Understanding your competitors’ selling enactment is important if you privation to bushed them. But however exactly tin you presumption and way their activities?

It’s simple—you tin usage a instrumentality similar Ahrefs to find out.

If you privation to get an overview of the integrated hunt contention successful your industry, the archetypal measurement is to place your competitors. 

It takes little than 30 seconds to bash this utilizing Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

Let’s commencement by entering a domain successful the hunt box. For this example, we’ll participate prowritingaid.com, a Grammarly competitor, into the hunt box. 

After that, click the “Organic competitors” nexus connected the left-hand side tab. 

From this chart, we tin spot ProWritingAid’s apical 5 competitors.

We tin spot that Grammarly outperforms everyone here. It besides has the highest level of integrated postulation and integrated postulation value. Let’s spy connected its selling enactment and spot what makes its strategy truthful powerful.

To bash this, let’s scroll down to the Top competing domains study to look astatine Grammarly’s selling enactment metrics.

When it comes to DR (Domain Rating), traffic, value, and share, it seems arsenic though Grammarly is mode up of the competition. It besides has a batch of pages. 

Another mode we tin spy connected it is by clicking connected the downward-facing caret by the domain name, which gives america entree to a almighty menu.

The benignant of accusation we tin get is:

• Organic and paid keywords.
• The links.
• The top-performing content.
• The full past of the tract connected archive.org. 
• An overview of the wide show successful Overview 2.0.

Moving on the apical enactment to the right-hand side, we tin larn more about: 

• Competitor’s keywords
• Common keywords 
• Target’s keywords

Clicking connected the numbers takes america to antithetic variations of the Content Gap report. This tin beryllium utile for knowing if your contented covers arsenic galore keywords arsenic your competitors.

For example, utilizing the Content Gap report, we tin spot which keywords Grammarly ranks for, but our tract doesn’t—in a nonstop comparison. I find this 1 of the astir utile reports successful this section. 

This is what it looks like:

Once I scope this stage, I filter keywords by debased Keyword Difficulty (KD) to look for speedy wins. That way, you tin make a competing portion of contented to outperform your competitors.

We tin usage Ahrefs to spy connected the integrated keywords for immoderate website.

If we participate Grammarly’s website into Site Explorer and caput implicit to the Organic keywords report, we tin spot the keywords its website ranks for.

Here’s what I look astatine erstwhile spying connected a rival portion utilizing this report:

• I cheque the KD column – How hard are these keywords to fertile for? How overmuch effort volition I request to enactment successful to surpass my competitor?
• I cheque the “traffic” column – How overmuch integrated postulation are these keywords driving connected your competitor’s site? What’s the prize?
• I cheque the SERP features successful the URL column – Does it person immoderate SERP features I tin effort to rank for?

From this analysis, it’s imaginable to find whether targeting these keywords is worthy your time. In much elemental terms, it’s an effort-to-reward ratio analysis. 

The cardinal constituent present is that effectual integrated hunt selling needs to beryllium targeted. Otherwise, you volition conscionable beryllium hoping that thing sticks.

There are 2 main ways to spy connected your competitor’s website postulation and rankings:

• Using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer – Best for speedy checks.
• Using Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker – Best for semipermanent monitoring of activity.

Tracking a competitor’s integrated postulation successful Site Explorer is arsenic elemental arsenic entering the domain sanction and clicking search. We tin past spot the “Organic search” keywords and postulation successful the Overview report. 

If we spell to its postulation (click connected the 23.2M number), it volition instrumentality america to the Top pages report. From here, we tin spot our competitor’s rankings astatine the bottommost of the page.

Another mode to way keyword wins and losses for immoderate website is to usage the Calendar feature.

Here’s what it looks like:

Clicking connected the calendar connected a circumstantial time shows you the wins and losses for the website’s keywords for that peculiar day.

Let’s accidental we lone privation to presumption the keywords that person improved successful position. We tin bash this by going to the checkboxes successful the bottommost left-hand country and deselecting everything isolated from “Improved.”

We tin present spot important improvements successful keyword positions connected February 22–27. 

We tin click connected a time connected the calendar to cheque the keywords that improved positions. I’ve selected February 22, 2023.

Scrolling down the page, we tin spot that the apical keyword betterment was for the keyword “thank you.”

Although we’ve seen however this diagnostic tin beryllium utilized to amusement keyword improvements, you tin besides usage it to place keyword losses of your competitors.

Let’s repetition the process, but this clip look astatine the mislaid keywords by lone selecting the “Lost” checkbox.

We tin spot that this tract mislaid much than its mean fig of links successful aboriginal March 2023. 

Knowing the magnitude of postulation a website gets and the keywords it ranks for is important. But astir businesses volition privation to spot the dollar worth of their competitors’ websites.

To find this out, plug a competitor’s domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, and you’ll spot the worth successful the “Organic search” summary.

In this example, the estimated worth of Grammarly’s integrated hunt postulation is $5.1M.

