Want to know which Google searches send potential customers to competing websites? You can find competitor keywords without guessing what rivals publish or copying their content. The useful process is to identify genuine search competitors, inspect their ranking terms, compare those terms with your own pages, and turn a small set of relevant gaps into an editorial plan. This guide shows exactly how to do that with Semrush in 2026.
Quick answer: Enter a competing domain into Semrush Organic Rankings, review its Positions report, and use Keyword Gap to compare your domain with up to four competitors. Prioritize terms that match your products, audience and search intent. Do not interpret estimated traffic as verified competitor analytics.
Table of Contents
- What competitor keywords actually mean
- Step 1: Identify real search competitors
- Step 2: Find competitor ranking keywords
- Step 3: Run a Keyword Gap analysis
- Step 4: Filter by intent, difficulty and value
- A practical ecommerce example
- Step 5: Build an action plan
- Free methods and tool limitations
- Common mistakes
- Frequently asked questions
- Sources
What Are Competitor Website Keywords?
Competitor keywords are queries for which another website appears in organic search results. They are not necessarily words intentionally added to a page. Search engines may rank a single useful page for many related queries, including natural variations that its author never wrote verbatim. An SEO research tool estimates which queries send visibility or visits to a domain by combining ranking observations with search data.
That distinction matters. When someone asks “how to find top performing keywords in competitors website,” the goal is usually to discover which topics attract qualified visitors, not to extract a secret keyword list hidden inside the site’s HTML. You should inspect both the query and the page receiving the ranking. A keyword may look valuable in a spreadsheet but have no sensible connection to your business.
Step 1: Find Your Real Search Competitors
Begin with three to five websites that solve similar problems for the same audience. A direct business competitor is a reasonable starting point, but search competitors are often different. An ecommerce retailer may compete in Google with a manufacturer’s buying guide, a specialist review site, and a marketplace even when those businesses do not share the same sales model.
Search Google for your core category and two or three buyer questions. Record the domains that repeatedly appear. In Semrush, the Organic Rankings Competitors report can also identify domains with overlapping organic keyword profiles. Use that list as evidence of search overlap, not proof that each domain sells the same product. Exclude huge reference sites or aggregators if their audiences are unrelated to your planned content.
Choose the market before comparing
A competitor’s US rankings may differ from its UK or Turkish results. Set the correct country database before extracting terms. If your site serves a local area, remember that national keyword estimates may not represent local demand. Write down the country, date and device scope so you can interpret later changes responsibly.
Step 2: Find Which Keywords a Competitor Ranks For
- Open Semrush and locate Organic Rankings (previously called Organic Research in older guides).
- Enter the competitor’s domain or, when relevant, a specific URL or subdomain.
- Choose the country database that matches your intended market.
- Open the Positions report and review the keyword, ranking position, search volume, difficulty and estimated traffic-related columns available in your plan.
- Inspect the ranking URL and live results for promising queries. Do not rely on one metric or screenshot.
- Use the export options if your subscription supports them, then remove irrelevant branded, navigational or out-of-market phrases.
The highest-volume query is rarely the automatic winner. A term such as “project management” is broad and highly competitive, whereas “project timeline template for agencies” may indicate a more specific need. A practical competitor website keyword analysis asks what the visitor expects and whether your website can provide an answer that deserves to rank.
For a wider review of Semrush’s SEO features, pricing context, and ranking tools, see our Semrush SEO Toolkit review. It covers the overall product; this tutorial focuses on the competitor keyword workflow.
Step 3: Analyze Competitor Keywords with Keyword Gap
Organic Rankings helps you investigate one website. Keyword Gap is for comparing overlapping and missing rankings. Put your website in the first field, marked “You,” and add up to four competitors. Select organic keywords and the appropriate market. The resulting categories tell different stories:
| Filter | What it means | Best next action |
|---|---|---|
| Missing | Every compared competitor ranks; your site does not | Investigate whether you lack a relevant page |
| Weak | Your site ranks lower than all compared competitors | Review page fit and content quality |
| Untapped | At least one competitor ranks and your site does not | Find niche opportunities worth testing |
| Shared | Every compared site ranks | Compare page types and content expectations |
| Unique | Your site ranks and the compared competitors do not | Protect and improve existing strengths |
Start with the Missing and Weak groups, but do not stop there. Untapped can reveal specialized questions that only one well-chosen competitor answers. The official Semrush documentation distinguishes these filters precisely. The tool does not know your editorial strategy, margins, or expertise, so human selection remains necessary.
Explore Semrush SEO and competitor research tools. Affiliate disclosure: This is a referral link. Dijipedya may receive a commission on qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.
Step 4: Filter for Useful Keywords, Not Just Easy Scores
Filter the candidate list in this order. First, remove queries that cannot lead to a relevant answer or customer. Second, classify the search intent: informational, commercial investigation, transactional or navigational. Third, assess volume and Keyword Difficulty together with the quality of existing results. Fourth, check whether you already own a page that serves the same intent.
