What is a competitor analysis for SEO?
An SEO competitor analysis is the process of studying which websites outrank you for your target keywords, what content and backlinks put them there, and where the gaps are that you can exploit. It is not the same as a business competitor analysis. Your fiercest market rivals may be invisible on Google, while a publisher or directory you have never heard of steals your organic traffic every month.
A proper SEO competitor analysis covers four areas: organic keyword overlap, content depth, backlink profile strength, and SERP feature ownership (featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, image packs). Miss any one of these and your action plan will have blind spots.
Why does this matter? Because SEO is a zero-sum game on page one. Every position your competitor holds is a position you do not. Understanding exactly how they earned those positions is the fastest way to build a credible plan to take them.
Key takeaway: SEO competitor analysis is a structured audit of rival websites across keywords, content, and links. Treat it as intelligence gathering, not box-ticking.
What is the difference between SEO competitors and business competitors?
Your business competitors are the companies pitching for the same contracts or shelf space as you. Your SEO competitors are whatever websites occupy the top positions for the queries your customers type. The two groups overlap less than most businesses expect.
Consider a Malaysian legal firm in Kuala Lumpur. Its business competitors are other law firms. Its SEO competitors for a query like 'employment law Malaysia' might include a legal news portal, a government FAQ page, and an HR software blog, none of which are chasing the same clients. If you only analyse rival firms, you miss the content strategies actually dominating the SERP.
The practical test: type your five most commercially valuable keywords into Google Incognito, note the top five results for each, and tally which domains appear most often. Those are your real SEO competitors, regardless of whether you have ever thought of them as rivals.
Key takeaway: Always build your SEO competitor list from SERP data, not from your sales team's list of competing businesses.
How do you identify your true SEO competitors?
Pull the top ten organic results for each of your ten highest-priority keywords, count how many times each domain appears, and rank them by frequency. The domains with the most overlapping keyword rankings are your true SEO competitors.
Here is a repeatable process for Malaysian businesses:
01. List your ten most commercially important keywords. Include local variants where relevant, for example 'payroll software Malaysia' alongside 'payroll software KL'.
02. Run each keyword in Google Incognito (or use a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Ubersuggest) and record the top ten organic results, excluding ads and local pack entries.
03. Build a tally table. Each time a domain appears, add a mark. After ten keywords, the domains with the highest tallies are your primary SEO competitors.
04. Cross-reference with a keyword overlap tool. Ahrefs' Competing Domains report and Semrush's Organic Research tool both surface sites that share a large portion of your ranking keywords. These tools also show which competitor ranks for keywords you do not, which is the seed of your keyword gap analysis.
05. Shortlist three to five competitors for deep analysis. Going wider than five dilutes the work without meaningfully improving your action plan.
A note on the Malaysian search landscape: queries in Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin often surface different competitor sets than English queries for the same topic. If your audience searches in more than one language, run the identification process in each language separately. BM variant example: 'analisis pesaing SEO' can return a meaningfully different SERP than 'SEO competitor analysis Malaysia'.
Key takeaway: Let SERP data, not intuition, define your competitor shortlist. Three to five well-chosen rivals give you more actionable intelligence than a sprawling list of ten.
How do you find the keywords your competitors are ranking for?
Export your competitor's full organic keyword set from a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush, then subtract your own ranking keywords. The remainder is your keyword gap: queries where they earn traffic and you do not appear at all.
This is the highest-leverage step in the entire process. Most businesses skip straight to 'let's create more content' without first confirming which specific queries are worth targeting. The keyword gap analysis solves that.
Step-by-step keyword gap process:
01. In Ahrefs, open Site Explorer, enter your domain, then navigate to Content Gap. Enter your three to five shortlisted competitors. The tool returns keywords at least one of them ranks for that you do not.
02. In Semrush, the equivalent is the Keyword Gap tool under Competitive Research. Enter your domain and up to four competitors. Filter by 'Missing' to see keywords none of your pages rank for, and 'Weak' to see keywords where you rank but below page one.
03. Sort the output by Keyword Difficulty first, then by search volume. In the Malaysian market, prioritise keywords with a difficulty score that is achievable relative to your current domain authority. A low-difficulty, moderate-volume keyword you can rank for in three months beats a high-volume keyword you will chase for two years.
04. Tag each keyword by intent: informational (blog or FAQ content), commercial investigation (comparison or review page), or transactional (service or product page). Build content in that priority order if revenue is the goal.
Below is a general framework for categorising keyword gap findings. Values shown are illustrative categories, not measured data.