To find the worth of a circumstantial leafage connected a competitor’s website, you tin either usage Ahrefs’ Site Explorer oregon Content Explorer. 

Let’s instrumentality a look astatine this utilizing Content Explorer. To bash this, plug site:grammarly.com into the hunt barroom to find the worth of our competitor’s website pages.

When it comes to paid advertising, you tin usage Ahrefs to show your competitor’s Pay Per Click (PPC) enactment connected Google.

Here’s how.

Enter your competitor’s domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and deed search.

This website has been bidding connected ~7K keywords, driving astir ~799K successful paid traffic. 

This is an fantabulous overview, but what if we privation much detail?

Scrolling down the page, we tin spot the past of the paid postulation successful a chart.

This illustration shows that a batch of paid enactment was switched disconnected aft December 2022. Also, we tin spot that the 2023 enactment is overmuch little than that of early 2021.

To spot the narration betwixt PPC and SEO, we tin overlay its “Paid traffic” with its “Organic traffic” like this:

The illustration shows that erstwhile integrated postulation does well, the paid postulation is reduced.

We tin click connected the Ads study if we privation to spot the benignant of ads that this tract is running.

From there, we get a elaborate breakdown of its paid enactment and ads detail.

If I privation to filter each of Grammarly’s ads containing the keyword “plagiarism,” I tin bash this rapidly by adding a statement containing a filter with this keyword.

Once you person added the “Contains” filter, deed “Apply.”

You’ll past spot Grammarly’s ads that incorporate this keyword. 

This tin beryllium a large mode to spy connected your competitors’ descriptions connected their Google ads.

Identifying the authors penning a website’s contented is an underutilized spying strategy, successful my opinion. 

Here’s why—with this data, you can:

• Understand which authors are driving the astir postulation to a website and place their top-performing articles.
• Understand the worth of the postulation each writer is driving to the website. 
• Recruit apical authors from different websites, knowing their concern worth adjacent earlier you spot their resumes.
• See however galore articles authors person written, the magnitude of their content, its societal shares, and the benignant of topics they are penning about.

Let’s caput to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, plug successful site:grammarly.com, and click connected the “Authors” tab.

If we scroll down, we tin spot 72 authors connected this website.

Looking astatine the apical author, we tin spot that helium drives sizeable postulation to the tract done lone 42 pages. The postulation worth of these pages is $285.5K.

If you enactment with a PR oregon outreach team, you tin usage this diagnostic to place journalists to enactment with rapidly and easily.

Another mode to usage this diagnostic is to hunt for mentions of your rival utilizing Content Explorer but exclude your competitor’s website.

To bash this with Grammarly, we would participate the pursuing into the hunt box:

"grammarly.com" -coupons -promo -codes -site:grammarly.com

From this, we tin spot that 14,113 pages notation Grammarly excluding these keywords. If we click connected the “Authors” tab again, we tin spot who has written the articles.

As we tin spot from the list, immoderate authors are from high-authority sites. We tin attack these journalists and transportation to them.

If a rival has a higher DR than your website, it’s usually a bully denotation that you tin payment from analyzing their links to find what links you request to get.

To find what links your rival (or immoderate website) has, simply plug the domain sanction into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and caput implicit to the Referring domains report.

We tin spot that Grammarly has immoderate precocious DR links. If your concern wants to recreate immoderate of these links, we tin commencement by looking for publications successful the list.

I’ve noticed that the Guardian’s website is linking to Grammarly. Using Site Explorer, we tin click connected “Links to target” and spot the nonstop links from the Guardian.

We tin spot successful this illustration that the Guardian has referred to the Oxford comma nonfiction connected Grammarly’s website.

If we right-click, transcript this URL, and paste it into Content Explorer’s hunt bar, we tin find the writer and different adjuvant accusation connected this page. 

We tin adjacent observe the author’s societal media illustration connected this screen.

Clicking connected the author’s sanction takes you straight to their Twitter profile. From there, you tin transportation wherefore they should nexus to your website. 

We’ve established that this method is an fantabulous mode to find high-DR nexus prospects. But what if you privation to observe galore opportunities successful one go?

To bash this, you tin usage the Link Intersect tool. It allows you to comparison your website against the competition.

To get started, plug successful your competitors successful the apical rows and adhd your website successful the bottommost row.

In this example, you tin spot a database of the links your rival has, but your website doesn’t. I’ve utilized immoderate made-up website examples here, but you get the idea.

In summary, this is simply a large mode to spy connected your rival and usage that accusation to find caller nexus prospects. 

Final thoughts

Spying connected your competitors gives you insights you wouldn’t get anyplace else. It gives you a barometer of what’s moving successful your manufacture and encourages you to up your game.

Using tools similar Ahrefs makes keeping tabs connected your competitors easy, allowing you to enactment astatine slightest 1 measurement (or position) up of them successful Google. 

Got much questions? Ping maine on Twitter. 🙂