Top 10 SEO Competitor Research Tools You Must Try

Do you want to outrank your competitors? Have you ever wondered how to rank at the top on the first page of SERPs and how much website traffic you get? Answering these questions will help you define the success or failure of your future SEO tactics. 

A digital marketer must focus on competitor research before they make a strategic plan. 

According to research, at least 70% of large enterprises think that the effectiveness of their previous campaigns would be better if they had conducted competitor research. 

Take a moment.

Could your past campaign have done better if you had done a competitive analysis using reliable SEO competitor analysis tools? 

If your answer is yes, it’s still not late. Starting today, you can begin by studying your competitors and devising a marketing strategy based on their pros and cons with the help of free SEO competitor analysis tools. 

To make your job easy, you should keep certain SEO competitor analysis tools and techniques handy and leverage them to track their search rankings, social mentions, traffic, content, and other means they use to thrive in business. Regardless of the industry you serve in, keeping a tab on your competitors helps you stay informed of things that are working or failing in the market.

SEO competitor rank tracker tools give digital marketers and SEO experts a competitive edge in determining and preparing strategies that help generate value-added results. 

Why do you need to use Competitor Research Tools?

Well! There is not one but many reasons that make it important for you to use the best SEO competitor analysis tools. We have enlisted some of the most quintessential ones below:

• Finding new ways to connect with potential customers, boost customer loyalty, and enhance retention. 
• Looking for practices and techniques your competitors follow to attract customers.
• Getting inspired from their SEO and SMO strategies to drive traffic and boost conversions.
• Evaluating the ongoing strategies based on analysis to build a more tactical approach for staying ahead.

If you are wondering how to begin with competitor analysis, we have beefed up the list of the best SEO competitor analysis tools you need to know about. It will help you learn more about your competitors, understand their SEO strategies, and develop a sound plan to align with your business goals perfectly.

Top 10 SEO Competitor Analysis Tools and Software 

1. Ubersuggest

While analyzing competitors or doing competitor SEO tracking, you need to focus on the backlinks they use, targeted keywords, and ranking web pages. 

Ubersuggest is the best SEO competitor analysis tool that uses features that make it easy for you to spy on your competitors and scrutinize all the information. Once you have gathered the data, you can build a strategy to outrank your competition.

With Ubersuggest, it becomes easy to find the high search volume keywords. It has over 322,000 keywords, helping you to interpret clearly what your competitors are targeting and where the traffic is coming from. Talking about keyword ranking, it would also be worthwhile to know that four more factors are associated with it.

• Volume, including the keyword’s average monthly search volume.
• Position, including the URL, ranked in the SERP.
• EV or estimated visits, including the estimated traffic on the webpage for the keyword.
• SD or SEO difficulty, including the estimated competition based on organic search.

Keywords tell a lot about the website, and by clicking on the keyword, you can get more information regarding the top 100 URLs.

As a marketer, you also need to look for the backlinks used by the competitors. Ubersuggest provides you with another list of the following features for analyzing your competitor's market and presence by conducting thorough competitor SEO tracking.

• Domain Score – It includes the overall strength of the website from 1 to 100, where 100 is the highest and 1 is the lowest.
• Backlinks – It includes the total number of backlinks created to the website.
• Referring Domains – It includes the overall number of unique domains that link back to the website.
• Backlink Over Time – It shows the graph of backlink growth.
• Social Share – It shows the number of shares on social sites like Facebook and Pinterest.

Now that you have seen what your competitor is doing, you no longer have to predict what is going on with your competitor's SEO strategy. You know the keywords they are using, backlinks, and the top pages they are focusing on. With this information, you are all set to create a results-driven strategy by using SEO competitor analysis software.

Pricing: $12 - $40 Per Month (Source: Ubersuggest)

Try Now!

2. SEMrush

The purpose of competitor research is only valid if you can turn the gathered information into actionable insights that help you improve or develop your SEO and content strategy.

Content marketing is an essential part of SEO marketing strategy, and documenting an effective content strategy is an infallible way to succeed in content marketing. SEMrush is another popular SEO competitor analysis tool many digital marketers use to conduct sturdy competitor analysis. SEMrush allows you to accomplish the following:

• Competitor analysis
• Keyword analysis
• Backlink analysis
• Website audit

SEMrush tools show you updated keywords and ranked web pages on SERPs. Gathering real-time data, such as competitive insights and keywords, can help you create eloquent content appealing to your readers. Procuring such a marketing strategy will aid in hitting the right target market.

