How to Find Competitor Keywords – View and Review SEO Keywords (2023)

This guide will show you how to find competitive keywords.

The ultimate goal is to teach you how to see what keywords your competitors are using to rank their websites in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for organic traffic.

As you will learn below, there are many methods of checking competitor keywords as well as good keyword research tools that you can use for free to do competitive analysis for SEO.

At the bottom of this page, you'll learn how to best find your competitor's keywords to discover new topic ideas for your own website.

How to find competitive keywords

1. Use Google Keyword Planner

The first way to find competing website keywords is to use the Google Keyword Planner tool. While this tool is mainly used to find search terms for Google ads targeting, you can also use it as free SEO keyword research to find keywords used by your competitors.

All you need is a Google account to access the Google Keyword Planning tool, which is part of the Google AdWords control panel. CanSign up for Google AdWords here.

After you have logged in, do the following:

• Go to the Keyword Planner tool found under the Tools & Settings icon.
• Click the Discover New Keywords option.
• Select the Getting started with a website tab.
• Enter the domain of a competing website or the URL of a single web page. Then select the correct keyword search option: "Use Entire Site" or "Use This Page Only".
• Click the Get Results button.
• Google Keyword Planner then displays a list of competing keywordsalong with average monthly search volume to get a good idea of ​​how much organic search traffic the keyword is getting per month

2. Find competitive keywords with Screaming Frog

The next method you can use to view your competitor's keywords is Screaming Frog.

Screaming Frog SEO ArañaThe software can be used to track any website on the internet. You can download and crawl 500 URLs for free, or purchase a license to break this limit and access advanced features.

With the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool, you can analyze your competitor's websites for on-page SEO elements like title meta tags, URL structure, header text, image alt text, internal anchor text and more. If your competitor is using good on-page SEO techniques, you can easily find out which keywords they are targeting by looking at the commonly used words in these HTML elements.

3. See keywords in KWFinder

The next way to check competitor keywords is to use KWFinder, a dedicated SEO keyword research tool.

KWFinder is my favorite keyword research tool and I use it every day to find good keywords for my websites. CanTry KWFinder for FREE herevia my affiliate link at no additional cost to you. I only earn a commission if you ever switch to a paid plan.

As mentioned in my fullKWFinder review herelets you review competing websites for their top keywords along with keyword difficulty, average monthly search volume, and other key SEO metrics. You can then use this information to create similar content on your own website. All you have to do is use the "Search by Domain" feature to find keywords for the root domain or any URL on the website.

KWFinder is also recommended in mineThe Best Free Keyword Research Toolsbook page.

After using this tool or any of the other tools mentioned in this guide, you can check out this other page for tipshow many keywords per page for seoyou have to focus. That way, you'll know how to effectively optimize your content for the largest number of search terms.

4. Check keywords with Keysearch

Another popular tool to find out what keywords your competitors are using is keysearch. It is very similar to the KWFinder mentioned above but has its own unique dashboard and some other advanced features for SEO analysis.

CanTry Keysearch for FREE hereUse my affiliate link and scan your competitor's websites to see the keywords they optimize to rank for content on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

5. Use Semrush for SEO keyword analysis

Semrush is perhaps the most popular tool for finding keywords used by competitors; However, it costs a lot more (about $119.95 per month). That's because Semrush is an all-in-one marketing platform that offers a lot more features than just keyword research. CanTry Semrush for free herevia my affiliate link.

The real strength of Semrush is that it includes a keyword gap tool that allows you to do a complete analysis of your website's keywords compared to your competitors. This way you can find out whatLong-Tail- vs. Short-Tail-KeywordsYour competitors are ranked for what your site is not. You can then create new webpages targeting those keywords to hopefully get more organic traffic from Google.

6. Find keyword gaps with Ahrefs

Another popular tool for finding out what keywords your competitors are using is Ahrefs. also has oneContent-Gap-ToolThis is similar to Semrush to help you analyze multiple competitors at once to create a list of keywords your site should be targeting.

7. See keywords for ads in Wordstream

If you're looking to source competitor keywords to easily load into your Google Ads or Bing Ads account for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Wordstream can help. Use theKostenloses Keyword-Tool WordStreamto search your competitors' websites for a list of terms along with their Google search volume, competition level, cost per click (CPC) and opportunity score.

8. Check Keyword Sites Opportunities with SpyFu

SpyFuis another popular keyword research and competitor analysis tool to find competing keywords. What makes Spyfu different is that it exposes all search engine marketing tactics of its most successful competitors, includingorganic keywordsand paid SEO channels.

