SEO competitor analysis in four rounds, with the tool for each

An SEO competitor analysis is only worth the hours if it ends with a few changes you will actually make. The method below runs in four rounds: choose the rivals, read their pages and keywords, weigh their links and technical health, then check who AI answers quote. Each round names the seogeoaeo.ai tool that does the lookup and what it costs in credits, so you can price the whole job before you start.

Prices and tool limits come from seogeoaeo.ai's own pages, checked in October 2026.

Round 1: choose three to five rivals

The rivals that matter in search are the domains on page one for the queries you care about. That list often surprises people. A comparison blog, a directory or a marketplace can take more of your clicks than the company your sales team worries about.

You can build the list by hand. Pick five queries that bring you customers, search each one in a private window, and write down every domain on the first page. Any domain that shows up three or more times goes on the shortlist. Cross off Wikipedia, YouTube and similar giants, since they rank for nearly everything and their playbook is not one you can copy.

The faster route is the Competitor Finder, at 38 credits a run. It lists the 30 sites that share the most Google keywords with your domain in the country you pick. For each one you see how many keywords you share and what share of its keywords you also rank for. A site where at least 5% of its keywords overlap with yours counts as a close competitor; a giant with millions of keywords will not.

Stop at five. A sixth rival almost never changes what you decide to do.

Round 2: read their pages, then their keywords

Start with pages, not numbers. For each rival, find the two or three pages that pull in the most search visits and note what kind of page each one is: a tool, a list of templates, a "this vs that" page. The format usually explains the traffic.

Then look at the searches behind those pages. Leave out searches for the rival's own brand. Note the position each rival holds: a rival in second place is hard to dislodge, while one in ninth place is within reach. Let the intent of the search decide what you would build. People trying to learn want a guide; people ready to buy want a product page.

Competitor Keywords, at 35 credits a run, returns a rival's top 100 Google keywords by estimated traffic for one country, with position, volume, difficulty, intent, cost per click and the ranking page. It also lists the rival's highest-traffic pages, which covers the page review above. It does not track rankings over time and it cannot see anyone's Search Console data.

The gaps you care about are the ones that repeat. If three rivals rank for related phrases with the same type of page and you have nothing, searchers expect that page to exist. Group those phrases by the page that would answer them. Treat every volume and difficulty figure as an estimate and compare it across rivals rather than reading it as a count.

Round 3: weigh links and technical basics

Links tell you whether content alone can close a gap. What matters is where a rival's links come from. Directory listings, partner pages and a couple of trade sites are links you can often earn too. Years of press coverage is a slower fight.

Backlink Finder, at 70 credits, shows the 100 strongest sites linking to a domain, with a link rank from 0 to 1,000, the day each was first seen and a spam score. Use one link source for every rival, because each provider's index misses different links.

For the technical side, put each rival's best page next to your closest match. Check that both return a 200 status, carry one clear title and H1, load quickly on a phone, and still show their main content without JavaScript. The On-Page SEO Checker (8 credits), AI Crawler View (8 credits) and Core Web Vitals Snapshot (20 credits) each answer one of those questions. If your page fails where theirs passes, fix that before you write anything new.

Round 4: see who AI answers quote

AI answers keep a separate score, and the sites that lead there are often not the ones leading in Google. Ask the assistants the questions your buyers ask, such as "best X for Y", and write down which sites they cite and which brands they name.

The AI Citation Finder, at 160 credits, counts which pages Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT cite for a topic. It does not cover Perplexity or Gemini; AI Answer Visibility (120 credits) samples ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini for a single question instead. Neither covers Google's AI Mode, so check that one by hand.

What a full round costs

The Indie plan is $29 a month for 2,000 credits, which covers that round with room for page checks. Every tool shows its price before it runs, and a run that fails before producing a result is refunded.

Finish with three or four actions

Write each action with the evidence behind it, a named owner and a date to look again. "Build a comparison page, because two rivals hold top-five spots for that search and we have no page" is an action. "Improve content" is not.

Repeat the analysis each quarter. If you need daily rank movement between those rounds, seogeoaeo.ai is the wrong tool for that part; Semrush Position Tracking or the Ahrefs Rank Tracker covers it.