If your content isn’t getting the traffic or engagement it deserves, it might not be a problem with your quality, but with your positioning. To compete in today’s digital landscape, you must understand not only what your audience wants but also what your competitors are doing. That’s where a competitor content audit comes in.
A competitor content audit is a strategic process that allows you to examine the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ content. This gives you insight into what topics they’re ranking for, how they’re structuring content, what gaps you can fill, and how to elevate your content performance. Whether you’re a content strategist, marketer, or small business owner, learning how to perform a competitor content audit can sharpen your strategy, reveal missed opportunities, and put you ahead in the rankings.
Step 1: Identify Your Competitors
Before you can audit anything, you need to know who your competitors are. Start by searching for the keywords you want to rank for and note the top websites consistently appearing in the results. These aren’t always your direct business competitors, they might be blogs, publications, or marketplaces, but if they’re ranking for your target audience, they’re worth analyzing.
You can also use tools like:
These platforms let you plug in a domain and see what keywords they’re ranking for, top-performing pages, and even backlinks.
Step 2: Gather Data on Their Top Content
Once you’ve identified your competitors, analyze their top-performing content. This gives you insight into the topics that drive the most traffic for them. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can show you a competitor’s most visited pages. You’ll want to pay attention to:
- URL and title of each page
- Topic and keyword focus
- Word count and content depth
- Content type (blog post, video, guide, infographic)
- Traffic estimates
- Backlink count and referring domains
You can export this data and organize it in a spreadsheet to compare it against your content later.
Step 3: Analyse Keyword and Topic Gaps
Keyword and topic gaps refer to subjects your competitors are covering and ranking for, that you aren’t. These gaps represent opportunities to expand your content portfolio.
Use the Content Gap tool on Ahrefs or SEMrush’s Keyword Gap tool to compare your domain with several competitors. These tools will show you which keywords they rank for, but you do not, allowing you to build a list of high-opportunity topics to explore.
Also, look for keyword intent, are they targeting informational queries, commercial searches, or transactional keywords? You might notice trends such as blog posts answering common questions that you haven’t addressed yet.
Step 4: Evaluate Content Quality and Format
Next, manually review a few of your competitors’ best-performing content pieces. Go beyond surface-level observations and examine:
- Headline structure: Is it click-worthy but still relevant?
- Visual elements: Are they using videos, charts, infographics, or illustrations?
- Depth of information: Do they offer unique insights or just surface-level summaries?
- Internal linking: Are they linking to other strategic pages within their site?
- Tone and readability: Is the writing style formal, casual, conversational, or technical?
- Calls to action: How are they engaging the reader to take the next step?
Compare these factors to your content. This will help you determine whether your articles are too short, too thin, lacking visual support, or missing a strong CTA.
Step 5: Assess Engagement Metrics
Engagement is a key indicator of how valuable and interesting a piece of content is to the audience. While you won’t have access to competitors’ internal analytics, you can observe public engagement such as:
- Number of social shares (use BuzzSumo or Social Searcher)
- Comments on blog posts or social media
- Number of backlinks to individual content pieces (check in Ahrefs or SEMrush)
- How often is the content referenced in other blogs or publications
If a competitor’s post on a certain topic is getting lots of shares or mentions, it suggests that the content resonates with their audience, and potentially with yours too.
Step 6: Identify Content Gaps and Opportunities
Now that you’ve collected and reviewed all this data, you’re ready to look for gaps and missed opportunities. Ask yourself:
- Are there topics your competitors haven’t covered in depth?
- Is there outdated content you could improve on with current information?
- Can you combine multiple related issues into a comprehensive guide?
- Are competitors overlooking certain formats like video or downloadable templates?
You don’t just want to copy your competitors, you want to outdo them. Find the areas where they’ve started the conversation but haven’t finished it, or where your unique expertise can bring a fresh angle.
Step 7: Create an Action Plan for Your Content
Turn your insights into a content strategy. Based on your audit, plan content that:
- Targets high-volume, low-competition keywords
- Fills in gaps where competitors are weak or absent
- Matches or exceeds the quality of top-performing content in your niche
- Uses updated SEO best practices and internal linking
- Includes visual assets or formats that competitors aren’t using
You may also want to update existing content on your site to compete better. Refreshing content with new keywords, improved structure, or more depth can help you climb search rankings faster than starting from scratch.
Step 8: Monitor and Repeat Regularly
A competitor content audit is not a one-time task. Digital trends shift quickly, and what worked last quarter might not be relevant next month. Make competitor audits a quarterly part of your content workflow. As new competitors emerge and algorithms evolve, staying informed will help you adapt and maintain an edge.
You can automate parts of the process with tools like:
These can help track competitors, audit pages, and even measure content structure against ranking benchmarks.
Final Thoughts
A competitor content audit helps you move from guesswork to strategic execution. Instead of publishing content and hoping it performs, you can make data-backed decisions that increase your chances of visibility, traffic, and conversions. By learning from your competitors’ successes and weaknesses, you can create content that not only competes but also leads.
The key is not imitation, but strategic elevation. Analyse what’s working, find the gaps, and fill them with content that offers more value, clarity, and authority. That’s how you stand out in saturated search results and build a brand people return to.