The competitor ranking for “Nashville plumber emergency” has a content gap you can see from space. Their page hasn’t been updated since 2022, covers three neighborhoods, and loads in 4.7 seconds. You could outrank them in eight weeks.
Or you could spend those eight weeks chasing “plumber near me” where HomeAdvisor, Yelp, and Angi have been entrenched for a decade.
Same amount of work. Completely different outcomes. The difference is knowing which gaps are opportunities and which are traps.
Your SEO Competitors Aren’t Who You Think
Here’s something that trips up Nashville businesses constantly: the company you compete with for customers isn’t necessarily the company you compete with for keywords.
A Nashville HVAC company might lose bids to three local competitors. But when they search “HVAC repair Nashville,” they’re competing against Angi, Yelp, HomeAdvisor, and a handful of content sites that don’t install a single air conditioner. Those are SEO competitors. Different game, different players.
Finding your actual SEO competitors:
Search 10-15 of your priority keywords. Not your brand name—your service keywords. Note which domains appear repeatedly. If the same sites show up for 8 out of 10 searches, those are your SEO competitors.
Tools systematize this. In Ahrefs, enter your domain in Site Explorer, then check “Competing Domains.” Semrush’s Organic Competitors report does the same thing. Both show domains with the highest keyword overlap.
What you’ll often find: a mix of direct business competitors, directory sites, content publishers, and maybe one or two companies from adjacent industries that happen to target similar keywords.
Which competitors to analyze deeply:
Not all of them. Pick 5-7 based on:
- Sites ranking for keywords you actually want (not just any overlap)
- Sites slightly ahead of you in authority (achievable targets)
- Direct business competitors with meaningful organic presence
- One aspirational competitor (what does success look like?)
A Nashville law firm doing competitor analysis doesn’t need to dissect Avvo’s entire keyword strategy. But they absolutely should understand what the three firms ranking above them for “Nashville personal injury lawyer” are doing differently.
Extracting Keyword Data: What to Actually Look For
Every SEO tool will give you a competitor’s keyword list. Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz—they all export thousands of keywords with volumes, positions, and traffic estimates. That’s the easy part.
The hard part is knowing what to do with that data.
The extraction process:
In Ahrefs Site Explorer, enter a competitor domain. Go to Organic Keywords. You’ll see everything they rank for. Filter to positions 1-20 (where they’re actually getting traffic). Export.
In Semrush, Domain Overview → Organic Research → Positions. Same filtering, same export.
Now you have a spreadsheet with potentially thousands of keywords. This is where most people get stuck. They see “2,847 keywords” and either get overwhelmed or start randomly picking ones that look interesting.
What actually matters in that data:
Keywords where they rank positions 1-3: This is their strongest content. Study why it works. What’s their angle? How comprehensive is it? What are they doing that you’re not?
Keywords where they rank positions 4-10: These are potentially vulnerable. They’re on page one, but they haven’t locked it down. Better content could displace them.
Keywords where they rank positions 11-20: They’re trying but not succeeding. Either the keyword is hard, or their content isn’t good enough. Both are useful to know.
New keywords they’ve recently started ranking for: This shows where they’re investing. If a competitor suddenly starts ranking for a new topic cluster, that’s strategic intelligence.
High-volume keywords in your space: Filter by volume thresholds relevant to your industry. In Nashville’s legal market, 500 monthly searches might be significant. In Nashville’s restaurant scene, you might need 2,000+ to care.
Don’t just extract data. Understand what it’s telling you about their strategy.
Gap Analysis: The Part Everyone Gets Wrong
Gap analysis identifies keywords where competitors rank but you don’t. Tools make this trivially easy. Ahrefs Content Gap, Semrush Keyword Gap—enter your domain, enter competitors, see the gaps.
But here’s what the tools don’t tell you: most gaps aren’t opportunities.
Types of gaps (and what they actually mean):
Complete gaps: Keywords where you have zero presence. Could mean opportunity. Could also mean the keyword is irrelevant to your business, serves a different intent than you can satisfy, or requires content you can’t credibly create.
Weak gaps: Keywords where competitors rank top 10 and you’re buried on page 3. You have some relevance, but you’re not competitive. Often more actionable than complete gaps because you’ve already demonstrated some topical connection.
Content format gaps: Competitors have comparison pages, you don’t. They have a glossary, you don’t. They have calculators or tools, you don’t. These gaps represent content types, not just topics.
Topic cluster gaps: Entire subject areas they cover that you’ve ignored. A Nashville accounting firm might have comprehensive content on personal taxes but nothing on business formation—while competitors own that space.
The mistake: treating every gap as something to fill.
