How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis: A 6-Step Workflow That Covers AI Search Too

In this article, you’ll learn how to run a complete SEO competitor analysis in six steps, with the exact tools and tactics to use at each stage. You’ll also see how to extend that analysis to AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. In 2026, your real competitors are not just the brands above you on page one. They are also the ones AI models recommend when buyers ask for solutions in your category.

What Is an SEO Competitor Analysis?

An SEO competitor analysis is the process of studying how competing websites win organic traffic, then using that intelligence to inform your own strategy. You look at the keywords driving their traffic, the pages earning their backlinks, the technical health of their site, and the content patterns that consistently rank.

The point is not to copy your competitors. The point is to understand what already works in your space so you can build something better. Without this step, you are guessing.

Two nuances most guides skip.

Your SEO competitors are not always your business competitors. If you sell CRM software, HubSpot is both. But Forbes Advisor, G2, and Capterra rank for the same money keywords without selling software. They count too.

Your AI search competitors are a different list entirely. The brands ChatGPT mentions when a buyer asks “best CRM for small business” are often not the same brands ranking on page one of Google. Citation patterns, schema, and content structure all shape who gets recommended in AI answers. We will cover both.

Why Bother Running One?

You skip the experimentation phase because your competitors have already tested which keywords convert and which formats earn links. You find gaps no one else has noticed yet, like topics they have not covered or prompts they do not appear in. And you stay ahead of AI search shifts, where visibility moves faster than Google rankings.

When to Run a Competitor Analysis

Run one before launching a new site, after rankings drop, at the start of every quarter, when a well-funded entrant joins your space, or when AI visibility shifts on a tracked prompt. For most teams, quarterly is the right cadence.

How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis

The workflow has six steps. Each step covers both traditional SEO and AI search, because in 2026 you cannot run one without the other.

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors in Both Channels

Start with traditional SEO. Build a list of 3 to 5 sites that consistently appear when you search for your most important target keywords.

There are three ways to build that list.

Method 1: Use a keyword research tool. Enter 5 to 10 of your priority keywords into Ahrefs, Semrush, or any tool with a keyword overlap report. The domains that appear across multiple keywords are your real competitors.

Method 2: Search Google directly. Open an incognito window. Search your top 5 keywords. Note the domains that appear most often. Quick and free.

Method 3: Use Google Search Console. Filter for queries where you rank in positions 4 to 15. Search those queries manually and write down who ranks above you. This surfaces competitors you can realistically beat in the short term.

Once you have your list, score their authority. Use the Analyze AI Website Authority Checker to estimate how hard each domain will be to outrank. Do not skip lower-authority competitors either. Beating a weaker site is faster, and every keyword you take builds the authority you’ll need for harder battles.

Find Your AI Search Competitors

You cannot find AI search competitors by Googling. AI models build answers from a different signal stack. Training data, citation patterns, and content structure all play a role, and the rankings often surprise you.

In Analyze AI’s Competitor Intelligence view, the platform automatically surfaces brands that appear alongside yours in AI-generated answers. Click “Track” and Analyze AI starts comparing your visibility, sentiment, and citation share against theirs across every AI model.

You can also add competitors manually. If you already know your business rivals and want to track them in AI search, just enter their name and website.

This step often surfaces competitors most marketing teams have never thought to track. A brand that does not rank in Google can still be the most-cited source in ChatGPT for your category. Both layers need attention. The strategies are different.

Step 2: Find Keyword Gaps and Prompt Gaps

A keyword gap is a search term competitors rank for that you do not. These are the most direct opportunities in any analysis because the demand is already proven. You just have to satisfy it.

Here is the workflow.

1. Pull each competitor’s ranking keywords using your SEO tool of choice. Cross-reference all five lists.

2. Filter for keywords where every competitor ranks in the top 10 but you do not. These are consensus opportunities.

3. Apply three filters before you commit. Volume must be high enough to justify the work. Difficulty must be realistic given your authority (use the keyword difficulty checker). Intent should lean commercial or transactional for short-term revenue, informational for top-of-funnel coverage.

4. Group keywords into clusters. A single piece of content should target a cluster of related terms, not a single keyword. This prevents keyword cannibalization.

5. Before you create anything, study what currently ranks. Note the format, depth, and unique angle of each ranking page. Your job is to write the next, better version.

Find Prompt Gaps in AI Search

A prompt gap is the AI-search version of a keyword gap. It is a question buyers ask AI models that competitors get cited in but you do not.

In Analyze AI’s Prompt Tracking view, you can see which prompts you appear in, which ones competitors win, and your visibility position for each one.

If you sell CRM software, you might track prompts like “best CRM software for small businesses,” “alternatives to Salesforce,” and “which CRM has the best email integration.” For each one, you see your visibility, sentiment, and which competitors appear in the response. A prompt where every competitor shows up at 100% but you do not appear is a clear gap. That gap maps to a content problem you can solve.

