How to Do Competitor Analysis with SEMrush [A 2025 Detailed Guide]

Between the vast ocean of data and the never-ending race on Google rankings, SEO is no different from a fierce battlefield. Want to reach the top? You not only need to make internal efforts, but also be really smart in “spying” on your competitors.

This article from RankMarket will be the most comprehensive guide on how to analyze competitors in SEO using the SEMrush tool.

What is SEO competitor analysis?

Analyzing competitors in SEO is the process of researching and evaluating the SEO strategies of websites that are competing with you on search engines, especially Google. The goal is to understand what they are doing, from which keywords they are targeting, how they build backlinks, to how they optimize their content and user experience. This helps you identify your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, and find opportunities to improve your website's rankings.

Semrush Guru

buy Semrush One / Guru /Adversting / .Trends account - the most famous SEO tools for all digital marketers

View Product

SEMrush acts as a “powerful assistant” in this process. With a huge database and features such as Organic Research, Keyword Gap, Backlink Analytics, this tool allows you to collect detailed data about your competitors, including:

• Keywords: What keywords are your competitors ranking for? Which keywords are driving the most traffic?
• Backlinks: What websites are they getting links from? What is the quality of the backlinks?
• Traffic: How much traffic is your competitor getting, and from what sources (organic, paid, social)?
• Content: What content is your competitor doing well? What content strategy are they using?

Analyzing your competitor is not just about “watching,” it’s about learning from what they do well and avoiding the mistakes they make. This is the foundation for building an effective SEO strategy, especially in highly competitive industries.

Why is SEO competitor analysis important?

Analyzing competitors not only helps you understand how fast your competitors are running, what tactics they use, or even where they are on the track. Doing SEO without competitor analysis is the same – you will be groping in the dark, wasting time and effort without the desired results.

Here are 5 reasons why SEO competitor analysis is indispensable:

1. Understanding the market: You know which keywords your competitors are targeting, what content attracts customers, thereby identifying opportunities for yourself. For example, if your competitor ranks highly for the keyword “SEO services Hanoi” but ignores “cheap SEO Hanoi”, that’s your opportunity to attack.
2. Find Keyword Gaps: SEMrush helps you discover keywords that your competitors rank for but you haven’t exploited. This is “pure gold” for expanding your content and increasing traffic.
3. Improve your content strategy: By analyzing your competitors’ content, you’ll know what they’re doing well (e.g. long articles, with video illustrations) and what they’re not doing well (e.g. lack of FAQs or clear CTAs). From there, you can create superior content.
4. Optimize backlinks: Backlinks are still an important factor to get to the TOP of Google. Analyzing your competitors' backlinks helps you know where they're getting their links from, what their quality is, and how you can build a stronger backlink profile.
5. Save time and money: Instead of blindly testing, you learn from your competitors' successes and mistakes, helping you optimize your SEO strategy faster and more effectively.

In short, analyzing your competitors not only helps you “know yourself and your enemy” but also gives you a shortcut to surpass your competitors in the fierce battle on Google.

How to Do Competitor Analysis with SEMrush [A 2025 Detailed Guide]

To analyze your SEO competitors with SEMrush, you need to follow a clear and systematic process. Here are the detailed steps, designed to suit both beginners and experienced SEOers.

Step 1: Identify your competitors

Before you analyze, you need to know who your competitors are. There are two main types of competitors:

• Direct competitors: Businesses that offer similar products/services and target the same customer segment.
• SEO competitors: Websites that rank highly for the keywords you want to target, even though they may not be direct business competitors.

How to do it with SEMrush:

1. Go to Domain Overview in SEMrush.
2. Enter your domain name or target keyword to find high-ranking websites.
3. Switch to the Competitors tab in Organic Research to see a list of SEO competitors. SEMrush will display a Competitive Positioning Map, showing you websites that rank for the same keywords as you, along with their traffic and the number of keywords they are ranking for.

For example, if you run a plumbing business in Hanoi, you can enter the keyword “water pipe repair Hanoi” and SEMrush will list websites like “diennuoc.com” or “suachuaxaydung.vn” as SEO competitors.

Step 2: Analyze Competitors’ Keywords (Keyword Gap)

Once you’ve identified your competitors, the next step is to find out what keywords they’re ranking for and what opportunities you can exploit.

How to show:

1. Go to Keyword Gap in SEMrush.
2. Enter your domain and up to 4 competitor domains.
3. Select your market (e.g. US) and keyword type (Organic Keywords).
4. Click Compare to see the results.

