Do you rely on Competitor research to identify new content opportunities for your site? If you’d like to do it more efficiently, you need a trusted competitor research tool by your side.

As a blogger and agency owner who’s been doing SEO for the last several years, I can’t overstate the importance of competitor research in the SEO landscape. A robust competitive analysis plan can unpack a plethora of content opportunities and help you gain a strong foothold in your niche.

To that end, you need to invest in an SEO tool that has excellent competitive research capabilities. In this article, I’ll list down 7 of the best competitor research tools you should consider investing in.

7 Best Competitor Research Tools

1. SEMrush

SEMrush is one of the most revered SEO tools on the market. While the tool has a plethora of useful SEO and SEM features, it’s primarily known for its outstanding keyword research and competitor research capabilities.

The SEMrush Competitive Research toolkit allows you to identify your main organic competitors, their best performing organic Keywords, top pages, top paid keywords, traffic stats, and much more.

Let me briefly explain how to do competitor research in SEMrush. If you’re not an SEMrush user, I’d urge you to sign up for a 30-day free trial to implement some of the action items explained below.

Get 1-month free trial to SEMrush Pro

To get started, click on “Competitive Research Toolkit” and go through this sequence:

SEO > Organic Research > Enter your competitor’s domain

You’ll get a top-level view of your competitor’s organic keywords, estimated monthly organic traffic, alongside other important SEO metrics.

The overview report will also highlight a few of your competitor’s top organic keywords:

And the top-ranking pages, along with their percentage share of organic traffic and the total number of organic keywords they currently rank for.

Super useful information because you’ll know exactly what keywords and pages are driving the highest search traffic to your competitor’s site.

Hit the “View all” button under each section to see the complete list of keywords that your competitor ranks for and the complete list of top-ranking pages.

Adjust the filters in the report to arrive at the most relevant data.

But that’s not all. SEMrush also reveals your competitors’ advertising strategies in Google Ads and allows you to monitor their social media efforts.

Navigate to “Advertising Research” from the sidebar menu and if your competitor is running ads on Google, you’ll be able to view their paid keywords, URLs ranking in paid search results, and ad copies.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to SEMrush’s competitor research features. To really understand the depth of data you can gather on your top rivals, you’ll need to spend some time using the tool.

For that reason, I’d highly recommend that you sign up for a free trial of SEMrush Pro to test some of these features out and see how it adds value to your overall marketing efforts.

Try SEMrush Pro free for 30 days

Unique Features

The feature that sets SEMrush apart from the other competitor analysis tools on this list is the Advertising suite. You can unpack a ton of advertising data that’s just not possible with other competitive analysis tools on the market.

In addition to being a robust SEO competitor analysis tool, SEMrush is also one of the best social media competitor analysis tools on the market. With SEMrush’s Social Media Tracker, you can monitor your competitors’ social media presence and gain insights on what content is trending in your industry.

Another noteworthy tool in the SEMrush suite is the Traffic Analytics tool — a market intelligence and competitive research tool that provides accurate estimations of any website’s desktop and mobile traffic. It’s an add-on tool that costs $200/mo. It’s slightly on the expensive side, but the unique insights you can gain on your competitors make it a worthwhile investment.

To learn more about SEMrush’s Traffic Analytics, check out The Ultimate Guide to SEMrush Traffic Analytics.

Get 1-week trial to SEMrush Pro + Traffic Analytics

SEMrush: Pricing Plans

SEMrush offers 3 plans:

• Pro – $99.95/mo
• Guru – 199.95/mo
• Business – $399.95/mo

If you’re an SEO beginner, it’s better to get started with SEMrush’s Pro plan ($99.95/mo). You’ll get access to all the features and 40+ advanced tools, including SEMrush’s competitive research toolkit.

Since I run a digital marketing agency and manage multiple websites, I use SEMrush’s Guru plan ($199.95/mo). If you manage an agency or SMB, it’s better to go with SEMrush’s Guru plan. You’ll have higher limits and get access to advanced features like historical data and branded reports.

At $399.95/month, SEMrush’s Business plan is best suited for large agencies, e-commerce companies, and enterprises with complex SEO problems.

If you’ve never tried SEMrush before and want to experiment with some of the features discussed above, I’d encourage you to sign up for a 30-day free trial of SEMrush Pro. Click on the link below to activate your trial.

Get 1-month free trial to SEMrush Pro ($99.95 value)

2. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content marketing tool that lets you discover content ideas in your niche, identify top influencers, and analyze competitor content.

If you’re ever in need of ideas for your next post, you can always bet on BuzzSumo to deliver. It’s packed with innovative features, but for the purpose of this post, let’s just focus on BuzzSumo’s competitive analysis capabilities.

