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Learn how to find your competitors’ keywords and stay ahead of the game. This blog post will guide you through the process of conducting a competitive analysis and identifying the most valuable keywords for your business.

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Understanding competitors’ inbound strategies are essential to staying ahead in today’s competitive online landscape.

Your best bet is identifying the keywords they are ranking for to target their customer base and beat them at their game. And our favorite tools for this are Marketing Miner, Surfer SEO and Semrush. They help you uncover your competitors’ keywords, search volumes, and other vital metrics.

In this article, we explore how to use these tool.

We will walk you through the process step-by-step and provide tips and tricks to help you make the most of these valuable tools. So, let’s dive in.

Competitor Keyword Analysis With Marketing Miner

Marketing Miner is one of the best tools for for researching competitors’ keywords. Let’s see what this software can do for you.

Marketing Miner Overview

Marketing Miner is an all-in-one online marketing tool for data-driven marketers. 

It helps you analyze your online presence, conduct SEO research, track competitors’ strategies, and improve your ranking and organic traffic. The tool can analyze up to 100,000 keywords, URLs, or domains at a go.

Marketing Miner provides you with all the insights you need to succeed and build a thriving business.

Marketing Miner Features

• Keyword research and analysis
• Competitor analysis
• SEO audit and optimization
• Backlink analysis
• PPC research and analysis
• Social media analysis
• SERP tracking
• Data extraction and visualization

Marketing Miner Pricing

• Freemium: Offers free credits with limited access to features.
• Digger plan: $59/month
• Machine plan: $99/month

Marketing Miner also has a custom plan.

Using Marketing Miner For Competitive Analysis

Getting noticed online is becoming more challenging than ever. However, looking over competitors’ shoulders and stealing their strategies can help you beat them at their games.

And here, we will explore how to pull that off with Marketing Miner.

Identify Your Top SERP Competitors

Knowing your competitors is the first step towards beating them.

Naturally, you can identify them by searching for keywords relevant to you and also choosing the websites that rank for these search terms.

However, this method is only sometimes reliable since your top competitors may not be the top-ranking websites for those keywords.

Thankfully, marketing miner’s Link prospecting tool can help you identify your top SERP Competitors. All you need to do is to provide between five to ten keywords relevant to your niche, and the marketing miner will generate a report containing your top competitors.

When you identify them, visit their websites and follow these tips to uncover their keywords:

• Press CTRL + U on your keyword to reveal the website source code.
• Use the search function (CTRL + F), type title in the search box to see the keywords they are using in their SEO title.
• Search </h1> to discover their primary keywords.
• Type “description” to see the keywords they are using in their meta description.
• Use a Keyword Cloud Generator to uncover the keywords that are used in the content

Related Post: Keyword Research Ultimate Guide: A Step-By-Step Strategies For More Traffic

Conduct a Content Gap Analysis

A content gap analysis identifies relevant topics, keywords, or types of content your website is not currently covering but is part of your competitors’ content strategy.

Conducting a content gap analysis can help you identify opportunities to create new content or optimize existing content better to meet the needs and interests of your audience.

Suppose you desire to meet your audience’s needs. In that case, we recommend using Marketing Miner’s content gap analysis feature, which requires you to add your competitors.

After which, the tool compares their content strategy with yours to identify what keywords they’re using, but you need to.

Mine Keyword Data

Marketing Miner can provide keyword metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, and competition.

These metrics can help you identify valuable keywords worth targeting in your SEO campaigns. To mine Keyword data with Marketing Miner, use the Keyword analysis tool, which provides detailed information about the keyword you input.

You can analyze keyword data from the country you want to target.

Marketing Miner also suggests related keywords and provides data on them too!

You can filter these keywords based on search volume, difficulty, etc.

These features and lots more make marketing miner a versatile tool we know you’ll love.

Identify Low-Hanging Fruits

Low-hanging fruits are keywords with high search volume but have low competition.

Marketing Miner’s keyword analysis tool can help you find low-competition and high-search-volume keywords that you can target to improve your organic search traffic.

To use the keyword analysis tool, you must input a phrase relevant to your niche, and your result will be a list of Numerous keywords related to the phrase you provided.

The results also indicate the search volume of each keyword and the difficulty level (if it’s competitive or not).

By using Marketing Miner to identify low-hanging fruits in your marketing campaigns, you can focus on the areas that offer the most significant potential for improvement and growth.

This data-driven approach can help you achieve better results with less effort and resources. 