Pricing: $129 - $499 Per Month (Source: SEMrush)

Try Now!

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another renowned SEO competitor analysis tool known for its quality of backlink data. It is also considered the best tool for digital marketers, website owners, marketing agencies, etc. It utilizes your competitors as the treasure house of information, informing you of every effective SEO strategy and tactic that will not work on target prospects. 

The following aspects will help you steeply increase your website's organic traffic. 

• Understanding what works best in the industry and what does not.
• Look for their weakness and get the most out of them; at the same time, look for their strength and imitate them.
• Learn what SEO tasks and strategies help them to move forward.

Ahrefs is mostly preferred when finding the best SEO competitor rank tracker tools.

Pricing: $99 - $999 Per Month (Source: Ahrefs)

Try Now!

4. Moz

Research is the key. Where many companies keep on wondering where and how their competitors are getting so much traffic and leads, tools like Moz help dig deep into the source.

Moz is one tool that shows how competitor research can help exceed website traffic. Moz competitor analysis helps research keywords, spam scores, backlinks, traffic analysis, etc. With the help of Moz, you get precise insights on the keywords you should be targeting, the type of content and blogs you need to produce to attract the audience, places to get quality backlinks, and so on.

• It helps in analyzing your actual SEO competitors.
• It provides you with correct insights about what should be done in your SEO strategy to beat your competitors.
• Gives you complete link information and insightful data for any website.
• Provides you with broken inbound links on your website.

The in-depth research and Moz competitor analysis make it the most popular and lived tool among marketers.

Pricing: $99 - $599 Per Month (Source: Moz)

Try Now!

Read more: Top 10 Behavior Analytics Software Tools

5. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is considered the best SEO competitor analysis tool that helps you figure out how a website gets visitors.

It provides the average search traffic from various search engines and traffic distribution across all channels, such as social media, shares, direct, etc.

Looking for unique website visitors became easy with this tool. SimilarWeb is one of the most efficient competitor research tools to analyze a website, app, or platform. Major brands use it since it's flexible and delivers one of the most accurate sets of information on any website.

SimilarWeb provides the optimum choice for checking the keywords that bring the most traffic from search engine results. With this tool, you are provided with apt information that helps you identify which keywords should be your top priority, as they can drive more traffic to your client's website.

SimilarWeb provides a list of competitors based on the type of websites ranked in SERP for the same set of keywords.

You can use two or more competitors to compare traffic statistics with SimilarWeb, as it will help you gather all the needed insights to produce an effective strategy.

Pricing: $125 - $333 Per Month (Source: SimilarWeb)

Try Now!

6. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is popularly considered one of the best SEO competitor analysis tools, focusing mainly on social media networks. However, it also assists with SEO content research by assessing content shareability and generating backlink volume. BuzzSumo helps determine which competitor’s content or themes prevail, making customers share or engage with the most.

For every search phrase you type into the platform, BuzzSumo will show you the total number of shares for links connected to that search term. Any content marketer should be aware of this information. It informs you which articles, subjects, and types of material are the most popular, providing a clear picture of what you should write about. With the BuzzSumo competitor SEO tracking tool, you are provided with:

• Ability to compare the content strategy of different websites.
• Ability to analyze different types of content, such as articles, listicles, information graphics, videos, etc.
• Ability to dig deep for potential competitors that can be a threat in the future.

Pricing: Free / $199 - $999 Per Month (Source: BuzzSumo)

Try Now!

7. iSpionage

It is one of the SEO competitor rank tracker tools that makes it simple to examine what your competitors are doing with organic search. It contains SEO competition research, social monitoring, and keyword tracking among its features. iSpionage tool primarily focuses on AdWords campaigns and keyword competitor research.

You may identify profitable terms by looking at information on the PPC keywords your competitors are bidding on. You can also see how many PPC keywords they're bidding on, the average position each ad appears in, monthly AdWords click traffic, and monthly PPC expenditure for each competition you scrutinize.

iSpionage has a patented Keywords Effectiveness Index that assists you in identifying lucrative keywords with the greatest search volume while evaluating cost per term and adding those high-performing keywords to your campaign.

