SEMrush Competitor Analysis in Practice: Keyword Strategy from Discovery to Execution
You’ve spent countless hours on keyword optimization, published tons of content, and built plenty of backlinks—yet traffic growth remains elusive. The problem might not be your execution, but your initial strategy direction. You may have never identified who your real competitors are.
When many SEO practitioners conduct competitor analysis, they only focus on business competitors. For example, if you’re building project management software, you might only analyze Monday.com, Asana, and similar product competitors. But in search results, your real competitors could be a tutorial on Zhihu, a technical article on CSDN, or a niche blog. They don’t sell software, but they’re capturing rankings and traffic for keywords like “project management methods” and “team collaboration tips.”
SEMrush’s competitor analysis features help you uncover these hidden organic search competitors. More importantly, it helps you discover keyword gaps—opportunities where competitors rank but you don’t.
This article shares a complete SEMrush competitor analysis methodology and keyword strategy execution framework. First, I’ll teach you how to identify real competitors (not who you think they are), then explain the workflow and result interpretation for keyword gap analysis, and finally provide an execution strategy from analysis to content creation. If you’re still debating between SEMrush and Ahrefs, I’ll give you a decision framework based on actual needs at the end.
Chapter 1: Three Levels of Competitor Identification
When doing SEO competitor analysis, many people’s first instinct is to throw their product competitors’ websites into an analysis tool and check their keywords. This approach seems reasonable, but often yields no valuable results.
Because SEO competitors and business competitors may be completely different things.
1.1 Business Competitors vs. Organic Search Competitors
Business competitors are companies that directly compete with your products or services. For example, if you make project management software, business competitors might be other project management software vendors—you probably already know these companies well and don’t need tools to tell you.
But what are organic search competitors? They’re websites competing with you for the same keyword rankings in search engine results pages. They might not sell the same products as you at all, but because their content covers similar keywords, they compete with you in search results.
Here’s an example. Your project management software’s official website has business competitors like Monday.com, Asana, and Notion. But in search engines, when users search for “project management methods,” your organic search competitors might be a project management article on Zhihu, a tutorial on CSDN, or a project management blog.
These types of competitors, you might not even know exist, but they occupy ranking positions in search results and capture the traffic you want.
SEMrush’s Organic Rankings tool helps you identify organic search competitors. Open Organic Rankings, enter your domain, and click the Competitors tab. SEMrush automatically analyzes your keyword ranking data and identifies websites with the highest keyword overlap with yours—these are your organic search competitors.
How is keyword overlap calculated? Simply put, SEMrush checks how many keywords you rank for, and how many of those keywords are also covered by another website. Higher overlap means more intense competition in search results.
1.2 Cross-Channel Competitors: A More Comprehensive Perspective
Organic search is just one customer acquisition channel. Users might also find your competitors through paid ads, social media, referral links, and other channels. If you want a comprehensive view of the competitive landscape, you need to look at cross-channel competitors.
SEMrush’s Market Explorer tool provides this perspective. Enter your domain, click Find Competitors, and SEMrush analyzes traffic sources to find websites competing with you across all channels.
Traffic source analysis includes: organic search traffic (from search engines), paid search traffic (from bidding ads), social media traffic (from platforms like Weibo and Zhihu), direct traffic (users typing URLs directly or accessing via bookmarks), and referral traffic (from links on other websites).
This tool can analyze up to 5 competitors’ traffic source comparisons simultaneously. You can see each competitor’s traffic composition—for instance, one competitor might rely mainly on paid ads for traffic, while another primarily uses social media. This information helps determine competitors’ marketing strategy focus.
For SEO, the significance of cross-channel competitors is: if a competitor has high organic search traffic percentage, it means their SEO is strong and worth studying closely; if organic search traffic percentage is low, they might rely more on paid ads or other channels, making SEO analysis less valuable.
1.3 Why Does This Distinction Matter?
Back to the initial question: why can’t you just look at business competitors?
Because your SEO strategy goal is to get organic search traffic, and organic search traffic comes from keyword rankings. The competition for keyword rankings is with websites covering those same keywords, not necessarily companies selling similar products.
