How to find competitors’ keywords for your SEO strategy
Your competitors’ keywords show where your audience is already searching and which websites are already winning that visibility.
By analyzing the keywords competitors rank for, bid on, and appear for in AI answers, you can spot gaps in your own strategy and decide which opportunities are worth pursuing first.
In this guide, we’ll show how to find competitors’ keywords using SE Ranking, AI-assisted workflows, Google Keyword Planner, Bing Keyword Planner, SERP analysis, and backlink data.
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Competitor keyword research helps you identify the terms, topics, and pages that already bring visibility to websites targeting the same audience.
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Perform competitor keyword research using SE Ranking’s Competitive Research Tool in layers: first find your competitors, then find the keyword gaps between their domains and yours, and finally review their top-performing pages to understand which topics drive the most visibility.
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Prioritize keyword gaps (keywords your competitors rank for but you don’t) based on realistic opportunity, not just search volume. Keywords where you already rank in positions 11–30 are often easier to improve than terms where your site has no visibility at all.
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Use SE Ranking MCP to speed up and simplify competitor analysis. With SE Ranking data connected to an AI assistant, you can quickly check keyword gaps, ranking changes, new competitor keywords, and emerging opportunities without moving through the full workflow manually.
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Add AI search competitor analysis to your workflow. SE Ranking’s AI Search in Competitive Research tracks AI visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. Using it, you can identify prompts, topics, and sources where competitors are present but your domain is missing.
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Use Google Keyword Planner and Bing Keyword Planner as supporting tools for competitor keyword ideas, especially for paid search. They can add useful context, but they do not replace full organic keyword gap analysis.
Why competitor keyword research matters
Competitive keyword analysis gives your SEO strategy a data-backed starting point by showing which keywords already bring visibility to websites targeting the same audience.
Specifically, it helps you:
- Discover gaps you wouldn’t find on your own. Your competitors have already done years of testing. The keywords they rank for (especially those generating significant organic traffic) tell you what your shared audience is searching for. That includes niche areas and specific use cases you may have missed in standard keyword research.
- Prioritize content that converts. Knowing a competitor ranks for a term is only half the picture. What matters is whether that term is relevant to your business and whether you can realistically rank for it. Competitor keyword data, filtered by difficulty and intent, shortens the prioritization process significantly.
- Understand your market’s search behavior. The full set of keywords your competitors rank for is a map of audience intent in your category. Tracking shifts in that map over time (e.g., which topics they’re expanding into, which they’re losing traction on) tells you where the category is moving.
- Allocate resources efficiently. Identifying where competitors have a clear advantage before you invest content budget there lets you focus on winnable gaps first.
The goal is not to copy a competitor’s strategy directly. It’s to understand what the market rewards, then build a sharper version of it.
How to find your competitors’ keywords
Before analyzing keywords, you need to know which competitors to look at. And this step is not always as straightforward as it seems.
The thing is, there are two main groups: business competitors and SEO competitors.
Business competitors sell similar products or services to the same audience. SEO competitors are the websites that rank for the keywords you want to target. These groups may overlap, but they are not always the same. For instance, a well-optimized SaaS blog, a media site, or a comparison platform may outrank you for your most important keywords without competing in your market at all.
For competitor keyword analysis, SEO competitors should usually come first. They show which websites are already earning visibility in search for the topics you care about, which pages are ranking, and what types of content Google is currently rewarding.
If you’re not sure who your SEO competitors are, start by searching for two or three of your highest-priority keywords and noting which domains appear consistently in the top 10. Or use SE Ranking’s Competitive Research tool to surface them automatically, which is covered in the next section.
If you need more guidance on identifying competitors before doing keyword research, read our guide to finding competitor websites.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking’s Competitor Keyword Checker surfaces the keywords any domain ranks for in organic and paid search, along with key metrics like difficulty score, search volume, CPC, paid competition, search intent, and SERP features. It’s the most direct route to competitor keyword gaps at scale.
Finding missing organic keywords
Open Competitive Research and enter your own domain. Choose Domain (with subdomains) or Domain only — avoid URL mode, which doesn’t include the Competitors tab. Select the region and click Analyze.
From the Overview, navigate to the Competitors tab under Organic Traffic Research. This table shows your organic competitors ranked by traffic, with columns for traffic, keywords, traffic cost, backlinks, and — the one to focus on — Missing Keywords.
The Missing Keywords column shows the keyword gap for each competitor: terms they rank for that your domain doesn’t.
Click the number next to a competitor to open the Competitors Comparison tab, pre-filtered to the Missing tab.
From there, use the filters to narrow by search volume, keyword difficulty, intent, or position range. The Export button saves the list for further analysis. To compare multiple competitors at once, you can add up to two additional domains using the input field in the Competitors Comparison tab.
Finding a specific competitor’s keywords in organic search
If you already have a specific competitor in mind, enter their domain directly into Competitive Research instead of your own. Under Organic Traffic Research, the Keywords tab shows every term they rank for, with position, traffic, difficulty, intent, and the ranking URL.
The Pages tab is useful for a different angle: it shows competitor pages ranked by organic traffic share.
