How to Find Keywords of Competitors and Fill the Gaps

You open Google Analytics, stare at the organic traffic graph, and notice a competitor you've been watching is pulling in significantly more search traffic than you — for products or services that are nearly identical to yours. You check a few of their pages. The writing isn't better. The site isn't faster. But somehow they're ranking for a dozen terms you've never even thought to target.

That's the gap. And the good news is that it's completely visible if you know where to look.

This guide walks through how to find the keywords your competitors are ranking for, how to identify which ones are worth pursuing, and how to turn that research into a content plan that actually closes the gap.

What You're Actually Looking For

"Find competitors' keywords" sounds like a single task, but it's really three separate questions:

1. What keywords are they ranking for that you aren't? — These are pure gaps.
2. What keywords are you both ranking for, but they outrank you? — These are opportunities to improve.
3. What keywords are they ranking for that you've never considered? — These often reveal entire topic areas you've ignored.

Most people stop at question one. The real leverage is in questions two and three combined — they show you where your competitors have built content infrastructure that you haven't.

Step 1: Identify Your Real Competitors

Your SEO competitors are not always your business competitors. A company that sells a different product might rank for all the same keywords you want. A blog with no product might outrank you for your most valuable search terms.

Start by searching Google for five to ten of your most important keywords. Look at who shows up consistently — not who you think of as a business rival, but who is actually winning the SERP. Those are your search competitors.

Build a list of five to eight of them. More than that and you'll get overwhelmed. Fewer than five and you'll miss patterns.

Step 2: Pull Their Keyword Data

You cannot see competitors' keywords without a tool. There's no manual way to reverse-engineer what someone ranks for across thousands of queries. The major options are:

Ahrefs

Site Explorer → enter competitor URL → "Organic keywords" report. You'll see every keyword they rank for, their position, estimated monthly search volume, and the URL that ranks. This is the most complete dataset available.

Semrush

Domain Overview → enter competitor → "Organic Research" → Keywords. Very similar output to Ahrefs. Some users find the interface more intuitive. The keyword database is comparable in size.

Moz Pro

Competitive Research → enter domain. Moz's keyword data is thinner than Ahrefs or Semrush but still useful, especially for backlink context.

Google Search Console (for your own site only)

GSC won't show you competitors' keywords, but it's essential for understanding what you're already ranking for — which becomes the baseline you'll compare against.

Free options

Ubersuggest (limited free tier), Keyword Surfer (Chrome extension), and Similarweb all offer partial data. They're useful for a quick gut-check but not comprehensive enough for serious gap analysis.

If you're doing this seriously, Ahrefs or Semrush is worth the subscription for at least one month. The data quality difference is significant.

Step 3: Run a Gap Analysis

Once you have a competitor's keyword list, the question becomes: which of these keywords are they ranking for that you aren't?

This is called a keyword gap analysis, and every major SEO tool has a built-in feature for it.

In Ahrefs:

Go to Content Gap (under Site Explorer, using your domain as the base). Enter two to five competitor domains. Ahrefs will return every keyword those competitors rank for that your site does not.

In Semrush:

Go to Keyword Gap tool. Same idea — enter your domain and competitor domains side by side. Filter to "Missing" to see keywords competitors rank for that you don't appear for at all. Filter to "Weak" to see keywords where you rank but competitors outrank you.

The output will often be thousands of keywords. That's normal. Your next job is to sort them.

For a deeper breakdown of how to run this process systematically, Keyword Competitive Analysis: How to Find Ranking Gaps walks through the mechanics step by step.

Step 4: Sort and Prioritize the Gaps

A raw keyword gap list is noise. You need to filter it into something actionable.

Sort by search volume

Start with keywords that have at least 100 monthly searches. Below that, you're optimizing for very thin traffic unless the term is hyper-commercial (e.g., a very specific product name with buyer intent).

Filter by keyword difficulty

Most tools score this 0–100. A new site or a site with modest domain authority should target under 40. A site with solid authority can go after 40–70 with the right content. Anything above 70 requires significant domain strength and usually isn't worth pursuing unless it's a core business term.

Look for clusters, not just individual keywords

If a competitor ranks for "email marketing for nonprofits," "nonprofit email campaigns," and "email strategy for nonprofits," that's not three separate content pieces — that's one article targeting a topic cluster. Group related keywords together before you start planning content.

Prioritize by intent

Keywords with commercial or transactional intent (someone looking to buy or compare) are worth more per click than informational ones. But informational keywords build topical authority that eventually lifts your commercial rankings. You need both.

Step 5: Look at the Actual Pages That Rank

Once you have a shortlist of target keywords, look at what your competitors actually published for each one. Go to the URL that ranks and read it.

Ask:

• Is this a blog post, a product page, a landing page, or something else?
• How long is it? How deep does it go?
• What questions does it answer that yours doesn't?
• Are there formats they're using — comparison tables, calculators, step-by-step guides — that you haven't tried?