A gap exists because either (a) you haven’t gotten to it yet, (b) it’s not relevant to your business, or (c) it’s not worth the effort. Most gaps are (b) or (c).
Before chasing any gap, ask:
Does this keyword attract people who could become our customers? A Nashville restaurant ranks for “best food blogs Nashville.” That keyword has volume, you have a gap—but unless you’re pivoting to food media, it’s not your opportunity.
Can we serve this search intent? A gap for “free contract templates” might have volume, but if you’re a law firm that charges for contract work, what exactly are you offering someone who wants free templates?
Do we have credibility here? If you’re a residential electrician, a gap for “commercial electrical code Nashville” isn’t automatically your opportunity. You might not have the expertise to create credible content.
Is the effort justified by the return? A 200-volume keyword requiring a 4,000-word guide and active promotion might not be worth it. A 200-volume keyword you can capture with a solid page and your existing authority might be.
Evaluating Whether a Gap Is Worth Pursuing
Let me be honest: I’ve seen dozens of scoring frameworks for keyword prioritization. They all have the same problem—they pretend you can reduce complex strategic decisions to a formula.
Business value times two, plus achievability, minus effort, divided by moon phase. Sure.
What actually works is asking the right questions in the right order.
The decision sequence:
First: Does this keyword matter to your business?
Not “does it have volume” or “could we rank for it”—does ranking for this keyword drive outcomes you care about? A Nashville home services company might find a gap for “DIY drain cleaning.” High volume, low competition. But do they want to rank for a keyword where the entire intent is avoiding hiring them?
If the answer is no, stop. Don’t evaluate further. Move to the next keyword.
Second: Is the intent compatible with what you offer?
Check the SERP. What’s ranking? If the top 10 results are all how-to guides and you want to rank a service page, you have an intent mismatch. You can fight Google’s understanding of intent, but you’ll probably lose.
If the intent works, continue.
Third: Can you realistically compete?
Look at who’s ranking. What’s their domain authority relative to yours? How good is their content? How many backlinks does the page have?
A Nashville boutique can’t outrank Nordstrom for “women’s fashion.” But they might outrank Nordstrom for “Nashville boutique sustainable fashion.”
Fourth: What would it take?
New content or updating existing? How comprehensive does it need to be? Do you need backlinks you don’t currently have? Can you execute with current resources?
Only gaps that pass all four questions deserve serious planning.
Competitor Content: Looking Beyond Keywords
Keywords tell you what competitors target. Content tells you how they do it—and where they’re weak.
Analyze their top-performing pages:
For any competitor, their top 10 organic traffic pages represent their strategy in concentrated form. What topics? What formats? What depth?
In Ahrefs, Site Explorer → Top Pages shows this ranked by estimated traffic. In Semrush, Domain Overview → Top Organic Keywords, then click through to see the actual pages.
What to evaluate:
Comprehensiveness: Do they actually cover the topic, or do they skim the surface? Thin content that ranks often ranks because nothing better exists—yet.
Freshness: When was it last updated? A guide to “Nashville business regulations” from 2021 is probably outdated. That’s opportunity.
User experience: Does the page load fast? Is it readable? Does it actually answer the question, or does it bury the answer under 1,500 words of filler?
Unique value: What do they provide that others don’t? Original research? Local expertise? Tools? Or are they just rewriting what everyone else says?
Gaps within content: Even strong content often misses angles. A competitor’s guide to Nashville corporate law might cover LLCs and corporations but ignore B Corps. That’s a gap you could own.
Specific questions to ask:
What would make this content more useful? If you can answer that, you know what your content needs to do.
What questions does it leave unanswered? These become your sections.
Is there a format that would serve users better? Their listicle might be inferior to your interactive comparison tool.
Finding Differentiation Angles
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about competitor analysis: everyone has access to the same tools, the same data, the same methodology. If you just find gaps and fill them with similar content, you’re competing on execution—and execution advantages erode fast.
The real value is finding angles competitors can’t or won’t take.
Differentiation that competitors can’t copy:
Proprietary data: Your client results, your research, your surveys. A Nashville real estate agency publishing monthly neighborhood market data owns something competitors can’t replicate without doing the same work.
Local expertise: Generic content about “how to choose an accountant” can be written by anyone. Content about navigating Tennessee’s specific business tax requirements requires actual knowledge.
Practitioner perspective: The difference between “10 Marketing Strategies for Restaurants” and “What Actually Worked for Our Nashville Restaurant Clients” is the difference between theory and practice.
Contrarian positioning: If every competitor says “you need SEO,” maybe the angle is “when SEO isn’t right for your Nashville business.” Not because you don’t sell SEO, but because honesty builds trust—and ranks.
