What Are Competitor Keywords?
Competitor keywords are keywords your competitors are currently targeting to improve rankings and generate more online traffic.
Targeting competitor keywords helps you appear on the same SERPs (search engine results pages) as your competitors. You can also use competitor keyword research to reveal weaknesses, such as valuable keywords they have yet to target.
With this information, you can perform a competitor keyword analysis to find out which keywords to focus on next (more on that later).
What Is Competitor Keyword Research?
Competitor keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing the keywords your competitors are currently targeting and ranking for in SERPs.
From here, you’ll first need to find out which keywords have worked well for your competitors so far.
To start this process, you can take a deeper look at your customers and their online search habits.
Leveraging Search Intent
Users know what they’re looking for when they enter keywords or phrases into Google.
To maximize your organic success, you will need to zero in on search intent.
Search intent is the reason behind someone’s search. And your content needs to match the user’s intent.
There are four main types of search intent:
- Informational: when the user wants to learn more about something
- Transactional: when the user wants to complete an action, like buying
- Commercial: when the user wants to learn more before completing an action
- Navigational: when the user wants to find a specific page or website
How to Do a Competitor Keyword Analysis
If you’ve already done your keyword research, you can analyze your competitors to get the most out of your target keywords.
(If you haven’t, think about broad keywords from your niche.)
Performing a competitor keyword analysis can be done in five simple steps:
- Find Your Competitors
- Research the Competition
- Gather Competitor Keywords
- Export Keywords
- Organize Your Results