An SEO competitor analysis helps you understand which websites compete with you in organic search, what they rank for, which pages drive their visibility, where they earn authority, and which gaps are worth pursuing.
For B2B SaaS companies, the goal is not to copy every keyword a competitor ranks for. A competitor may generate thousands of visits from broad informational topics that have little connection to pipeline. The useful part is identifying the searches, pages and topic clusters that matter to your ICP, then turning those findings into a prioritized SEO roadmap.
| Question | What you want to learn |
|---|---|
| Who are we competing with? | Your real organic competitors, not just business competitors |
| What do they rank for? | Keywords, topics and page types generating visibility |
| Why do they rank? | Content quality, links, topical depth and site structure |
| Where are we weaker? | Keyword, content, backlink and AI visibility gaps |
| What should we do next? | Pages to create, improve, interlink or promote |
If you are building the broader roadmap first, start with our SEO strategy template for B2B SaaS.
What Is SEO Competitor Analysis?
SEO competitor analysis, also called SEO competitive analysis, is the process of comparing your organic search presence with the websites competing for the same queries. This usually includes reviewing competitor keywords, high-performing pages, backlinks, content gaps, site architecture and search intent. In 2026, it should also include AI search visibility because buyers increasingly discover brands through ChatGPT, Google AI surfaces and other answer engines.
The output should not be a giant spreadsheet of missing keywords. It should be a list of specific SEO opportunities ranked by business value.
SEO Competitors vs Business Competitors
Your commercial competitors are not always your biggest SEO competitors. For example, a SaaS company selling revenue forecasting software may compete commercially with three other forecasting tools, but in Google it might also compete against HubSpot, Salesforce, review sites, large sales blogs and finance publications.
- Direct competitors: companies selling a similar product.
- Organic competitors: websites frequently ranking for your target searches.
- Content competitors: publishers, review sites and adjacent SaaS companies competing for informational demand.
A strong analysis looks at all three.
SEO Competitor Analysis: The 8-Step Workflow
1. Identify Your Real Organic Competitors
Start with your most commercially important keyword groups and look at which domains appear repeatedly. If you sell revenue forecasting software, you might check searches around revenue forecasting software, sales forecasting tools, forecasting methods, forecasting templates, Salesforce forecasting alternatives and AI sales forecasting.
Then compare those recurring domains with your direct competitor list. SEO tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush can also identify domains with large keyword overlap, but manual SERP checks are still useful because they show the actual sites Google considers relevant for each intent. A competitor set of five to ten domains is usually enough for the first analysis.
2. Compare Their Organic Footprints
Once you have the competitor set, build a high-level benchmark.
| Metric | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Organic traffic | Shows overall search visibility |
| Ranking keywords | Shows breadth |
| Top 3 / Top 10 keywords | Shows ranking strength |
| Top pages | Reveals formats and topics driving results |
| Referring domains | Indicates authority |
| Branded vs non-branded traffic | Helps separate brand demand from SEO performance |
Do not judge competitors only by total traffic. One competitor may receive huge traffic from generic glossary articles while another dominates category, alternatives and comparison searches that are far more valuable commercially. For SaaS companies, that distinction is important. Our SaaS SEO guide covers why SEO should ultimately be evaluated against qualified pipeline rather than traffic alone.
3. Run a Competitor Keyword Analysis
Now look at the searches responsible for that visibility. Instead of treating every ranking keyword equally, group them by intent: category, use case, comparison, alternatives, problem-aware and educational queries. This tells you what type of demand each competitor is trying to own.
For a quick first-pass keyword list before you run the full competitor gap analysis, our Ahrefs Keyword Generator guide shows how to uncover free keyword ideas, long-tail searches and buyer-intent terms that you can then validate against competitor rankings.
- Category: CRM software, revenue forecasting software
- Use case: CRM for startups, forecasting for SaaS
- Comparison: Salesforce vs HubSpot
- Alternatives: Salesforce alternatives
- Problem-aware: how to improve forecast accuracy
- Educational: what is revenue forecasting
For example, one competitor may be heavily focused on high-volume educational traffic while another has built dozens of bottom-funnel comparison pages. Those are two very different SEO strategies. If you need the tool-level research workflow, our Ahrefs Keyword Explorer guide covers the process in more detail.
