# SEO Competitor Analysis: A 5-Step Method With Real Data **URL:** https://mettevo.com/blog/article/seo-competitor-analysis **Published:** 2026-09-18 **Updated:** 2026-09-18 **Author:** Oleg Silin **Category:** Blog | Mettevo > Discover how SEO competitor analysis reveals keyword gaps, backlink opportunities, content strategies, and actionable insights to strengthen your search visibility. ![SEO Competitor Analysis](https://stage.mettevo.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Team_collaborating_at_office_table_20260918105053.jpeg) --- SEO competitor analysis is the process of identifying which sites outrank you in Google, then reverse-engineering their keywords, content, backlinks, and search visibility to close the gaps. This guide breaks the process into five repeatable steps and adds something most guides skip: a live measurement, taken in August 2026, of Google's own top 10 results for this exact keyword. ## **Key Takeaways** - Your real competitors are whatever domains rank in the top 10 for your target keywords, not necessarily the businesses you consider rivals. - A keyword gap and a content gap are different exercises: one compares rankings, the other compares the depth and format of what is actually published. - Backlink research does not require a paid subscription. Free, capped tools are enough to spot which link-earning content formats work. - Share of voice beats average position as a competitive metric, and you can calculate it for free using Search Console, Keyword Planner, and a spreadsheet. - Mettevo's own August 27, 2026 measurement of Google's top 10 for "SEO competitor analysis" found a median of 2,279 words per page and zero pages using FAQPage schema. ## **What Is SEO Competitor Analysis?** SEO competitor analysis is a subset of the broader field of competitive analysis, narrowed specifically to organic search. Instead of comparing pricing, product features, or brand positioning, it compares who ranks, for which queries, and why. The output is not a slide deck. It is a ranked list of specific gaps between your site and the pages currently occupying positions one through ten, each gap tied to an action you can actually take this quarter. The competitors that matter here are search engine results page (SERP) competitors: the specific pages ranking for your target keywords right now, regardless of company size or category. A sneaker brand and a shoe-repair blog can both compete for "how to clean white sneakers" without ever competing for the same customer. Step 1 explains how to build that list from your own keywords. ## **Step 1: Who Are Your Real SEO Competitors?** Start with the keywords that drive revenue, not your full list. Pick 15 to 20 terms that describe what you sell, then search each one in an incognito browser to avoid personalization. Record every domain that appears in positions one through ten, and tally how often each one shows up. Domains that show up for five or more of your core terms are your real competition, and the list rarely matches your assumptions. Our own August 2026 measurement of the top 10 for "SEO competitor analysis" found tool vendors such as SpyFu and SE Ranking sitting next to independent guides from Moz and Zapier. That same top 10 also held a Semrush-powered tool page from Search Engine Land and a glossary entry from Siteimprove. None of them sell the same product as the others, yet all of them compete for the same search. ## **Step 2: What Is a Keyword Gap, and How Do You Find One?** A keyword gap is a query where at least two tracked competitors rank in the top 10 and you do not rank at all, or rank outside the top 50. It is the cleanest starting list for new content, since the demand and competitive precedent are already proven. Pull each competitor's top pages, export their ranking keywords, and filter out branded terms and anything unrelated to what you sell. What remains is usually a few hundred queries, not the tens of thousands a raw export first shows. We cover the full keyword-gap workflow, including which specific paid and free tools to use for the export itself, in a detailed walkthrough of finding the keywords your competitors already rank for. This guide assumes you already have that list. It focuses instead on the four things a keyword export does not give you: content gaps, backlink patterns, share of voice, and a live read on what is actually ranking right now. ## **Step 3: How Do You Run a Content Gap Analysis?