Rankfill

Competitor Content Analysis: Find What They Rank For

You publish an article. You wait. Traffic trickles in, but nothing like what you expected. Then you search a keyword you thought you owned — and a competitor you've barely heard of is sitting in position two, three, and five with content you didn't know existed.

That's the moment most people start asking: what exactly are they publishing that I'm not?

That's competitor content analysis. It's not complicated, but it has to be methodical. This guide walks you through how to actually do it.

What You're Really Looking For

The goal isn't to find your competitors' content so you can copy it. The goal is to find the intersection of three things:

When you find all three, you stop guessing what to write and start working from a map.

Step 1: Identify Your Real Search Competitors

Your search competitors are not always your business competitors. A company selling the same product might not rank for the same keywords you're targeting. A SaaS blog might be outranking you for terms that a media site or an agency also targets.

Start by searching your 5–10 most important keywords and noting which domains appear consistently. These are your search competitors — the ones that matter for this exercise.

Write them down. You'll use this list throughout the process.

Step 2: Pull Their Ranking Keywords

You need a keyword tool that shows you organic keyword data for any domain. Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz all do this. Free alternatives like Ubersuggest and Sistrix have limited data but are usable for getting started.

For each competitor domain:

  1. Enter their domain (not a specific URL)
  2. Pull their full organic keyword report
  3. Export it — you want a spreadsheet, not a dashboard snapshot

For a domain with serious content investment, you might see tens of thousands of keywords. That's fine. You're about to filter it down.

Step 3: Find the Gap — Keywords They Rank For, You Don't

This is the core of the analysis.

Most tools have a built-in "content gap" or "keyword gap" function. In Ahrefs it's called Content Gap. In Semrush it's Keyword Gap. You enter your domain and one or more competitor domains, and the tool shows keywords competitors rank for that you don't appear for at all.

If you're doing this manually in a spreadsheet:

  1. Export your own organic keyword list
  2. Export each competitor's keyword list
  3. In a combined sheet, use a VLOOKUP or MATCH formula to flag keywords that appear in competitor data but not yours
  4. Sort by estimated search volume

The output is your gap list. Every row is a keyword your competitor is currently getting traffic from that your site doesn't touch.

For a deeper look at structuring this kind of research, Keyword Competitive Analysis: How to Find Ranking Gaps covers the mechanics in detail.

Step 4: Audit What Content They Built to Rank

Knowing the keyword is only half of it. Now you need to look at the actual content they built to rank for it.

For each priority keyword on your gap list:

  1. Search the keyword
  2. Open the ranking competitor URL
  3. Answer these questions:

Format: Is it a guide, a list, a comparison page, a tool, a definition? The format matters because it signals what searchers actually want.

Length and depth: Are they ranking with a 600-word overview or a 4,000-word deep-dive? Don't assume longer is better — match what the search results reward.

Structure: What headers do they use? What subtopics do they cover? This tells you what Google considers a thorough answer.

Internal links: What pages do they link to from this content? This shows you the topic clusters they've built around the keyword.

Age: When was the page published? Old content that still ranks has strong backlinks or genuine authority. New content that ranks fast suggests the keyword isn't very competitive.

You don't need to do this for every keyword on your gap list. Do it for the 20–30 highest-priority gaps — highest volume, lowest difficulty, most relevant to your business.

Step 5: Score Your Gaps by Opportunity

Not every gap is worth filling. A keyword your competitor ranks for at position 18 with 50 monthly searches is probably not where you start.

Score your gap list by:

A competitor keyword analysis that doesn't filter by these factors produces a list you'll never work through. Filtering is how you find where to actually start.

Step 6: Build the Content Plan

Now you have a prioritized list of keywords your competitor ranks for, the content they built to rank, and a sense of difficulty. Turn this into a production plan.

For each priority keyword:

Without a unique angle, you're publishing a copy of content that already exists and hoping Google picks yours. That doesn't work reliably. Even a small differentiation — a better example, a more honest take, a fresher data point — gives you something to stand on.

Doing This at Scale

If you have 10 competitors and you're serious about capturing their traffic, the gap list gets large fast. Running this process across a full competitive set can surface hundreds of real keyword opportunities.

At that scale, the manual approach breaks down — not because the methodology changes, but because exporting, filtering, and auditing hundreds of URLs takes more time than most teams have.

Some sites handle this by narrowing scope to 2–3 competitors. Others use tooling to automate the gap identification. Rankfill, for example, maps your full competitive set and outputs a prioritized content plan with traffic estimates, which is one way to compress the research phase if you're working with limited bandwidth.

For a step-by-step walkthrough of the full research process, Keyword Research Competitor Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide goes deeper on tooling and methodology.

What to Avoid

Chasing every gap. You'll find more opportunities than you can act on. Focus beats volume every time.

Ignoring search intent. If the keyword is informational and you build a product page, you won't rank. Match the intent of what's already ranking.

Skipping the content audit. The keyword alone doesn't tell you what to build. You have to look at what's actually ranking.

Treating this as a one-time exercise. Competitors keep publishing. Running this analysis quarterly keeps you from falling further behind.

FAQ

How often should I run a competitor content analysis? Quarterly is a reasonable cadence for most sites. If you're in a fast-moving space or actively publishing new content, monthly makes sense.

What's the best free tool for this? Ubersuggest and Google Search Console (for your own data) can get you started. For competitor data specifically, free tiers are limited — Ahrefs and Semrush both offer trials worth using for an initial analysis.

How many competitors should I analyze? Three to five is manageable for a manual process. Focus on the ones you encounter most often in the SERPs for your priority keywords, not necessarily your biggest business rivals.

Do I need to outrank them on every keyword they rank for? No. Find the keywords where they're ranking but not dominant — positions 5–20 — and where difficulty is manageable. Competing for keywords where they hold position 1 with strong backlinks is a long fight. Go around them first.

What if a competitor ranks for thousands of keywords I don't? Filter aggressively. Sort by volume, cut anything below your threshold, then cut anything with difficulty above your site's current authority level. You'll likely end up with a workable list of 50–200 real opportunities.

What do I do after I publish the content? Track rankings for the target keyword starting week two. If you're not moving into the top 20 within 60–90 days, check whether you need more internal links pointing to the page, stronger on-page optimization, or external links. Finding and targeting competitor keywords also covers how to build authority around these gaps once the content is live.