4. Find Keyword and Content Gaps
A keyword gap analysis finds searches competitors rank for that you do not. A content gap analysis looks one level higher and asks which meaningful topics or buyer questions are missing from your site altogether.
| Keyword | Possible content decision |
|---|---|
| SaaS churn rate | One benchmark article |
| average SaaS churn rate | Same article |
| good churn rate for SaaS | Same article |
| SaaS churn benchmark | Same article |
You do not need four separate URLs. For every gap, ask whether it is relevant to your ICP, whether it connects to a problem you solve, whether there is real buying intent, whether you already have a page that should rank, and whether a new page would add something genuinely useful. This prevents competitor research from becoming a content-production exercise.
5. Study the Pages That Actually Win
The keyword list tells you what competitors rank for. Their top pages tell you how they are doing it. Look at the formats driving their growth, such as guides, comparison pages, alternative pages, templates, calculators, tools, research reports, statistics pages, product pages and integration pages.
| Element | What to check |
|---|---|
| Search intent | Does the format match what the SERP rewards? |
| Depth | Does it fully answer the query? |
| Differentiation | Is there original research, examples or data? |
| UX | Tables, screenshots, tools, templates |
| Internal links | How does the page connect to the rest of the site? |
| Backlinks | Has the page earned authority? |
| Freshness | Is it regularly updated? |
The goal is not to rewrite the competitor’s article. It is to understand why that format works and whether you can build something more useful.
6. Compare Competitor Backlinks
Content is only part of the picture. Two sites can publish similar pages and perform very differently because one has significantly stronger authority. A competitor backlink analysis should focus on websites that link to competitors but not to you.
The most useful opportunities often come from domains linking to multiple competitors because they have already demonstrated interest in your category. Prioritize links from industry publications, SaaS directories, partner ecosystems, expert roundups, research articles, resource pages, podcasts and associations.
Do not chase a link simply because a competitor has it. Relevance and placement quality matter more than copying their backlink profile. We already have a separate tutorial on how to find competitor backlinks using Ahrefs.
7. Review Topic Clusters and Internal Linking
Some SEO competitors win because their site is better organized, not because every article is individually better. Compare how competitors build topic clusters and how pillar pages connect to supporting articles, tutorials, commercial pages and comparison content.
| Pillar | Supporting pages |
|---|---|
| SaaS SEO | Keyword research, technical SEO, link building |
| AI search | ChatGPT SEO, GEO, AI Overviews |
| Google Ads | Audits, bidding, keywords, campaign structure |
Look for pillar-to-supporting-page links, contextual internal links, commercial page links, breadcrumbs, orphan pages and repeated anchor themes. Competitor analysis should influence not only what you publish, but also how existing pages connect. Our B2B on-page SEO checklist covers this layer in more detail.
8. Compare AI Search Visibility
SEO competitor analysis in 2026 should include AI visibility. Take the same topics your buyers search for and test them as conversational prompts, then record which brands and sources appear.
| Prompt | Your brand | Competitor A | Competitor B | Cited source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best CRM for SaaS | No | Yes | Yes | Competitor comparison |
| Salesforce alternatives | Yes | Yes | No | Your alternatives page |
| Best revenue forecasting tools | No | Yes | Yes | Third-party review |
This helps uncover a different type of gap. A competitor may rank only slightly above you in Google but be cited repeatedly across ChatGPT or Google AI experiences. Our guides to how to rank on ChatGPT and Generative Engine Optimisation cover this in more detail. You can also reference the methodology in our AI Visibility Report.
How to Prioritize SEO Competitor Opportunities
The final step is deciding what is worth acting on. Not every gap should become a page. I would score opportunities against five factors: business relevance, buyer intent, search demand, ranking feasibility and pipeline potential.
| Opportunity | Demand | Intent | Business relevance | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue forecasting software | High | Commercial | Very high | Priority |
| Salesforce forecasting alternatives | Medium | BOFU | Very high | Priority |
| Forecasting methods | Medium | Informational | High | Build cluster |
| Motivational sales quotes | High | Informational | Low | Ignore |
This is where competitor analysis becomes useful to the business instead of just interesting to the SEO team.
Best SEO Competitor Analysis Tools
You do not need a huge stack. Ahrefs is useful for organic competitors, top pages, keyword gaps and backlinks. Semrush is useful for keyword gaps, organic visibility, competitive research and increasingly AI visibility. Google Search Console should be used to validate your own real query and page data, while Google itself is still essential for understanding search intent and the actual SERPs.