If your keyword strategy only focuses on business competitors, you might miss real opportunities and threats.
For example: suppose you make project management software, and business competitor Monday.com’s website keyword strategy mainly revolves around product keywords like “project management software.” If you only focus on them, you might overlook content keywords like “project management methods” and “agile project management tutorials”—these keywords might have higher search volume and potentially lower competition difficulty.
Meanwhile, real organic search competitors—like project management columns on Zhihu, tutorial articles on CSDN—cover massive amounts of content keywords, but you might never have noticed them.
SEMrush’s Organic Rankings tool helps you discover these hidden competitors. After clicking the Competitors tab, you’ll see a competitor list sorted by keyword overlap. The list might contain many websites you didn’t expect—this is the tool’s value, helping you see what you don’t know.
Core Concept
Organic search competitors are websites competing with you for keyword rankings in search engine results pages, potentially completely different from business competitors. SEMrush’s Organic Rankings tool can automatically identify organic search competitors based on keyword overlap calculation.
Chapter 2: Complete Keyword Gap Analysis Workflow
To be honest, when many people use SEMrush for keyword research, they only know to check keyword search volume and difficulty. This feature is useful, but if you don’t look at what competitors are doing, your keyword strategy is like groping in the dark.
Keyword Gap tool’s core value is simple: it helps you discover keywords where competitors rank but you don’t. These keywords are often your easiest opportunities to pursue.
2.1 Setting Up Keyword Gap Analysis
Open SEMrush, find the Keyword Gap tool (under the Competitive Intelligence menu). The interface looks a bit complex, but the operation is actually quite intuitive.
You need to enter up to 5 domains: your own website domain, plus up to 4 competitor domains. Next to the domain input box is a dropdown menu to select the region for analysis—if your website mainly targets domestic users, choose China; if targeting overseas, select the corresponding country or region.
One easily overlooked detail: when entering competitor domains, use the domain that performs best for them in organic search. Some companies have multiple websites, like a main site and a blog site—choose the one that frequently appears in search results. Choosing the wrong domain will skew analysis results.
Click the Compare button, and SEMrush generates a comparison report. This process might take a few seconds to tens of seconds, depending on the domain scale and regional database size you selected.
2.2 Interpreting Analysis Results: Three Core Views
After the report generates, you’ll see several different views. I’ll focus on the three most useful ones.
The first is the Keyword Overlap Venn diagram. This diagram uses circles to show keyword overlap between you and competitors. Larger circles mean the website covers more keywords. Overlap areas represent keywords where both of you have rankings.
Looking at this diagram, you might discover an interesting fact: the competitors you thought you had might not be your real competitors in search results. For example, for our tech blog, business competitors might be other blog platforms, but in search results, real competitors might be Zhihu, CSDN, and similar content platforms. Because they also cover massive amounts of keywords like “tech tutorials” and “programming basics.”
The second view is the Top Opportunities table. This table directly lists the keyword opportunities where you’re most likely to get rankings. SEMrush automatically calculates an “opportunity score” based on factors like search volume, keyword difficulty, current ranking position, etc. Higher-scoring keywords are theoretically easier to rank for.
The third view is the Missing tab. This tab shows all keywords where competitors rank but you don’t at all. These keywords are your most direct gaps and easiest content voids to fill.
2.3 Priority Framework: How to Choose Keywords
Keyword Gap tool might give you hundreds or thousands of keyword suggestions. The question is: you can’t write content for all of them, you need to choose the most valuable ones.
Let me share a practical judgment framework that we’ve validated in actual projects with good results.
Search Volume Standard: Monthly search volume at least 1,000. Keywords with too low search volume, even if you rank first, will have limited traffic. But there are exceptions—if your site is new or has small traffic base, keywords with 200-500 search volume can also be considered.
Keyword Difficulty (KD) Standard: KD value below 49. SEMrush’s keyword difficulty score ranges from 0-100, with lower scores meaning easier to rank. New sites should prioritize keywords with KD < 30, sites with some authority can challenge the KD 30-49 range. Keywords with KD over 50 typically require massive backlink and content accumulation to compete.