This tells you what you need to build, not just what keyword to target. Ranking for a keyword isn't about inserting a phrase into a page — it's about matching the content type and depth that searchers actually want for that query.

This analysis also reveals where competitors have weak pages ranking by default because no one else has covered the topic well. Those are your fastest wins.

Step 6: Check for Untapped Topic Areas

Beyond individual keywords, look at your competitors' top pages by organic traffic. In Ahrefs, this is Site Explorer → Top Pages. In Semrush, it's Organic Research → Pages.

Sort by estimated traffic. Scroll through the top 50. You'll often find entire topic areas — a complete resource section, a tools category, a comparison hub — that your site doesn't touch at all. These aren't just missing keywords; they're missing content strategies.

This is where the real gap lives. Most competitors don't win because they optimized individual pages better. They win because they built content infrastructure around topics you never covered. Competitor Keyword Analysis: Uncover What You're Missing goes deeper on how to spot these structural gaps.

Step 7: Build a Content Plan From the Gap

Now you have:

• A list of target keywords grouped into clusters
• Knowledge of what type of content ranks for each
• An understanding of which topic areas you're missing entirely

Turn this into a publishing plan.

Assign each keyword cluster to a content type:

• Informational clusters → blog posts, guides, how-to articles
• Commercial clusters → comparison pages, product landing pages, feature pages
• Navigational or branded gaps → homepage updates, product page optimization

Sequence your content:

Don't publish everything at once. Prioritize:

1. Topics where you have existing authority (easiest to rank)
2. High-volume, lower-difficulty gaps
3. Topics that support your commercial pages with informational content

Set a realistic publishing cadence:

A site publishing two solid articles per week will outpace one that publishes ten mediocre ones in a burst and then goes quiet. Consistency matters more than volume over a six-month horizon.

For a structured approach to putting this whole research-to-plan workflow together, Keyword Research Competitor Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide is a useful reference.

The Mistakes That Waste the Work

Even with good data and a solid plan, most sites fail at the execution stage for predictable reasons.

Targeting keywords without understanding intent. If someone searches "email marketing pricing," they want a pricing page or a comparison table — not a blog post about how email marketing pricing works. Publishing the wrong content type for a keyword is the most common reason pages don't rank.

Copying competitors instead of improving on them. You don't rank by matching a competitor's page. You rank by being demonstrably more useful. Cover what they missed. Go deeper. Add examples, specifics, or data they don't have.

Ignoring pages that almost rank. Check your own Google Search Console for keywords where you appear on page two or three. A focused content update on those pages often produces faster results than publishing something new. Closing a gap doesn't always mean creating new content.

Publishing and waiting. Content that gets no links, no internal links pointing to it, and no promotion rarely moves. Build internal links from your existing high-authority pages to new content. Promote it where relevant. Get at least a few external links if you can.

Tools Summary

If you want a done-for-you version of this process — where your competitors are identified, your gaps are mapped, and you get a full content plan with traffic estimates — Rankfill does exactly that, identifying every keyword opportunity competitors are capturing that your site is missing.

FAQ

Can I find competitors' keywords for free?

Partially. Tools like Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner, and Similarweb offer limited free data. For a complete picture — particularly for a full gap analysis across multiple competitors — you need a paid tool like Ahrefs or Semrush. A one-month subscription during an active research phase is usually worth it.

How many competitors should I analyze?

Three to five is a practical starting point. Any fewer and you miss patterns. Any more and the keyword list becomes unmanageable before you've prioritized it. Start with whoever consistently outranks you for your most important terms.

My competitor ranks for thousands of keywords. How do I decide where to start?

Filter for: search volume above 100, keyword difficulty under 50, and informational or commercial intent that matches something your site actually covers. That should reduce a list of thousands to a workable 50–100. Then group by topic cluster and start with whatever cluster you already have the most content around.

How long does it take to rank after publishing content that targets a gap?

Three to six months is realistic for a site with existing authority targeting medium-difficulty keywords. Lower-difficulty terms on a strong domain can move faster — sometimes six to eight weeks. High-difficulty terms can take a year or more, if they move at all without significant links.

Do I need to write about every keyword I find?

No. Many keywords in a gap analysis aren't worth pursuing — too little volume, too competitive, or too far from your business. Be selective. Fifty well-targeted pieces of content built around real clusters will outperform 200 loosely related posts that don't build topical depth.

What if I'm in a niche where tools show low keyword volumes?

Low-volume doesn't mean low-value. In B2B especially, a keyword with 50 monthly searches might represent significant commercial opportunity. Also check whether the keyword tools are underestimating — many niche and long-tail terms are systematically undercounted. Look at the pages that rank and see how much traffic they're actually estimated to receive.

Should I target the same keywords as my competitors or find ones they've missed?

Both. The ones they rank for that you don't are the gaps you need to close to be competitive. The ones they've missed entirely are where you can build a lead. The most successful content strategies do both in parallel — close the existing gaps while finding underserved terms the whole category is ignoring. How to Find and Target Your Competitor Keywords covers the second part of that in more detail.