Keyword Gap Priority Framework:
– Priority Tier 1 (Act first): Low difficulty, clear commercial or transactional intent, competitor ranking in positions 1 to 5
– Priority Tier 2 (Plan for Q2): Low-to-medium difficulty, informational intent, competitor ranking in positions 1 to 10
– Priority Tier 3 (Backlog): Medium-to-high difficulty, any intent, competitor ranking in positions 1 to 5
– Deprioritise: High difficulty, low volume, unclear or navigational intent
This framework is a general planning reference, not measured client data.
Key takeaway: A keyword gap analysis tells you exactly which queries are worth creating content for. Without it, your content calendar is guesswork.
How do you analyse a competitor's backlink profile?
Export your competitor's referring domains, identify the link types driving their authority (editorial mentions, directory listings, guest posts, resource pages), then build a targeted outreach list focused on sources that are both attainable and relevant to your site.
Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals Google acts on. Knowing where a competitor's domain authority comes from tells you which link-building tactics are actually working in your niche and market.
How to run the backlink audit:
01. Enter your competitor's domain into Ahrefs Site Explorer or Semrush's Backlink Analytics. Export the referring domains list, not just individual backlink URLs. Domain-level data is more useful for strategy.
02. Filter for high-authority referring domains (Domain Rating or Authority Score above 40 is a reasonable starting threshold for most Malaysian market contexts). Ignore link farms, private blog networks, and irrelevant foreign directories.
03. Categorise the link types you find. Common categories include: industry publications and news sites, local business directories (.com.my, Malaysia-specific listings), niche-relevant blogs and resources, government or university pages (.gov.my, .edu.my), and partner or supplier pages.
04. Cross-reference your own backlink profile. Any referring domain linking to a competitor but not to you is a link gap opportunity. These are warm prospects because the site has already shown willingness to link to content in your space.
05. Build an outreach shortlist. Prioritise pages where a link to your content would add genuine value: a resource page missing your topic, a roundup that references competitors but not you, a local directory where you are not yet listed.
One thing the Malaysian market does well is local citation building through Malay-language directories and regional chambers of commerce listings. If your competitor has these and you do not, that is a quick structural gap to close before pursuing editorial links.
Key takeaway: Competitor backlink analysis is not about copying their link list. It is about understanding which link types carry weight in your niche, then earning those links through better content or direct outreach.
How do you analyse competitor content for SEO gaps?
For each top-ranking competitor page, assess content depth, topical coverage, SERP feature ownership, and on-page structure. The goal is to find where their content is thin, outdated, or missing an angle you can own.
Content gap analysis goes beyond keywords. A competitor might rank for a term with a page that is two years old, misses several related subtopics, or ignores the local Malaysian context entirely. Those weaknesses are your entry points.
Content audit checklist for each competitor page:
– Word count and depth: Is the page genuinely comprehensive or padded? A long page that never answers the core query is beatable with a tighter, better-structured response.
– SERP features owned: Does the page hold a featured snippet, a People Also Ask answer, or a top image result? Check what format triggered that feature (a concise definition, a numbered list, a table) and match or improve it.
– Freshness: When was the page last updated? Stale content on fast-moving topics (regulations, software pricing, market data) is an easy win if you publish something current.
– Local relevance: Does the page acknowledge Malaysian specifics: RM pricing, local regulations, city-level context? International content often ignores this. Local relevance is a genuine differentiator on .com.my SERPs.
– Internal linking structure: Pages with strong internal link equity from a site's other high-authority pages are harder to displace. Check whether the competitor's top-ranking page is the natural destination of most of their internal links on that topic.
The Skyscraper approach has been discussed widely in SEO circles. What the better Malaysian sites do differently is not just adding more words but adding more local specificity: case examples from Klang Valley businesses, pricing in RM, references to local regulatory bodies. That is the differentiator that generic content farms cannot replicate.
Key takeaway: Content gap analysis is about finding the angle your competitor left uncovered. Local specificity, fresh data, and better structure are the three levers that move results in the Malaysian market.
How do you turn SEO competitor analysis into an action plan?
Consolidate your keyword gap, backlink gap, and content gap findings into a prioritised task list, grouped by effort and impact. Assign ownership and a timeline before the document leaves the strategy meeting.
An SEO competitor analysis that does not end in a calendar of specific actions is just a report. Here is how we convert findings into work at IM Consultant Services.
The four-output action plan:
01. Quick wins list. These are actions completable within thirty days: fixing missing meta descriptions, adding your site to local directories your competitors already occupy, updating one stale page with fresh data and a new publish date. Quick wins build momentum and protect existing rankings.
02. Content production queue. Rank your keyword gap findings by Tier 1, 2, and 3 as described in the keyword gap section. Assign a page type (blog post, service page, FAQ cluster) and a target publish date to each Tier 1 keyword. A realistic pace for most small-to-medium Malaysian businesses is two to four new optimised pages per month.
