Semrush estimates competitors’ search visibility, traffic, advertising, backlinks, and AI-answer presence from its own databases. It does not expose their private analytics, conversion rate, profitability, or strategy. A useful analysis treats every third-party number as directional and converts it into testable actions for the company’s own site.
Match the tool to the question
| Question | Semrush tool | Output to review |
|---|---|---|
| Who competes in organic search? | Organic Rankings Competitors | Common keywords, competition level, estimated traffic |
| Which keywords are missing? | Keyword Gap | Missing, weak, untapped and shared terms |
| Which pages drive visibility? | Organic Rankings Pages | Estimated traffic, keywords and URL patterns |
| Where do rivals earn links? | Backlink Analytics and Backlink Gap | Referring domains, linked pages, authority and link context |
| How may channels compare? | Traffic Analytics / Traffic & Market | Estimated visits, sources, geography and audience patterns |
| What paid messaging appears? | Advertising Research | Keywords, ads, landing pages and history where available |
| Where are brands cited in AI? | AI Visibility products | Prompts, mentions, competitors and cited sources by coverage |
Semrush packages SEO, traffic and market intelligence, AI visibility, advertising, local, social, and other capabilities across toolkits and tiers. Confirm the subscription includes the named tool, country database, history, exports, projects, users, and API access. A trial should use real competitors and a normal monthly workload.
Step 1: define the competitive set
Start with three categories. Business competitors sell a similar product to the same buyer. Search competitors rank for the same queries but may monetize differently. Attention competitors influence the audience through publications, communities, marketplaces, or tools.
Enter the company domain in Organic Rankings and open the Competitors report. Semrush identifies domains with overlapping ranking keywords and calculates a competition measure. Remove giant platforms or dictionaries unless they genuinely compete for the target intent. Add known commercial rivals that the algorithm misses.
Create a list of three to five domains for each market or product line. Compare like with like: subfolder versus subfolder where possible, not a regional product category against a global corporate domain.
Step 2: establish directional baselines
Use Domain Overview for a fast snapshot of organic keywords, estimated traffic, paid presence, backlinks, and trends. Record the selected country, device, date, and database. Then open Organic Rankings for detail.
Look at multi-month direction rather than a single estimate. Sudden changes can reflect a site migration, seasonality, algorithm update, database change, or lost rankings. Inspect position changes and the actual ranking pages before explaining the movement.
Do not present estimated traffic as Google Analytics sessions. Semrush models visibility from rankings, search-volume estimates, and expected clicks. Use it to compare consistent directional signals, and use first-party data for the company’s own outcomes.
Step 3: analyze top pages and topics
In Organic Rankings, review Pages and Positions. Filter for the target country, relevant intent, and positions likely to matter. Export the competitor’s high-visibility URLs with estimated traffic, ranking terms, and trend.
Classify page type: product, category, comparison, guide, tool, template, data study, glossary, or brand page. Note whether performance is concentrated in a few pages and whether the asset has links, original data, or a useful interactive element.
Do not copy the outline. Ask why the page deserves attention and what evidence the company can add. A competitor’s successful calculator suggests user demand for a task, not permission to reproduce its interface.
Step 4: run Keyword Gap
Enter the company and up to the allowed competitor set. Choose organic keywords and the correct country database. Review categories such as Missing, Weak, Untapped, Strong, and Shared according to the interface.
Filter by business-relevant intent, realistic difficulty, meaningful volume, and SERP features. Exclude competitor brand terms unless the comparison is lawful, useful, and honest. Group related keywords into page-level needs rather than creating one URL per term.
Check the live results for each priority cluster. A missing term may require a product page, local page, video, or tool rather than a blog article. Map the opportunity to an existing page before proposing new content.
Step 5: inspect backlink gaps
Use Backlink Analytics to examine referring domains, linked pages, anchors, link types, countries, and new or lost patterns. Backlink Gap compares competitors and identifies domains linking to several rivals but not the company.
Qualify prospects manually. Open the source page and determine why the link exists. Useful categories include industry directories, associations, supplier pages, research citations, tools, guest expertise, journalism, and resource lists. Discard scraped sites, paid-link networks, irrelevant foreign domains, and hacked pages.
Turn patterns into assets. If competitors earn citations to annual data studies, build a stronger transparent study. If relevant associations list certified providers, complete the legitimate membership process. Never treat a high Authority Score as proof a link is safe or attainable.
Step 6: compare traffic and audience estimates
Traffic Analytics or Traffic & Market products can estimate visits, channel mix, geography, engagement, and audience overlap for competitor sites, subject to package and data availability. Use consistent domains, dates, geography, and device settings.
Look for hypotheses: a rival may rely heavily on referrals, direct traffic, paid search, or a particular country. Validate by inspecting campaigns, public partnerships, backlinks, ad libraries, and search visibility. Small sites can have sparse or volatile estimates.
These reports cannot reveal profit. A channel with substantial traffic may acquire low-value visitors. Do not copy a spending pattern without knowing unit economics.
Step 7: review paid-search evidence
Advertising Research can show keywords, ad copy, positions, and landing pages found in the selected market. PLA or display tools may provide additional evidence depending on subscription and region.
Group competitor messages by promise, proof, offer, audience, and call to action. Inspect landing-page consistency. Long-running ads can indicate continued testing or value, but they do not prove profitability.
Use the analysis to formulate experiments, not plagiarism. Preserve screenshots and dates because ads change quickly. Follow trademark and comparative-advertising rules.
Step 8: assess AI visibility carefully
Semrush has expanded competitor research into AI platforms, including visibility across tracked prompts and cited sources. Use it to see where competitors appear, which questions trigger them, and what sources receive citations within the product’s monitored database.
Prompt sets are samples, not universal market share. Record platform, model, location, date, and prompt category. Verify important responses manually. Improve source pages with accurate entities, original evidence, and direct answers rather than mass-producing speculative AI content.
Step 9: turn findings into a roadmap
Create an opportunity table with evidence, affected funnel stage, proposed asset or fix, expected business outcome, effort, confidence, owner, and success measure. Limit the first cycle to five actions.
Examples include consolidating overlapping pages, upgrading a high-impression guide, publishing an original benchmark, building a comparison page, repairing internal links, reclaiming lost links, or pitching a relevant association resource.
Connect Semrush with Search Console and Analytics where appropriate. Track first-party impressions, clicks, conversions, and revenue for the company’s pages. Re-run competitor analysis quarterly and after major market events, not every time a ranking moves.
Verdict
Organic Rankings, Keyword Gap, and Backlink Gap form the most useful Semrush competitor workflow. Traffic and AI visibility products add context when the subscription and decision justify them. The platform is strongest at identifying where to investigate, not at proving a competitor’s commercial results.
Choose three true competitors, validate every major estimate against live pages, and turn the analysis into five owned experiments. A smaller evidence-backed roadmap beats a hundred exported “missing keywords†that no one will implement.