SEO Competitor Analysis
SEO competitor analysis that names the 5 sites that matter.
Not a 60-page deck listing 40 competitors. The 5 to 10 sites that show up on your commercial SERPs and what to take from each.
- True-competitor IDs from SERP overlap
- Keyword + content + backlink intersection
- Quarterly share-of-voice scorecard
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Most competitor analysis decks list every brand in your category.Then never mention which ones actually rank for your money queries.We focus on the 5 to 10 that actually own the SERPs.
Most competitor analysis decks list every brand in your category. Then never mention which ones actually rank for your money queries. We focus on the 5 to 10 that actually own the SERPs.
An SEO competitor analysis is only useful if it changes what you ship next month. Ours starts with SERP overlap data (Ahrefs Content Gap, SEMrush Domain vs Domain), maps the keyword, content and backlink gaps that matter, and ends in a tactical briefing your content and link teams can execute against. No 60-page PDF, no generic SWOT slide.
See client outcomesHow a competitor analysis engagement runs
How a LASEO competitor analysis runs in 5 phases
Five phases over the first 8 weeks, then quarterly refreshes. Each phase produces an artefact you keep, regardless of whether the engagement continues.
- 01
True-competitor identification (week 1)
Pull SERP overlap for your top 100 commercial queries using Ahrefs and SEMrush. Score every URL that appears in the top 10 by frequency and average position. The 5 to 10 sites with the highest SERP overlap score are your real competitors, often different from your business competitor list.
- 02
Keyword + content gap mapping (week 2-3)
Run Ahrefs Content Gap and SEMrush Keyword Gap across the named competitors. Deduplicate into one Google Sheet with volume, KD, current ranking distance and suggested target page. Map content gaps by topic cluster, not just keyword list.
- 03
Backlink intersection report (week 3-4)
Run Ahrefs Link Intersect to find domains linking to two or more competitors but not to you. Score by referring domain DR, traffic, and topical relevance. Output is a ranked list of 100-300 link prospects with contact research notes for the top 30.
- 04
SERP feature audit (week 4-5)
For each priority query, document which competitor owns which SERP feature: featured snippet, People Also Ask, image pack, video carousel, knowledge panel. Score by impact (CTR steal potential) and effort (how feasible to win the feature back).
- 05
Tactical opportunity briefs (week 6-8)
Convert the gaps into 20+ opportunity briefs ranked by impact-to-effort. Each brief: target keyword, competitor we are taking it from, recommended format and length, internal link plan, link prospects. From quarter two onwards, share-of-voice scorecard refreshed every 90 days.
Tracked quarterly,not delivered once and forgotten.
Most competitor decks are written once, presented in a kickoff, and never re-opened. We run the analysis on day one and refresh the share-of-voice scorecard every quarter, so the brief you ship in May is informed by what your competitors actually shipped in March. Five to ten competitors, named individually, tracked individually.
What SEO competitor analysis actually means
Competitor analysis, explained without the strategy-deck speak
When you commission an SEO competitor analysis you are buying SERP intelligence, gap data and a prioritised action list. That is different from market research (which looks at brand and product positioning) and from a simple Ahrefs export (which gives you data without prioritisation). The discipline is narrow and the output should be tactical.
SEO competitor analysis vs market research
Market research asks who your customers are, what they value, how your positioning compares. SEO competitor analysis asks who ranks on your money SERPs and what they have that you do not. Both useful, completely different scopes. We do the second; we do not do the first.
Business competitors vs organic competitors
Your business competitors are the brands your sales team loses deals to. Your organic competitors are the sites that show up when buyers search your commercial queries. The two lists overlap maybe 40-60 percent. The organic list is the one that drives content and link decisions.
Ahrefs Content Gap vs SEMrush Keyword Gap
Both tools answer the same question with different index coverage. We run both, deduplicate the export, and resolve conflicts using GSC data for keywords where we already have impressions. Single-tool gap reports miss 20-40 percent of the real opportunity.
Share-of-voice tracking, the honest version
Share-of-voice is the percentage of total available organic visibility your brand captures across a tracked keyword set vs your competitor set. We track it via Sistrix Visibility Index and a custom GSC + SEMrush blend. Trended monthly, reviewed quarterly.