For AI visibility, you can use dedicated monitoring platforms or a controlled prompt set. For a broader comparison, see our B2B SEO tools guide and LLM SEO tools guide.
SEO Competitor Analysis Checklist
- real organic competitors
- direct SaaS competitors
- keyword gaps
- content gaps
- top competitor pages
- backlinks
- topic clusters
- internal linking
- commercial-intent keywords
- AI search visibility
- prioritized recommendations
Every finding should end with an action such as create, optimize, consolidate, interlink, build links, monitor or ignore.
Common SEO Competitor Analysis Mistakes
- Copying competitors blindly. A page ranking well does not mean every tactic on that page should be copied.
- Chasing every missing keyword. Some competitor traffic has no connection to your business.
- Looking only at direct competitors. Publishers and adjacent SaaS brands can be stronger SEO competitors.
- Ignoring page formats. Sometimes the opportunity is not a missing keyword but a missing template, calculator or comparison page.
- Ignoring authority. Better content does not always beat a site with significantly stronger topical authority and backlinks.
- Stopping at Google. Competitive visibility increasingly includes AI answers and citations.
- Producing a report without priorities. If the analysis does not change what your SEO team works on next, it has little value.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is competitor analysis in SEO?
SEO competitor analysis is the process of identifying the websites that compete with you in organic search and comparing their keywords, top pages, content, backlinks, site structure and visibility. The goal is to find where competitors are stronger, where your site has gaps, and which opportunities are worth prioritizing based on search demand and business relevance. For the broader planning process, see our B2B SaaS SEO strategy guide.
How to do SEO competitor analysis?
Start by identifying your real organic competitors, then compare their ranking keywords, top-performing pages, backlinks and content clusters with your own site. Next, run a keyword gap and content gap analysis, review how competitors structure and internally link their pages, and check where they appear in AI search. The final step is to turn those findings into a prioritized list of pages to create, optimize, consolidate, interlink or promote.
How to find SEO competitors?
Search your most important commercial and informational keywords and note which domains appear repeatedly. You can also use tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush to find websites with significant keyword overlap. Your SEO competitors may be different from your direct business competitors because publishers, review sites and adjacent SaaS companies can compete for the same search demand.
How to find competitor keywords?
Use an SEO tool to compare your domain with competitor domains and look for keywords they rank for that you do not. Pay particular attention to high-intent terms such as category keywords, comparisons, alternatives and use-case searches. After exporting the data, group related keywords by topic and intent so you do not create separate pages for multiple variations of the same search need. Our Ahrefs Keyword Explorer guide shows how to validate and prioritize keyword opportunities.
What is a keyword gap analysis?
A keyword gap analysis identifies search queries that competitors rank for but your website does not, or queries where they significantly outrank you. It helps uncover missing topics, weak pages and opportunities where an existing page may need improvement. For B2B SaaS, the best keyword gaps are usually those with strong product relevance and buying intent, not simply the highest search volume.
Which tools are best for SEO competitor analysis?
Ahrefs and Semrush can cover most keyword, content and backlink research. Google Search Console validates your own performance, while AI visibility tools can extend the analysis into ChatGPT and other generative search experiences.
What is a content gap analysis?
A content gap analysis looks beyond individual keywords to identify topics, buyer questions or stages of the customer journey that competitors cover better than you. For example, several related keywords may all point to one missing comparison page, template or guide. The purpose is to find meaningful gaps in topic coverage, not to create a new article for every keyword variation.
How often should you run an SEO competitor analysis?
A full SEO competitor analysis is usually worth doing quarterly, with lighter monthly checks for major ranking, backlink and content changes. You should also rerun it when entering a new category, launching a new product, planning a major SEO roadmap or seeing a significant drop in organic visibility. If backlinks are a major gap, use our guide on how to find competitor backlinks using Ahrefs.
Final Takeaway
The purpose of SEO competitor analysis is not to create a longer spreadsheet of everything other companies rank for. It is to identify where competitors have already demonstrated organic demand and where your business has a realistic opportunity to build something better.
For B2B SaaS, the strongest opportunities usually sit at the intersection of search demand, buyer intent, topical authority and commercial relevance. Add AI visibility to that analysis, and you have a much more complete view of who you are competing with in 2026.