Competitor Analysis: See What Your Competition Ranks For – and Why
Competitor analysis answers a question that stands at the start of every SEO strategy: what are the ones you want to overtake found for – and what do they have that you lack? Which keywords your competitors capture, which pages carry their traffic, where the gaps are that you can occupy.
What the module is
A competitor analysis for SEO isn’t a look at the prettier website. It compares three things measurably: the keyword set (what the others rank for, what you don’t), content depth (which topics they cover, how thoroughly) and authority (which pages link to them).
The result is a list of concrete gaps – keywords with demand a competitor ranks for and you don’t – sorted by effort and return. It’s the least automatable module in the MCP SEO system, and that’s exactly why your approval always stands at the end, not a button press.
Anyone planning without a competitor analysis works blind
Three patterns keep showing up.
Saturated topics instead of gaps
You write about topics your market has long saturated, and ignore the gaps nobody occupies.
Underestimated content depth
You underestimate how deeply the competition covers a topic – your 400-word text goes up against a 2,000-word guide and loses.
Watching the wrong pages
You don’t see that a competitor gets most of its traffic through a handful of pages – exactly the ones you should attack first.
“I manage around 15 projects in parallel and constantly see the same trap: companies copy what the biggest competitor writes about, instead of checking what it actually ranks for. Those are rarely the same pages. The traffic almost always sits in a few unremarkable pages, not in the glossy homepage.”
— Viktor Pásztor, SEO freelancer in BerlinThe process in six steps – always ending with your approval
Identify competitors
The real organic competitors, not the ones you think of as competition. Often others rank for your keywords than you’d expect.
Pull keyword overlap
What they rank for, what you rank for, where the gap is. The data source is real ranking data, not estimates.
Compare content depth
Length, structure and currency of the pages that actually rank.
Assess authority
Number and quality of referring domains, so that what’s achievable in what timeframe stays realistic.
Prioritise gaps
By search volume, competitive difficulty and your effort.
Approval
The result sits as a list in your folder. You decide which gaps we tackle. Without your approval, no text comes from it.
Four routes to a competitor analysis
| Criterion | Do it yourself | SEO pro (manual) | Agency | How I do it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data source | free tools, often incomplete | pro tools like Ahrefs, Semrush | the agency’s tool stack | Ahrefs, Semrush, Screaming Frog, GSC |
| Competitor selection | by feeling, usually wrong | data-based | data-based | via real ranking overlap |
| Depth | snapshot | high | high, partly standardised | high, related to your offer |
| Time investment for you | high | low | low | low, just approval |
| Assessment of the gaps | usually missing | yes | yes | yes, with prioritisation by effort |
| Costs | time instead of money | medium | high | at hourly rate, only what’s needed |
What the analysis concretely delivers
Realistic keywords
Before the first text, you know which keywords are realistically achievable.
No hopeless effort
You save yourself texts on topics where the gap to close is too large.
Hitting the right pages
You hit the competitor pages that really carry traffic – not the most visible ones.
Questions about competitor analysis
How often should you analyse competitors?
At the start of every strategy and every six months thereafter. Rankings shift, new competitors appear, old ones fall back.
Which tools do you use for it?
Ahrefs and Semrush for rankings and referring domains, Screaming Frog for content structure, Google Search Console for your own starting position. The tools deliver the data, the assessment I do.
Is it legal – analysing the competition?
Yes. Only publicly visible rankings and pages, as every user sees them, are analysed. No internal data, no access to others’ systems.
Can’t I just copy the competition’s keywords?
Copying rarely brings rankings. What matters are the gaps – demand nobody serves well yet.
Back to the pillar
Competitor analysis is a module of MCP SEO, my system for automated SEO routine work. It provides the basis on which keyword research and SEO texts build.
How the modules interact and why your approval stands at the end of every measure is explained in the overview of MCP SEO.
Request a competitor analysis for your project
Send me your domain and the competitors you know of. I’ll tell you what they really rank for – and where the gap for you lies. Reply within 24 hours on weekdays.
→ Book your free consultation