Competitor keyword research enables you to identify the keywords your competitors are optimizing for. Keyword research is a typical marketing strategy used to determine the top search terms for a business. It usually involves analyzing search volume or average bids to generate a list of what potential customers are searching for when looking for a product or service. The objective of conducting keyword research is to create targeted content and pages on a website that ensures when customers search for specific keywords, they find a solution offered by your business.

Finding your competitors' keywords can help you identify content to target. If certain topics in your competitors' blogs are ranking high, you can pull some of those keywords to generate ideas for your own blog. Additionally, you can identify top keywords your competitors use that you're not using and target low-difficulty ones to drive more traffic to your website. Conducting keyword research has many advantages, and there are plenty of paid tools available to help. However, there are also a few free ways to generate a list of your competitors' keywords and verify them on a budget.

Main Steps:

1. Find Competitor Keywords. Determine which keywords your competitor is ranking for and the ones you’re not.
2. Verify Search Volume. Make sure the keywords you want to target have a strong search volume and are relevant to your business and content.
3. Determine Competitiveness. Prioritize keywords that have a lower competition to make sure your website ranks and can drive traffic to your site.

Finding the Keywords

Option #1:

domain name/sitemap.xml or Sitemap Finder

Find your competitor's sitemap by adding /sitemap.xml to the end of the domain. This doesn’t always work for every website so the best bet is to use a tool like Seomator’s free Sitemap finder. A sitemap is a list of all the content a website is publishing. Once you have access to your competitor's sitemap you can use HarperAI to scrape all the keywords from your competitor. Use prompt ‘Based on {{page}} extract all relevant keywords.’ Once you have your keyword list, you can verify them using another free tool such as Google Ads Keyword Planner to view the search volume.

Option #2:

site:domain name/category or site:domain name keyword

To determine the top-ranking page of your competitor you can use ‘site:’ at the start of the domain. One option is to just use the domain as is which will generate a list of pages that Google ranks roughly in chronological order. This is a way to tell which pages are driving the most traffic for your competitor. The second option is to specify the page you want to evaluate. For example, the competitor we’re using has a blog called Vitals. I can take the URL of the blog page and attach site: to view which blogs are getting the most traffic.

Another option is to use the site:domain set up and list a keyword you want to rank for. This will show you webpages of your competitor that includes topics related to the keyword you want to rank for. From here you can pull out the keywords you want to target by feeding the links back into HarperAI and ask to extract the relevant keywords.
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ChatGPT4 Prompt: Create a bookmarklet that scrapes the titles from a Google SERP page

Using ChatGPT 4.0, ask to 'Create a bookmarklet that scrapes the titles from a Google SERP page and copies them to a clipboard'. From there, you want to create a new bookmark instead of inputting a URL. Copy the code generated by ChatGPT and Save. Once the bookmark is saved, go back to the listing and use the bookmark to copy the list of blog titles that came up. You should be able to copy the titles to the clipboard and copy and paste them back into ChatGPT. From there simply ask to extract the keywords from the list. The result will be a list of keywords you can now go through individually.
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Option #3:

WordStream

WordStream is another free tool for finding keyword ideas from your competitor. It asks you to input your competitor's URL along with the industry and location. The result is a list of keyword ideas with additional information such as monthly search volume and competition difficulty. You can download the CSV by entering your email. You’ll have to do a bit more research here since the list generated is targeted toward Google Ads campaigns but can still be used to generate keywords to look into.

Option #4:

Google Keywords Ads Planner

You can use Google Keywords Ads Planner with your competitor's websites. Search for your competitor's website and it will produce a list of keyword ideas based on your competitor that you can use. An option to sort through these is to use HarperAI with the prompt ‘Based on {{page}} filter the best keywords for my website to target.’ From there you can look through the list and decide on which ones you want to optimize for.

Option #5:

Ubersuggest Tool

Ubersuggest is an interesting tool to quickly find your keyword gaps. Meaning keywords your competitor is ranking for that you are not. Simply, search for your website domain and click ‘Competing Domains’ on the left sidebar. This will generate similar sites that you are competing with based on overlapping keywords. You can easily add and remove the websites that are listed to ensure they’re relevant to your search.

Once that’s complete, the table below will generate a list of keywords that you and your competitors both optimize for. However, the interesting feature here is the Keyword Gap. By clicking on ‘View All’ you’ll be able to see the keywords of a competitor that you’re not ranking for. Now you can easily pull out the keywords that work for you by exporting the list to a CSV. You can get three free searches per day without having to start a paid account.

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Verifying Volume and Competition

Option #1:

Google Ads Keyword Planner & Ahrefs Keyword Generator

Once you’ve generated a list of keywords - you can verify the words using something like the Google Ads Keyword Planner. Simply take a keyword from your list and input it into the keyword planner. You’ll be able to view how many searches per month it has. Another tool is the Ahrefs keyword generator which will list keyword matches and volume to the keyword you’re searching.

Another option is to use Google Trends and search for the keyword or version of the keyword you’re interested in. A quick tip for analyzing the results is to examine the data and graph. If a graph displays with no data underneath then that suggests there is a search volume of 200+ searches per/month. If a graph appears with data then it suggests the search volume is 500+ searches per/month. Finally, if there is no graph but some data then it suggests 100+ searches per/month.

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Option #2:

Keywords Everywhere

If you want to simplify this process and have a small budget to work with - you can try the browser extension, Keyword Everywhere. This tool has a freemium model but keyword-related features start at $1 per/month. Once installed you can easily view your competitors top performing pages and how many total keywords they’re ranking for. You can search for the top keywords your competitor's website or webpage is ranking for and view related keywords people are searching for. This tool offers keyword data on multiple search engines as well such as YouTube, Instagram, Amazon, and Etsy to name a few.

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Option #3:

Ubersuggest Tool

Ubersuggest’s browser extension allows you to determine the domain authority of different sites. The ranking ranges from 0 to 100 and generally, you can target keywords that are ranking less than 50 to start. Once traffic is coming to your site, you can start to target more difficult keywords. The website will also display Paid Difficulty and SEO Difficulty per keyword. Paid Difficulty is the estimated competition based on paid search. SEO Difficulty is the estimated competition based on organic search.

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Final Thoughts

These are a few options for free and low-budget ways to find your competitor's keywords. We’ve mainly covered Google search engines but keyword research can be done separately for different search engines depending on what’s relevant to your business. Once you find your competitor's keywords always make sure to verify them using some of the suggestions above. You want to check the competitiveness as well and prioritize the keywords you target accordingly. Avoid blindly trying to optimize for all the keywords without considering their relevance and difficulty level. Of course, there are paid tools that can bundle a lot of these steps and we can cover them in more detail in a separate piece. However for small-low budget teams - these are a great selection of tips to try out that’ll make a huge difference in your SEO marketing strategy.

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