Search Intent Judgment: Prioritize Commercial or Transactional intent keywords. These keywords’ users typically have clear needs and higher conversion value. Informational keywords might have larger traffic volume but usually lower conversion rates.
SERP Feature Check: Open the keyword’s SERP analysis and check if the search results page has strong SERP features, like Featured Snippets, People Also Ask, or lots of ads. If there’s a Featured Snippet, you might be able to grab that position by optimizing content format; but if there are too many ads, it means commercial competition for this keyword is intense, and organic search click-through rate might be diluted.
Specific operation method: In the Missing tab, use filters to screen KD value and search volume ranges. Then check SERP analysis one by one to judge search intent and SERP features.
Add screened keywords to Keyword Strategy Builder. This tool helps you organize keyword lists, group by topic, facilitating subsequent content planning.
2.4 A Real Case Study
I did a hypothetical analysis using BetterLink Blog. Entering domain eastondev.com, plus a few competitor domains (assuming similar tech blogs). After Keyword Gap analysis, I discovered several interesting keyword gaps.
For example, the keyword “SEO tool comparison,” competitors all rank for it, but our blog has zero coverage. Search volume about 2,000/month, KD value 35, medium difficulty. Search intent is Commercial—users want tool recommendations. SERP analysis shows a Featured Snippet—if we write a detailed SEO tool comparison article, we have a chance to grab that featured snippet position.
Another example, “keyword research methods,” search volume 1,500/month, KD value 28. This keyword is lower difficulty, and we already have several articles about keyword strategy—just need content optimization targeting this keyword, and we might get rankings.
Both keywords fit our priority framework, so they were added to the content planning list.
Chapter 3: Execution Strategy Framework: From Analysis to Content
After completing Keyword Gap analysis, you have dozens of keywords waiting to be written. At this point, many people make a mistake: randomly picking a few keywords and starting to write articles, then finding rankings unchanged and traffic not growing, and suspecting the tool is inaccurate.
Actually, the problem isn’t the tool—it’s the execution strategy. Keyword gap analysis’s value lies in discovering opportunities, but actually getting rankings and traffic requires a systematic execution framework.
3.1 Keyword Grouping: Turning Scattered Keywords into Content Clusters
The keywords you get might be disorganized, like simultaneously having “SEO tool comparison,” “keyword research methods,” “SEMrush tutorial,” “Ahrefs feature introduction,” etc. If each article only covers one keyword, efficiency is low, and content lacks connection, not helping SEO authority accumulation.
A better approach is grouping by topic to form Content Clusters.
For example, the several keywords mentioned above can be grouped into one topic: “SEO Tools & Methods.” This topic group can form a structure with one core article (Pillar Content) plus multiple related articles:
- Core article: “Complete Guide to SEO Tools: From Keyword Research to Competitor Analysis”—covering multiple high-search-volume keywords
- Related article 1: “SEMrush Tutorial in Practice”—covering SEMrush-related keywords
- Related article 2: “Ahrefs Features Explained and Usage Tips”—covering Ahrefs-related keywords
- Related article 3: “Keyword Research Methodology”—covering keyword research method-related keywords
The core article strings related articles together through internal links, forming topic authority. Search engines will consider your website to have complete knowledge coverage on this topic, making rankings easier to improve.
Keyword Strategy Builder tool can help you do this grouping work. Create a new keyword list, add all discovered keywords, then use the Tag function to group by topic. Each tag is a potential content cluster.
3.2 Content Creation Priority: What to Do First, What to Do Later
With content clusters, you still need to decide execution order. Not all keywords are worth writing content for immediately.
I suggest arranging by three priority levels:
Priority 1: Existing Content Optimization
Check your existing articles to see if any already cover target keywords but rank in positions 11-20 (second page). These articles already have some foundation—targeted optimization might push them into the top ten.
Optimization directions include: strengthening keyword density (natural integration, not stuffing), supplementing relevant content paragraphs, adding internal and external links, improving page load speed, optimizing title and meta description. These optimization tasks require much less work than writing new articles, and results are usually faster—you can see ranking changes within weeks.
