How to Find Your Competitors' Keywords
Through keyword research you can uncover lots of keywords that could potentially be good targets for your SEO or PPC campaigns. It' highly likely that
your competitors have already done that though, so finding their important keywords is a good move.
Date published: 08.01.25
Written by Calum Macleod
Why is it important to find your competitors' keywords?
There's a few reasons to find your competitors' keywords. Your competitors that have been successful online will have put money and effort into campaigns to see which keywords work for them. By identifying
some of those keywords you can piggy back on that work and give your business a quick route to success. You may have carried out extensive keyword research on your end and identified keywords
in the process of running your campaigns. You may be targeting very similar keywords to your competitors already but need some new ideas. Competitor keywords can help to fill in
some of your blind spots.
The best ways to find competitor keywords
One of the best ways to find your competitor's keywords is through manual research of your competitor's sites. It's also possible to do it through
some software options that are available. I'm not talking about basic keyword research which you can do through Google Keyword Planner. That's of course important,
but when you've carried out research from your own perspective it's good to then compare that with what your competitors are doing to make sure there's no gaps in
your strategy.
On-page elements
If you have a competitor with a site that is well optimised for search engines you'll be able to find their keywords very easily. Just look at the Meta title tags for
each page. If they are ranking well for a competitive keyword it is highly likely that the keyword will be included within the title tag. It may also appear throughout the page as either a keyword or a phrase.
You can find what's in the Meta title by hovering your mouse above the pages tab in a browser. You can also visit the page and press CTRL U. This will show the
source code of the page where you'll be able to see the title tag.
If you want to do this at scale you can use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider. With this tool you'll be able to crawl an entire site and produce a list of page
Meta titles allowing you to see the keywords. This is the method I would recommend as it has the highest likelihood of being accurate.
There are some tools which can help you find some of your competitors tools. Spyfu is a good one. It allows you to enter a competing domain and see which keywords they have run
ads for in Google. It's a paid tool but you can cancel within 30 days of sign up, to see if it's worth the money.
SEM Rush will also allow you to see keywords. Use their organic research tool to see a list of keywords that a domain is ranking for.
Chat GPT can also be used to provide lists of potential competitor keywords. With this it's best to prompt it to give you potential keywords for your industry rather than
specific competitors. You'll likely need to refine the prompts to get past it giving you the keywords you already have. As with all things AI it's difficult to know how good the data you're getting back is so use your best judgement.
Double check your keywords
Once you've uncovered some good keyword prospects do a bit of research on them. Search in Google to see what kind of results they bring up. If there's PPC ads
listed then that's a good start as it means there's likely demand. Then run the keywords through Keyword Planner to see what the search amounts are and the cost per
click range.
