8+ Best Competitor Analysis Tools For Competitive Benchmarking

Nov 11, 2022 by Simon Hilton

Are you looking for the best competitor analysis tools to help you track your competitors across organic search, social media, and paid channels?

The best competitor analysis tools make it easy to conduct detailed competitor research on any competing domain or social media profile, and spot gaps in your strategy to help you grow.

Competitor analysis tools like Semrush, Similarweb, and SE Ranking allow you to analyze your competitors website traffic, organic traffic, organic and paid keywords, paid traffic, as well as other metrics like backlinks that drive site performance.

Competitive analysis tools for social media like Sproutsocial provide you with intelligence on your competitors social media profiles, and allow you to spot how they've grown and which marketing campaigns have been effective in driving impressions, followers, and brand reach.

Before you pick a competitive intelligence tool, it's important to be clear up front on what type of competitor analysis you want to complete, and which competitive metrics you need to track over time.

We've completed a review of the best competitor analysis tools for competitive research, as well as competitor analysis tools for SEO, social media, and tracking important content in your niche.

All-In-One Competitor Analysis Tools

Semrush

Semrush is one of the leading SEO tools online, but in recent years has transitioned to an all-in-one competitor research tool for businesses of all sizes.

Already used by over 10 million marketing professionals, Semrush provides a full suite of tools that allow you to spy on your competition, including overall website traffic, traffic share, organic search performance, and performance in paid and social media channels.

Semrush offers a content marketing tool that allows you to assess the quality of your competitor's content, and spot opportunities to enhance your own.

Like other leading SEO competitor analysis tools, Semrush provides you with competitor research tools that run backlink analysis, monitor competitor keywords, spot link-building opportunities, and track competitor keyword rankings.

Pricing starts at $119.95 per/mo, allowing you to track up to 5 projects and utilize SEO, social media, and PPC competitive analysis tools.

For enterprises, there are Guru and Business plans that offer further scale.

Features we like

Market research tools - get a complete picture of your competitor's website traffic across channels, as well as estimations on bounce rate, dwell time, and top traffic sources. Get a breakdown of how your competition drive traffic by marketing channel, and dive in to analyze where the gaps in your strategy exist

SEO competitor analysis - Semrush provides access to a full suite of SEO tools that allow you to monitor competitor keywords, analyze competitor backlinks, and assess domain authority. On top of this, Semrush allows you to complete site audits and optimize for local SEO
Assess competitor content - once you've uncovered the organic keywords that your competition is driving traffic from, you can run content reports to assess their content quality, and learn what contextual keywords they are using in their content to help rank
Social media analytics - track and monitor competitor social media accounts to see when they post, what they're posting, and how much traffic they're driving. Semrush also provides tools to schedule your social media posts so that you can manage activity from one competitor analysis tool

Semrush pricing

Semrush offers 3 paid plans for startups, through to established enterprises.

Pro - $119.95 per/mo, track 5 projects, 500 organic keywords, 10k results per report
Guru - $229.95 per/mo, track 15 projects, 1,500 organic keywords, 30k results per report
Business - $449.95 per/mo, track 40 projects, 5,000 organic keywords, 50k results per report

Similarweb

Like Semrush, Similarweb is another leading competitive analysis tool for businesses of all sizes - in fact, some of the biggest businesses in the world opt for Similarweb as opposed to Semrush when it comes to competitive research and monitoring competitors websites.

Similarweb offers two different modules, Research Intelligence and Marketing Intelligence.

Research Intelligence provides access to sophisticated tools that allow you to understand how much website traffic your competitors are driving, and how you are positioned within that competitive set over time. Monitoring everything from traffic share, through to site engagement, and target audience data.

Within Research Intelligence, there is also a range of tools within Similarweb that also allows you to monitor which marketing channels are driving your competitor's traffic, how their traffic and website performance is trending over time, and to run gap analysis to see which organic keywords, paid keywords, and ads are performing well for your competitors, and not your business.

Marketing intelligence also features a wide range of tools that allow you to monitor organic search performance, PPC campaigns, and other digital marketing campaigns.

On top of this, Similarweb also offers a keyword research tool that shows you all of the organic keywords that are driving traffic in your niche, and who amongst your competitor set is winning that traffic share over time. Their keyword list feature allows you to monitor your share of traffic and search rankings for large combinations of keywords in one central view.

