Competitor keyword research without paid tools: what you can see, what you can't, and how to find the gaps

What is competitor keyword research?

Competitor keyword research is finding the search queries your competitors' pages are written for, or rank for, and comparing them with yours to find gaps: topics they cover that you don't, and topics where they outrank you. The output is a short list of pages to write or improve, not a copy of someone else's keyword list.

It answers three practical questions:

• What are we missing? Topics several competitors have a page for and you don't.
• Where are we losing? Searches you appear for, but below page one, where a competitor has a focused page.
• Where are we ahead? Topics only you cover, which are worth defending.

Can you see exactly which keywords a competitor ranks for?

No. Only a website's owner can see its real search queries, in its own Search Console; every competitor keyword list, free or paid, is an estimate. Paid SEO suites build theirs by collecting Google's results pages for a large set of keywords and modelling traffic from them and other data. Those estimates can be useful, but they are not the competitor's numbers, and they are not your only option.

Two practical consequences follow. First, do not chase a competitor's estimated traffic figure; chase the topics, which you can verify by reading their pages. Second, the most reliable side of any keyword gap is yours, because your own Search Console data is measured.

How do you find your search competitors?

Your search competitors are the sites that appear for your important keywords, which are often not the companies you compete with for customers. A plumber's business rivals are other plumbers; its search competitors for “how to fix a running toilet” include hardware stores, DIY blogs and video sites.

1. List 10 to 20 keywords that matter

   Take them from your Search Console queries (sorted by impressions) and from the services or products you sell.

2. Search each one yourself

   Use a private window and note the domains on page one. Do it by hand: Google's spam policies treat sending automated queries to Google, including scraping results for rank-checking, as machine-generated traffic.

3. Count the repeats

   Domains that appear for several of your keywords are your search competitors. Pick three to five of a similar size to you; a giant marketplace that ranks for everything teaches you little.

How do you find a competitor's keywords for free?

Read the competitor's site the way a search engine does: its page titles, headings, navigation and sitemap tell you which searches each page is written for. This is slower than a tool, but every finding is a fact, not a model.

• The sitemap. Most sites publish one at /sitemap.xml, or list it in /robots.txt. Its URLs are the site's own list of pages, and the slugs alone usually name the topics.
• Titles and H1s. Open the pages in the sections that matter to you. The title and main heading are the page's primary keyword in almost every case.
• Navigation and category pages. These show which topics the competitor treats as important enough to link from every page.
• The site: operator, with care. Searching site:competitor.com topic finds their pages on a topic. Google's documentation for site: says the list of URLs it returns is not always exhaustive, so treat it as a sample.

How do you use Google Keyword Planner for competitor research?

In Keyword Planner, choose “Discover new keywords”, switch to “Start with a website” and enter a competitor's page or domain: Google suggests keywords related to that site's content, with monthly search estimates. This is the closest Google gets to a free competitor keyword tool.

• Google's Keyword Planner help says it reads the site's content to suggest ideas, that the text of links is not used, and that combining a keyword with a URL can give more ideas than a URL alone.
• Use a single page's URL for a focused list, such as a competitor's service page, and the whole domain for a broad one.
• The ideas are keywords related to the page's content. They are not the keywords the page ranks for, and Keyword Planner says nothing about the competitor's positions.
• You need a Google Ads account with billing details entered to finish the setup. Our guide to using Google Keyword Planner for free covers it.

How do you do a keyword gap analysis with Search Console?

Put the competitors' topics in one column and, next to each, your own Search Console impressions and average position for the matching queries; the empty and weak rows are your gaps. Your side of the comparison is measured, which is what makes this method trustworthy.

1. Export your queries

   In the Performance report, export the last 3 months of queries with clicks, impressions and average position.

2. List the competitors' topics

   From their sitemaps, titles and Keyword Planner, write one row per topic, with how many of your competitors cover it.

3. Match and label

   For each topic, look up your matching queries. Label it missing (no impressions and no page), weaker (you appear, but past position 10), shared (you are on page one too) or yours (you cover it and they don't).

4. Prioritize

   Weaker rows first: Google already shows you for them, so improving the page is quicker than starting one. Then missing rows that several competitors cover. Then check each target's difficulty with the keyword difficulty checker.

Worked example: a keyword gap for a bookkeeping firm

Here is what the gap table looks like for an imaginary small bookkeeping firm compared with two competitors. The domains are placeholders and the numbers are made up for illustration.

