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How to Do a Competitive Analysis in Digital Marketing (7 Steps, 2026)
How to do a competitive analysis in digital marketing in one day: seven steps, free and paid tools with 2026 prices, a worked example for a local business, and the three moves that come out of it.
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Author: Shiva Ji|16 min read|July 23, 2025
In this article
A competitive analysis in digital marketing is a structured look at what your competitors do online, where they win, and where they leave gaps you can take. Done properly it takes about one working day with free tools, and it changes the plan more than any other single exercise, because it replaces guesses about keywords, content and ad spend with what is already working in your market.
This guide is the process we teach on the digital marketing course at Offshore Academics and run for agency clients at Offshore Marketers. It covers what competitive analysis is and which competitors to include, a seven-step process with the output of each step, the free and paid tools with 2026 prices, how to turn findings into three moves, a worked example for a local business, and the mistakes that waste the day. If you are new to the subject, our guide on how to start digital marketing covers the basics first.
TL;DR
Analyse three kinds of competitor: direct (same product, same market), search (whoever ranks for your keywords), and a couple of indirect ones to watch.
Seven steps: pick five competitors, benchmark five numbers each, find the keyword gap, audit their content, read their ads in the public ad libraries, map their social and email, then check backlinks and mentions.
Free tools cover most of it: Google Search Console, the Meta Ad Library, the Google Ads Transparency Center, Similarweb free, Ubersuggest free, Google Trends and the Wayback Machine. Semrush starts at $139.95 a month, Ahrefs at $29, SpyFu at $39.
The output is a one-page SWOT and three moves with an owner and a date, not a 40-slide deck.
Repeat it every quarter, before any launch, and whenever rankings or ad costs move without an obvious reason.
For learners, one written analysis of a real local business is a portfolio piece that interviews better than most certificates.
What is competitive analysis in digital marketing?
a) The definition and the three kinds of competitor
Direct competitors sell what you sell. Search competitors rank where you want to rank. They are often different companies.
Competitive analysis in digital marketing is the process of identifying who competes with you online, measuring what they do across search, content, paid media, social and email, and using the gaps to decide your own plan. The mistake most people make at the start is analysing only the companies they think of as rivals. Online there are three kinds. Direct competitors sell the same thing to the same customer.
Search competitors are whoever ranks for the keywords you want, which for a coaching institute might include a news site, a YouTube channel and a Quora thread. Indirect competitors solve the same problem a different way; a free YouTube playlist is an indirect competitor to a paid course. Analyse all your direct competitors, the top five search competitors, and keep an eye on two indirect ones.
b) Why it matters, with the numbers
The gap between first and second is not small, and it is measured before you spend anything.
The gap between winning and nearly winning online is large. Backlinko’s click studies, summarised in HubSpot’s 2026 competitor analysis guide, put 27.6% of clicks on the first organic result and 15.8% on the second, and find the top result has around 3.8 times more backlinks than the rest of page one. Ahrefs found in February 2026 that pages ranking first see a 58% lower click rate when an AI Overview appears above them, which means the competitor being cited by the AI now matters as much as the one ranking first.
A competitive analysis tells you which of those positions your competitors hold, and what it took to get there, before you spend a rupee trying to take it.
c) When to do it
Quarterly is the floor. The other three triggers usually come first.
Do it every quarter as a calendar item, and additionally before any launch, whenever rankings, ad costs or lead volume move without an obvious cause, and whenever a new name starts showing up in your ad auctions or search results. A first full analysis takes a day; the quarterly refresh takes two or three hours because the benchmark sheet already exists and you are updating numbers rather than building it.
How to do a competitive analysis in digital marketing: seven steps
Step 1: Pick five competitors, not fifteen
Output of step 1: a list of five names with why each is on it.
Start with the keywords that bring you customers, not the ones you wish you ranked for. Search each one in an incognito window and write down who appears on page one. Add the direct competitors your sales or admissions team hears about most. Then cut the list to five. Fifteen shallow profiles look thorough and teach nothing; five deep ones produce the plan.
