How to find keywords your competitors rank for using Ahrefs

Executive overview

Most bloggers guess at content ideas. A faster method is to reverse-engineer what's already working for competitors. Find who ranks for your target keywords, then use Ahrefs to expose their best-performing pages in seconds.

Competitors are a ready-made content roadmap — use their traffic data, not guesswork.

Finding and analysing competitors

• Search your target keyword in Google to identify competing sites
• Enter a competitor's domain into Ahrefs Site Explorer
• Use the Top pages report (not Organic keywords) — it groups keywords by the page that ranks, showing traffic per article
• The top-traffic pages with the fewest referring domains are your priority targets
• Note these pages in a spreadsheet for content planning

Expanding the competitor list

• From any competitor's Site Explorer, open the Competing domains report
• This surfaces other sites ranking for the same queries — repeat the Top pages analysis on each
• Each new competitor can reveal another round of competing domains, letting you map the full competitive landscape