Click on the Keywords Total number for any page to see exactly which terms that specific URL ranks for. This works well when you want to understand how a competitor has structured their content around a topic rather than just pulling a raw keyword list.
Both views support filtering, column customization, and export.
Finding competitors’ new keywords in organic search
SE Ranking also tracks new keywords competitors start ranking for over time, which is useful for catching emerging topics before they become competitive.
Inside your project, open the Insights tool and navigate to Competitors’ new keywords. This shows terms your tracked competitors entered the top 30 for in the past month, with search volume, keyword difficulty, ranking page, position, and date of detection. You can change the timeframe from one day to one month, and export the full list.
The Competitors’ new pages section directly below it complements this by showing the pages behind those gains — useful for understanding whether a competitor’s new keyword traction is coming from a new article or an existing page they’ve updated.
Finding competitor keyword gaps in AI search
Organic rankings show where competitors appear in traditional search results. But they do not show whether competitors are being mentioned or cited in AI answers, where many users now discover brands, products, and information.
This means a competitor may rank below you in Google’s organic results but still appear more often in relevant answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews, or AI Mode. In that case, the gap is not just a ranking gap. It is an AI search visibility gap that standard keyword tools may miss.
SE Ranking’s AI Search in Competitive Research (part of the AI Search Toolkit, available as an add-on) shows exactly where competitors are cited or mentioned in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — and where you’re not.
Open Competitive Research → AI Search tab, enter your domain, select a target location, and add your brand name if you want to track both brand mentions and domain links.
Then add up to five competitors to benchmark your AI visibility against theirs.
The report shows how often your brand or domain appears in AI answers compared to competitors. You can switch between AI platforms, compare overall AI presence, brand mentions, and domain links, and see where competitors have stronger visibility.
For competitor gap analysis, go to the Prompts tab. Start with Topics to see broad subject areas where competitors appear, then use the Overlap filter to find gaps:
- Shared topics show where both you and competitors appear.
- Missing topics show where competitors appear but your domain does not.
- Unique topics show where only you appear.
From there, open a topic and review the individual prompts behind it. Focus on prompts marked Missing, since these show specific AI search queries where competitors are visible and your domain is absent.
Each prompt includes the actual AI-generated answer, mention/link status, competitors present, cited sources, and, where available, ad placements. This helps you understand not only which competitors appear in AI search, but also what type of content, domains, and sources AI systems tend to reference for topics relevant to your business.
You can also use the Citations tab to see which domains and URLs are cited most often in AI answers, compare your citation share with competitors, and identify pages that may be influencing AI visibility in your category.
This research is separate from organic keyword gap work. Some terms where competitors dominate AI answers will barely register in traditional search, and vice versa. Running both types of analysis gives you a more complete picture of where rivals are actually reaching your audience. For guidance on which prompts are worth tracking in the first place, see our guide on how to choose prompts to track.
Finding the keywords competitors are bidding on
To research paid search strategies, go to the Paid Traffic Research section in Competitive Research and select the Competitors tab. The mechanics are the same as for organic: choose a competitor, click on their missing keyword count, apply filters, and export. You can also compare up to two additional competitors using the same interface.
AI assistants and MCP connectors
You can also speed up competitor keyword research by connecting SEO & GEO data to AI assistants through MCP.
So, instead of opening multiple reports, applying filters manually, and exporting CSVs, you can ask for the data directly in a prompt. For example, with SE Ranking’s MCP connected to Claude or ChatGPT, you could ask:
“Find keywords my top 5 competitors rank for that my domain does not, US, search volume > 500, KD < 40, sorted by traffic potential.”
The underlying keyword, competitor, and ranking data still comes from the connected platform, while the AI assistant makes it easier to query, refine, and reuse that data without moving between tabs or spreadsheets.
On top of that, SE Ranking offers dedicated, pre-built Skills for Claude that help automate different SEO and GEO workflows, including SEO competitor gap analysis. With a Skill, you don’t have to write a detailed prompt from scratch: it comes with predefined instructions for the task. For competitor keyword research, the Skill prompts Claude to compare a target domain against its top organic competitors and surface keywords competitors rank for that the target domain does not, already filtered by intent, search volume, and keyword difficulty.
This matters most for analysts and agency teams running keyword gap analyses repeatedly across multiple clients or projects. The SE Ranking MCP connection is available on all plans.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner surfaces competitor keyword ideas using a different mechanism: rather than analyzing ranking data, it finds keywords by looking at live search queries, search intent, and historical search volume across Google’s search network. Then, it maps those signals to a competitor’s URL to return relevant suggestions.
Navigate to the Keyword Planner, choose Discover new keywords, then Start with a website.
Enter the competitor’s domain, select the relevant language and region, and choose whether to scan the entire site or a specific URL. For a comprehensive view, scanning the full site gives more results.
Click Get results to see the keyword table. You can modify the columns to include additional metrics, apply filters to focus on specific volume or competition ranges, and export the full list.
Keep in mind what Google Keyword Planner is and isn’t: it’s a paid search planning tool, so the keyword ideas skew toward ad-relevant terms rather than organic search strategy. It groups search volume figures for similar keywords, which can obscure real demand for individual variants. And it has no keyword gap feature, so you can’t compare your domain against a competitor’s directly. These are real limitations for SEO work, but the tool still adds value as a supplement, particularly for understanding paid keyword intent in a category.