03. Link-building outreach list. Take your top twenty link gap prospects and prepare personalised outreach, referencing specifically why your content is a better or complementary resource than what they currently link to. Spray-and-pray link outreach has a near-zero response rate in 2026. Specificity is the only thing that works.
04. Monitoring cadence. Set up rank tracking for every keyword on your gap list. Check competitor ranking changes monthly. Markets shift: a competitor who outranked you in January may have been hit by a core update by March, opening positions you should move into quickly.
Want us to run this competitor analysis framework on your site and deliver a prioritised action plan? We will map your full keyword gap and identify the three highest-impact moves for your domain. Reach out to the IM Consultant Services team and we will turn this into a working document for your marketing calendar.
Key takeaway: The deliverable of a competitor analysis is not a slide deck. It is a dated task list with owners. If every action does not have a person and a deadline, the analysis will not change your rankings.
What tools do you need to do a competitor analysis for SEO?
You need one keyword research and site audit platform (Ahrefs or Semrush are the industry standards), Google Search Console for your own site's baseline data, and Google itself for manual SERP checks. Free tools can cover the basics; paid platforms are necessary for deep keyword gap and backlink work.
Here is a practical tool stack by budget level:
Starting out (low budget):
– Google Search Console: your own performance data, free
– Google Keyword Planner: basic volume data, free
– Ubersuggest free tier: limited competitor keyword data
– Manual SERP checks in Incognito: competitor identification, free
Growth stage (mid budget):
– Ahrefs Lite or Semrush Pro: full keyword gap, backlink analysis, content gap reports
– Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs): on-page audit of competitor pages
– Google Alerts: monitors competitor brand mentions and new content
Advanced (agency or in-house SEO team):
– Ahrefs or Semrush at higher tiers for API access and more data exports
– Surfer SEO or Clearscope: content depth benchmarking against ranking pages
– SE Ranking: strong value-for-money option well-suited to Malaysian agency workflows
One common mistake: businesses pay for an enterprise tool but only use it for rank tracking. Competitor analysis requires the keyword gap, backlink, and content gap modules. If you are not using those features, you are leaving most of the tool's value on the table.
Key takeaway: Ahrefs or Semrush combined with Google Search Console covers the vast majority of SEO competitor analysis needs. Start with what you have and upgrade once you have exhausted the free tier's limits.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between SEO competitors and business competitors?
SEO competitors are the websites ranking above you for your target keywords. Business competitors are companies pitching for the same customers. The two groups often have little overlap. A legal firm's business rivals are other firms, but its SEO competitors for 'employment law Malaysia' may include news portals and HR blogs. Always build your SEO competitor list from real SERP data, not your sales team's view of the market.
How often should you do an SEO competitor analysis?
Run a full SEO competitor analysis every six months as a baseline. Run a lighter check (rank movements, new competitor content, fresh backlink gaps) monthly. After a Google core update, run an immediate check: core updates redistribute positions significantly, and competitors who drop create opportunities you should act on within weeks, not quarters.
What tools do you need to do a competitor analysis for SEO?
At minimum you need Google Search Console (free, for your own baseline) and one paid keyword platform. **Ahrefs** and **Semrush** are the industry standards for keyword gap and backlink analysis. SE Ranking is a strong budget alternative popular with Malaysian agencies. Free tools like Ubersuggest cover basics but lack the depth needed for backlink gap work and full organic keyword exports.
How do you find keywords your competitors rank for that you do not?
Use the Content Gap tool in Ahrefs or the Keyword Gap tool in Semrush. Enter your domain and up to four competitors. Filter results by 'Missing' (keywords none of your pages rank for) and 'Weak' (keywords where you rank outside the top ten). Sort by keyword difficulty first, then volume, to prioritise the gaps you can close fastest.
How do you use backlink analysis in SEO competitor research?
Export your competitor's referring domains from Ahrefs or Semrush, then compare against your own backlink profile. Any domain linking to a competitor but not to you is a link gap opportunity. Prioritise sites that have already linked to multiple competitors in your niche: they are warm prospects. In Malaysia, local directories and .com.my industry publications are often the fastest structural gaps to close.
Can you do SEO competitor analysis without paid tools?
Yes, at a basic level. Manual SERP checks in Google Incognito identify your true competitors. Google Search Console shows which queries you already rank for. Ubersuggest's free tier gives limited competitor keyword data. However, **paid tools are necessary for backlink gap analysis and full keyword gap exports**. For any business investing seriously in SEO, a paid platform pays for itself quickly through better-targeted content decisions.