Beginner’s Guide to Competitive SEO Research in the Age of AI

Competitive research is a critical part of any SEO strategy. In this video, we will be doing a beginner’s guide to competitive research for SEO in the age of AI. Today’s tools are constantly shifting, trying to keep up with constant changes in search. But we can use the data in these tools to do competitive research that helps us position our brands, our websites, and our content in ways that attract the right eyes, grow our visibility, and increase engagement and possibly even traffic.

Before we get into the tools, let’s do a broad overview of competitive research.

What Is Competitive SEO Analysis

So, what is competitive SEO analysis? Very simply, it’s the process of identifying your competitors in search and the LLMs analyzing what they’re doing to be successful, and uncovering the weaknesses we may have in our strategies.

How do we close the gap between our visibility and theirs?

You need to think like a coach. In sports, one of the coach’s main jobs is to study the opposing team: understand what they’re doing, their strengths, and their weaknesses, and then build a plan to win. That’s really what we want to do — think like a strategic coach.

Why Competitive Research Matters

Competitive research helps you:

• Identify opportunities. What topics and questions are being answered? Where are the gaps in your content or strategy?
• Understand benchmarks. How do you stack up against your competition?
• Refine your strategy. Make data-driven decisions, not just intuitive ones. Intuition matters, but backing it up with real-world data is critical.

Business vs. SEO Competitors

One important thing to note: your business competitors and your search competitors aren’t always the same.

Your direct business rivals may differ from the sites competing with you in search. This is where you need to look at language, terms, and how people are searching.

For example:

A local bakery might compete with other local bakeries for customers. But if they’re sharing cookie recipes online, their competition in search isn’t other bakeries — it’s food blogs or recipe sites.

Once you understand the difference between business and SEO competitors, the next step is to see what top-ranking sites are doing well and how to apply those insights to your strategy. Let’s walk through a few tools that help uncover this information, starting with Ahrefs.

Ahrefs’ Site Explorer 

Using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, we looked at Best Buy as an example to see how a large retailer performs in search. The demo showed how to gather insights by analyzing their organic traffic, keyword trends, and top-performing content.

Key insights from Ahrefs:

• Organic traffic trends show seasonal patterns — for example, a noticeable spike during Black Friday.
• The organic keywords chart reveals how their keyword footprint has changed over time, including shifts in keyword intent (informational, commercial, etc.).
• Under Top Pages and Top Keywords, you can see what content drives traffic and which search terms bring users in.
• The SERP overview shows who else is ranking for the same terms and how that changes, which can help identify volatility or emerging competitors.

This tool is especially useful for spotting where large competitors might be vulnerable, like long-tail keywords they aren’t targeting or content gaps you could fill.

SEMrush 

Next, we used SEMrush to look at similar data for Best Buy. The goal was to cross-reference Ahrefs metrics and dig deeper into keyword trends and visibility.

What SEMrush highlights well:

• A breakdown of keyword intent helps you understand what users are looking for and whether they’re browsing, comparing, or ready to buy.
• You can track which keywords are triggering featured snippets or AI-generated answers, which affects visibility.
• Their Keyword Magic Tool and Topic Research Tool show content clusters and themes competitors are ranking for.
• Branded keywords dominate traffic for Best Buy, but SEMrush helps uncover supporting topics where smaller brands might have a shot.

This platform is great for mapping out content opportunities based on actual ranking patterns and user search behavior.

SE Ranking Domain Analysis 

SE Ranking offers a very clean, visual interface for competitive domain research. We used it to get a broader snapshot of how Best Buy is performing and where content opportunities exist.

Standout features in SE Ranking:

• Traffic and keyword graphs show gains, losses, and new rankings — ideal for spotting trends over time.
• The tool breaks down keyword intent and difficulty, making it easier to find attainable targets.
• A unique strength is the AI Overview Research section, which tells whether a competitor appears in Google’s AI-generated answers (formerly known as SGE).
• You can also see where a competitor is losing keyword rankings, which can help you identify opportunities to take that spot.

SE Ranking is especially useful for finding long-tail, high-intent keywords that big brands might be missing and understanding how AI-driven search impacts visibility.

Competitive SEO research isn’t just about spying on your rivals — it’s about learning how search works so you can make smarter, faster decisions. Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and SE Ranking give you the data you need to see what’s working for others, where they might be slipping, and where you have room to grow. The key is to focus on the right competitors, pay attention to shifting trends (especially in AI-generated results), and use this insight to build a more targeted, strategic content plan.

Want help implementing competitive research into your strategy? Reach out to our team — we’d love to talk.

And until next time, happy marketing!