Bing Keyword Planner
For teams with visibility in Bing’s search ecosystem, the Bing Keyword Planner offers competitor keyword analysis using Microsoft Advertising data. It works on the same principle as Google’s tool: enter a competitor’s URL, get keyword suggestions based on their content.
Access it through the Tools menu in Microsoft Advertising after upgrading to Expert mode. Select the Landing page option and enter the competitor’s domain. Results appear as ad group suggestions by default; switch to Keyword suggestions mode for individual terms.
The limitations here are similar to Google’s tool: designed primarily for paid search planning, basic metrics, and no competitor comparison capability. For a detailed walkthrough, see our complete Bing Keyword Planner guide.
Finding keywords competitors are using in their content
Knowing which keywords a competitor ranks for is different from understanding how they use those terms inside their content. Looking at the specific search terms competitors use — the exact phrases, related terms, and topic clusters — gives you a cleaner view of their content strategy and helps identify where your own content could be more thorough.
SE Ranking’s SERP Analyzer addresses this by pulling the terms that top-ranking pages use for a given keyword, making it possible to see what semantic coverage is expected by the SERP.
Open SERP Analyzer and click New Audit. Configure the country, search depth, and language, then add your target keyword. You can also include secondary keywords to broaden the analysis. Name the report and select a group or create one for your project.
Once the analysis is complete, open the report and go to Competitive Comparison → Terms tab. This shows the terms that top-ranking pages use on their pages. By default it displays the top three competitors, but you can add others using Add competitors.
The terms view has two modes: a common term list that combines terms from all analyzed pages into one list, and a separate term list that keeps each competitor’s terms distinct. Both support column additions, filters, and export.
This view is most useful when you’re about to write or update a piece of content on a keyword and want to understand what semantic depth the SERP expects — not just which competitors rank, but what they actually cover on the page.
Finding keywords competitors are using for link-building
Anchor text — the visible, clickable text used in backlinks — is another source of competitor keyword intelligence. The terms competitors attract links with reveal which keywords their industry considers authoritative for their domain, and often point toward topics worth targeting in your own link-building strategy.
SE Ranking’s Backlink Checker surfaces this data for any domain.
Open the Backlink Checker and enter the competitor’s URL.
In the Overview section you’ll find summary data on their backlink profile.
For anchor text specifically, navigate to Anchor Texts in the left-hand menu.
The table shows all anchor texts detected for the analyzed domain, each with associated metrics. You can sort by word count to separate branded anchors from keyword-rich ones, apply filters to focus on specific anchor patterns, add columns for additional data, and export the list.
The practical use here is identifying the keyword associations competitors have built through their link profiles — which often correlates with where they have the most authority and ranking depth. If a competitor has accumulated hundreds of links using specific keyword anchors, that tells you something about how their industry perceives and describes their content.
FAQ
Can I find competitor keywords for free?
Yes, to a limited extent. Google Keyword Planner (free with a Google Ads account) surfaces keyword ideas from a competitor’s domain using Google’s search network data, though it doesn’t offer a side-by-side gap view. SE Ranking’s Keyword Search Volume Checker lets you validate individual terms at no cost.
For a full competitor keyword gap analysis (with traffic estimates, difficulty scores, and filtering by intent), you’ll need a paid tool like SE Ranking’s Competitive Research.
How do I know which competitor keywords are actually worth targeting?
A competitor keyword is worth targeting when it is relevant to your business, matches an intent your content can satisfy, and gives you a realistic opportunity to improve visibility.
Start with keywords where you either do not rank at all or rank outside the top 10 (especially positions 11–30). These usually represent the clearest gaps. Then look at the pages currently ranking for those terms. If competitors rank with thin, outdated, or poorly optimized content, the keyword may be easier to compete for than a high-volume term dominated by strong, authoritative pages.
How often should I run a competitor keyword analysis?
Run competitor keyword analysis monthly if you work in a highly competitive niche. For more stable industries, quarterly is usually enough.
Between full competitor analyses, you can use SE Ranking MCP to quickly detect changes, such as new competitor keywords, ranking shifts, or emerging gaps, without running the entire workflow manually.
Conclusion
Competitors’ keywords show what your target market is already searching for and which topics are helping other websites earn visibility.
The best place to start is the organic keyword gap: terms your competitors rank for but your domain does not. SE Ranking’s Competitive Research Tool helps you find these gaps directly, so you can see where competitors are gaining search visibility and where your site may be missing opportunities.
From there, you can expand the analysis into other areas. AI Search in Competitive Research shows where competitors appear in AI-generated answers across platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. SERP Analyzer and Backlink Checker add more context by showing how competitors structure their ranking pages and which links support their visibility.
And if you have SE Ranking’s MCP connected to an AI assistant, the entire workflow is available on demand from a single prompt.
The goal is not just to collect competitor keywords. Each gap should help you decide whether the opportunity is worth pursuing, what it would take to compete, and how it fits into your current content and SEO priorities.