Step 2: Benchmark five numbers per competitor
Output of step 2: a benchmark sheet, you on row one.
Build one sheet with your five competitors as rows and you as row one. Five columns are enough: estimated monthly traffic and its channel split, organic keywords ranked, domain authority, social followers with posting cadence, and whether they are running paid ads right now. The numbers from free tools are estimates and can be 30% off, which does not matter; you are looking for who is twice your size and who is half, not for precision.
Step 3: Find the keyword gap
Output of step 3: twenty keywords, prioritised.
The keyword gap is the list of terms two or more competitors rank for that you do not. Semrush and Ahrefs have a gap tool; on a free budget, export each competitor’s top keywords from Ubersuggest and compare in a sheet. Sort by volume, then by how close the intent is to a purchase: “digital marketing course fees Mohali” beats “what is digital marketing” even at a tenth of the volume. Take the top twenty and you have next quarter’s content calendar.
Step 4: Audit their content
Output of step 4: a list of gaps in their content.
Open each competitor’s five best pages, found through the tools or simply by searching the keywords, and note the format, the length, the last update, the images and the call to action. Search your main keywords in Google and in ChatGPT and note which competitor is cited. Then list what none of them have: a fees page with real numbers, a comparison page, a case study with results, a salary guide. Gaps are where you win fastest. Our own salary guide exists because no competitor had one with real data.
Step 5: Read their ads in the public libraries
Output of step 5: their offers and their winning creative.
Both major ad platforms publish every active ad. The Meta Ad Library shows all live Facebook and Instagram ads for any page with start dates; the Google Ads Transparency Center does the same for Search, YouTube and Display. Screenshot each competitor’s ads, note the offer, the landing page and the run time. An ad that has run for four months is paying for itself; an ad that appeared last week is a test. You now know their offers and their best creative without spending anything.
Step 6: Map their social and email
Output of step 6: their cadence and their follow-up sequence.
Count posts per week and the format mix on their two main channels, and work out the engagement rate on the last ten posts. Sign up to their newsletter and, if relevant, enquire as a customer with a spare number, then log what arrives for a month: frequency, subject lines, offers, and how many times they follow up. Most businesses have never seen their competitor’s follow-up sequence, and it is often the real reason the competitor converts better. If you are building your own, our guide to email newsletters covers the cadence.
Step 7: Check backlinks and mentions
Output of step 7: a list of link targets and a reputation read.
Run each competitor through a free backlink checker and list their top referring domains. Mark the ones you could realistically earn too: local directories, education listing sites, press that covers your city, partner pages. Then search each brand name and read the reviews, the news and the complaints. Reputation is part of the competitive picture, and it is where a smaller business with better reviews can beat a bigger one.
💡
Pro Tip
Keep everything in one spreadsheet with one tab per step. The analysis is only useful if the next person, or you in three months, can update it in an afternoon.
Which tools do you need for a competitive analysis?
a) The free stack that covers most of the work
A complete first analysis costs nothing but a day.
A complete first analysis costs nothing. Search Console tells you where you already stand. The Meta Ad Library and Google Ads Transparency Center show every competitor ad. Similarweb’s free tier gives a traffic estimate and channel split for any site above a few thousand visits a month. Ubersuggest’s free daily searches cover keywords and a domain score. Google Trends shows which terms are rising in your state. The Wayback Machine shows what a competitor’s site said a year ago, which is the cheapest way to see what they have changed and therefore what they think is working.
b) The paid tools and what they cost in 2026
Semrush is the standard on agency job descriptions, and also the most expensive.
