Analyse Competitors' Keywords: Free and Cheap Methods

US searches/month for "analyse competitors keywords"

880

Keyword difficulty of "analyse competitors keywords" (0–100 estimate)

20/100

Ahrefs Lite (billed monthly)

$129/mo

budgetSEO Starter

$9/mo

budgetSEO Pro

$39/mo

budgetSEO keyword data via DataForSEO (United States) and published prices, October 2026

Why Competitor Keyword Analysis Matters

Competitor keyword analysis shows you which search terms already bring traffic in your niche, and where your own content is missing. When a rival ranks in position three for "email automation software," you have evidence that people search for that phrase and that the market rewards a page built around it.

Premium SEO suites bundle site audits, content editors, PPC research and link-building dashboards into plans that start around $100/mo. Ahrefs Lite costs $129/mo billed monthly. Freelancers and small site owners often need only keyword rankings and competitor domain overviews, yet pay for features they never open.

Cost pressure is the main reason people switch. In-house teams look for tools that deliver keyword and rank data without the enterprise price tag. Indie hackers running two or three affiliate sites, local SEO consultants tracking five clients, and bootstrapped SaaS founders all fit this profile. They want live Google rankings and keyword difficulty estimates, not a crawler that indexes a million pages.

The tradeoff is that cheaper tools usually omit site audits, content optimization editors and social media dashboards. Teams that need those features will still pay for the premium suites.

What Competitor Keyword Analysis Is

Competitor keyword analysis identifies which search terms drive organic traffic to rival websites, then checks whether your site can rank for the same queries. You export a competitor's ranking keywords, filter by search volume and difficulty, and decide which targets to pursue.

Competitor keywords are the phrases and questions that appear in Google results for a rival domain. They include head terms (high-volume, one or two words) and long-tail variations (lower volume, three or more words). Each keyword comes with a monthly search volume, a ranking position and an estimated traffic figure.

In marketing frameworks, this work falls under competitive intelligence or competitive benchmarking. The classic four Ps of competitor analysis, Product, Price, Place and Promotion, cover what competitors offer, what they spend, where they appear and how they reach people. Keyword analysis focuses on the Promotion pillar, specifically organic and paid search.

The method answers three questions: which keywords a competitor owns, how much traffic each one brings, and whether you have the authority and content to compete. Keyword data alone will not tell you why a competitor ranks. You still need to review their on-page content, backlink profile and site structure.

How We Picked the Tools

We chose tools that deliver real keyword and competitor data without forcing a twelve-month contract. Price came first: we looked for monthly plans and annual options that lower the effective monthly rate. Data source mattered because some platforms query stale databases, while others pull live Google results. Tools that use fresh API data from providers like DataForSEO show the current top 100 and recent search volumes.

We also required a keyword explorer that shows search volume, difficulty and trend, alongside a domain overview that lists a competitor's ranking keywords and estimated traffic. We checked how many competitor domains a project can track and whether the tool alerts you when a rival's keyword moves.

The shortlist needed a free tier for solo founders, a low-cost starter plan for freelancers tracking a handful of sites, and a pro option for agencies. We excluded tools that bundle features most users never open, such as site crawlers, content editors and PPC research, because those raise the price and clutter the interface. None of the lightweight options audit technical site health or write meta descriptions for you.

Why Competitor Keyword Analysis Pays Off: A Worked Example

Suppose you run a project-management SaaS and track 50 keywords. A competitor ranks for 1,200 terms. After merging both lists, you find 80 keywords where they sit in the top 20 and you do not rank at all. You filter for volume above 300 and difficulty below 25, which leaves 12 terms.

Manual results checks show that 9 of those 12 display SaaS landing pages in the top ten. That tells you Google treats those searches as commercial intent, so you plan new service pages or feature comparisons for them. You add all 9 to your tracker and review positions weekly to catch early movement.

Without the comparison, you would have written blog posts about general productivity topics that nobody in your category was ranking for.

How to Find Competitor Keywords Step by Step

You can start with free manual checks, then add a low-cost rank tracker to pull live Google data.

1. List three direct competitors. Open an incognito window, search your main topic, and note which domains appear in the top 10 repeatedly.

2. Run free site searches. Type site:competitor.com into Google to see their indexed pages. Click through their blog, service pages and category hubs to spot the topics they target.

3. Check their title tags. View the page source and read the <title> element. Most sites place their primary keyword near the front.

4. Build a seed list. Drop ten to fifteen phrases you found into a spreadsheet.

5. Run a domain overview. Enter the competitor's domain into a keyword explorer that queries live Google results. You will see which keywords the domain ranks for in the top 100, along with estimated monthly search volume and difficulty.

6. Check paid keywords. Free methods are limited here. Note any landing pages with UTM parameters or gclid in the URL that appear in search results, since those often receive paid traffic. A full paid-keyword report requires ad-intelligence data, which budget rank trackers typically lack.

7. Track the winners. Add keywords where the competitor ranks in positions 1–20 and your site does not. Set weekly rank checks so you see when your content starts to move.

Free site searches show what a competitor publishes but not which pages bring the most organic visitors.

Keyword Gap Analysis Step by Step

Keyword gap analysis compares your ranking keywords with a competitor's list and surfaces terms they rank for and you do not. It turns a vague sense that a rival ranks better into a prioritized action list.

