A Step-By-Step Guide to Competitor Content Analysis
The phrase competitor content analysis may conjure up images of spies, but you don’t need to put on a disguise to do it (although you could if dressing up is your thing). Checking out what works for your successful competitors is a great way to learn how to improve your own content.
In this blog post, we’ll look at the what and the why of competitor content analysis and take you through our seven steps for how to do it:
- Identify your competitors
- Identify their content
- View their content as a customer
- Evaluate their content as a professional
- Investigate the stats
- Expand your search
- Apply your findings
We’ll also share some useful tools to help you dig deeper, gather insights more efficiently, and make the most of your research.
What Is Competitor Content Analysis?
Competitor content analysis is the process of looking at what kind of content your competitors are creating – and what’s working well for them – so you can improve your own content.
This doesn’t mean copying their ideas! The goal is to spot trends, strengths, and opportunities. What topics do they focus on? How do they engage their audience? What tone and formats do they use? Are there content gaps you could fill – or things you could do better?
Put simply, it’s a smart way to find inspiration, strengthen your strategy, and create content that’s more relevant, useful, and engaging for your audience.
Why Should You Do Competitor Research?
You’ve poured time and energy into your content, but it’s not getting the attention it deserves. If you’ve ever wondered why, competitor research can help you find the answer.
By analyzing what’s working for others, you can:
- Understand what your audience is responding to elsewhere
- Identify content formats or topics you may be overlooking
- Learn from what others are doing well, and avoid what isn’t working
- Make your content stand out and connect with your audience more effectively
It can also reveal your own weak spots. That might feel uncomfortable at first, but it’s a valuable step toward improvement. The more you understand what’s already out there, the easier it is to create content that’s helpful and relevant to your readers.
Not sure what direction to take your content in? A closer look at the competition can help you focus on what matters and avoid wasting time on content that doesn’t land.
How to Do Competitor Research
Now that we’ve established what competitor content analysis is and why you should do it, how do you go about it? Here’s our step-by-step guide:
1. Identify Your Competitors
These might fall into one of two groups:
- Direct competitors: These are other businesses or freelancers who provide the same service or product to the same audience as you.
- Indirect competitors: These are other businesses or freelancers whose products or services tackle the same problem you are trying to address but in a different way.
To get an initial idea of who your top competitors might be, try a Google search (other search engines are available; a quick bit of competitor research suggests the most popular alternatives are Microsoft Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, and Yandex). Type in a description of your product or service, or the problem you’re offering to solve, and look at the first page of results. That’s where you want to be, so those are your successful competitors.
Make a note of any names or domains that show up more than once across different searches or keywords – they’re likely your closest content competition. This is also a good opportunity to start a list of competitor URLs to refer back to in later steps.
Top tip: If you want to go a bit deeper, some search engine optimization (SEO) tools such as Moz and Semrush show you which sites are competing with yours for search traffic, even if you haven’t heard of them before.
2. Identify Their Content
Follow up the first step by visiting the websites of each of your top competitors and looking at their content. You may find it by clicking on their blog, but make sure you also explore their site for other forms of content, such as:
- Ebooks
- Webinars
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Newsletters
It’s worth checking whether they publish consistently and whether their content is easy to find. If a competitor’s website is tricky to navigate or their blog is buried in the footer, that in itself is a useful insight. If your content is easier to access, you’ve already made an improvement your audience will appreciate.
Pay attention to how they organize their content as well. Do they use categories or tags? Are their posts grouped by topic or audience type? These small details can tell you a lot about how they want users to explore their content – and can help you improve how you present yours.
Top tip: Want to see how much content a competitor has? Try refining your Google search to show results from only the competitor’s blog. This trick will exclude the home page, contact page, and other areas of the website, giving you a list of all content from the specific area.
For example, to do this for the Knowadays blog, here is what you would enter into Google:
site:knowadays.com/blog/
Adding “site:” and the URL limits your search to the particular website, the hub or section, or the individual web page. You can enter other search terms alongside this limiter, and Google will look for your search query on the stated site only.
3. View Their Content as a Customer
Having identified your competitors and their content, take a step back and read it from the point of view of a potential customer. Think of a query someone in your target audience might search for – something you’d want your own content to answer – and see how your competitors approach it.
To evaluate the content, ask yourself a few questions:
- What was the featured snippet, if there was one?
- Did the content answer your query clearly and fully?
- Did it hold your attention, or did you lose interest partway through?
- Did it sound trustworthy and well informed?
- What sort of follow-up did it offer? Was there a clear call to action (CTA)?
Try to put yourself in the shoes of someone unfamiliar with the topic. Was the content easy to understand? Did it make you feel confident in the brand behind it? If not, that’s something you can improve on in your own content.
Top tip: Don’t just focus on the words. Pay attention to the experience too: Did the page load quickly? Was it easy to read on mobile? Small details like these shape how a visitor feels about the content (and whether they stick around).
4. Evaluate Their Content as a Professional
Now that you’ve read it as a customer, analyze the content as a fellow professional by keeping these questions in mind:
- What held your attention? Was it the layout, the length of the piece, or the use of humor, perhaps?
- Did anything lose your attention? Did it go off-topic or use too much jargon that wasn’t explained?
