How to Steal Your Competitors’ SEO Strategy (Legally, of Course)
With actionable steps!
📆 Thursday, 27th Feb 2025
Hey — It's Rhythm. Thrilled to have you back in Ecom Circle, where I spend my time scaling ecom brands & finding best growth strategies to share with you.
DEEP DIVE 💡Let’s be real—SEO is a battlefield. You pour hours into optimizing your site, tweaking meta descriptions, and writing blog posts that should rank… but somehow, your competitors keep outranking you.
Frustrating, right?
But here’s the kicker: Your competitors aren’t magically better at SEO. They’re just using strategies you haven’t discovered yet.
And that’s where SEO competitor analysis comes in. Think of it like legally spying on your rivals, uncovering what’s working for them, and using it to your advantage.
Let’s break it down.
But before that here is a quick word from today’s sponsor - Ignite Digital
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Step 1: Identify Your Real Competitors
Not everyone in your niche is a true SEO competitor. You want to focus on brands that:
✅ Rank for the keywords you wish you ranked for
✅ Have a similar business model (e.g., ecommerce vs. content sites)
✅ Show up consistently on the first page of Google
How to find them?
• Google your target keywords and see who’s dominating the SERPs.
• Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to pull competitor ranking reports.
Your goal? Pick 3-5 key players that are stealing your traffic.
Step 2: Uncover Their Winning Keywords
Once you have your list of competitors, the next step is figuring out what’s bringing them traffic.
🔍 Use the “Keyword Gap” tool in Ahrefs or SEMrush to compare your rankings with your competitors.
• “Missing” Keywords: They rank, you don’t. Big opportunity.
• “Weak” Keywords: You rank lower than them. Time to optimize.
• “Untapped” Keywords: Neither of you rank yet. First-mover advantage.
💡 Example: If your competitor ranks for “best organic dog treats” but you don’t, guess what? Time to create a killer piece of content targeting that term.
Step 3: Reverse-Engineer Their Content Strategy
Here’s a trick—Google one of your competitor’s top-ranking pages and ask:
📝 What type of content is ranking?
• Product pages? Blog posts? Listicles? Guides?
• If the top-ranking results are long-form guides and you’re only using short blog posts… you know what to do.
📏 How long is their content?
• Are they writing 2,000-word deep dives while you’re barely scratching 500 words?
• More words aren’t always better, but comprehensive content often wins.
🔗 What internal/external links are they using?
• Are they linking to high-authority sources?
• Are they using strategic internal links to keep users engaged?
Mimic what’s working. Improve on what’s missing.
Step 4: Steal Their Backlinks (Ethically, of Course)
Backlinks = SEO gold. The more high-quality sites linking to your competitor, the harder they are to outrank.
But here’s the good news: You can steal their backlink sources.
👀 How?
• Use Ahrefs’ “Backlink Checker” to see who’s linking to their pages.
• Reach out to those sites with a better piece of content and ask them to link to you instead.
• Create guest posts on sites where your competitors have backlinks.
Example: If your competitor got a backlink from Forbes for an article about “The Future of DTC Brands,” pitch your own unique perspective to Forbes.
Step 5: Optimize for Quick SEO Wins
Not everything has to be a long-term play. Some SEO tweaks can get you results fast.
✅ Fix slow-loading pages (Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check).
✅ Improve your title tags & meta descriptions (Make them more compelling!).
✅ Use structured data (Boosts your chances of ranking for rich snippets).
✅ Find low-competition keywords and optimize existing pages for them.
Little tweaks, big impact.
Final Thoughts: Play Smarter, Not Harder
SEO isn’t about reinventing the wheel. It’s about taking what already works—and making it better.
Your competitors have already done the hard work of figuring out what ranks. Your job? Analyze, adapt, and execute.
Because in SEO, the smartest competitor—not the loudest—wins. 🚀