How to Find Competitor Keywords Using AI

Of all the keywords your competitors rank for, which ones are worth your team’s time?

A competitor keyword analysis helps you narrow the list by comparing their rankings with yours and finding gaps that matter to your buyers. From there, you can decide which pages to update or consolidate, which gaps call for a new page, and which topics to set aside.

This article will guide you through using AI to turn a competitor keyword export into a 90-day SEO plan. Each step includes a copy-and-paste prompt you can use for your own site.

What You’ll Learn

• How to identify the right competitors for an SEO comparison
• How to export and clean useful keyword-gap data
• How to group related keywords by topic and search intent
• How to prioritize gaps by business value and ranking potential
• How to turn priority gaps into content briefs and track the results

1. Choose Your Competitors

Priya, a B2B marketing manager, wants to start with identifying which websites she’s up against. In SEO and GEO, you have two types of competitors:

• Business competitors sell similar products.
• Search competitors are the websites appearing for the same keywords or questions you want to rank for. (For example, you could be competing against an industry trade magazine, Wikipedia, or the like.)

Here’s how to identify which websites are actually competing with you in Google.

2. Build Your Competitor Keyword Report

Priya settles on four competitors. Now she can ask a more useful question: Which relevant searches do those sites show up for, and how does her site compare?

Start with Ahrefs’ Content Gap or Semrush’s Keyword Gap. Both compare organic rankings across sites and surface terms your competitors rank for. Ahrefs lets you add up to 10 competitors. Semrush lets you compare your site with up to four.

Run the initial keyword-gap analysis

The buttons vary by tool, but the export follows the same basic steps:

1. Enter your domain as the target.
2. Add three to five competitor domains, up to your tool’s limit.
3. Set the correct country and search database.
4. Choose organic keywords.
5. Choose a domain, subfolder, or URL comparison, depending on your tool and plan.
6. Filter for competitors ranking in the top 10 or 20.
7. Exclude competitor brand names.
8. Export the resulting keywords to CSV.

If the export is too broad, start with keywords where at least two competitors rank in the top 10 and your site ranks lower or has no recorded ranking. Ahrefs shows how to apply this filter.

Priya then runs the following prompt on the exported CSV file.

3. Group Your Keywords Into Topics

Even after filtering, Priya’s export contains many variations on the same questions. For example, “AI SEO reporting,” “automated SEO reports,” and “SEO reporting with AI” could all be covered by one article.

Instead of creating a separate page for every keyword, she uses AI to group related keywords into topics. This helps her identify which pages to create or improve without duplicating effort.

4. Prioritize Your Best SEO Opportunities

Priya now has a list of topics where your competitors are getting search traffic. But not every topic is worth pursuing.

She focuses on topics that are relevant to her buyers, have meaningful search volume, and give her website a realistic chance of ranking. She also wants to consider whether she already has a page that could be improved, rather than creating something new.

She uses her AI tool to quickly prioritize like so:

5. Turn Your SEO Opportunities Into Action

Priya now has a shortlist she can assign. Each item needs an owner, a target URL or proposed slug, and a way to tell whether the work paid off.

She uses AI to create a simple content brief that her team can follow. Once the content is published, Priya tracks its Google rankings, organic traffic, and conversions to see whether the changes are working.

How Media Shower Streamlines Competitor Keyword Analysis

Our Media Shower marketing platform does all this for you.

Instead of doing all this by hand, Media Shower’s AI marketing platform connects your current SEO rankings, content gaps, and keyword opportunities — then brings its best suggestions to you proactively.

Sign up for a free trial.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is competitor keyword analysis?

Competitor keyword analysis compares the queries your site and competing websites rank for. It helps you find topics you haven’t covered, pages that could answer a query better, and searches your business has a reason to pursue.

What is the best competitor keyword analysis tool?

Ahrefs and Semrush both offer dedicated keyword-gap reports. Choose the one that covers your market and fits your workflow. Use Search Console alongside it to verify your own impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average position.

How many competitors should I analyze?

Start with three to five sites that share your audience or appear for the searches you care about. Include direct competitors and other sites that regularly appear in those results, such as review sites or trade publications.

How often should I run an SEO competitor analysis?

A full review once or twice a year is a reasonable starting point. Check priority clusters more often if competitors publish quickly, your product changes, or you see movement in the search results for important buyer queries.

Should I target every keyword a competitor ranks for?

Pursue keywords that fit your audience, products, and expertise. A competitor’s export can include branded searches and topics unrelated to your buyers. Check the search results before you commit resources to a keyword.

What should an SEO competitor report include?

Include the keyword cluster, search intent, competitor URL, your existing or proposed URL, and the evidence behind your priority. Give each item a recommended action, an owner, and a deadline so the report can guide actual work.