It's only possible to buy access to Marketing Intelligence on a monthly basis via the Similarweb website (pricing starts at $119 per/mo), but you can sign up for a free trial to access Research Intelligence where pricing starts around $5k per annum.

Features we like

Custom industries - either access Similarweb pre-built industries or build your own industries by adding your competitor's URL into the industry builder. Monitor your traffic performance vs up to 300 direct competitors over time
Website benchmarking - benchmark your digital performance broadly or split by organic and paid channels to understand how you are performing vs your competition
Keyword gap analysis - discover organic and paid keywords that are driving traffic to competitors in order to see where you need to optimize and improve

Similarweb pricing

Similarweb offers 2 paid self-service plans. The Essential and Advanced Marketing Suites provide access to the same set of tools but you get more data access as part of Advanced.

Similarweb also offers a 7-day free trial.

Essential - $119 per/mo
Advanced - $349 per/mo
Ultimate - custom

SEO Competitor Analysis Tools

SE Ranking

SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO tool that allows you to track your competitors SEO strategy.

SE Ranking's competitor analysis tool is used by over 700,000 brands, including Zapier, Trustpilot and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Their competitive research reports provide tools to spy on a number of competitor metrics like top organic keywords, backlinks, and referring domains. It's also possible to also use SE Ranking to assess competitor website traffic and collect traffic cost estimations.

On top of competitive analysis tools, SE Ranking also offers tools for site auditing, keyword research, domain scoring, and more. Their gap analysis tools for organic keywords and backlinks are also helpful in allowing you to spot opportunities.

Pricing starts at $23.40 per/mo for Essential access, you can also scale this up with Pro or Business accounts.

Features we like

Competitor keyword research - run keyword analysis on your competitors to spot which keywords are most valuable for driving traffic
Monitor competitor backlinks - understand which backlinks are driving the most value for competitors, and run backlink gap analysis to discover new backlink opportunities
Analyze competitor paid ads - analyze organic and paid keywords, analyze competitor ad copy, and see what estimated ad cost at keyword level

SE Ranking pricing

SE Ranking offers 3 different pricing plans for their pro tools.

Essential - $23.40 per/mo, optimize 10 projects, track 250 keywords, 100 reports per day
Pro - $53.40 per/mo, unlimited projects, track 1,000 keywords, 5,000 reports per day
Business - $113.40 per/mo, unlimited projects, track 2,000 keywords, 10,000 reports per day

AHREFs

AHREFs is one of the largest and best established competitors to Semrush online.

AHREFs offers an all-in-one SEO tool for keyword research, competitive analysis, backlink monitoring, site audit, rank tracking and other SEO reporting functionality.

The AHREFs competitive analysis tool is used by millions of SEO experts and digital marketers and has one of the most active web crawlers on the internet, analyzing over 5 million domains every minute.

Their Site Explorer allows you to add any competitor URL and get a complete breakdown of their number of backlinks, referring domains, top organic keywords, and an estimation of organic traffic, and traffic value.

From there, you can dig down and analyze competitor backlinks, top keywords, most valuable pages, and more.

Pricing starts at $99 per/mo for lite access, and there are 3 other paid plans for growing businesses and enterprises.

Features we like

Site Explorer - run analysis on any competitor domain and get a complete breakdown of their organic search performance, including organic traffic, traffic value, top organic keywords, backlinks, and referring domains
Keyword Explorer - run keyword analysis and see which of your competitors is ranking on the terms your care about and want to target. Spot which other keywords they are ranking using AHREFs phrase match, and related keywords tool

AHREFs pricing

AHREFs offers 4 different pricing plans for competitive analysis.

Lite - $99 per/mo, optimize 5 projects, track 750 keywords, 100,00 crawl credit
Standard - $199 per/mo, optimize 20 projects, track 2,000 keywords, 500,00 crawl credit
Advanced - $399 per/mo, optimize 50 projects, track 5,000 keywords, 1,500,00 crawl credit

Social Media Competitor Analysis Tools

Sproutsocial

Sproutsocial is a leading social media management platform trusted by over 30,000 brands including Shopify, Eventbrite, and IHG.

