Why do competitors rank higher in organic search results? Let’s find out!

Sound familiar? You do a Google search for the services your company offers, and there’s your website, towards the top of the results page. But there’s a problem: your competitor’s website is ranking higher than yours (again), despite your solid content and branding.

So, why does this keep happening? What are they doing differently?

To fully understand why your competitors are outranking you in searches, you’ll need to do some deep diving to learn more about their SEO strategy and incorporate tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to formulate a solid competitor analysis. Then, you can better optimize your website to finally rank higher than them in a search.

Below are steps to take to create a comprehensive competitor analysis.

Start by identifying your real competitors in search

Before you can analyze what your competitors are doing, you need to know who they are, and that’s not always straightforward.

While you might think of competitors as companies in your space or region, search engines have a different view. Your SEO competitors are the websites that consistently rank for the keywords you care about, even if they’re media outlets, directories, or national brands.

An easy way to get started: run a few incognito Google searches for your primary services (like “creative ad agency in Chicago” or “branding for startups”). Take note of the top results. Who’s consistently showing up? These are your actual search competitors.

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Top tools for competitor keyword analysis

If you’re new to SEO or looking to sharpen your competitive edge, here are some of the top platforms for keyword and competitor research:

Ahrefs - Great for seeing what keywords competitors rank for, who’s linking to them, and how their traffic breaks down across pages.

Semrush - A favorite for all-in-one visibility, Semrush shows organic keywords, paid ads, content gaps, and even backlink profiles.

Moz - Known for its user-friendly interface, Moz offers keyword suggestions, ranking insights, and domain authority comparisons.

Ubersuggest - A solid free tool by Neil Patel for smaller teams, Ubersuggest features keyword tracking and basic competitor research options.

SpyFu - Especially useful for seeing your competitors’ top keywords and comparing overlapping rankings between domains.

For most of these platforms, all you’ll need to do is enter their domain name and in return, get access to:

• A list of top-performing keywords

• The URLs that rank for them

• Search volume (how often those terms are searched)

• Keyword difficulty (how hard it is to rank for that term)

• Paid vs. organic positioning

  
  

This insight can help you reverse-engineer their content strategy. If your competitor is ranking on page one for “email marketing agency for nonprofits” or “best ad agency for tech startups,” and you’re not, it might be time to create content targeting those exact phrases.

Most of these platforms offer free trials, so it’s worth testing a couple to see which one fits your needs best.

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Explore competitor websites through an SEO lens

Of course, you don’t need software to do everything. Sometimes, the best research comes from just clicking around.

Visit your competitor’s site and look at how they structure their pages. Do they have blog content tied to industry-specific search terms? Are their service pages focused on one keyword theme? Check how they title their pages (page titles and H1s), what phrases appear in their meta descriptions, and what language they use in subheadings and URLs.

Most of the time, the keywords they’re targeting will be woven throughout their site, and the way they structure that content can tell you a lot about why Google favors them.

Audit their content and frequency

Another big ranking factor is how often a competitor publishes content and how thorough that content is. Are they posting detailed blog articles once a week? Are they covering niche topics or answering long-tail questions your site doesn’t?

You can compare this with your efforts and ask: Are we answering the same questions? Are we publishing as consistently? Are we creating better content, or just more content?

Learning from competitors is the first step to outranking them

The point of analyzing your competitors isn’t to copy them, it’s to spot opportunities. With the right tools and a close look at their site, you can uncover the gaps in your own SEO strategy and start building content that performs better, ranks higher, and delivers more value to your audience.