Free Internet Marketing & Search Engine Marketing Competitive Research Tools

Overview: These are free and paid tools which will help you determine how large a competitor's traffic stream is, and which search terms are sending them the most traffic. Watch this video for a brief introduction to using the following tools.

Competitive research tools can help you find a baseline for what to do, but some companies that focus on the competition too much instead of adding value to their offerings actually end up destroying their own profit margins.

Competitive Research Tool

SEO Book Competitive Research Tool - What keywords are competing businesses ranking for? Which of them get the most search volume? Which of them has the greatest value? Should you target those keywords as well? Find out with our competitive research tool, which comes as a free bonus when you join our SEO training program.

SEO Toolbar

SEO Toolbar - Add useful marketing data (like link details, site age, site size) right at the top of your browser.

SEO for Firefox

SEO for Firefox - Import useful marketing data (like link details, site age, site size) right into Google and Yahoo search results.

General Competitive Research Tools

• Alexa - shows traffic trends for competing websites. Alexa has a heavy webmaster bias that is nowhere near as noticeable at Compete or Quantcast.
• Compete.com - shows you traffic trends for competing websites. Allows you to compare sites head to head. Also offers a paid search analytics tool which is both exceptionally useful and affordably priced.
• Quantcast - shows site traffic and demographic trends and details. Also allows you to download a list of their top 1,000,000 websites.
• Google Trends for Websites - free tool from Google showing traffic estimates, visitor country location, top 10 related websites, and top 10 related keywords. Only returns data for fairly high traffic websites though.
• Google Search Insights - shows keyword trends, hot keywords by cateogry, and top geographic regions for a keyword.
• Archive.org - see how old a website is and what it looked like in the past
• DomainTools - see Whois data and how many times a domain has changed hands
• SearchStatus - highlights nofollow links, shows PageRank, shows Alexa rank, and provides links to some backlink information
• Xinu - lists some SEO related data plus more general web related data points like Alexa ranking and Del.icio.us bookmarks.

Paid Competitive Research Tools

• SEMRush - competitive research tool from the folks who made SEO Digger. It covers both AdWords & organic search results, adding data like keyword value and keyword volume to ranking data. Full SEM Rush review here & we also secured a free 2-week trial code you can use here (no credit card required).
• Ahrefs - offers SERP ranking data & link data. Clicking this link will get you 50% off your first month. Ahrefs review here.
• Compete.com Search Analytics - low cost competitive tool showing keywords that send competing sites the most traffic.
• HitWise - similar to Compete.com Search Analytics, but costs about $10,000 and up.
• KeyCompete - shows keywords that competitors are buying
• KeywordSpy - similar to KeyCompete, but with more data - including cached ad copy and affiliate data
• SearchMetrics - offers SERP ranking data & link data. Provides historical ranking data, as well. Primarily focused on enterprise-level clients, but has a more accessible lower cost Essentials level.
• SEMPhonic - tracks keyword rankings and provides competitive reporting
• SpyFu - shows terms that competitors are buying or ranking for in the organic search results.
• Trellian Competitive Intelligence - shows keywords that competitors rank for and keywords that send them significant traffic.

SEO Related General Competitive Research Tools

• SEMRush - competitive research tool from the folks who made SEO Digger. It covers both AdWords & organic search results, adding data like keyword value and keyword volume to ranking data. Full SEM Rush review here & we also secured a free 2-week trial code you can use here (no credit card required).
• IndexRank - scores how well your site is getting indexed in Google compared with related sites.
• SEOMoz Trifecta - estimates how strong a page is based on inbound links, age, PageRank, etc. Grabs some of the similar datapoints that SEO for Firefox grabs.
• URLTrends - shows a sample of keywords that a site ranks for using a database somewhat smaller than SEODigger

Research the Competition's Keyword Strategy

View our keyword research tools section, or use some of the following free tools to get a view of their keyword strategy.

• Keyword Density Analysis Tool - finds common words and phrases on your site, or competing websites.
• Page Comparison Tool - tool compares the page titles, meta information, and most common two and three word phrases between different pages.
• Spider Test Tool - shows the page size, source code, meta tags, page title, textual copy of the page, keyword breakdown by density (including 2 and 3 word phrases), number of words, number of unique words, and outbound links on a page.

Research the Competition's Link Strategy

View our link analysis section, or use some of the following free tools to get a view of their link strategy.

• SEO Book Competitive Research & Keyword Research Gadget - use almost every useful competitive research tool from our free gadget. You can place this gadget on your site or on iGoogle.
• Hub Finder - link hub finding tool
• Link Harvester - web based tool that allows you to dig deeply through a competitor's backlinks
• Link Popularity Comparison Tool - allows you to quickly and easily compare your link popularity scores to other websites.
• Majestic SEO - link anchor index that allows you to download the link profile for any site...going thousands or millions of links deep!
• Open Site Explorer - similar to Majestic SEO, but with an easier to use interface and perhaps a few less filters. Database is not as large, but it also doesn't have as much outdated data as one would find in Majestic SEO's database.
• Competition Finder - tool looks at how many competing pages there are in Google's index that have your desired keywords in their page title and anchor text.
• SEO Link Analysis Script - extend Yahoo! Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Central using this free script from Joost De Valk. It verifies the link is still on the page, adds PageRank scores, displays anchor text, and highlights if the link uses nofollow.
• Search Engine Saturation Tool - helps you compare how many pages you have in the search indexes compared against competing sites.
• Back Link Analyzer - free Windows based downloadable software allowing you to deeply explore through a competitor's backlinks. powered by the Yahoo! API, so it might be a bit spotty, but it is not bad for free.

From the Search Engines

• Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool - allows you to plug in a URL and shows you what keywords Google thinks the page should be advertising for
• Google Traffic Estimator - estimates the number of Google AdWords ad clicks and bid prices for the top ad position.
• Google Search Based Keyword Tool - shows keyword search volume estimates and keyword values...by keyword, site, or category.
• Google AdWords - if you bid broad match on competing brands you can track your ad impressions to see how much traffic they get.
• Google AdSense - if your competitor is running AdSense ads on their site you can run a site targeted ad to see how much traffic they are getting.
• Yahoo! Clues - offers demographic information about keywords & allows you to compare keywords against each other
• Yahoo Term Extraction - delivers a list of most important keywords contained inside a piece of text.
• MSN AdCenter Labs - offers many keyword tools, including a content classification tool, demographic prediction tools, and a tool to detect online commercial intent

Competitive Research & Keyword Research Extensions

• Browser extensions which make it easy for you to access cool free SEO tools from anywhere on the web.
• SEO Book Gadgets - add free link analysis, competitive research, and keyword research tools to any web page or iGoogle.
• Google Toolbar Buttons - Allows you to add quick links to SEO tools and RSS feeds to the Google toolbar. They only works with the new beta Internet Explorer version of the Google Toolbar.
• Firefox Bookmarks - Links to various useful free SEO tools that you can add to your Firefox bookmarks toolbar.

Know Any Other Tools Worth Suggesting?

email me

Gain a Competitive Advantage Today

Want more great SEO insights? Read our SEO blog to keep up with the latest search engine news, and subscribe to our SEO training program to get cutting edge tips we do not share with the general public. Our training program also offers exclusive SEO videos.