Sproutsocial is used for social listening, social media publishing, engagement tracking, competitor analytics and social advocacy.

The social media research tool helps you make sense of competitor activity across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, allowing you to compare your performance on social media platforms against your direct competitors.

This includes insights on historical performance, including likes, comments, engagement per post and social reach.

Pricing starts at $249 per/mo, allowing you to track 5 social profiles, however you need to purchase the Professional plan to access competitor analysis reports, which costs $399 per/mo.

Features we like

Cross platform - track Instagram, Facebook and Twitter from one central dashboard
Competitor profile view - add specific competitor accounts that you're looking to track, alongside the metrics you care about analyzing. Sproutsocial has a series of interactive graphs which you can use to benchmark your social performance vs competitors to help bring competitive social data to life

Sproutsocial pricing

Sproutsocial has 4 paid plans starting at $249 per month, however competitor analysis is only available on the Professional, Advanced, and Enterprise plans.

Standard - $249 per/mo, track 5 social profiles, no competitor analytics
Professional - $399 per/mo, unlimited social profiles, competitor reports enabled
Advanced - $499 per/mo, advanced functionality and reports
Enterprise - custom

SocialMention

SocialMention allows you to spy on your competition across social media platforms with real-time data.

Like Sproutsocial, SocialMention is used by thousands of brands and agencies, including iProspect, eToro, and Mcann to understand what their customers are saying about them and their competition on social media.

The SocialMention competitor analysis tool allows you to track a variety of social media metrics all under one roof, including brand mentions, post interactions, follower counts, brand reach, shares, likes, and geography of social traffic.

And importantly, you can spot the tipping points which drove either growth or declines in performance for your competition.

Pricing starts at $99 per/mo, allowing you to track 3 projects and there are Company and Enterprise plans available for businesses who require more scale.

SocialMention Pricing

SocialMention offers 3 pricing plans.

Growing Business - $99 per/mo, 3 projects
Company - $299 per/mo, 5 projects, white label reporting
Enterprice/Agency - $499 per/mo, unlimited projects, full suite of tools to spy on competition

Not Just Analytics

Not Just Analytics is a competitor analytics tool for Instagram and Tiktok which allows you to monitor your competitors growth on social media platforms.

Get insights on competitor growth rates, engagement over time, hashtag usage, and how they engage with other content via their social media accounts.

Not Just Analytics also allows you to drill down and see which posts were post popular in terms of likes, comments, mentions, and hashtags.

Standard Pricing starts at $20 per/mo, allowing you to track 5 social profiles.

Not Just Analytics Pricing

Not Just Analytics offers 3 paid plans.

Light - $7 per/mo, 1 social profile
Standard - $20 per/mo, 5 social profiles, white label reporting
Pro - $45 per/mo, 50 social profiles, white label reporting

Competitive Research Tools For Content Marketing

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a competitive intelligence tool that allows you to monitor and analyze content performance at scale.

Trusted by over 1,000 major brands, Buzzsump helps SEO experts and content marketers learn what is being searched for, the popularity and virality of content, and how who is important in sharing and disseminating content throughout the internet.

Buzzsumo is also used to monitor and spot backlink opportunities, and discover influencers and important journalists for PR professionals.

Buzzsumo's monitoring tools make it easy to create alerts when top influencers, bloggers and journalists launch new content, which can also be used to monitor your competitors.

It's possible to also set up alerts so that you can see when you drive new backlinks, and to discover who is talking about your brand (and your competitors brands) online.

There is a free plan available that allows you to make 10 searches per month, and track 1 projects.

Paid plans start at $99 per/mo, providing you with unlimited monthly searches, and the ability to track unlimited projects.

Features we like

Competitor monitoring - track important journalists, influencers, and bloggers and monitor whether they are talking about you or your competition online
Social content data - search for your by competitor URL to find their top content, and learn where they drove the highest engagement rates
Backlink monitoring - learn what important sources on the internet are linking to so that you can optimize how you build authority online, and when your competitors are picking up coverage

Buzzsumo pricing

Alongside the free plan, Buzzsumo offers 3 paid plans.