Priority 2: Low-Difficulty High-Volume New Content
For keywords with KD < 30 and search volume > 1000, create new content. These keywords have relatively easy competition and decent traffic potential. Although new content, the ROI is relatively controllable.
When writing these articles, pay attention to content depth. Search engines tend to rank comprehensive, unique-perspective articles. Don’t just stuff keywords—provide real value, like detailed operation steps, real cases, data comparisons, tool reviews, etc.
Priority 3: High-Difficulty Keywords (Defer)
Keywords with KD > 50, or keywords where search results are dominated by authoritative websites, should be deferred. These keywords require sufficient authority accumulation to compete. If your website’s traffic and brand influence aren’t there yet, investing heavily in this content might not yield good results.
This doesn’t mean ignoring them completely—put them in long-term planning. First accumulate authority through priority 1 and 2 content, then gradually challenge high-difficulty keywords after overall SEO performance improves.
3.3 Content Optimization Strategy: How to Improve Existing Articles
Suppose you discovered an existing article “SEO Beginner’s Guide,” keyword ranking at position 15. This article’s topic happens to cover your discovered keyword “SEO beginner tutorial” (search volume 3,000, KD 28).
At this point, don’t rush to write a new article—first optimize this existing article.
Step 1: Open SEMrush’s On Page SEO Checker tool, enter this article’s URL and target keyword. SEMrush analyzes this article’s content and provides specific optimization suggestions, like “insufficient keyword occurrences,” “missing related keywords,” “meta description needs improvement,” etc.
Step 2: Optimize item by item according to suggestions. Be careful not to over-optimize—control keyword density at 2-3%, keeping content natural and smooth. If SEMrush suggests “increase keyword occurrences,” it doesn’t mean mechanically repeating keywords, but thinking about how to naturally integrate the keyword into content, like in titles, section openings, conclusion sections, and other key positions.
Step 3: Supplement content depth. If competitor articles have richer content (like cases, data, operation steps), your article needs to add these elements too. Search engines compare content quality of different articles under the same keyword—more complete content is easier to get higher rankings.
Step 4: Add internal links. From other relevant articles on your website, add internal links pointing to this article. Use target keywords or related phrases as internal link anchor text, like “If you want to learn SEO beginner tutorial, you can read this detailed guide.” Internal links help search engines understand this article’s topic and importance.
After optimization, wait a few weeks and observe ranking changes. If rankings improve (like moving from position 15 into top ten), optimization is effective; if rankings don’t change, you might need further adjustments or consider creating new content.
3.4 Effect Tracking Mechanism: Monitoring Ranking Changes
After content creation and optimization, you need to continuously monitor results. SEMrush’s Position Tracking tool is specifically for this purpose.
Setting up Position Tracking: Enter your target keyword list to track (can export from Keyword Strategy Builder), select region and device type to track (desktop or mobile). Set report frequency—I recommend weekly updates, so you can spot issues timely without being anxious about overly frequent data fluctuations.
Check Position Tracking reports weekly, focusing on several metrics:
Average Ranking Change: Overall keyword ranking trend. If average ranking is improving, SEO strategy is effective; if declining, need to analyze reasons—possibly competitors published new content, or search engine algorithm updates.
Top 10 Keyword Count: How many keywords have entered the top ten search results. This is direct proof of SEO success—the more top ten keywords, the more obvious traffic growth.
New Keyword Count: Any unexpected gains—keywords you didn’t specifically optimize for but got rankings for due to content relevance. These keywords are often new opportunities worth future attention.
I recommend establishing a monthly SEO review mechanism. Each month, check Position Tracking reports while combining Google Analytics traffic data to evaluate actual SEO work results. If certain keywords improved in rankings but traffic didn’t grow, keyword search intent analysis might be inaccurate—users’ real needs for that search don’t match the content you provide. In this case, adjust content direction.
Execution Suggestion
Discover 5-10 high-priority keywords weekly, create or optimize 2-3 articles monthly, review ranking changes and traffic growth monthly—this is a sustainable SEO work rhythm.