The platform also surfaces suggested prompts based on your industry and tracked competitors. You’ll often find queries you would not have thought to track, and those tend to be the most valuable.

Step 3: Audit Their Top-Ranking Pages

Once you know who you are competing with, look at the specific pages winning in your category. You want to understand two things about each page. What is on it. And how it performs.

Content Audit

For each top-ranking competitor page, document:

• The format. List, how-to, ultimate guide, comparison, calculator. The format reveals the intent the page satisfies.

• The depth. Word count, number of H2s, number of images, number of internal links.

• The unique value. What does this page do that no other page in the SERP does? That is the angle you have to beat.

• The on-page signals. Title tag structure, meta description framing, URL slug, header hierarchy, schema markup.

Pay extra attention to title tags. Look for where the target keyword sits (early is better), which click-enticing modifiers competitors use (“best,” “free,” “in 2026”), and which format signals match user intent (“[X] vs [Y],” “How to,” “Best [X] for [Y]”).

Technical Audit

Most ranking declines have a technical root cause. Run each competitor’s most important pages through Google’s PageSpeed Insights and document Largest Contentful Paint (under 2.5 seconds is the threshold), Interaction to Next Paint (under 200ms), Cumulative Layout Shift (under 0.1), mobile usability on a real phone, and schema usage (right-click, view source, search for “schema.org”).

Run the same checks on your equivalent pages. The gaps are your fix list. For a deeper teardown, follow our full technical SEO audit guide. Technical audits are most useful as relative comparisons. If everyone in your niche has slow sites, a fast site is a competitive advantage.

Step 4: Find Backlink Gaps and Citation Gaps

Backlinks are still one of the strongest signals in Google’s ranking system. In AI search, the equivalent is citations. They determine whether AI models reference your domain when answering questions in your space. Both follow the same logic.

Find Backlink Gaps

A backlink gap is a domain that links to one or more competitors but not to you. These are your highest-probability link prospects because the linking site has already shown willingness to link to content in your category.

The workflow:

1. Pull each competitor’s backlink profile in your tool of choice. Note total referring domains and the pages earning the most links.

2. Cross-reference the lists. Sites linking to two or more competitors but not to you are your shortlist.

3. Click through to each linking page. Note the context. Resource page, guest post, data citation, comparison article. The context determines your outreach approach.

4. Build outreach lists by context type. Resource pages take a 2-line ask. Data citations require original research. Guest posts need a content pitch.

5. Hunt for broken backlinks. Use the Analyze AI Broken Link Checker to scan competitor sites for 404 pages that still have backlinks pointing to them. If a competitor has 50 referring domains pointing at a dead URL, you create a better replacement and pitch yourself to those linkers.

For a deeper walkthrough, see our backlink gap analysis guide.

Find Citation Gaps in AI Search

In AI search, citations are how trust gets distributed. When Perplexity or ChatGPT generates an answer, they pull from a stack of sources and cite many of them. The domains that show up most often across these answers become the implicit authorities in your category.

Analyze AI’s Citation Analytics view shows which domains AI models cite when answering questions in your industry. You can filter by AI model, time period, and brand.

What you’ll learn:

• Which content types AI models prefer in your category. If review sites dominate citations, you need a strategy to win on G2 and Capterra. If competitor blogs dominate, your content has to be structurally better.

• Which sources differ by AI model. Wikipedia might dominate Claude citations while G2 owns ChatGPT. Remediation differs accordingly.

• Which of your own pages get cited and which do not. Pages that are never cited usually lack the structure, claim density, or proof points AI models look for.

This is your AI content roadmap. Audit your most important commercial pages against the cited competitors. Where they are denser in proof points, statistics, or structured claims, you can match and exceed.

Step 5: Watch SERP Features and AI Overview Placements

A SERP feature is anything on a Google results page that is not a standard organic listing. Featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, video carousels, AI Overviews, sitelinks, knowledge panels.

Featured snippets are the most actionable. You can only win one if you already rank on page one for the keyword. The strategy:

1. Identify keywords where competitors hold a featured snippet AND you also rank in the top 10.

2. Match the snippet format. Paragraph snippets need a 40 to 50 word direct answer. List snippets need clean H3 headings with concise items. Table snippets need actual HTML tables.

3. Place the answer near the top of your page so Google can pull it.

The same logic applies to People Also Ask boxes. If competitors appear there and you do not, structure your content to directly answer those questions.

What About AI Overviews and AI Mode?

AI Overviews and Google AI Mode are the new SERP features to monitor. Unlike featured snippets, they pull from a much wider source set, often including pages that do not rank in the top 10. The optimization rules are different. Direct answers, structured headings, and pages that pass an AEO audit get cited. Pages that do not, do not.

