Every SEO campaign should start with competitive analysis. Before you can build a strategy, you need to understand what the algorithm currently rewards for your target keywords -- and that means studying the sites that already rank.
The mistake most agencies make is either skipping competitive analysis entirely or obsessing over it. You need to understand the competitive landscape, but you can't reverse-engineer Google's algorithm by studying competitor sites. There are too many ranking factors we can't see. The goal is to build a realistic picture of what it takes to compete, not to copy what others are doing.
Here's the 8-step competitive analysis framework we use at WEBRIS for every client engagement.
Step 1: Identify your SEO competitors
Your business competitors aren't necessarily your SEO competitors. The sites you're actually competing against in the SERPs may include publishers, directories, aggregators, or businesses in adjacent industries that happen to rank for your target keywords.
Start in Ahrefs or Semrush. Drop your client's domain into the Organic Competitors report to find sites ranking for the same keywords. This gives you a list ranked by keyword overlap and traffic similarity. Then Google your top 5-10 target keywords manually and note which sites consistently appear in the top 10. The sites that show up repeatedly across your target keywords are your real SEO competition.
Pick 3 competitors to analyze in depth. Choose sites that represent attainable targets -- not the Wikipedia-level domains you'll never outrank, but the sites just above you in the SERPs that you could realistically overtake with focused effort.
Step 2: Crawl competitor sites
Run each competitor through Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to understand their site architecture. A crawl reveals: how their site is structured (flat vs deep hierarchy), total page count and content types, title tag and heading patterns, internal linking structure, and any technical SEO advantages they might have (schema markup, page speed, etc.).
Pay attention to their URL structure and information architecture. If competitors are using a clean hub-and-spoke model with service pages linking to supporting content, that tells you something about what Google is rewarding in your niche. If their sites are technically clean with fast load times and proper schema, you need to match or exceed that baseline.
Step 3: Check their indexation footprint
Use the site: operator in Google (site:competitor.com) to see how many pages are indexed. This gives you a sense of their content depth. A competitor with 500 indexed pages is playing a different game than one with 50.
Go deeper by checking specific sections: site:competitor.com/blog/ to see their content volume, site:competitor.com/services/ to understand their service page depth. For eCommerce competitors, check product and category page counts. This tells you the scope of content investment you'll need to compete.
Step 4: Analyze their keyword rankings
Pull each competitor's organic keyword data from Ahrefs or Semrush. Look at: total number of ranking keywords, top keywords by traffic value, keyword position distribution (how many in top 3, top 10, top 20), and keyword overlap with your client's site.
The keyword gap analysis is the most actionable output here. Compare your client's keyword profile against all three competitors to find keywords they rank for that you don't. These gaps represent immediate content and optimization opportunities. Sort by search volume and relevance to find the highest-value targets.
Step 5: Identify their top-performing pages
Look at the Top Pages report to see which pages drive the most organic traffic. This reveals their content strategy: are they winning with blog content, service pages, resource guides, or product pages? What topics are generating the most traffic? How much traffic does their top page drive compared to their 10th-best page?
Understanding page type distribution is important. If 70% of a competitor's traffic goes to informational blog posts, that tells you content marketing is the primary growth lever in your niche. If most traffic goes to service pages, the competitive battle is primarily about on-page optimization and authority building.
Step 6: Evaluate content quality manually
Tools can only tell you so much. Visit the top-performing pages manually and assess: word count and content depth, use of images, video, and interactive elements, content structure (headings, formatting, readability), on-page optimization (title tags, internal links, CTAs), user experience and page design, and unique value (do they offer something no one else does?).
This manual review helps you understand the quality bar in your niche. If the top-ranking pages are 3,000-word comprehensive guides with custom graphics and video, that's your benchmark. If they're thin 500-word pages, there's an opportunity to win with better content.
Step 7: Assess their backlink profile
Use Ahrefs to analyze competitor backlinks at both the domain and page level. Filter for dofollow links, one link per domain. Look at: total referring domains, link acquisition rate (new domains per month), types of links (editorial, directory, press, guest posts, etc.), anchor text distribution, and most-linked pages.
The link type analysis tells you what link building strategies work in your niche. If competitors are earning editorial links from industry publications, that's a signal to invest in digital PR. If they're building links from local directories and business associations, that's a local link building play. Match your strategy to what's working.
Link velocity is equally important. If your top competitor acquires 20 new referring domains per month, you need to match or exceed that pace to close the gap. This directly informs your link building budget and resource allocation.
Step 8: Evaluate brand strength
Branded search volume is a significant but often overlooked ranking signal. Use Ahrefs Keywords Explorer to check the monthly search volume for each competitor's brand name and product names. A competitor with 10,000 branded searches per month has a fundamentally different authority level than one with 500.
Brand strength tells you how much of a competitor's ranking advantage comes from brand authority versus on-page SEO. If a competitor ranks well and also has massive branded search volume, their ranking power comes partly from brand signals you can't replicate with traditional SEO alone. If they rank well with low brand search volume, their rankings are more vulnerable to a competitor who executes better SEO.
From analysis to strategy
The competitive analysis isn't the strategy -- it informs the strategy. Record all findings in a structured format (we use a Google Sheets template that compares our client against three competitors across all eight dimensions). Then translate the data into actionable recommendations: how much content to create, how many links to build per month, which keywords to prioritize, and how long it will realistically take to see results.
Present findings to clients in a visual format, not a raw spreadsheet. A slide deck with clear charts showing the gaps and a concrete action plan to close them is what builds client confidence and justifies your retainer.
Most importantly, run this analysis once at campaign kickoff, then revisit quarterly. The competitive landscape shifts constantly -- new competitors emerge, existing ones change strategies, algorithm updates reshuffle rankings. Your strategy needs to evolve with the data.