---
title: "How to Use Semrush for Competitor Analysis: Step-by-Step Guide"
date: "2026-07-25"
meta_description: "Learn how to use Semrush for competitor analysis with this step-by-step guide. Uncover rivals' keywords, backlinks, and traffic strategies."
tags: ["semrush", "competitor analysis", "seo tools", "keyword research", "digital marketing"]
category: "reviews"
affiliate_links_used: ["semrush"]
---

How to Use Semrush for Competitor Analysis: Step-by-Step Guide

Your competitor is ranking on page one for every keyword you want. You're not. That gap has a reason, and Semrush will show you exactly what it is.

I've used Semrush for competitor research across dozens of niches. It's one of the few tools that gives you real data instead of guesses. This guide walks you through the exact process I use to reverse-engineer what's working for competitors and turn that into a content and keyword strategy.

What You Need Before Starting

You need a Semrush account. The free plan gives you limited daily searches, which gets frustrating fast. The Pro plan at $139/month is the minimum I'd recommend if you're doing this seriously. Use this link to start a free trial before committing.

You also need to know your top 3 to 5 competitors. These should be sites competing for the same audience, not just the same industry. A local bakery and a national recipe blog might be in the same niche but not the same competition.

Have a spreadsheet open. You'll be pulling data across multiple Semrush tools and you need somewhere to organize it.

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Step 1: Run a Domain Overview on Your Competitor

Log into Semrush. In the search bar at the top, type your competitor's domain and select "Domain Overview" from the left sidebar.

This screen shows you their organic traffic, number of ranking keywords, backlink count, and authority score. Screenshot this. It's your baseline for measuring how big the gap actually is.

Pay attention to the traffic trend graph. A competitor losing traffic over the last six months is worth less attention than one steadily growing.

Step 2: Dig Into Their Top Organic Keywords

From the Domain Overview page, click "Organic Research" in the left sidebar. This opens a full keyword breakdown sorted by traffic contribution.

Filter by "Position 1 to 10" so you only see keywords where they're actually ranking well. Export this list to a CSV. You now have a documented list of terms your competitor ranks for that you may not be targeting at all.

Look for keywords with high monthly search volume and low keyword difficulty. Those are your fastest opportunities.

Step 3: Identify Their Top Traffic Pages

Still inside Organic Research, click the "Pages" tab at the top. This shows you which specific URLs on their site drive the most organic traffic.

This step is underrated. Most people focus on keywords, but pages tell you which content formats and topics are working. A listicle, a comparison post, a tutorial, or a tool page each signals a different content strategy.

Pick their top five pages and open each one in a new tab. You're about to analyze what they've actually built.

Step 4: Analyze the Content Gap

Go to the "Keyword Gap" tool in the left sidebar. Enter your domain in the first field and your competitor's domain in the second field.

Click "Compare." Semrush will show you keywords your competitor ranks for that your site doesn't. Filter by "Missing" to see keywords where you have zero presence. These are your priority targets.

This single view often reveals 50 to 200 keyword opportunities in one session. Export the list and sort by search volume.

Step 5: Review Their Backlink Profile

Go to "Backlink Analytics" in the sidebar and enter your competitor's domain. Look at the "Referring Domains" tab, not just the raw backlink count.

You want to see which sites are linking to them and why. Sort by Authority Score. High-authority sites linking to a competitor on a specific topic tell you what kind of content earns links in your space.

Filter for "Dofollow" links. Find any referring domains that look like guest posts, resource pages, or editorial mentions. Those are link-building opportunities you can pursue directly.

Step 6: Check Their Paid Search Strategy

Go to "Advertising Research" in the sidebar and enter your competitor's domain. If they're running Google Ads, you'll see the keywords they're bidding on and sample ad copy.

This matters even if you're focused on organic SEO. Competitors pay for keywords they know convert. If they're spending money on a keyword, there's likely buyer intent behind it, which makes it worth targeting organically too.

Step 7: Build Your Action Plan

Take everything you've exported, your keyword gap list, their top pages, and their backlink sources, and organize it by effort and impact. High-volume, low-difficulty keywords go first. Content gaps where you have existing authority go second.

Create a content calendar around this data. I pair this research with Surfer SEO to optimize each piece I create around the exact terms Semrush surfaces.

For writing the content itself, I've tested Jasper, Copy.ai, and Writesonic. All three can speed up the drafting process once you know what topic and keywords each piece needs to cover.

Quick Reference Table

Step	Action	Time Needed
1	Domain Overview on competitor	5 minutes
2	Export top organic keywords	10 minutes
3	Identify top traffic pages	10 minutes
4	Run Keyword Gap analysis	15 minutes
5	Review backlink profile	15 minutes
6	Check paid search strategy	10 minutes
7	Build action plan from data	30 minutes

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Analyzing too many competitors at once. Pick two or three and go deep. Spreading across ten domains gives you scattered data that's hard to act on.

Ignoring traffic trends. A competitor with 100,000 monthly visitors but a six-month decline is showing you something. Don't copy a strategy that's already failing.

Skipping the Pages tab. Most people stop at keywords. The Pages tab shows you what formats and angles actually drive traffic. This is where the real content strategy insight lives.

Not exporting data. Semrush limits how much you can view on screen. Export everything to CSV immediately. You can sort, filter, and cross-reference in a spreadsheet in ways the Semrush interface doesn't allow.

Treating keyword difficulty as the only filter. Search intent matters more than difficulty. A low-difficulty keyword with transactional intent can be worth more than a high-volume informational one, depending on your goals.

Pro Tips

Run the analysis monthly, not once. Competitor rankings shift. A site that wasn't targeting a keyword last quarter might be dominating it now. I check my top two competitors monthly and my full competitor set quarterly.

Use the Traffic Journeys feature. Under Organic Research, look for Traffic Analytics. This shows you where competitor traffic comes from and where it goes. If visitors from a competitor's blog post end up on their pricing page, that content is converting.

Compare two competitors against each other, not just against yourself. If two competitors both rank for a set of keywords you're missing, that's a confirmed content category worth entering. One competitor ranking for something might be an outlier. Two means there's a real audience there.

Cross-reference with Google Search Console. Pull your own top queries from GSC and compare them against the keyword gaps Semrush surfaces. Keywords where you're getting impressions but no clicks are easier to move than keywords where you have zero presence.

Document everything with dates. I keep a running competitor research log with dates on each export. This lets me track which keywords competitors gained or lost over time, which tells me how stable those rankings actually are.

Bottom Line

Competitor analysis with Semrush is not a one-time research task. It's an ongoing intelligence system. The sites winning in search aren't guessing at what to create. They're watching what works, filling gaps, and building on real data.

The seven steps above take about 90 minutes the first time. After that, a monthly check-in takes 30 minutes and keeps your strategy anchored to what's actually working in your space.

Start with one competitor. Run the full process. Build one piece of content from what you find. The compounding effect of doing this consistently is what separates sites that grow from sites that plateau.