- What made it sound authoritative? Maybe it was the tone of voice, layout, or language. Or perhaps it had a good balance of relevant links.
- Did anything make you doubt its credibility? Were there spelling, grammar, or factual errors?
- What sort of follow-up options were available? Did they use a CTA? Were the next steps easy to follow?
- How often is it updated? How are any updates highlighted?
You might also think about who the content seems to be aimed at. Is it written for beginners or more advanced readers? Does it assume too much knowledge, or not enough? This can help you match your content to your audience, so you’re writing at the right level, using the right tone, and covering topics that feel relevant to your readers.
Top tip: Bookmark standout examples, both good and bad. Collecting real-life references gives you a clearer sense of what works, what doesn’t, and what kind of voice or structure you want to aim for in your own content.
5. Investigate the Stats
What appealed to you may well have appealed to others, but there is a good way to find out what has worked across the board: checking out your competitors’ stats. You can gain a lot of useful information by looking at how their content performs in terms of SEO, organic traffic, backlinks, and high-ranking keywords. You can use online tools and templates, some of them free, for this step.
These stats show how visible and popular a competitor’s content is in search engines and what kind of content attracts attention over time.
Consider how much of each type of content your competitors are publishing and which formats have been successful in attracting and retaining an audience. Are their short how-to posts pulling in lots of traffic, or is it their long-form guides? Are certain blog topics earning more backlinks or shares?
Look for possible gaps, too. If no one’s covering a topic you know your audience cares about, that could be a perfect opportunity to step in with your own content.
Top tip: Just getting started? Try using a free tool such as Ubersuggest to look at one competitor’s most popular pages. Even a quick peek at what’s getting the most views can give you ideas to try in your own content.
6. Expand Your Search
Content reaches an audience in a variety of ways, so have a look at how your competitors are driving people to theirs. Explore how they are making use of platforms such as:
- YouTube
- TikTok
Are they promoting blog posts on social media? Turning them into short videos or infographics? Sharing snippets in email newsletters? The goal here isn’t to match them channel-for-channel, but to understand how they’re reaching their audience – and whether you’re missing opportunities to do the same.
You might also notice that some competitors focus heavily on one platform over others. That could reflect where their audience spends most of their time or just be reflective of what they’re good at. Either way, it’s worth paying attention to.
Top tip: Look for patterns in how your competitors repurpose content. Do they turn blog posts into LinkedIn carousels or video summaries? Spotting these habits can give you inspiration for how to stretch your own content further.
7. Apply Your Findings
You’ve put in the hours, but now comes the important bit – applying what you’ve learned to your own content. Here are some things you might consider:
- Should you change your layout? If your more successful competitors present information in smaller chunks (e.g., using bullet points and headings), then you could adopt that practice without losing your own voice. It could even land you the highly prized spot on a search engine’s featured snippet.
- Could your titles be more attention-grabbing? Having studied what works for your competitors, you will be better informed about what makes for a click-worthy title.
- Which keywords worked? What did you type into the search bar during Step 2? Make sure to include – and naturally incorporate – those words in your content.
- What did they miss? This is vital: fill those gaps and you will have a greater chance of rocketing up the rankings.
- What did you miss? If, for example, your analysis shows that your successful competitors are regularly posting on social media, maybe it’s time you did too.
Don’t feel like you have to make sweeping changes right away. Start with one or two small improvements – such as updating a headline, restructuring an old blog post, or filling a gap you spotted – and build from there.
Top tip: Keep a running list of insights and ideas as you go. Competitor research isn’t a one-off task; it’s something you should return to regularly to stay sharp, inspired, and aligned with your audience’s needs.
Useful Tools for Competitor Content Analysis
You don’t need fancy software to start doing competitor research. But if you’re ready to go that bit deeper, there are some great tools out there to help. Here are a few worth exploring:
- Ubersuggest: This is a beginner-friendly tool that shows you top-performing pages, keyword rankings, and backlink data for any website.
- SimilarWeb: This site gives a high-level overview of a competitor’s traffic sources and top pages.
- Screaming Frog: Here we have a desktop crawler that scans a website and lists all its pages. This is great for understanding how a competitor’s content is structured.
- BuzzSumo: This platform helps you discover the most-shared content on a topic or domain, making it easier to spot trends and high-engagement formats.
- AnswerThePublic: This tool visualizes the questions people are searching for around your topic – great for finding inspiration and content gaps.
- Moz, Ahrefs, or Semrush: You can investigate these more advanced platforms that offer deep insights into SEO, backlinks, content gaps, and keyword opportunities.
Most of these tools offer free versions or trials. Try a few and see which ones give you the insights that matter most for your content goals.
Becoming A Freelance Writer
Your successful competitors didn’t get to the first page of search results by accident. They worked hard to improve their content and its visibility, and so must you. And, having invested the time in analyzing your competitors, you need to keep up the hard work of refining your own content; that way, you can reach your audience, attract them to your content, and keep them engaged.
If you’d like to learn more about freelance writing, check out our Becoming A Freelance Writer course. It covers everything from planning and writing effective blog posts to building your brand and finding clients. Why not try a sample out for free?
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