When competitor analysis matters most
Pre-launch (so you do not enter a market you cannot win), category expansion (so you size the gap before investing 12 months of content), and post-traffic-drop diagnosis (so you can confirm whether a competitor took your share or whether something else changed).
Realistic timeline and price
A serious one-off SEO competitor analysis takes 6-8 weeks of senior work and costs EUR 8,000-18,000. Quarterly tracking adds EUR 2,500-5,000 per quarter. Anything advertised for under EUR 3,000 is either a tool export with a PDF wrapper or a junior analyst working from a template.
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Why LASEO vs alternatives
Competitor analysis compared honestly
Tool exports, agency decks and freelance audits all have a place. Here is where LASEO fits and where it does not.
Long deck, vague conclusions
- 40-60 brand names supplied by your sales team, copy-pasted into a SWOT slide. Half of them do not rank on your money SERPs.
- One tool export (usually Ahrefs Content Gap) with no deduplication. Misses 20-40 percent of opportunities the other tool would catch.
- Total backlink count per competitor, listed in a table with no prospect prioritisation.
- Aggregate stat ('competitor owns 32 percent of featured snippets in your space') with no per-query detail.
- 60-page PDF deck for a board presentation. Filed in Drive, never re-opened.
- One-off engagement. Delivered once, then re-sold 18 months later as a 'refresh'.
Short brief, named actions
- Five to ten sites identified from SERP overlap data across your top 100 commercial queries. Named, scored, and frequently different from the sales team's list.
- Ahrefs Content Gap + SEMrush Keyword Gap + GSC impression data, deduplicated and conflict-resolved in one Google Sheet.
- Backlink intersection report: domains linking to two or more competitors but not to you, ranked by DR, traffic and topical relevance with the top 30 enriched.
- Per priority query: which competitor owns which feature, scored by CTR steal potential and feasibility to win back.
- 20+ tactical opportunity briefs in Notion plus one Google Sheet your team works from daily. Quarterly executive PDF separate.
- Initial 6-8 week analysis, then quarterly share-of-voice scorecard and refreshed brief list. Competitors move, your view of them should too.
Topical cluster
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Competitor intelligence in production
Competitor analyses that changed the next quarter's roadmap
What our competitor-analysis clients say
Competitor intelligence in their own words
Their SERP overlap data told us our biggest organic competitor was a site our team had never heard of. We pivoted 60 percent of our content calendar to attack that gap and recovered 38 percent of lost category traffic within two quarters.
The backlink intersection report was the single most useful deliverable we have ever received from an SEO firm. Twelve of the top 30 prospects accepted our pitch, all on relevant topical pages. Our outreach team had a roadmap for six months.
We had paid two agencies for competitor analyses before LASEO. Both gave us 60-page decks. LASEO gave us 22 opportunity briefs we shipped in 90 days. Three of them now rank top three for keywords that drove EUR 240k in attributed revenue last quarter.
Their SERP overlap data told us our biggest organic competitor was a site our team had never heard of. We pivoted 60 percent of our content calendar to attack that gap and recovered 38 percent of lost category traffic within two quarters.
The backlink intersection report was the single most useful deliverable we have ever received from an SEO firm. Twelve of the top 30 prospects accepted our pitch, all on relevant topical pages. Our outreach team had a roadmap for six months.
We had paid two agencies for competitor analyses before LASEO. Both gave us 60-page decks. LASEO gave us 22 opportunity briefs we shipped in 90 days. Three of them now rank top three for keywords that drove EUR 240k in attributed revenue last quarter.
Honest answers about SEO competitor analysis 
What buyers actually ask before commissioning a competitor analysis.
Five to ten, not forty. The reason is statistical: across your top 100 commercial queries, a small group of sites will appear in the top 10 far more often than the rest. Those five to ten are doing 80 percent of the damage to your share of voice. Tracking forty competitors dilutes the analysis, produces noise in your share-of-voice metric, and gives your team too many directions to chase. We identify the true list from SERP overlap data on day one, then revisit it once a year in case the market has shifted. Anyone selling you tracking on twenty-plus competitors is selling you a dashboard, not an analysis.
Senior strategy call
Bring a competitor questionto a senior consultant.
30 minutes with a LASEO senior consultant. We will not pitch. We will diagnose who your real organic competitors are (often a surprise), name the biggest content or link gap, and tell you whether a full competitor analysis is the right next step.