The fastest way to monitor your share of these features is in Analyze AI. The platform tracks your appearances across Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini, so you can see which features your competitors win that you do not, and what content patterns separate them.

Step 6: Track Visibility Over Time and Watch the Competitive Narrative

A static snapshot is useful. A trend line is decisive. The teams that win in search treat competitor analysis as a continuous loop, not a one-off project.

Three things to track weekly:

1. Your AI visibility share against tracked competitors. Are you gaining or losing share-of-voice across AI models?

2. The narrative landscape. A competitor with high visibility but weak narrative is a different threat than one with high visibility and strong narrative.

3. Your AI traffic and conversions. AI search traffic tends to be more intent-rich than generic organic. If your AI traffic is growing while your competitors’ is flat, you have proof of what is working.

The Perception Map in Analyze AI plots every tracked competitor on a 2x2 matrix of visibility (X axis) and narrative strength (Y axis). The four quadrants tell you immediately who is “Visible & Compelling” (you have to compete head-on), who has a “Good Story, Less Seen” (vulnerable to your visibility push), who is “Visible, Weak Story” (vulnerable to a narrative attack), and who sits in “Low Visibility” (not yet a threat).

Click any competitor and a battlecard appears with their typical rank, tracked prompts, AI-cited pages, and the themes AI models associate with them. Sales-enablement-grade intel, generated automatically.

How to Run All of This Weekly Without a Second Analyst

Most teams stop after step 6. The analysis is done, the gaps are identified, the next sprint is planned. Three weeks later the sprint ships, the team moves on, and the analysis goes stale.

The fix is automation.

Analyze AI ships with an Agent Builder. There is a pre-built template called “Compare your org with competitors and get competitive analysis” that pulls your ranked keywords, your top-ranking GSC pages, your AI visibility data, and competitor data, then runs an LLM over the result with your brand voice rules injected.

You can run it manually, schedule it (every Monday at 7am), or trigger it on a webhook. The agent runs in seconds. The output lands in your inbox or Slack channel.

What teams typically build:

• Monday board prep. A scheduled agent compiles share-of-voice, visibility shifts, top-cited domains, and competitor narrative changes from the previous week into a one-page Word doc, on the CMO’s desk before Monday standup.

• Daily competitor narrative drift watch. A scheduled agent detects new competitor narratives over a sentiment threshold and posts to Slack with the source URLs and a draft response.

• Quarterly category-narrative diff. A scheduled agent compares this quarter’s narrative themes against the last four runs of itself, then writes a one-page diff brief.

The agents inherit your data, your competitor list, your tracked prompts, and your brand voice. You build them once. They run forever.

Build Your SEO Competitor Analysis Template

To make competitor analysis repeatable, document your findings in a structured format. Here is a minimum template for each competitor.

Fill this in for 3 to 5 primary competitors. Update quarterly. Wire the AI search rows to a scheduled agent so they update themselves between reviews.

Common SEO Competitor Analysis Mistakes to Avoid

Analyzing too many competitors. Six or more makes the analysis unmanageable. Three to five is enough to spot patterns.

Looking only at keywords. Backlinks, technical health, content quality, and AI search citations all shape competitive position. A keyword-only analysis misses most of the picture.

Copying instead of beating. A 2,000-word competitor guide is a floor, not a target. Either go meaningfully deeper, or take a sharper angle the competitor missed entirely.

Ignoring AI search. The brands appearing in AI answers in 2026 are accumulating compounding referral traffic. Skipping this layer means flying blind on a real revenue channel.

Running the analysis once. A snapshot from last quarter is already partially wrong. Build the cadence in or it will not happen.

Obsessing over vanity metrics. Pursue actionable findings. Fillable gaps, winnable links, beatable pages, prompts you can claim. Not score deltas you cannot influence directly.

Next Steps: Turn Analysis Into Action

A competitor analysis is only valuable if you act on it. Here is how to prioritize.

This week. Pick your 3 to 5 primary competitors using the methods in step 1. Identify two technical issues where competitors clearly outperform you and fix them. Set up tracked prompts in Analyze AI for the 10 highest-intent questions in your category.

This month. Publish content against your top 3 keyword gaps. Send outreach for the highest-quality backlink gap opportunities. Build an Agent Builder workflow that runs your weekly competitor monitoring without you.

This quarter. Run a content audit against the cited competitors in your AI Sources view. Refresh stale pages identified in your content strategy review. Republish your competitor analysis template with quarter-over-quarter trend lines.

The teams winning in 2026 are not the ones running the most thorough one-time analysis. They are the ones that have wired their analysis into ongoing operations. Build the system once. Let it compound.