** A content gap is different from a keyword gap. Keyword gap analysis tells you which queries you are missing. Content gap analysis tells you why the pages that already rank for those queries are winning. For each keyword from Step 2, open the top three to five ranking pages and note the format: is it a long-form guide, a comparison table, a free tool, or a short glossary entry? Note the word count, whether it includes a table or FAQ section, and whether an AI Overview, Google's artificial intelligence (AI) summary panel, appears above it. Google's own [SEO Starter Guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide) puts this plainly: "Don't just rehash what others already published." That is a useful filter. If every top-ranking page already covers the same five subheadings, matching them will not move you into the top 10; you need the subheading they skipped. Our own benchmark below found that three of the ten results for this exact keyword are tool landing pages built to sell software, not methodology guides: SpyFu, SE Ranking, and Search Engine Land. That gap is itself the opportunity: nobody in this top 10 shows a reader how to run the analysis without buying a subscription first. ## **Step 4: How Do You Analyze Competitor Backlinks Without an Ahrefs Subscription?** Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals, and you do not need a paid seat to see who is earning them. [Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker](https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker) lets you look up any domain without creating an account. It caps the results. According to [Fractl](https://www.frac.tl/how-to-use-ahrefs-backlink-checker/), published in May 2026, the free version displays up to 100 backlinks per domain, along with the referring domain for each one. A hundred links is a small slice of a large site's full profile. It is still enough to see which pages actually earn links. Run your top three competitors through the free checker, and sort by referring domains rather than raw backlink count. Look at which specific pages earn the most links: original data reports, free tools, and long guides tend to win most often. That pattern tells you what to build next. Google Search Console shows the same kind of report for your own site under Links, but only for your own property. It cannot show a competitor's inbound links. Cross-referencing two or three free checkers is the only way to triangulate a fuller picture. For a longer list of options beyond the Ahrefs free tool, including tools with different indexes that surface backlinks the others miss, see a longer list of free Ahrefs alternatives for backlink research. ## **Step 5: How Do You Calculate Share of Voice Without a Paid Tool?** [Ahrefs' own guide to competitor analysis](https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-competitor-analysis/), one of the top 10 results for this exact keyword, runs through eleven separate tactics. It never once mentions share of voice (SOV): the metric that actually tells you who is winning a keyword set. Moz's guide reportedly follows the same template-first pattern; we could not reload the live Moz page ourselves to confirm it while writing this piece. Both are built around what their own paid platform already reports, not around what you can calculate for free. Share of voice measures your percentage of the total clicks available across a fixed keyword set, not your average rank. The formula is simple: your estimated clicks across the set, divided by the combined estimated clicks of you and every tracked competitor across that same set, times 100. Average position hides more than it reveals now. A 2025 [GrowthSRC Media study](https://growthsrc.com/google-organic-ctr-study/) covering more than 200,000 keywords found organic click-through rate (CTR) for position one fell from 28% to 19% year over year. Position two fell even further, from 20.83% to 12.60%, a decline of about 39%. Positions six through ten gained roughly 31% more clicks over the same period. AI Overviews are the likely reason: they now absorb clicks that used to go to the top listing. GrowthSRC's public breakout only goes deep enough for positions one and two individually, plus one aggregate figure for six through ten combined. No public source verifies a rate for every individual spot from three to ten. The free method below works around that gap. To calculate it without a subscription: 1. Start from the keyword list you already built in Step 2. Pick 20 to 50 terms that matter most to revenue. 2. Record your position for each keyword using Search Console's Performance report. Check 2 to 4 named competitors' positions manually, in an incognito window, since Search Console only reports on your own property. 3. Pull monthly search volume for the same keywords from Google Keyword Planner's free access tier. According to [Google's own help documentation](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7337243), setup requires entering billing information to access basic features such as keyword ideas, but it does not require an active advertising campaign. 