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Create a Keyword Report

After completing your keyword research, it’s essential to have a report for continuous use.

Creating a keyword report will help you effectively manage your SEO strategy since the report will contain all the search phrases you’ll need.

The report also includes data from the keyword you provided.

Marketing Miner also suggests keywords related to the search term you provide, including their metric data.

All of which you can include in your report.

To create a Keyword report, click the “export data” button, which you’ll find below the information marketing.

Exporting Keyword Data requires marketing Miner credits.

The number of credits you’ll need depends on the number of keywords you want to export.

Depending on personal choice, you can export the data from your analyzed keyword and all suggested keywords or selected ones.

Competitor Keywords Research With Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO is another excellent software for competitor keyword analysis. In this section, we will show you how to use this tool to spy on your competitor’s keywords.

What is Surfer SEO?

Surfer SEO is a keyword research tool that can analyze millions of competing websites and tell you exactly what keywords to use, the length of your blog posts, and even what topics you should cover. So, if you’re looking for ways to improve your website’s organic traffic, definitely consider this tool. 

Surfer SEO Pros

• Easy to use: You don’t need any technical skills or SEO knowledge to use it.
• Data-driven: It uses real-time data from Google to give you reliable and relevant insights.
• Comprehensive and versatile: It covers all aspects of content optimization, from keyword research to content editing.
• Fast: Saves time and effort by automating your SEO workflow and providing out-of-the-box suggestions. 
• Affordable and flexible: It offers different plans and pricing options to suit your needs and budget.

Surfer SEO Cons

• It doesn’t guarantee success because you still need to monitor your results and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Surfer SEO Pricing

Surfer SEO offers four main plans: Lite, Essential, Advanced, and Max. Here’s how much each cost per month (billed annually)

• Lite: $19
• Essential: $69
• Advanced: $149
• Max: $249

Surfer SEO also offers a free trial for 7 days where you can test all the features without any limitations.

Using Surfer SEO for Competitive Keyword Research

One of the main features of Surfer SEO is the SERP Analyzer. 

With it, you can analyze the top-ranking pages by keyword and see what drives their ranking. The feature helps you learn what keywords your competitors are targeting, how they are optimizing their content, and what you can do to beat them.

Follow these steps to use Surfer SEO for competitive keyword research: 

Step 1: Identify your top competitors

Download Surfer SEO’s Keyword Surfer extension. 

When you launch the extension, it will show you your competitors’ estimated monthly search volume, difficulty,  and trend for any keyword you type in Google. For example, I typed the phrase “how to raise money for business”, and the tool gave me the exact keywords to target for that search intent (And other relevant information).

Alternatively, you can use the Keyword Research feature in Surfer SEO, which shows you similar results based on your target keyword.

Step 2: Find the keywords they are targeting

Next, launch the SERP Analyzer using the Surfer SEO desktop app to get a detailed analysis of the top-ranking pages for each keyword. In SERP Analyzer, you can see and compare various metrics such as:

• Content score: a measure of how well the content matches the search intent and the ranking factors
• Word count: the number of words in the content
• True density: the number of times a term or phrase appears in the content
• NLP entities: the entities or concepts that are relevant to the content
• Backlinks: the number and quality of links pointing to the page

Step 3: Analyze the key metrics

Next, analyze the key metrics: content score, backlinks, etc. that affect the rankings of your competitors’ pages. You can also use the Correlations feature in Surfer SEO, which shows you how different factors correlate with higher rankings for a given keyword.

You can see correlations such as:

• Content length vs. position
• Number of headings vs. position
• Number of images vs. position
• Number of backlinks vs. position

Now, you’re in a perfect position to craft the perfect content because you have a sound knowledge of how long you want it to be, the number of headings to use, and so on.

Step 4: Optimize your content for the keywords

Armed with your new-found metrics and correlations, it’s time to optimize your content in Surfer SEO’s content editor. The Content Editor feature in Surfer SEO helps you:

• Create SEO-friendly content that matches the search intent and the ranking factors.
• Optimize your content for word count, true density, NLP entities, headings, images, schema, etc.

Launch the content editor and follow all its guidelines to craft SEO content. Check our Surfer SEO review to learn how this works.

Competitor Keywords Analysis With Semrush

SEMrush is a great tool for competitor keyword analysis as it helps you identify and track your competitors’ keywords even more efficiently. Over one million businesses and agencies use this tool–a testament to its effectiveness. 

