How to Find a Competitor’s Best-Performing Keywords

To find a competitor’s best-performing keywords, don’t start with everything they rank for — start with their top pages by estimated traffic, then work backward to the keywords driving each one. A competitor can rank for 3,000 keywords and get real traffic from 40 of them. Free tools like Google’s cache, SimilarWeb, and Ubersuggest get you a rough traffic-weighted picture in 20 minutes; a paid tool like Ahrefs or Semrush’s Organic Keywords report gets you exact positions and traffic-share estimates per keyword in about the same time.

This is a narrower question than a full keyword gap analysis, which compares your rankings against several competitors at once. Here you’re studying one competitor closely and asking a single question: of everything they rank for, what’s actually pulling searchers to their site? Ranking for a keyword and earning traffic from it are not the same thing — a page can sit at position 8 for a 10,000-search-a-month term and get almost nothing, while another page at position 3 for a 500-search term drives steady, qualified visits.

What do you need before you start?

• The competitor’s domain and their 3-5 most obviously important pages — homepage, main product or service pages, and whatever blog or resource content shows up when you search your own core keywords.
• At least one free tool — SimilarWeb, Ubersuggest, or Google Search itself — even if you also have paid tool access, since free tools sometimes surface a different angle (referral sources, seasonal patterns) that a keyword-only report misses.
• 30-45 minutes for a single competitor if you’re using free tools only, or 15-20 minutes with a paid Organic Keywords report.

Step 1: How do you find a competitor’s top pages before you look at keywords?

Start at the page level, not the keyword level. In Ahrefs Site Explorer or Semrush’s Organic Research tool, pull up the competitor’s domain and sort their pages by estimated organic traffic. A single page ranking for 200 related keywords tells you more about a competitor’s content strategy than a flat list of 1,000 disconnected keywords ever will, because it shows you which topic they’ve actually built authority around.

No paid tool? Run site:competitordomain.com "your core topic" in Google to see which of their pages Google considers most relevant to that topic, then check SimilarWeb’s free report for the domain — the free tier shows roughly the last 3 months of estimated visits and a short list of top keywords and referral sources, enough to sanity-check which pages matter most.

Step 2: How do you pull the keywords behind each top page?

Once you’ve got 3-5 top pages, click into each one’s individual organic keywords report (in Ahrefs, this is the “Organic keywords” tab filtered to that specific URL; in Semrush, it’s the page’s entry inside Organic Research). Note position, estimated monthly traffic share, and search volume for each keyword the page ranks for — not just the top one.

Pages rarely earn traffic from a single keyword. A competitor’s “pricing” page might rank #1 for their brand name plus “pricing” and also pull meaningful traffic from four or five adjacent terms like “[category] cost” or “[category] plans compared.” List all of them, because the pattern across keywords tells you more about intent than any single term does.

Step 3: How do you tell which keywords are actually driving traffic versus just ranking?

This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that matters most. A keyword report shows rank; it doesn’t automatically show impact. Use this filter:

Both Ahrefs and Semrush attach an estimated traffic-share percentage to each keyword within a page’s report — sort by that column, not by search volume, when the goal is finding what actually performs. Volume tells you demand; traffic share tells you what a competitor is actually capturing.

Step 4: How do you do this with free tools only?

You can get a workable, if rougher, answer without a paid subscription:

1. SimilarWeb’s free domain overview shows top traffic sources and roughly five top keywords for the domain — a quick sanity check on what’s working at a whole-site level.
2. Ubersuggest’s Traffic Analyzer takes a competitor domain and returns an estimated monthly organic visit count, a list of top pages, and a keyword breakdown per page on its free tier.
3. Manual SERP checks. Search your shared core keywords one by one and note where the competitor lands. If they’re consistently in the top 3 across a cluster of related terms, that’s your traffic signal even without an exact number attached.
4. Google Search Console’s “Performance” comparison isn’t available for competitor domains — it only shows your own site’s data — but if you and a competitor share backlinks or guest posts, checking the referring page’s own outbound anchor text sometimes reveals which of their pages they consider worth linking to internally, which correlates loosely with which pages they’ve invested the most in.

Cross-reference at least two of these before drawing a conclusion. Each free tool pulls from a different estimate methodology, so a keyword or page that shows up as a likely winner in both SimilarWeb and Ubersuggest is a much stronger signal than either alone.

How does this connect to a broader competitive keyword strategy?

Finding one competitor’s traffic-driving keywords is a single input, not a strategy on its own. Once you’ve mapped what actually works for them, the next question is usually broader: how does your full keyword footprint compare against 2-3 competitors at once? That’s the keyword gap analysis process — same tools, wider lens, aimed at finding what several competitors rank for that you don’t, rather than studying one competitor’s winners in depth.

One category worth handling separately: a competitor’s own branded search terms. If you notice their brand name appearing as a top traffic driver in their own keyword report, that’s expected — but deciding whether you should ever target or bid on that same branded term is a different call with its own risks, covered in our guide on competitor brand keywords.

What mistakes should you avoid when researching competitor keywords?

• Sorting by keyword volume instead of traffic share. A high-volume keyword at position 40 sends a competitor almost nothing. Always check where they actually rank before assuming a keyword matters to them.
• Only checking the homepage. Most competitor traffic comes from inner pages — blog posts, comparison pages, category pages — not the homepage. Skipping straight to page-level data misses most of the picture.
• Trusting a single free tool’s number as exact. Free traffic estimators use modeled data, not real analytics. Treat any single number as directionally useful, not precise, and cross-check when a decision has real budget behind it.
• Copying the keyword without copying the intent match. A keyword that performs for a competitor because their page answers a very specific question won’t perform the same way bolted onto an unrelated page on your site.
• Doing this once for one competitor and stopping. The keywords driving a competitor’s traffic shift as they publish and as rankings move. A quarterly check on your 2-3 main competitors catches new winners early.

FAQ

What’s the fastest free way to find a competitor’s best keywords?

SimilarWeb’s free domain overview, combined with Ubersuggest’s Traffic Analyzer. Both return top pages and an estimated keyword breakdown in a few minutes each, and cross-checking the two gives a more reliable read than either alone.

Is ranking position enough to know a keyword drives traffic?

No. Position tells you where a page sits in results; it doesn’t tell you how many of those searches turn into clicks. Always check the traffic-share or estimated-traffic figure a tool attaches to that specific keyword and page, not just the rank.

How many of a competitor’s keywords typically drive most of their traffic?

It varies by site, but concentration is common — a small share of a competitor’s total ranking keywords, usually the ones in positions 1-3 for meaningful search volume, typically account for the majority of their organic visits. That’s exactly why sorting by traffic share instead of keyword count matters.

Should I target the exact same keywords a competitor performs well for?

Only the ones relevant to what you sell and realistic given your domain’s current authority. Use their winners as validated demand signals and format ideas, not a copy-paste list — matching their intent and content depth matters more than matching their exact keyword.

How often should I check a competitor’s top-performing keywords?

Quarterly for your 2-3 main competitors is enough for most businesses. Check sooner if you notice a competitor has published a wave of new content or if you see a sudden shift in your own rankings that might trace back to their activity.

Manually pulling and cross-checking this data every quarter is exactly the kind of ongoing work that gets skipped once a launch gets busy. Our SEO Growth plan builds competitor-driven keyword strategy into the retainer, so someone is tracking what’s actually working for your competitors every month, not just once.

Written by Palash, founder of PalV’s DM. 5+ years in SEO, 1,000+ articles published.