How to Find Your Competitors' Keywords (3 Ways)

There are three reliable ways to find the keywords your competitors rank for. First, the free manual method: study their pages, navigation and page titles to see what they target, which costs nothing but misses hidden terms. Second, free tools such as limited tiers of keyword software, which surface a sample of a rival’s keywords but cap how much you see. Third, the paid method: a keyword gap report in a tool like Semrush, which lists the keywords a competitor ranks for that you do not, ranked by volume and difficulty. The paid route is faster and far more complete, but you can get a long way for free. This guide walks through all three, with the honest limits of each as of July 2026.

The quick answer: which method to use

If you have five minutes and no budget, read your competitor’s page titles and headings. If you have a free tool trial, run their domain through it and export what you can before the limit bites. If you have a paid subscription, use a keyword gap report, which is the only method that systematically shows the keywords they rank for and you do not. Most small businesses should start with the free manual method to understand who they are really competing with, then use a free or trial tool to fill the gaps. The paid gap report is worth it once you are choosing where to invest content budget and need the full picture rather than a sample.

Method 1: the free manual method

You can learn a surprising amount about a competitor’s keyword strategy without any tool, and it costs nothing. Open their site and read it like a search engine would. Their page titles (the clickable blue line in Google) are the clearest signal of the keyword each page targets. Their main navigation shows the topics they consider commercially important. Their blog categories reveal the informational keywords they chase. Type their brand into Google followed by “site:theirdomain.co.uk” to list their indexed pages, then scan the titles for patterns. This will not give you search volumes or every ranking, but it tells you what they are deliberately targeting, which is often the most useful thing. For a small local competitor, this method alone can map most of their strategy in half an hour.

Method 2: free tools (and their limits)

Free tiers and trials of keyword tools will show you a sample of a competitor’s keywords, which is enough to spot opportunities without spending anything. Ubersuggest allows a few free searches a day, Ahrefs’ free Webmaster Tools covers your own verified site rather than rivals, and most paid tools offer a trial you can use to pull a competitor’s data once. The universal catch is the cap: free tiers limit how many keywords, rows or reports you can see, so you get a taste, not the full list. The honest workflow is to pick your two or three closest competitors, run each through a free tool or trial, and export whatever the limit allows before it stops you. Our guide to free keyword research tools tests eight of these on one niche and shows exactly where each free tier runs out.

Method 3: the keyword gap report (paid)

The paid method is the only one that answers the real question directly: which keywords do my competitors rank for that I do not? In Semrush this is the Keyword Gap tool. You enter your domain and up to four competitors, and it produces a table of shared and unique keywords, showing where each site ranks, the search volume and the difficulty. The gold is the “missing” and “weak” filters: keywords your rivals rank for where you are absent or ranking poorly. That list is a content plan written for you. It is faster and far more complete than the manual method, and it removes the guesswork about which terms are worth chasing. This is the workflow we use in client research, and it is covered step by step in our Semrush competitor analysis guide. To size up a rival before you dig into their keywords, see how to check a competitor’s website traffic.

Free method vs paid method

Both routes have their place. The table below sets out the trade off so you can pick by what you have: time, budget, or both.

	Free manual and free tools	Paid keyword gap report
Cost	£0	From about £76 to $139 (about £102) a month
Completeness	A sample, plus what you can read	The full list of gaps, ranked
Search volumes	Limited or none	Yes, per keyword
Speed	Slower, more manual	Minutes
Best for	First look, tight budget	Choosing where to invest content budget

Turning competitor keywords into a plan

Finding the keywords is only half the job. Once you have a list, sort it by intent and difficulty rather than volume alone. Group the keywords into topics, because you will usually target a cluster with one strong page rather than one keyword per page. Prioritise terms where the search intent matches a page you can genuinely make the best answer to, and where the difficulty is realistic for your site’s authority. For a low authority site, that means favouring longer, lower difficulty phrases first. Then check which of your existing pages already rank on page two for these terms, because improving those is faster than starting from scratch. Our guide to finding long tail keywords covers how to expand each topic into the specific phrases worth writing for. For the full set of tools and comparisons, see our SEO tools hub.

Frequently asked questions

Can I see what keywords a website ranks for free?

Partly. Free tool tiers and trials show a sample of a site’s keywords, and reading its page titles and navigation reveals what it deliberately targets. To see the full list of a competitor’s rankings with volumes, you need a paid tool such as Semrush or SE Ranking, or a trial of one.

What is a keyword gap analysis?

A keyword gap analysis compares your site with your competitors and lists the keywords they rank for that you do not. It is the fastest way to find content opportunities, because the output is effectively a ready made list of terms worth targeting, ranked by volume and difficulty.

How many competitors should I analyse?

Start with your two or three closest rivals, the ones genuinely competing for the same customers and search terms. Most gap tools let you compare up to four at once. Analysing more than that tends to produce noise rather than useful, actionable overlap.

Are competitor keyword tools accurate?

They are estimates, not exact figures. Search volumes and rankings are modelled from clickstream and crawl data, so treat the numbers as directional. The relative picture (which terms a rival ranks for and roughly how competitive they are) is reliable enough to plan from, even if the precise volumes vary between tools.

Which tool is best for finding competitor keywords?

Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool is our pick for depth and clarity. SE Ranking offers similar functionality at a lower price. For a free first look, use a trial of either, or read page titles manually. See our Semrush vs Ahrefs comparison for how the two leaders handle competitor data.