How to find keywords driving traffic to your competitors using Ahrefs

Executive overview

Most keyword research starts from scratch. A faster approach is to reverse-engineer what already works for competitors. Ahrefs' Position Explorer reveals every keyword a competitor ranks for and estimates how much traffic each drives.

Plug a competitor's domain in, sort by traffic, and their keyword strategy is exposed in minutes.

Using Position Explorer to uncover competitor keywords

  • Enter a competitor's domain in Position Explorer to see all keywords they rank for
  • Results show keyword rankings by country (e.g. US vs UK)
  • Navigate to the Organic Keywords report for the full ranked list
  • Default sort is by traffic — showing which keywords actually drive visits
  • Click any column header to re-sort by a different metric

Reading competitor strategy from the data

  • A pattern of branded-keyword rankings (e.g. ranking #5 for "Ahrefs", "BuzzStream") signals a review-based content strategy
  • High rankings for tool brand names often come from in-depth tool reviews
  • A few minutes in the report can reveal a repeatable content strategy the competitor is executing

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