• This tool allows you to add competitors and view the most effective keywords for organic and PPC.
• The tool provides you with an estimate of your competitors' ad and PPC budgets.
• It provides comparison graphs to help you differentiate between your and your competitor’s campaigns.
• This tool provides detailed information on your competitors' SEO and PPC keywords.
• It gives you information on search volume, average position, CPC, keyword difficulty, and other factors.
• It can assist you in deciphering your competitors' strategies and implementing the most beneficial for you.

Pricing: $59 - $299 Per Month (Source: iSpionage)

Try Now!

8. SpyFu

SpyFu is a robust SEO competitor rank tracker tool that lets you see all statistics on your competitors' keywords in organic and AdWords searches and find even more similar phrases. All you have to do now is plug in your competitors' keywords to obtain an overall picture of their strategy.

With SpyFu, you can easily learn about your competitors' search marketing strategies and see their results. You can view their Google rankings, the keywords they're bidding on in AdWords, and any advertisements they've purchased in the last few years.

SpyFu excels in competition research for PPC campaigns. It reveals everything your competitor did while running advertisements, including keywords, ad history, negative keywords, ad split testing, and more.

SpyFlu also offers information like average search volume per term, historical keyword usage for PPC, number of clicks, cost per click, etc. As part of their SEO approach, this SEO competitor analysis tool also displays the organic keywords they rank for.

Pricing: $39 - $79 Per Month (Source: SpyFu)

Try Now!

9. Monitor Backlinks

Monitor Backlinks is a relatively new product on the market but has already established a solid reputation. Despite being newer than most industry competitors, Monitor Backlinks is one of the most preferred competitor research tools for backlink research. You can seamlessly track the backlinks of various competitors, uncover a slew of bad backlinks, and locate high-quality ones.

It may help you develop your link-building strategy, build quality links from your competitors, and produce link bait material by analyzing the backlinks of bloggers and webmasters in your area. You may also predict traffic growth based on keyword placement and attempts to improve a website's backlink profile.

It gives you a detailed study of any website's backlinks, whether it's yours or one of your competitors.

You may utilize this information to your advantage; for example, if you know which websites link back to your competitors, you can focus your link-building strategy on those websites. Aside from that, the tool informs you about the quality of the backlinks, which will aid in discovering harmful backlinks.

Pricing: $25 - $187 Per Month (Source: Monitor Backlinks)

Try Now!

10. SEO PowerSuite

Powerful competitive intelligence is the activity that consists of many aspects of competitors’ research. When done properly, it helps you form and refine your SEO and business promotion strategy, winning the top positions in Google search results.

SEO PowerSuite is a multifunctional SEO competitor research tool. This set of four tools lets you dig deeper into any aspect of your competitors’ activities, whether backlinks or content strategy. You can find new competitors if you only enter a new market niche.

Thus, SEO PowerSuite lets you:

• Find domain and topic SERP competitors (Rank Tracker)
• Analyze keywords (Rank Tracker)
• See what content suits certain keywords best (Rank Tracker)
• Identify backlink strategy and legally borrow your competitor’s backlinks (SEO SpyGlass)
• Technically audit websites (WebSite Auditor)
• Compare your content to competitors’ pages (WebSite Auditor)

The tool collects real-time and historical data so that you know your competitors’ current strategies and their previous results. Therefore, SEO PowerSuite is your go-to tool for better understanding your competitors’ moves and estimating when your efforts will start bringing tangible results. 

Pricing: Free / $596 - $1396 Per Year (Source: SEO PowerSuite)

Before going ahead with any of these premium and professional competitor research tools, you can also try using the free SEO competitor analysis tools to get an overall idea about the functions. However, the above tools offer way more advanced and professional functions than free SEO competitor analysis tools available online. 

All in All

Based on the recent survey we conducted on LinkedIn, 65% of people prefer SEMrush and Ahrefs over other SEO competitor analysis tools. However, when it comes to competitor analysis, every tool has distinctiveness, making the marketers combine a few to drive the best possible results.

You can integrate some or all of these SEO competitor tracking tools depending on your needs.

The SEO competitor research tools assist you in identifying the areas where your competitors are succeeding and the reasons behind their success. These can also help generate actionable information to enhance visibility and keep up with competitors.Above all, ensure you're producing material valuable to your audience. Only if you have content that can drive your SEO can you get the most out of these SEO competitor analysis tools.