Chapter 4: SEMrush vs Ahrefs: How to Choose the Right Tool
SEMrush and Ahrefs are the two mainstream choices in the SEO tool space. Online there are countless comparison articles, listing features, comparing prices, showing data. Honestly, many comparison articles have lots of information, but after reading you still don’t know which to choose.
My suggestion: don’t make decisions based on feature comparisons—make decisions based on your actual needs. Both tools have their advantage scenarios; the key is figuring out your team, budget, and marketing focus.
4.1 SEMrush’s Advantage Scenarios
SEMrush has a larger keyword database. According to official data, SEMrush covers 27.3B keywords (142 regions), while Ahrefs doesn’t publicly disclose keyword count, but SEMrush is generally considered to have broader keyword coverage. If you do lots of keyword research, especially multi-region, multi-language keyword strategies, SEMrush might be more suitable.
SEMrush’s content marketing features are more complete. Beyond basic SEO tools, SEMrush has Writing Assistant, Brand Monitoring, Social Media Poster, and other features. If your marketing work isn’t just SEO but also involves content creation and social media operations, SEMrush’s all-in-one platform might be more convenient.
SEMrush is more agency-friendly. SEMrush Business plan supports API access, white-label reports, multi-project management, and other features. If your team is an agency, or needs to produce professional reports for clients, these features are valuable.
SEMrush has a larger user base. SEMrush has 10M+ global users, 117K paying customers. Larger user base means more active community, richer tutorial resources, and easier to find solutions when encountering problems. For beginners, learning cost is relatively lower.
4.2 Ahrefs’ Advantage Scenarios
Ahrefs has a stronger backlink database. Ahrefs covers 500M referring domains, SEMrush covers 390M. Backlink analysis is Ahrefs’ traditional strength—if your SEO strategy focuses on link building, Ahrefs might be more suitable.
Ahrefs’ interface is cleaner. Many users report Ahrefs’ interface design is more intuitive and operations are smoother. For SEO beginners, the learning curve is relatively gentle.
Ahrefs’ pricing is more flexible. Ahrefs Starter plan is only $29/month, suitable for individual users or small teams with limited budgets. SEMrush’s cheapest Pro plan is $129.95/month. If you just want to try an SEO tool, or have simple needs, Ahrefs has lower entry cost.
Ahrefs has higher enterprise adoption rate. According to 2024 data, Ahrefs is used by approximately 54,215 companies, SEMrush by approximately 24,854 companies—a ratio of about 2:1. While this data doesn’t directly indicate tool quality, enterprise adoption at least reflects market recognition.
4.3 Decision Framework: Choose Based on Actual Needs
I’ll break decision factors into several dimensions—you can judge based on your situation.
Team Size:
- Individual user or 1-2 person small team → Ahrefs Starter or Lite
- 3-10 person medium team → SEMrush Guru or Ahrefs Standard
- 10+ person large team or agency → SEMrush Business
Budget Range:
- Budget < $50/month → Ahrefs Starter $29/month
- Budget $50-100/month → Ahrefs Lite $99/month
- Budget $100-250/month → SEMrush Pro $129.95/month or Ahrefs Standard $199/month
- Budget > $250/month → SEMrush Guru $249.95/month or Business $499.95/month
Marketing Focus:
- Pure SEO focus (keyword research, backlink analysis, ranking tracking) → Ahrefs
- SEO + Content Marketing + Social Media Operations → SEMrush
- SEO + Agency Business (multiple clients, white-label reports) → SEMrush Business
Feature Needs:
- Backlink analysis is core need → Ahrefs
- Keyword research and competitor analysis are core needs → SEMrush
- Need content creation assistance tools → SEMrush (Writing Assistant)
- Need brand monitoring and social media management → SEMrush
My suggestion: if budget allows, try both tools for a period (SEMrush has 7-day free trial, Ahrefs has $7 7-day trial). Test both tools with actual projects, experiencing operation flow, analysis result quality, and data accuracy. Whether a tool is good ultimately depends on your specific use case.
| Dimension | SEMrush | Ahrefs |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword Database | 27.3B (142 regions) | Smaller but high quality |
| Backlink Database | 390M referring domains | 500M referring domains (leading) |
| Starting Price | $129.95/month (Pro) | $29/month (Starter) |
| User Count | 10M+ global users | Smaller user base |
| Enterprise Adoption | ~24,854 companies | ~54,215 companies (about 2:1) |
| Content Marketing Features | Complete (Writing Assistant, Social Media) | Basic |
| Agency Features | API, White-label Reports | Basic |
| Interface Experience | Feature-rich but slightly complex | Clean and intuitive |
Conclusion
After all this, SEMrush competitor analysis’s core value is actually quite simple: helping you see what you don’t know.
