review Their SERP Feature Presence
Search their target keywords and note if competitors appear in featured snippets, “People Also Ask,” image packs, local packs, etc. This helps you map which features you should optimize for.
Inspect Their Social / Content Promotion Channels
See how competitors promote content — social media, forums, partners. Strong promotion may lead to more backlinks or exposure.
Site Architecture & On-Site Structure
Inspect Their URL Structures
Look at how they format URLs on key pages. Are they short, keyword descriptive, clean (no random IDs)? Use that as a model if they do well.
Evaluate Their Internal Linking
Check how competitor pages link to other pages (related topics, categories). Strong internal link networks help spread SEO value across their site.
Map Competitor Site Architecture and Content Hubs
Study how top-ranking competitors structure their websites — note how categories, subtopics, and internal links cluster around main themes. Well-organized hubs show Google a clear topical hierarchy and help competitors dominate entire topic areas, not just single keywords.
Structured Data & Technical Optimization
Check Their Structured Data / Schema Usage
On competitor pages, view page source and look for schema (e.g. Article, FAQ, Product). Validate if they are using it correctly (e.g. Rich Results Test).
Benchmark Their Page Speed & Core Web Vitals
Run competitor pages through PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse. Compare metrics like LCP, CLS, INP to yours — faster sites often gain an edge.
Check Their Mobile Usability
Open competitor pages on mobile and test navigation, readability, and layout. Mobile usability is crucial since Google uses mobile-first indexing.
Backlink & Authority Profile Analysis
Analyze Their Backlink Profile
Use backlink tools to see how many referring domains they have, what pages attract most links, and the quality of those domains. See which sites link to them that don’t link to you.
Examine Their Anchor Text Distribution
Look at the anchor text used in backlinks pointing to competitor’s pages. Are they branded, generic, or keyword-rich? This gives insight into their link strategy.
Find Broken / Lost Backlinks of Competitors
Search for links that used to point to competitors but now return 404 or redirect. These expired or broken links may be opportunities you can reclaim.
Evaluate Their Local / Geographical SEO (If Relevant)
If your niche has location-based elements, see whether competitors have localized pages, city-specific content, or Google Business presence.
Strategy & Action Planning
Create “Beat This Page” Briefs for Priority Keywords
After identifying your most important target keywords, build a page plan that outlines how to outperform the current top-ranking result. Include deeper coverage, better design, stronger references, and improved user experience. This turns your competitor research into actionable SEO content strategy.