SEMrush will display:

• Shared Keywords: Keywords that both you and your competitor rank for.
• Missing Keywords: Keywords that your competitor ranks for but you don't.
• Weak Keywords: Keywords that you rank for lower than your competitor.
• Strong Keywords: Keywords that you rank for higher than your competitor.
• Untapped Keywords: Keywords that some competitors rank for but you and others don’t.

For example, if a competitor ranks for “cheap plumbing repair Hanoi” with 500/month search traffic, but you’re not targeting it, this is an opportunity to create new content or optimize an existing page.

Tip:

• Use filters to find keywords with high search volume and low Keyword Difficulty.
• Focus on local keywords if you’re a local business, e.g. “water pipe repair Cau Giay”.

Step 3: Analyze backlink of competitors (Backlink Gap)

Backlink is an important factor that determines ranking. SEMrush helps you uncover your competitors' backlink strategies and find link building opportunities for yourself.

How to do it:

1. Go to Backlink Analytics or Backlink Gap in SEMrush.
2. Enter your domain and your competitors' domain.
3. Click Compare to see a list of websites that are linking to your competitors but not to you.

The results will include:

• Referring Domains: Domains that are pointing backlinks to your competitors.
• Authority Score (AS): The authority score of the linking domains.
• Matches: The relevance of your competitor's website to the referring domain end.

For example, if your competitor receives a backlink from a local newspaper site like “baohanoi.vn”, you can contact them to place an article or guest post on the same site.

Tip:

• Prioritize backlinks from websites with a high Authority Score and relevant to your industry.
• Analyze the anchor text your competitors use to optimize your strategy.

Step 4: Analyze Traffic and User Behavior

Understanding how your competitors attract traffic helps you adjust your strategy.

How to do it:

1. Go to Traffic Analytics in SEMrush.
2. Enter your competitor's domain and select a market (e.g. US).
3. View metrics:
   • Visits: Number of monthly visits.
   • Unique Visitors: Number of unique visitors.
   • Traffic Sources: Traffic sources (organic, paid, social, direct).
   • Bounce Rate: The rate at which a page exits.
   • Pages per Visit: The average number of pages a user views.

For example, if a competitor has a low bounce rate and a high time on site, this shows that their content is engaging. You can analyze their top pages in Organic Research to learn how to write headlines, structure articles, or use CTAs (Call to Action).

Step 5: Analyze Content and Advertising Strategy

Content is the core element of SEO. SEMrush helps you discover your competitors' top-performing pages and their advertising strategies.

How to do it:

1. In Organic Research, look at the Pages tab to see your competitors' top-traffic pages.
2. Analyze content: Post length, content type (blog, guide, video), primary keywords, and use of headings (H1, H2).
3. Switch to Advertising Research to see your competitors' paid advertising (PPC) campaigns, including keywords, estimated budgets, and ad copy.

For example, if your competitor has a highly-ranking “How to Fix Plumbing at Home” blog post, you can create a similar but more detailed post, adding a video or infographic to increase the value. value.

Tip:

• Use Content Gap to find topics that your competitors have covered but you haven’t.
• Create “skyscraper” content – ​​improve on your competitors’ content by adding new information, high-quality images, or a more readable format.

Step 6: Monitor and update regularly

SEO is a long-term game. You need to monitor your competitors regularly to stay up to date on changes in their strategies.

How to do it:

1. Use Position Tracking in SEMrush to track your and your competitors' keyword rankings.
2. Set up Alerts to get notified when your competitors make major changes (e.g., spikes in traffic or loss of rankings).
3. Perform monthly or quarterly analysis to adjust your strategy.

For example, if your competitors start targeting new keywords or building backlinks from reputable websites, you need to react quickly by optimizing your content or finding similar backlinks.

Conclusion

Analyzing your SEO competitors with SEMrush is an important step to building an effective and sustainable SEO strategy. By understanding what your competitors are doing – from keywords, backlinks, to content and traffic – you can find opportunities to outrank them in Google rankings. SEMrush not only provides data, but also helps you turn that data into concrete actions, from targeting new keywords, building quality backlinks, to creating more engaging content.

Start by identifying your competitors, analyzing keywords and backlinks, then monitor regularly to ensure you stay one step ahead. If you are looking for a reputable address to buy SEMrush accounts, let RankMarket accompany you with the cheap SEMrush account sharing service!

Frequently asked questions when analyzing competitors in SEO with SEMrush

References:

• What Is a Competitive Analysis? (with Template + Examples) – https://www.semrush.com/blog/competitive-analysis/