A 90-search query with clear buying intent can be more important to a small store than a 10,000-search general-interest phrase. Conversely, a commercially attractive query may not be realistic if your site lacks the product, expertise, or independent evidence the searcher needs. These are editorial judgments. A difficulty score is a useful estimate of organic competition, not a guaranteed probability of ranking.
Check the SERP before assigning a page
Look at what Google currently rewards: product categories, software comparisons, videos, tutorials, definitions or local listings. If most results are product collections, a generic blog post may be the wrong format. If they are instructional pages, a thin product page probably will not satisfy visitors. Search intent is not an annotation you add after writing; it guides the page you choose to create or improve.
Example: Keyword Research for an Ecommerce Competitor
Imagine you run a small online store selling refillable notebooks. A competitor ranks for “refillable leather notebook,” “how to refill a notebook cover,” “notebook refill sizes,” and “best digital planner app.” The first three phrases could fit your products or practical guides. The fourth points to a digital software audience, so it is probably irrelevant unless you genuinely offer that category.
You might map the product-led phrase to a collection, the refill question to a tutorial, and the size question to a compatibility guide. Each page then answers a distinct problem. A copy-paste “ultimate notebook guide” trying to rank for all three could underperform because visitors need different information at different stages. Our Shopify SEO apps guide explains how this keyword work complements, rather than replaces, technical SEO apps.
These notebook phrases are illustrative examples, not a claim that we audited a particular competitor or measured those phrases in a live Semrush account. For your own project, use the actual exported keywords and verify current SERPs in the correct country.
Step 5: Turn the Keyword Gap into an Action Plan
A spreadsheet with hundreds of competitor keywords is not yet a content strategy. Reduce the list to a manageable editorial queue. Give each candidate one of three outcomes: update an existing page, create a new page for a distinct intent, or discard it. Record why you made that decision. The most defensible plans contain fewer, better-chosen tasks rather than a long list of near-duplicate pages.
| Candidate | Intent | Page decision |
|---|---|---|
| Refillable notebook covers | Product discovery | Improve collection page |
| How to change notebook refill | Tutorial | Create illustrated guide |
| Best digital planner app | Software comparison | Discard as unrelated |
After publishing changes, establish a baseline in Google Search Console: impressions, clicks, average position and landing-page queries. Review actual performance after enough time has passed for search engines to recrawl and for meaningful data to accumulate. A rise in a Semrush estimate or a one-day ranking fluctuation does not prove a content edit caused an improvement.
Can You Find Competitor Keywords for Free?
You can investigate many of the questions manually. Search your main product phrases on Google in the target market, record consistently visible sites, review their category structures, and compare the pages that answer real buyer questions. Google Search Console is valuable for your own site, but it does not provide a competitor’s private clicks or complete keyword inventory. Free tiers and limited reports from SEO platforms can be helpful; their current access and export limits vary.
A paid workflow becomes more attractive when you monitor many competitors, need position and volume filters, or repeat the exercise regularly. Buying the tool is optional; the core research process is the same. Verify what a current Semrush plan includes before subscribing rather than assuming every Keyword Gap function is available without limits.
Five Competitor Keyword Research Mistakes to Avoid
- Choosing the wrong competitors. A broad publisher can rank for your topic while serving a different audience. Compare relevant domains.
- Copying competing content. Use keywords to understand needs, then create original analysis, examples, visuals, or useful data.
- Ignoring intent. A comparison query and a tutorial query may require different URLs even if they share words.
- Chasing volume alone. Evaluate conversion relevance and your ability to satisfy the query alongside demand.
- Treating estimates as measured traffic. Competitor clicks and conversions remain private. Third-party figures provide directional research, not verified analytics.
Also avoid publishing multiple articles that answer the same question only because a keyword file contains many near-identical phrasings. A single strong tutorial can cover “find competitor website keywords” and “analyze competitors website keywords” naturally. Search intent, not exact-match repetition, should determine whether you need another page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find top-performing keywords on a competitor’s website?
Enter its domain in Semrush Organic Rankings, open Positions, and inspect queries associated with the competitor’s strongest ranking pages. Filter for your audience and verify the live results. “Top-performing” should mean relevant to the question you want to answer, not simply the largest search volume.
What is the difference between Organic Rankings and Keyword Gap?
Organic Rankings investigates a domain’s visible search keywords and estimated performance. Keyword Gap compares ranking sets across your site and several competitors, then groups terms by the differences between them. Use the former for discovery and the latter for prioritization.
Can I see the exact keywords that send a competitor traffic?
You can estimate which organic queries a competitor ranks for. Without access to its private analytics or Search Console account, you cannot verify all its exact organic clicks or conversions. Treat third-party traffic figures as estimates.
Should I target every missing keyword?
No. Some missing queries are irrelevant, too broad, or already covered by a page you could improve. Use audience fit, intent, difficulty and available expertise to choose a shorter list of meaningful opportunities.
Official Sources
- Semrush: What is Organic Rankings?
- Semrush: Organic Positions report
- Semrush: How to use Keyword Gap
- Semrush: Organic Rankings Competitors
Sources checked November 1, 2026. Feature names, plan allowances, and prices may change. Examples in this tutorial are illustrative, not a representation of an independent paid-account test.