Differentiation that competitors won’t copy:
Effort-intensive formats: Original video, interactive tools, comprehensive guides that take 60+ hours to create. Most competitors won’t invest that level of effort, especially for long-tail keywords.
Speed and freshness: Being first to cover emerging topics, being fastest to update when things change. Requires operational commitment most competitors won’t make.
Depth over breadth: Instead of 50 shallow posts, 10 definitive guides. Most competitors optimize for content volume because it’s easier to measure.
Before executing on any gap, ask: what’s our angle that makes this different from what’s already there?
Monitoring: Making This Ongoing
Competitor analysis isn’t a project. It’s a practice.
What to track:
Keyword ranking changes: Both yours and theirs. Ahrefs and Semrush offer alerts when competitors gain or lose significant rankings. Set them for your top 5-7 competitors on your priority keywords.
New content publication: Subscribe to competitor blogs. Set Google Alerts for their brand names plus terms like “guide,” “report,” “study.” Know when they publish something substantial.
Backlink acquisition: When competitors earn links to specific content, it tells you what content strategies work in your space. Ahrefs New Backlinks report shows this.
SERP changes: For your most important keywords, note when the competitive set changes. New players entering? Established players slipping? Both are actionable.
Cadence:
Weekly: Check rankings on priority keywords. Scan competitor new content.
Monthly: Review keyword gap analysis for any new opportunities. Check competitor organic traffic trends.
Quarterly: Full competitor audit. Are there new competitors to add? Have priorities shifted? What worked, what didn’t?
Competitive response:
When competitors target your strong keywords: defend with content updates, additional internal links, promotion.
When competitors publish on topics you planned: accelerate your timeline or find a different angle.
When competitors abandon topics: evaluate whether there’s opportunity they saw and you’re missing, or whether they learned something you haven’t yet.
What This Actually Looks Like
Abstract frameworks are easy. Execution is hard. Here’s what competitor keyword analysis looks like in practice for a Nashville business.
A residential electrician wants to grow organic traffic. Current authority: modest, maybe DR 25. Ranking for a few branded and long-tail terms but not competitive on the main keywords.
Step one: Find competitors.
Search “electrician Nashville,” “electrical repair Nashville,” “licensed electrician Nashville TN.” Note what appears. Mix of big directories (HomeAdvisor, Yelp, Thumbtack), a few established local competitors, and maybe a couple of content sites.
The directories aren’t really competitors—you’re not going to outrank Yelp for head terms. Focus on the local competitors with similar authority.
Step two: Analyze their keywords.
Pull organic keyword data for 4-5 competitors. Filter to positions 1-20, volume 50+. Export and combine.
Patterns emerge: competitors rank for neighborhood + service combinations (Germantown electrical repair, East Nashville electrician), specific services (panel upgrade Nashville, EV charger installation), and seasonal terms (generator installation Nashville winter).
Step three: Find gaps.
Run Content Gap analysis with your domain against competitors. Thousands of keywords appear. Filter ruthlessly.
Relevant to your services? Yes/no. Check.
Intent you can serve? SERP check.
Competition level appropriate for your authority? Quick assessment.
Worth the effort? Honest evaluation.
What survives: maybe 30-50 keywords worth pursuing. Not 2,847. Thirty to fifty.
Step four: Prioritize.
Group by topic cluster. Neighborhood pages. Service pages. Informational content.
Which cluster has highest business value? For an electrician, service pages probably convert better than informational content. But informational content builds authority for service page rankings.
What can you execute first with existing resources? Start there.
Step five: Differentiate.
Competitor neighborhood pages are thin—200 words of “we serve Germantown, call us.” Your angle: actual content about electrical issues common in Germantown’s older homes, specific expertise signals, before/after photos from Germantown projects.
Competitor service pages are generic—copied manufacturer content. Your angle: local context (Nashville code requirements, permit process), real project examples, honest pricing guidance.
Step six: Execute and monitor.
Create the content. Track the rankings. Adjust based on results.
In three months: which gaps turned into rankings? Which didn’t? What does that tell you about where to focus next?
Competitor analysis isn’t about finding data. It’s about making decisions.
Resources
- Ahrefs Content Gap tool: https://ahrefs.com/content-gap
- Semrush Keyword Gap: https://www.semrush.com/analytics/keywordgap
- SpyFu for competitor history: https://www.spyfu.com/
- Moz Keyword Explorer: https://moz.com/explorer
Competitive analysis reflects SEO practices as of early 2025. Tool interfaces evolve; consult current documentation for specific features. SERP composition and ranking factors vary by industry and location.