Free - 10 searches per month, track 1 projects
Pro - $99 per/mo, unlimited searches, unlimited projects
Plus - $179 per/mo, includes Brief Generator and Question Analyzer
Large - $299 per/mo, includes Youtube Analyzer and Facebook Analyzer

Feedly

Feedly is an affordable content monitoring platform that allows you to flag and monitor relevant content across Twitter, blogs, and newsletters in one central dashboard.

Used by over 15 million individuals and teams at brands including Danone, Cloudflare, and Lufthansa, Feedly allows you to find and organize important content sources, group them into digestible formats, and gives you the tools to share content with your team.

It's also possible to track competitor content within Feedly, in order to learn what content your competitors are launching, and when.

Feedly pricing

Feedly offers 3 paid plans, starting at just $6 per/mo.

Pro - $6 per/mo, 1,000 feeds
Pro+ - $8.25 per/mo, 2,500 feeds
Enterprise - contact Feedly for custom pricing

Why invest in the best competitor analysis tools?

Competitor analysis tools are becoming a vital part of any digital marketers toolkit. And for good reason.

It's tough out there.

Digital advertising spend has exploded over the last 10 years, and there is no sign of things slowing down. In fact, advertising spend online is expected to hit $1 trillion per annum by 2027, with a huge 40% of ad dollars being spent on search engine marketing.

So it's vital you know who's spending, and where they're spending.

On top of this, we're living amongst a turbulent economy. Central banks globally are pushing up interest rates, and governments are having to deal with balancing spend after a COVID crisis that saw trillions of dollars pumped into the economy.

These factors are making it even more important to utilise competitor research tools to understand who is winning and losing in your market.

When it comes to competitor analysis tool features, there are also some major reasons to invest.

Competitor analysis - competitor analysis tools allow you to monitor your competitive landscape by monitoring each competitor's URL. That means you can understand competitor website traffic, website engagement rates, and the channels that are performing for your competition. Without tools that allow you to analyze your competitors, you are operating blind without insight into your market
Digital marketing strategy - competitor research tools help you uncover the marketing strategies that are working for your competition. Tools like Similarweb and Semrush give you a breakdown of how traffic is being driven to competitor websites by channel (including search traffic across organic and PPC). That way, you can see whether you are over or under indexing in key channels
SEO competitor analysis - with 40% of ad spend sitting between organic and paid search channels, search engine marketing has never been more important. SEO competitor analysis tools allow you to assess your competitors SEO strategy, getting a 360 degree view of the top organic keywords that are driving them search traffic. On top of this, you can monitor competitors backlinks, referring domains, and top pages to understand where they're having success in organic search, and what factors are driving their SEO performance
Content marketing strategy - competitor analysis tools like Buzzsumo give you the ability to understand what content is driving performance in your niche. This means you can track which influencers, bloggers, and news outlets should be covering your business, and you're armed with tools to spy on your competitors content and how it's performing
Competitors social media performance - investing in social media competitor research tools is another great way to pick through the noise. Social media research tools like Sproutsocial provide you with data on your competitors social media activity, including insight on the posts that drove followers, engagement, likes and social reach

How to pick the best competitor analysis tool for your business?

Investing in competitor analysis tools is a great way to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, and to discover actionable insights that will help your business grow.

But before you pick a competitive analysis tool and compare the best tools on the market it's important to look understand what data you will get access to relative to your use case.

Start by asking yourself these questions.

What type of competitive analysis do you want to complete?
What digital marketing channels do you care about?
Do you need to monitor SEO and PPC?
Are you looking to monitor social media performance?
Do you need analytics on your competitors content marketing?
What is your budget?

There are a host of competitive analysis tools online for measuring your competitors general website traffic performance, as well as their performance across organic and social media.

Ensure that you pick competitor analysis tools that allow you to spy on the data and metrics that will help your business progress.

Likewise, ensure that you pick competitive analysis tools that are backed by a robust data methodology and trusted data sources.

After all, competitive intelligence data is only valuable if it paints and accurate picture of your competitive landscape.

Sign up to the best competitor analysis tools

If you are ready to start analyzing your competition, click through and sign up for a competitive intelligence tool like Semrush or Similarweb.

As soon as you've signed up, you can drop in your competitor's URL's and start analyzing their marketing strategies to kick start your competitor research.

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