What is Semrush?

Semrush is an all-in-one digital marketing toolkit that helps businesses improve their online visibility and discover marketing insights. It offers a wide range of features, including keyword research, competitive analysis, backlink analysis, site audit, position tracking, etc.

Even more impressive is the fact that Semrush uses data from over 142 geodatabases and 24.9 billion keywords to provide you with comprehensive and accurate insights for any market or niche.

Semrush Pros

• Comprehensive: It covers all aspects of online marketing, from SEO to PPC to social media.
• Reliable and up-to-date: It uses data from multiple sources and updates it regularly to ensure accuracy and relevance.
• Customizable: It allows you to create custom reports, dashboards, and projects to suit your needs and goals.

Semrush Cons

• Semrush has a lot of features, which can be overwhelming for some users. If you’re not familiar with SEO, it could be difficult to know where to start.

Semrush Pricing

Semrush offers three main plans: Pro, Guru, and Business. Here’s how much each plan costs: 

• Pro plan: $119.95 per month (or $99.95 per month if billed annually)
• Guru plan: $229.95 per month (or $191.62 per month if billed annually)
• Business plan: $449.95 per month (or $374.95 per month if billed annually

You can also customize your plan by adding more users, projects, keywords, or pages as needed. Semrush also offers a free trial for 7 days where you can test all the features without any limitations.

Using Semrush for Competitor Analysis

Here are the steps to use Semrush for competitor keyword analysis:

Step 1: Identify your competitors

The first step is to identify who your main competitors are in organic and paid searches. 

Use the Domain Overview tool in Semrush to get a comprehensive overview of any domain’s online performance. You can then select the competitors that you want to analyze further and compare them with your website.

Step 2: Use the keyword gap tool

The next step is to use the Keyword Gap tool in Semrush. 

The Keyword Gap tool shows metrics such as volume, keyword difficulty, the average cost per click for a keyword, keyword trend, etc. for up to 5 domains.

These insights enable you to see what keywords your competitors are targeting and how they are performing for them. You will also know what keywords you are missing or have an advantage over your competitors.

Step 3: Export your keywords

Now you can export your keywords from the Keyword Gap tool and use them to optimize your content and campaigns. Tap the Export button in Semrush to download your keywords in various formats, such as CSV, XLSX, or PDF.

You can then use the Send to other tools button in Semrush, which allows you to send your keywords to other tools within Semrush, such as:

• Keyword Manager: a tool that helps you organize, analyze, and update your keywords
• Position Tracking: a tool that helps you track and monitor your rankings for your target keywords
• PPC Keyword Tool: a tool that helps you create and manage your PPC campaigns for your target keywords

Step 4: Analyze your results

The final step is to analyze your results and see how your website performance has improved after using Semrush for competitor analysis. SEMrush provides a comprehensive overview of performance, find detailed information about organic search performance, and backlink profiles of any competing domain online.

More Ways to Uncover Competitors’ Keywords

Besides using Surfer SEO and Semrush, there are other ways to uncover competitors’ keywords. And here are some of them:

Use keyword cloud tools

Keyword cloud tools are tools that generate a visual representation of the most frequently used words or phrases on a webpage. They help you see what topics or themes are prominent on a webpage and what keywords are associated with them.

Look at the competitors’ SEO titles, meta descriptions, and H1 tags

Another way to uncover competitors’ keywords is to look at their SEO titles, meta descriptions, and H1 tags. 

These are the elements that appear in the search results and on the web pages and tell the search engines and the users what the pages are about.

Use Ubersuggest to see keywords that bring them the most traffic

Ubersuggest is a free online tool that helps you generate keyword ideas, analyze keyword difficulty, and see keyword trends. It also allows you to see what keywords bring the most traffic to any website.

It lets you see what keywords your competitors are ranking for and how much traffic they are getting from them. You can also see various metrics such as volume, average cost per click, keyword competition, etc.

Look beyond your competitors

Explore other options to enrich your keyword profiles.

Focusing squarely on your competitors could deny other opportunities, costing your potential organic visitors. We recommend going through the Google search result page’s ‘People Also Ask’ section to discover high-yield, low-competition keywords.

Other places you can find relevant keywords are:

• Quora
• Google autosuggest
• Google Trends

These places are rich sources of long-tail and low-competition keywords that can bring you quick wins and instant gratification.

Competitive Keyword Research: What Next?