You might be very familiar with business competitors, but in search results, real competitors might be completely different websites. Organic search competitors, cross-channel competitors—these concepts sound academic, but once you understand them, your keyword strategy can truly target the right goals.
Keyword Gap tool helps you discover keyword gaps, but gap analysis is just the first step. The real challenge is: after discovering opportunities, how do you execute? How do you turn dozens of keywords into a systematic content plan? How do you judge priorities? How do you monitor results?
This article provided a complete execution framework: keyword grouping to form content clusters, arranging content creation and optimization by priority, using Position Tracking to monitor ranking changes. This framework isn’t theory—it’s a proven path we’ve validated in actual projects.
As for SEMrush vs Ahrefs, don’t be confused by feature comparison tables. Figure out your team size, budget range, and marketing focus, then judge against the decision framework. Both tools have their advantage scenarios—the key is matching your actual needs.
If you want to start now, I suggest doing one thing first: open SEMrush’s Organic Rankings tool, enter your domain, and look at the list in the Competitors tab. You might have unexpected discoveries—those competitors you thought you had might not be your real competitors in search results; and the real competitors, you might never have noticed.
Complete SEMrush Competitor Analysis Process
Systematic method from identifying competitors to executing keyword strategy
⏱️ Estimated time: 60 min
- 1
Step1: Identify Organic Search Competitors
Open SEMrush Organic Rankings tool, enter your domain, click Competitors tab.
• SEMrush automatically analyzes keyword overlap
• Review competitor list to find websites you didn't expect
• Focus on high-overlap competitors—they're your real search competitors - 2
Step2: Set Up Keyword Gap Analysis
Open Keyword Gap tool, enter your domain + up to 4 competitor domains.
• Select analysis region (China/target market)
• Ensure you use the domain where competitors perform best in organic search
• Click Compare to generate comparison report - 3
Step3: Filter High-Priority Keywords
Use filters in Missing tab to screen keywords.
• Search volume > 1000/month
• KD < 49 (new sites prioritize < 30)
• Search intent: Commercial or Transactional
• SERP features: Featured Snippet opportunity or no strong competition - 4
Step4: Keyword Grouping and Content Planning
Use Keyword Strategy Builder to group keywords by topic.
• Each topic forms a content cluster
• Plan 1 pillar article + multiple related articles
• Build topic authority through internal links - 5
Step5: Execute and Track
Create or optimize content by priority, use Position Tracking to monitor results.
• Prioritize optimizing existing articles ranking 11-20
• Create new content for low-difficulty high-volume keywords
• Check ranking changes weekly, review traffic growth monthly
FAQ
What's the difference between organic search competitors and business competitors?
How many domains can Keyword Gap tool compare at once?
How to determine keyword priority?
• Search volume > 1000/month (new sites can relax to 200-500)
• Keyword Difficulty (KD) < 49, new sites prioritize < 30
• Search intent: prioritize Commercial or Transactional
• SERP features: Featured Snippet opportunity, not too many ads
Which has higher priority: optimizing existing content or creating new content?
SEMrush or Ahrefs—which should I choose?
• Budget < $50/month: Ahrefs Starter $29/month
• Primarily keyword research: SEMrush (27.3B keyword database)
• Primarily backlink analysis: Ahrefs (500M referring domains)
• Need integrated content marketing: SEMrush (Writing Assistant, Social Media Management)
• Agency business: SEMrush Business (API, white-label reports)
Recommend trying both tools, testing with actual projects to evaluate experience.
What are the benefits of keyword grouping?
How to track keyword ranking changes?
22 min read · Published on: Apr 12, 2026 · Modified on: Apr 12, 2026
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