How to find competitor keywords (free and paid)

To find competitor keywords, enter a competitor's domain into a tool that tracks Google rankings and sort its keywords by estimated traffic. Then compare that list with your own rankings to find the keywords they rank for and you do not. Without a tool you can get part of the way by reading their site structure and searching Google for their pages, but you will not see volumes or positions.

This guide is about learning from what a rival already ranks for. If you are starting from your own topic instead, see how to do keyword research.

Step 1: pick the right competitors

Your search competitors are the sites that rank for your keywords, which are not always your business rivals. Search five of your most important keywords in a private window and note the domains that keep showing up. A blog or directory that ranks for all five is a search competitor even if it sells nothing.

Pick two or three. More than that adds noise before you have acted on anything.

Step 2: see what they rank for

Free, no tool:

• Read their main navigation, category pages and blog index. Page titles and headings show which keywords they target.
• Open their sitemap.xml (usually at /sitemap.xml or listed in /robots.txt) for a full list of URLs. URL slugs often contain the target keyword.
• Search site:competitor.com topic on Google to see which of their pages Google returns for a topic.

This shows what they target, not what actually ranks or brings visits.

Free, with data: use the free competitor keyword finder to see the 20 keywords sending a domain the most estimated Google traffic, with volume, difficulty, position and the ranking page. No account is needed, and you get one free search a day across the free tools.

Step 3: find the gap

The gap is the set of keywords a competitor ranks for that you do not. The free SEO competitor analysis tool takes a competitor's domain plus yours and lists up to 20 such keywords, along with their top pages and a traffic comparison. Treat it as a sample: it caps at 20 keywords per run.

For each gap keyword, ask:

The action is usually one of three: write a new page, improve an existing page that ranks on page two, or ignore it because it does not fit your offer. For software companies the gap is often comparison and alternatives pages; SEO for SaaS covers how to build them.

Step 4: study their top pages

Keywords cluster on pages. Sort their pages by estimated traffic and open the top five. Note the format (guide, tool, comparison, category page), the depth, and how recent they are. A competitor's best page tells you what Google rewards for that topic, which a keyword list alone cannot.

Step 5: check if you can compete

Before writing, check the links behind their ranking pages. A page with links from hundreds of sites is hard to beat with content alone. Our guide on how to check backlinks covers this step.

Doing it in zaDojo

The free tools stop at 20 keywords. In zaDojo you get the full lists inside a project:

1. Open Domains, then Overview, enter the competitor's domain (or just its /blog folder) and pick the country.
2. Sort the Keywords tab by traffic to see which keywords bring the visits, with position, volume, CPC, difficulty and ranking URL.
3. Switch to Pages for the URLs that earn the most traffic.
4. Save the keywords worth chasing to your project, export the table, or open the same domain in Backlinks.

A domain lookup costs about €0.10. Saving and exporting use no credits. The plan is €10 a month with €10 of usage included, and new accounts get €0.10 of trial credits with no card. Details are on the domain overview feature page.

With an AI agent connected through the zaDojo MCP server, you can ask for the whole job: "Get the top 20 traffic keywords for rival.com in Germany, mark the ones where mysite.de is not in the top 20, and save those with the tag gap." The Competitor Analysis skill studies one rival in depth, and the Competitive Landscape skill maps a whole market.

Limits to know

• Traffic numbers are modelled from rankings and search volumes. They are good for comparing sites, and they will not match the competitor's own analytics.
• Data is per country. A site selling in several markets needs one lookup per market.
• Small or new competitors may show little data, because the index covers keywords with measurable search volume.
• Copying a competitor's keyword list gives you their strategy, not yours. Keep only keywords your customers would actually search.

Questions people ask

Can I see a competitor's Google Search Console data? No. Search Console only shows data for sites you verify. Every third-party tool estimates competitor keywords from its own ranking data.

How do I find competitors I don't know about? Search your main keywords and list the domains that rank repeatedly. In zaDojo, an agent can run find_serp_competitors across a keyword set to do this in one step.

Should I target the same keywords as my competitors? Only the ones that fit your offer and where you can build a better page. The gap is a list of candidates, not a to-do list.