Now that you’re done stealing your competitors’ keywords through competitive research, the next step is to optimize your content to rank high on Google.

We recommend using Surfer SEO. It helps you analyze and optimize your content to rank higher in search results and provides recommendations on the ideal word count, headings, and other on-page SEO elements to include in your content.

Also, building high-quality backlinks can improve your ranking.

With Adsy, you can source high-quality backlinks from relevant websites. It features hundreds of high-authority websites and blogs you choose from.

Recommended For You: Gain powerful, actionable on-page optimization insights with Surfer SEO to outrank your competitors and dominate the organic competition.

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FAQs

What are Seasonal Keywords?

These keywords have higher search volumes during specific seasons or times of the year and are relevant to products, services, and content associated with those seasons.

For example, keywords related to gift-giving, Christmas decorations, and Christmas recipes will likely increase search volume during the Christmas holiday season.

Similarly, keywords related to outdoor activities, travel destinations, and summer clothing will likely be more prevalent in the summer.

It’s essential to regularly review and update your seasonal keyword strategy to stay ahead of the competition and capture the attention of your target audience during notable times of the year.

What to do after you have found your competitors’ keywords?

The next step after finding your competitors’ keywords is using these phrases to improve your SEO strategy.

You can do so by:

• Analyzing the keywords to identify the relevant ones to your business, including the high volume and low competition ones.
• Evaluating your content to see if they include the keywords you analyzed
• Optimizing your website’s metadata and content to include the keywords
• Creating new content with the Keywords you’ve found
• Monitoring the results.

What is the difference between broad and long-tail keywords?

Broad keywords are short and general search terms that describe a wide range of topics or products.

These keywords typically consist of one or two words,  have a high search volume, and can also be challenging to rank for since they have high competition.

Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer and more specific search terms that describe a particular topic or niche.

They typically consist of three or more words.

These keywords have a lower search volume than broad ones but are more targeted and have lower competition.

Can Marketing Miner Find Keywords Your Competitors aren’t using?

Yes, Marketing Miner can find keywords your competitors are not using but are still relevant to your industry or niche.

Marketing Miner has powerful keyword research features that collect data from various sources to identify relevant search terms people use to find products or information online.

However, keep in mind that keyword research is a continuous process that requires regular reviews and updates to your keyword strategy to stay ahead of the competition.

What to Look for When Doing Competitor Keyword Research

There are several things to look for when doing competitor keyword research. They include:

• Keyword relevance
• High search volume
• Low competition
• Keyword seasonality
• Keyword gaps

How are Keyword Research Reports Useful?

Keyword research reports are useful for businesses and marketers for several reasons:

• Creating a new website structure
• Developing or optimizing a content strategy
• Building PPC campaigns 
• Website optimization

How to do Keyword Research With Marketing Miner

Marketing Miner is not entirely free, but it does offer a free trial that allows users to test the tool’s features before committing to a paid subscription.

After the trial period ends, users must purchase a subscription to continue using the tool.

What are some of the best keyword competitive analysis tools?

• SEMrush: SEMrush offers a variety of features for competitor keyword analysis, including keyword gap analysis, organic research, and backlink gap analysis.
• Moz: Just like SEMrush, Moz is a powerful tool that offers powerful tools for competitor keyword analysis, including keyword research, backlink analysis, and competitor overview.
• Ubersuggest: This free keyword research tool offers a basic set of features for finding competitor keywords.

How can I find competitor keywords?

One option is to use a keyword research tool such as SEMrush. With it, you can see what keywords your competitors are ranking for, as well as the search volume and difficulty of those keywords. Another way to find competitor keywords is to look into the backlink profiles of your competitors.  

How often should I update my competitor keyword research?

If you are in a rapidly changing industry, you may need to update your keyword research on a monthly or even weekly basis. But if you are in a more stable industry, you may only need to update your keyword research on a quarterly or even annual basis.

How can I use competitor keywords to improve my SEO?

Our most successful use case for competitor keywords is for use in long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are keywords that are more specific and less competitive than short-tail keywords. By targeting long-tail keywords, you can increase your chances of ranking for those keywords and driving traffic to your website.

What are the benefits of using a competitor keyword analysis tool?

There are several benefits to using a competitor keyword analysis tool. These tools can help you to:

• Identify the keywords that your competitors are targeting
• Understand the search volume and difficulty of those keywords
• See how your competitors are ranking for those keywords
• Build backlinks to your website
• And most importantly, improve your SEO performance