With BuzzSumo, you can uncover your competitors’ top-performing posts, track all the key metrics around these posts, and find out which social networks perform the best.

Let’s take a deeper look at some of BuzzSumo’s competitor research features. You can sign up for a 1-week free trial of BuzzSumo by clicking here to implement the action items below.

To analyze your competitors on BuzzSumo, plug in your competitor’s domain in the search box:

You’ll see your competitor’s top-performing posts in terms of social shares.

By default, BuzzSumo shows the domain’s top-performing posts in the last 12 months.

So you may have to play around with the filters to get the most relevant data for your research. For instance, if you’d like to analyze your competitors’ recently produced content, just select the “Past Month” filter to see the engagement metrics for your competitor’s latest posts.

BuzzSumo also allows you to track your competitors’ backlinks. While you can view any site’s backlinks by simply entering their domain in the search box and find sites willing to link to content in your niche, the real value is in determining backlinks a specific URL has generated.

Why? Because if you have similar content on your blog, you can target these sites in your email outreach campaign and get high-quality backlinks.

To view backlinks of a specific URL, simply copy-paste the URL in the search box. Pay special attention to the engagement metrics of each site to determine the quality of the backlink.

But that’s not all: You can also use BuzzSumo as a YouTube competitor analysis tool. Just plug in your competitor’s channel name in the search bar and get access to engagement metrics for all their videos.

Armed with these insights, you’ll know exactly what kind of videos are resonating with your target audience on YouTube.

You can then replicate and improve upon some of these ideas to drive more engagement towards your YouTube channel.

Unique Features

In my opinion, BuzzSumo’s most unique feature is the monitoring feature. With this feature, you can track brand mentions of your competitors and always stay ahead of the curve.

BuzzSumo sends an email alert every time someone links to one of your competitors.

The other aspect that needs to be highlighted about BuzzSumo is the advanced filtering options available in Content Analyzer.

You can access advanced filtering options by hitting “+More Filters.”

You can get really granular in your competitor research efforts by selecting specific filters to obtain the most relevant data for your needs. For instance, if you’d like to see the infographics published by your competitor in the last few months, just select the “Infographic” option under Content Type.

Similarly, if you’d like to analyze your competitor’s long-form posts, select the “In-depth articles only” filter under Word Count.

In other words, BuzzSumo’s advanced filters do all the heavy lifting for you and you’ll be able to zero-in on the information you need in a quick and efficient manner.

Buzzsumo Pricing

As is the trend with other leading SEO and content marketing tools on the market, BuzzSumo’s pricing plans start at $99/month. Here’s the current pricing structure followed by BuzzSumo:

• Pro – $99/mo (Unlimited searches, 5 alerts, 5 users)
• Plus – $179/mo (Unlimited searches, 10 alerts, 10 users)
• Large – $299/mo (Unlimited searches, 30 alerts, 15 users)
• Enterprise – $499+/mo (Unlimited searches, 50 alerts, 50 users)

Most bloggers can go with the Pro plan which offers unlimited monthly searches and 5 alerts.

If you’re in a super competitive niche or run a digital agency, BuzzSumo’s Plus plan ($179/mo) offers the best value. In addition to greater limits, you also get access to Question Analyzer, one of BuzzSumo’s best features.

Large companies and agencies can benefit from the amount of data that can be unpacked with BuzzSumo’s Large plan ($299/mo). It’s also the ideal plan for YouTubers as you get access to BuzzSumo’s YouTube Analyzer.

If you need to add more users and would like access to BuzzSumo’s API, you can get in touch with BuzzSumo to get more details on BuzzSumo’s Enterprise plan ($499+/mo).

Regardless of the plan you choose, I’d highly recommend you try BuzzSumo free for 7 days to explore the features discussed above.

Try BuzzSumo free for 7 days

3. SE Ranking

Talking about competition, one tool that’s had to navigate the tough competitive landscape to create an identity for itself is SE Ranking. Launched in 2013 in an already crowded space of cloud-based SEO tools, SE Ranking has grown steadily over the years and is now used by over 400,000 users across the world.

SE Ranking features a set of tools for site audit, keyword research, backlink analysis, and PPC analysis. It also has formidable competitor research features, which is why it’s included in this list.

With SE Ranking, you can identify your competitors’ top organic keywords, top paid keywords, best-performing posts, most popular ads, and much more.

Let’s take a deeper look at some of these features. To implement the action items below, sign up for a 2-week free trial of SE Ranking by clicking here.

Click on the “Competitor Research” tab and enter your competitor’s domain in the search box. The overview report will provide a quick summary of your competitor’s organic traffic and paid traffic.

