Rankfill

Check What Keywords a Site Ranks For: Best Methods

You're looking at a competitor's site. They're outranking you on terms you care about, and you have no idea how. So you open a new tab and type their URL into Google, hoping something useful shows up. It doesn't. Google doesn't work that way.

What you actually need is a way to pull the keyword list a site has earned — every search query where they appear in results, their ranking position, and ideally how much traffic each keyword sends them. That data exists. Here's how to get it.

What "ranking for a keyword" actually means

Before digging into tools: a site "ranks" for a keyword when Google returns it in organic (non-paid) results for that query. Position 1 gets the most clicks. Position 30 gets almost none. The tools below show you positions, estimated traffic, and sometimes the specific page driving each ranking.

You can look up any site — your own, a competitor's, or a site you're considering buying.

Method 1: Google Search Console (for your own site only)

If you want to check your own site's rankings, Search Console is the most accurate source available. It pulls directly from Google's data.

Where to find it: Go to search.google.com/search-console, add your property, and navigate to Performance → Search Results.

What you get:

The limitation: This only works for sites you own and have verified. You cannot use Search Console to look up a competitor.

Method 2: Ahrefs Site Explorer

Ahrefs is the most widely used tool for this. Paste any URL into Site Explorer and you get a full keyword list with positions, estimated traffic, and ranking history.

How to use it:

  1. Go to ahrefs.com and open Site Explorer
  2. Enter the domain (e.g. competitor.com) or a specific page URL
  3. Click Organic Keywords in the left sidebar

You'll see every keyword the site ranks for in your selected country, its current position, volume, and the page it ranks on. You can filter by position range (e.g. positions 1–10 only) or by keyword difficulty.

Cost: Ahrefs starts at $99/month. No meaningful free tier for this use case.

Method 3: Semrush

Semrush does the same thing. Enter a domain into the search bar and select Organic Research → Positions.

The output is nearly identical to Ahrefs: keyword, position, volume, traffic estimate, and URL. Semrush also shows a "keyword intent" tag (informational, commercial, etc.), which helps prioritize quickly.

Free tier: Semrush lets you run a limited number of free searches per day before locking results. If you're doing one-off lookups, this might be enough. For ongoing research, you'll want a paid plan (starts at $139/month).

Method 4: Ubersuggest

Neil Patel's tool. Less depth than Ahrefs or Semrush, but the free tier is more generous. Enter a domain, go to Organic Keywords, and you'll see their top-ranking terms with positions and volume.

Good for a quick snapshot. Not reliable enough for exhaustive research on a large competitor.

Method 5: Moz Pro

Moz's True Competitor and Keyword Explorer tools overlap with what Ahrefs and Semrush do. If you already have a Moz subscription, use it. If you don't, Ahrefs or Semrush will give you more complete data.

What to actually do with the keyword list

Pulling a list of 5,000 keywords a competitor ranks for is easy. Knowing what to do with it is harder. Here's how to make the list useful:

Filter for position 1–20 only

Keywords in positions 21+ are barely getting traffic. Start with what's actually working for them.

Sort by traffic, not volume

Volume is how many people search the term per month. Traffic is the estimated clicks the site actually receives. These differ because position matters — a site in position 8 for a 10,000-volume keyword gets far fewer clicks than position 1 for a 1,000-volume keyword.

Find the keywords you don't rank for at all

This is the actual opportunity. Take your competitor's keyword list, compare it against your own, and isolate the gaps — terms they rank for that you don't appear for anywhere. This is competitor keyword analysis done properly, and it tells you exactly where to build content.

Group by topic, not keyword

One page can rank for dozens of keyword variations. When you see a cluster of similar terms all pointing to the same competitor page, that's a signal: one well-built page from you could compete across all of them.

Checking multiple competitors at once

Looking at one competitor gives you one slice of the picture. Looking at five gives you the actual landscape.

Most serious practitioners pull keyword lists for 3–5 competitors, combine them, and then filter for terms that multiple competitors rank for but their own site doesn't. If three different sites are all ranking for the same keyword and you're not, that's a clear signal the opportunity is real and that there's a path to rank. This is the foundation of keyword competitive analysis — finding the gaps your competitors have already validated.

For a step-by-step version of this process, keyword research competitor analysis walks through it in detail.

The free-tool approach (no paid subscription)

If you don't want to pay for Ahrefs or Semrush:

  1. Google Search Console for your own site (free, most accurate)
  2. Semrush free tier for quick competitor lookups (limited queries)
  3. Ubersuggest free tier for a rough competitor snapshot
  4. Google Search itself — search site:competitor.com to see indexed pages, then manually search variations of your target keywords to see where they appear

The manual approach is slow and incomplete, but it works for spot-checking specific keywords if you don't need a full picture.

When the list is too big to act on

A mid-size competitor might rank for 40,000+ keywords. There's no realistic way to build content targeting all of them. The filtering approach above helps, but even then, you may be looking at hundreds of viable targets.

This is where tooling that maps the full competitive landscape and prioritizes by traffic opportunity becomes useful. Services like Rankfill automate the competitor identification and gap analysis, giving you an estimated traffic number attached to each opportunity so you know which content to build first.

The manual version — pulling lists from Ahrefs, comparing them against your own rankings, sorting by opportunity — is the same process. It just takes longer.

FAQ

Can I check keywords for free without any tool? Sort of. Google Search Console is free and gives you your own site's data. For competitor sites, Semrush and Ubersuggest have limited free queries, but you'll hit a wall quickly. For serious research, a paid tool is necessary.

How accurate are keyword ranking tools? Ahrefs and Semrush are directionally accurate — positions can be off by 1–2 spots, and traffic estimates are estimates, not actuals. Search Console is the only source of exact data, and only for your own site.

What's the difference between checking a domain vs. a specific page? A domain lookup shows every keyword the entire site ranks for. A page-level lookup shows keywords that specific URL ranks for — useful when you want to understand what one competitor article is capturing. Most tools let you switch between the two.

My competitor ranks for 50,000 keywords. Where do I start? Filter for positions 1–10, sort by estimated traffic, then remove branded keywords (queries containing their company name). What's left is the actionable list. From there, cross-reference against your own rankings and prioritize terms where you don't appear at all.

Can I see keywords a site used to rank for but doesn't anymore? Yes. Ahrefs and Semrush both track ranking history. In Ahrefs, filter organic keywords by "Lost" to see terms the site recently dropped out of results for. These can be opportunities — content gaps they've created that you could fill.

Does this work for checking my own site too? Yes, but Search Console will give you better data for your own site. Third-party tools often undercount your own keyword footprint because they're estimating from crawl data, while Search Console pulls directly from Google.