With Spyfu, you can get keyword data from competitors and track the ranking history of any website or domain. This gives you an idea of ​​how a change in Google's algorithm has affected the keyword ranking results for this competitor's website.

9. Use Moz to find top keywords and competitors

Moz has oneSEO competitor analysis toolyou can use to gain the following insights about your competitors:

• Main Competitors:This displays a list of your top SERP competitors on Google.
• Keyword possibilities:This helps you find keyword gaps by understanding your competitors' top keywords and the potential impact on website traffic.
• Content options:This allows you to see the best content that your competitors are using to rank for important keywords.

10. Check popular SEO keywords with BuzzSumo

Another great way to check your competitor's keywords is BuzzSumo.

However withBuzzSumoIt analyzes the social sharing aspect of your competitor's websites to find popular content. You can then reverse engineer the keywords that the content ranks for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing using one of the other tools mentioned on this page. This allows you to discover topics that have shown interest and excitement in your industry, which can hopefully lead to a higher volume of organic search traffic.

How to see competitor keywords for free

1. View the HTML source code of the website

The first way to find free keywords is to check the HTML source code of the website. You can do this in two ways:

• Right-click the webpage and choose View Page Source.
• Use the keyboard shortcut command Ctrl + U.

Once you look at the website source code, you can look for the most important SEO elements on the page, such as: B. the meta title tag <title>, the meta description tag <description> and the main heading tag <h1>. . You should see a common keyword in these three places, indicating the SEO keyword that the competitor is trying to rank for on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

In the example image below you can see the phrase “best SEO tools” highlighted for this website, which is obviously a keyword you want to rank for in the SERPs since it's in these key HTML locations.

If you want some great tips on how to properly optimize these elements for on-page SEO, check out this other tutorialHow to add keywords for SEO to a website.

2. Check the competitor sitemap

Another easy way to view competitor keywords for free is to check your site's sitemap file. The sitemap shows you a list of URLs for each website. And if the competitor has good SEO practices on the page, the URL will contain the main target keyword.

There are three easy ways to find your competitor's sitemap:

• Manual verification:Add sitemap.xml to the end of the domain name so it looks like "domain.com/sitemap.xml". Most website owners use the standard sitemap string, which makes it easy to find.
• Check the Robots.txt file:Almost every website has a robots.txt file, which contains a line of code that directs search engine crawlers to the sitemap file. Add robots.txt to the end of the domain like this: "domain.com/robots.txt" and find the line of code that starts with "Sitemap:" like this: "Sitemap: https://domain. com/sitemap.xml"
• Use Google search operators:The Google search engine allows special operators to help you find indexed content in the SERPs. You can use this group of operators to find the sitemap file for some websites. Simply replace "domain.com" with your competitor's domain and TLD extension: "site:domain.com filetype:xml inurl:sitemap".

3. Use the Google Keyword Planner for free

As mentioned earlier in this guide, Google Keyword Planner is free to use by anyone with a Google account. It is part of Google AdWords that canLogin here.

After signing up for AdWords, follow these steps to use Keyword Planner to find a list of free SEO keywords that your competitors are ranking for in the SERPs:

• Click the Tools and Settings icon.
• Select "Keyword Planner".
• Click the Discover New Keywords option.
• Select the Getting started with a website tab.
• Enter the domain of a competing website or the URL of a single web page.
• Choose the correct keyword search option: "Use Entire Site" or "Use This Page Only".
• Click the Get Results button.

Google Keyword Planner then displays a list of keywords for the entire domain or individual webpage URL along with average monthly search volume and some pay-per-click (PPC) data.

4. Download SEO Powersuite for free

SEO-Powerpaketoffers a free download to try and test its tools. You can use the free features to do a quick competitor analysis. SEO PowerSuite consists of 4 tools that cover all aspects of SEO including keyword research, rank check, backlink analysis, on-page and content data, mobile SEO, social media, analytics and reports.

5. View keywords with Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is another free way to see what keywords your competitors are using for SEO. Under theUbersuggest Keyword-IdeenIn this section, you can use the "Search for website" feature in Ubersuggest to check a domain or website URL to find potential keywords that you can also use for your website. Please note, however, that you can only carry out 3 searches per day without registering.

Search, show and check competitor's keywords. Summary

I hope you enjoyed this guide to finding competitive keywords.

As you have discovered, there are many ways to check competitor keywords using free and paid SEO keyword research tools. You can also see what keywords your competitors are using by analyzing HTML source code, sitemap files, robots.txt files and more. So just use the method you like the most to get competitor keywords which you can also use to improve the search engine optimization strategy for your website.