While you’re still in the overview report, scroll down to view your competitor’s top organic keywords and the distribution of organic keyword rankings. To view more organic keywords alongside critical keyword metrics, hit the “View Detailed Report” button below the column.

Scroll down further in the overview report to find your competitor’s best-performing pages. These are the pages generating the highest amount of search traffic to their site.

Hit “View Detailed Report” to see all the top pages in organic search. Pay special attention to the top 10 pages in the report and organic traffic share of each page.

Click on the number of keywords against each page to see the top organic keywords your competitor is currently ranking for.

These are the keywords you’d want to target while replicating the top organic pages and posts of your closest competitor. Just make sure your content is 10x better to increase its chances of ranking higher and attracting natural backlinks.

Return to the overview report to analyze your competitor’s PPC strategy. The “Paid keywords” column shows your competitor’s top 5 paid keywords. Hit the “View Detailed Report” button to open up the paid research report.

This report will show your competitor’s estimated paid traffic, the total number of paid keywords, and a complete list of paid keywords your competitor is targeting in Google ads.

You can also use SE Ranking to view your competitors’ backlinks in order to replicate their link building strategies.

Visit the “Backlink Checker” tab and enter your competitor’s domain in the search box.

The Backlink overview report will show you data on your competitors’ referring domains, backlinks, dofollow/nofollow ratio, alongside other key backlink metrics.

To view the complete list of sites linking to your competitor’s domain, click on the Referring Domains number.

You can adjust the filters in this report to identify the most authoritative backlinks your competitor has obtained over the years. These are the backlinks you’d want to replicate for your site to beat your competition in SERPs.

Unique Features

SE Ranking has a few features that deserve a special mention. The first feature I’d like to highlight is SE Ranking’s Report Builder, which allows you to create personalized reports and present critical SEO data points to your clients in a clear and concise manner.

If you run an agency, you’ll be mighty pleased with this feature.

The other feature that’s worth talking about is the “Competitor Comparison” feature, where you can compare the organic traffic and keywords of your domain with two of your main organic competitors.

Running this check will allow you to see what keywords your domain has in common with your competitors and what keywords are unique to your domain.

More importantly, you’ll discover missing keywords — these are the top keywords your competitors are ranking for that your site is not. If you ever run out of keyword ideas for your next piece of content, these are the keywords you need to consider.

SE Ranking Pricing

SE Ranking is one of the most affordable SEO services on the market, with plans starting at $39 a month. You can further save 20% on any SE Ranking plan by opting for annual billing.

Here’s the pricing structure that SE Ranking currently follows:

• Optimum – $39/mo (250 keyword rankings, 10 websites)
• Plus – $89/mo (1000 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)
• Enterprise – 189/mo (2500 keyword rankings, unlimited websites)

The Optimum plan ($39/mo) is ideal for solopreneurs, SMBs, and bloggers. You’ll get access to all features and you can add up to 10 projects/websites and monitor 250 keyword rankings.

If you run a digital marketing agency, then the Plus plan ($89/mo) is better suited for your needs as there’s no restriction on the number of projects you can add to your account. You also get to monitor 1000 keyword rankings and run site audits for 150,000 pages.

The Enterprise plan, as the name suggests, is meant for large enterprises and big agencies as you’ll have greater limits and even get access to SE Ranking API.

Try SE Ranking free for 2 weeks

4. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the leading SEO tools on the market. When it was launched in 2012, it was primarily used for backlink analysis. Since then, the tool has evolved into a full-fledged SEO software by integrating advanced keyword research and content marketing features.

Despite adding several useful features to their toolkit, backlink analysis continues to be Ahrefs’ biggest strength. And it’s this strength that you can leverage to uncover a ton of competitive intelligence data to boost your search rankings.

First off, you can use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to find out how your competitors are acquiring backlinks and replicate their link building strategies.

To do this, enter your competitor’s domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer:

A quick glance at key metrics like referring domains and backlinks in the overview report should give you an indication of how robust your competitor’s link building strategies are.

To get deeper insights into your competitor’s backlink profile, navigate to the “Referring domains” report.

Here you’ll be able to view all the websites that link to your competitor’s domain.

Click on the “Links to target” number against each website to view all the pages from that website that link to your competitor.

If you have similar pages on your website targeting the same keywords, you’d want to take note of these links for your future link building efforts.

You can also take a look at your competitor’s newly-acquired backlinks by navigating to Backlinks > New in the overview report. This will show all the backlinks acquired by your competitor in the last 3 months.

And finally, you can gain super actionable insights by finding your competitor’s best pages by backlinks. To access this data, navigate to Pages > Best by links in the overview report.

Here you’ll find your competitor’s top pages based on the number of incoming links.

This report contains a treasure trove of useful data as it shows you what kind of content attracts the highest number o