Free Tools for Competitor Website Analysis in 2022

Mar 03 , 2022

Even in 2022 we come across those who believe that a good content is more than enough for a brand’s website to have good traffic. If only it was that easy! Developers know how competitive it is to get on the top slot in a Google search, let alone hold that spot. And when Google paid ads, and other “features” take up the space on SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages), things get more complicated. Which is why you do not just need good content, but also need to carry out good SEO practices, and observe how your competitors act to gain traffic.

Here are a few tools you can use to help you improve your website’s performance at the expenses of your competitors.

Alexa: Alexa, from the house of Amazon, may perhaps be one of the first and most used tools by marketers all across the globe, and for a good reason too! It focuses on four main tools, namely the Audience overlap tool (which finds competitor sites, runs a competitive analysis, and uncovers ways to get in front of your audience), Site overview (research and track the performance of relevant sites), Site comparisons (benchmark your website traffic and performance metrics against others in your industry), and Top sites (used to view and analyse the highest performing sites).
SimilarWeb: SimilarWeb is an effective competitor analysis tool that will allow you to benchmark against your competitors and industry, reveal your competitor’s analytics and online strategy, discover new opportunities, identify emerging leads and new players, and understand consumer intent and journey
BrandMentions: BrandMentions is effective in inferring every mention across the Internet, including non-social sites too. In essence, if a brand is mentioned anywhere online, BrandMentions will find it, index it, and inform you. It can also help you monitor your competitor’s keywords and social handles in addition to your brand name and social handle.
Mention: Mention is special because it is easy to understand and use. And more importantly, it can provide competitive analysis to track specific competitors and compare key metrics. It also offers integration with Slack and sends you a daily digest email that summarizes what you’re monitoring.
Ahrefs: Ahrefs’s key competitive analysis tool is the Organic Research Report, which will show you the exact keywords your competitors are ranking for in organic search results and how much traffic this brings them. Its Top Pages report shows the pages that send the most traffic to their sites, and its Content Gap feature uncovers the keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t!
Neil Patel All-in-One SEO Tool: Now here’s an interesting tool that can tell you why your competitors rank so high and how you can outrank them. This tool can also tell you the number of organic keywords the site ranks for, the traffic it gets from these keywords, the number of paid keywords it is currently bidding for, and an estimate of their paid ad cost.

Apart from these, there are also other tools you may use, such as Spyfu, VidIQ, Social Mention, BuzzSumo, Semrush, Sprout Social and more. Regardless, at the end of the day, you must choose a tool that can make you comfortable and give you the results you are looking for. And no other way to do so than trying them all by yourself!