1. Export your tracked keywords. Pull a CSV of every keyword you monitor, with your current position for each term.

2. Run a domain overview on the competitor. Enter their domain into a keyword explorer and export every keyword where they rank in the top 100.

3. Merge the two lists. Use VLOOKUP or a similar function to match keywords that appear in both exports. Flag rows where the competitor ranks in positions 1–20 and you rank outside the top 100 or not at all.

4. Filter by volume and difficulty. Sort so that keywords with 500+ monthly searches and difficulty under 30 rise to the top. These are your quick wins.

5. Check search intent. Search each shortlisted keyword in an incognito tab. If the top ten results are all product pages and you plan to write a blog post, skip it, because Google will not rank a mismatched format.

6. Add the winners to your rank tracker. Import the final list so you can monitor progress.

Difficulty scores are estimates. A term marked easy may still need months of link building if your domain is new.

Ranked Alternatives: Best For Each Tool

The table below compares the main options. Prices are as of October 2026 where a source is listed, and "not published" means the vendor does not list the figure.

Ahrefs is the most complete option if you need site audits, content editors and a large backlink index alongside competitor keyword data. Semrush offers similar breadth plus PPC research and social tools. SpyFu focuses on paid search history and ad copy. Mangools pairs keyword difficulty scores with SERP previews in a beginner-friendly interface. SE Ranking bundles rank tracking with reporting. Moz provides domain authority metrics that some agencies still use for client reports.

budgetSEO is a practical Ahrefs alternative when your main goal is to analyse competitors' keywords and track your own rankings. The keyword explorer and domain overview use live Google results via DataForSEO and show a domain's organic keywords, estimated traffic, position distribution and backlink summary. budgetSEO is not affiliated with Ahrefs and does not include site audits, content editors or PPC research.

The tradeoff is that budgetSEO will not audit your site's technical health or suggest content edits. Pair it with a separate crawler if you need those checks.

Price Comparison

Plan limits for budgetSEO are below. Use this table as the single reference for keyword and project limits.

Ahrefs Lite costs $129/mo billed monthly (as of October 2026). Moz Standard and the other competitors above do not publish prices in the sources used for this article, so their cells are marked not published.

Keyword difficulty is a 0–100 estimate, not a guaranteed measure of ranking effort. it builds it from the strength of the domains and pages that currently rank for each term, so a higher score signals more competition. Treat any score as a guide and check the live results yourself before committing content time.

US searches/month for "analyse competitors keywords"

880

Keyword difficulty of "analyse competitors keywords" (0–100 estimate)

20/100

Ahrefs Lite (billed monthly)

$129/mo

budgetSEO Starter

$9/mo

budgetSEO Pro

$39/mo

budgetSEO keyword data via DataForSEO (United States) and published prices, October 2026

Tracking Competitor Keywords Over Time

Tracking competitor keywords over time shows which terms gain or lose traffic and when a rival publishes content that shifts rankings. Add up to five competitors per project. Starter checks positions weekly and Pro checks daily on up to 100 keywords. Rank change alerts arrive by email on paid plans, so a sharp move by a rival prompts a review of their page.

Use the domain overview to pull a competitor's top organic keywords, then compare them with your own list to find gaps where they rank in the top 10 and you sit outside the top 100. Confirm search volume and difficulty in the keyword explorer, write a page that matches the intent of the top three results, and add the target to your tracker to watch the first weeks after publishing.

Rank tracking does not score readability or analyse HTML structure, so you will still need a separate content editor or on-page audit tool for those checks.

Related reading

• Pricing
• Free SEO tools
• SEO guides

FAQ

What is competitor keyword analysis?

Competitor keyword analysis identifies which search terms drive organic traffic to rival websites, then checks whether your site can rank for the same queries. You review a competitor's domain, export the keywords they rank for in Google's top 100, and compare that list with your own rankings to find gaps.

How do I find my competitors' keywords for free?

Search Google for your main topic, note which domains appear in the top 10, and use site: searches to see their published pages. Google Search Console shows the queries that already bring traffic to your own site, which helps you judge overlap. Google Keyword Planner gives search volume for free with a Google Ads account, but it does not show a competitor's exact rankings.

What are competitor keywords?

Competitor keywords are the search terms for which a rival domain ranks in organic results. They include queries that bring the competitor traffic today and related terms with similar intent that your site might target.

What is a competitor analysis called?

Competitor analysis is also called competitive analysis, competitive intelligence or a competitor audit. When it focuses on search terms, it is usually called competitor keyword analysis or keyword gap analysis.

How much does competitor keyword analysis cost?

Costs range from free manual checks to paid suites. Ahrefs Lite costs $129/mo billed monthly (as of October 2026). it offers a Free plan at $0, Starter at $9/mo or $90/yr, and Pro at $39/mo or $390/yr. Other vendors in the comparison table do not publish prices in the sources used here.

Which tool is the cheapest alternative to Ahrefs for competitor keywords?

it offers a Free plan (15 keywords, 1 project, manual checks, no credit card), Starter at $9/mo or $90/yr (150 keywords, 3 projects, automatic weekly checks), and Pro at $39/mo or $390/yr (750 keywords, 10 projects, daily checks on up to 100 keywords). It tracks up to 5 competitors per project and provides domain overview and keyword explorer data from live Google results via DataForSEO. It does not include site audits, content editors or PPC research.