The result is four actions and one deliberate skip. A gap is only worth closing if it is something you sell or know; covering “payroll services” because both competitors do would bring visitors the firm cannot serve.

How does MrKeyword do competitor keyword research?

MrKeyword predicts which keywords any domain ranks for from its own index of public pages, compares competitors' pages with your measured Search Console queries, and labels every competitor position Predicted. It does not scrape Google and does not buy third-party keyword data.

• Domain Overview → Organic keywords. Enter any domain. MrKeyword takes the phrases that domain's indexed pages are about (from titles, descriptions and headings), predicts a results page for each one from its shared index of public pages, and lists the keywords where the domain is predicted in the top 20. A keyword only counts when enough other domains compete for it in the index, so a site never “ranks” just for its own unique phrases. Traffic is the keyword's volume times the click rate for that predicted position.
• Find Competitors. Compare up to 4 competitors side by side, then open the Keyword gap tab. With Search Console connected, it matches your own searches against each competitor's pages and sorts them into “Competitors target these, you're below page one”, “Both of you target these” and “Only you target these”, matching the weaker, shared and yours rows above; topics you have no impressions for at all are in Content Gap. Topic gap and Backlink gap tabs cover topics and linking domains.
• Content Gap. Enter up to 5 competitor domains and MrKeyword reads the topics in their sitemaps and page titles, then lists the ones your site has no page for, ranked by how many competitors cover them. It shows counts of competitors and pages, never an invented search volume.
• Rank Tracking → Competitors. Add a competitor's domain and MrKeyword predicts where it ranks for the keywords you track, beside your own measured Search Console position, in separate labelled columns, with a predicted share of voice.
• Who you're up against. In Keyword Research, each searched keyword shows the sites in MrKeyword's index that target it and how strong they are, with a difficulty for your own site.

Domain Overview works on any signed-in account, including the Free plan, and developers can pull the same predicted keywords through the Data API. To size a competitor, the free website traffic checker and domain authority checker use the same MrKeyword data.

How accurate are predicted competitor rankings?

Predicted rankings are directional: good for spotting which topics a competitor is strong on, not for quoting their exact position. They come from a model of a results page built from MrKeyword's index, not from Google's results, and Google weighs many signals the model cannot see.

• Coverage limits. A competitor whose pages MrKeyword has not indexed yet has no predictions. Its pages are added as MrKeyword's crawler and public web crawl data reach them.
• Thin topics are left out. When too few other domains in the index compete for a phrase, no position is claimed for it.
• It is measured. MrKeyword compares its predictions with the real Search Console positions of connected sites and shows the result on its Prediction Accuracy page.
• Verify the few that matter. Before you invest in a page because a competitor “ranks #3”, search the keyword yourself.

Which competitor keywords are worth targeting?

A competitor keyword is worth targeting when it fits what you sell, more than one competitor covers it, your own data shows Google already connects you with it, and you can realistically write the best page for it. Score each gap on those four points before you write anything.

Be wary of one pattern: a competitor's whole section on a topic you have never written about, such as a large blog category. It shows the topic matters to them, not that it will work for you. Start with the one page in that topic closest to what you already rank for, and expand only if it earns impressions. To judge how big a competitor is before you copy its priorities, our guide on how to check a website's traffic explains what each estimate can and cannot tell you.

What do you do after finding competitor keyword gaps?

Group the gaps into topics, decide one page per topic, write or improve that page, and track its primary keyword.

• Group first. Ten gap keywords are often two topics. Keyword clustering turns them into a page plan, and the specific questions inside each topic are usually long-tail keywords you can win sooner.
• Write a better page, not a copy. Covering the same topic is the entry ticket; ranking needs the page that answers it best for your reader.
• Record the decision in your master keyword list, including the gaps you chose to skip.
• Track it. Add the primary keyword to Rank Tracking with the new page as its target URL. The Free plan tracks 25 keywords.

What MrKeyword does not do

• It does not scrape Google or buy clickstream data, so it has no record of a competitor's real positions, ads or historical Google rankings.
• It cannot see a competitor's Search Console, and nobody else can either.
• Predicted keywords come from what a domain's indexed pages are about, so a competitor ranking for a phrase none of its pages mentions will be missed.
• The keyword gap against your searches needs your Search Console connected; without it, only the page-based comparisons are available.

Questions and answers