4. For any tracked site sitting in position one or two, apply the GrowthSRC rate above directly. For position three and below, no public source breaks out a verified rate per spot. Pull your own actual clicks-to-impressions ratio at that position from Search Console's Performance report instead, and use it as the stand-in rate for competitors sitting there too. 5. Add your estimated clicks across the full set, divide by the combined total for you and every competitor, then multiply that ratio by 100 to get a percentage. To see the formula in action: imagine your estimated clicks across a 30-keyword set add up to 1,200 a month, and your three tracked competitors add up to 3,800 combined. Your share of voice is 1,200 divided by 5,000, times 100, which is 24%. Run the same calculation quarterly, and a shrinking number tells you a competitor is pulling ahead before your rankings alone would show it. For a second opinion on the click estimates, how Similarweb's and Semrush's traffic estimates compare is a reasonable sanity check. Google's Search Console API (Application Programming Interface) has one limit worth knowing before you automate this. [Its documentation](https://developers.google.com/webmaster-tools/v1/how-tos/all-your-data) caps exports at 50,000 rows per day per search type when sorted by clicks. Data also typically lags two to three days behind real time. ## **What We Found When We Measured Google's Top 10 for This Keyword** On August 27, 2026, Mettevo pulled Google's United States (US) top 10 organic results for "SEO competitor analysis" through the Ahrefs API and downloaded every page that loaded successfully. Of the ten URLs returned, seven pages loaded and were measured for word count, heading structure, and FAQPage schema. Domain Rating (DR), Ahrefs' authority metric, ranged from 56 to 91 across those seven pages, with a median score of 85 points. The median across those seven pages is 2,279 words and 12 H2 headings; the range runs from 1,255 to 4,280 words. Dividing word count by H2 count shows a pattern the medians alone hide: spyfu.com averages 112 words per heading and seranking.com averages 84, both closer to a feature list than a guide. Ahrefs' own guide averages 412 words per heading. That gap is the content-gap opportunity described in Step 3: three of the ten original results, not half, are built to sell software rather than teach a method. Zero of the seven pages carry FAQPage schema, which lines up with what Google itself has been signaling. In August 2023, Google Search Central [restricted FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health websites](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/08/howto-faq-changes). By May 7, 2026, [Google's own structured data documentation](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/faqpage) confirms the FAQ rich result stopped appearing in Google Search entirely, for every site. That explains why nobody in this top 10 bothers with FAQPage markup for classic snippets. It does not explain why we still use it below: the audience has shifted from Google's rich-result carousel to the crawlers behind AI answer engines, which still parse structured question-and-answer data without a visible snippet reward in classic search. This measurement has real limits, and they matter more than the headline numbers. Reddit, YouTube, and npm results were excluded from the pull by design, so this is a measurement of traditional web pages only. Pages that returned a 403 error or timed out during download are not counted at all, which means the sample undercounts sites that block automated fetching. Some of the URLs Ahrefs returned point to section-level or hub pages rather than single articles, so the word counts above are a lower-bound estimate, not an exact count of any one article's length. This is also a single snapshot, taken on one day, not a trend. ## **FAQ** ### **What is the best competitor analysis tool for SEO?** No single tool is best for every task. Ahrefs, Semrush, and SE Ranking combine keyword and backlink data in one paid subscription. Search Console and Keyword Planner cover your own rankings and search volume for free. Match the tool to the step you are running. ### **How to use ChatGPT for competitor analysis?** ChatGPT cannot query a backlink index or a ranking database, so treat it as a synthesis tool, not a data source. Paste a competitor's page copy and headings, then ask it to list the questions or angles your own draft is missing. With web search turned on, it can also pull a competitor's current page for comparison. Verify any numbers it returns against the original source. ### **What are the 5 steps of a competitive analysis?** For SEO specifically, the five steps in this guide are: 1. Find out which domains actually rank for your target keywords. 2. Find your keyword gaps. 3. Find your content gaps. 4. Analyze competitor backlinks. 5. Calculate share of voice across the keyword set. Broader business competitive analysis usually adds market positioning and a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) review. The SEO version stays focused on rankings, content, and links, since those are what Google actually measures. ### **How often should you repeat a competitor analysis?** Run the full five-step process quarterly; monthly repeats mostly produce noise, since keyword gaps and backlink profiles shift slowly. Check your core keyword rankings monthly through Search Console instead, and re-run the full analysis sooner if a competitor ships a redesign or a visible content push.