The paid tools make the same analysis faster and deeper. Semrush at $139.95 a month is the agency standard and has the best keyword gap and backlink gap reports. Ahrefs starts at $29 for a starter plan and $129 for the full toolset, with the best backlink data. SpyFu at $39 shows a competitor’s Google Ads history going back years. Moz Pro at $99 and Ubersuggest at $29 are the budget options. Prices are from the AI Rank Lab 2026 comparison and vendor pages.
If you are learning, note that Semrush appears on more Indian agency job descriptions than any other tool, which is why the skills that raise pay list includes it.
c) A zero-rupee stack for a learner
Do the whole analysis free, then use a trial week for the gap report.
A learner can do the whole thing without paying. Set up Search Console on any site you control so the first-party data is real. Use the free tiers for the benchmarks, both ad libraries for the paid picture, and Google Trends for demand. When you reach the keyword gap step, start a Semrush or Ahrefs free trial and do that step in the trial week. One written analysis of a real local business, with screenshots, is a portfolio piece; our comparison of digital marketing certificate programmes explains why employers rate that above most certificates.
How do you turn the analysis into a plan?
a) The one-page SWOT
Every line comes from a step above. If it cannot be traced to a finding, it does not go on the page.
Compress the seven tabs into one page with four boxes. Strengths and weaknesses are about you, measured against the benchmark sheet. Opportunities are gaps nobody is filling, from the content audit and the ad libraries. Threats are moves competitors made in the last quarter. Every line must trace back to a finding; a SWOT written from opinion is the reason most people think SWOT is useless.
b) Pick three moves, not thirty
Three moves with owners and dates beat a deck of thirty recommendations.
Choose three moves. Usually they are the same three: build the page nobody has that your best keywords want, run your own version of the competitor ad format that has been live longest, and fix the one benchmark number where you are furthest behind. Give each an owner, a date and the number it should change. Then rerun the benchmark sheet in ninety days. If you want to see how a well-chosen move plays out at brand scale, our 12 brand collaboration examples show what each company decided to do and which number it moved.
c) The report format that gets read
Section
Length
What goes in it
Summary
5 lines
Who the five competitors are, the one thing each does best, the three moves
Benchmark sheet
1 table
You on row one, five numbers per competitor, date of the data
Keyword gap
20 rows
Keyword, volume, intent, which competitors rank, the page you will build
Ads and offers
1 page
Screenshots of the longest-running ad per competitor with offer and landing page
Content and reputation gaps
1 page
What none of them have; review score and recurring complaints
Three moves
3 lines
Move, owner, date, target number
The report is short. Five lines of summary, the benchmark table, the twenty-keyword gap, one page of ad screenshots, one page of content and reputation gaps, and the three moves. A manager reads the first five lines and the last three; everything else is evidence in case they ask.
A worked example: a coaching institute in Mohali
a) The competitor set
The sheet makes the shape of the market obvious in one look: one big national player, two local rivals, and free content.
Take a hypothetical digital marketing institute in Mohali. Searching its five main keywords produces two local institutes, one national online platform, a YouTube channel and a free playlist. The benchmark sheet, filled from free tools, shows the shape of the market at a glance: a national player it will never out-rank on broad terms, a local rival four times its size that posts daily and runs six ads, a smaller rival, and free content that competes for the same beginner.
b) What the seven steps found
The findings are specific enough to act on tomorrow, which is the test of a good analysis.
The keyword gap produced fourteen local terms containing “fees”, “placement” or “Mohali” that both rivals rank for, and not one page in the market gives real numbers. The ad libraries showed Institute A’s longest-running ad offering a free demo class, pointed at a landing page that avoids fees. The mystery enquiry showed Institute A calling within four minutes and sending six WhatsApp follow-ups in ten days, while Institute B replied once by email. None of this cost money, and all of it is specific enough to act on tomorrow.
c) The three moves
Every move points back to a finding, and forward to a number.
The three moves follow directly. Publish a fees and placement page with real numbers, which takes the fourteen local keywords and the trust that comes from being the only honest page. Run a free demo class ad like Institute A, but put the fees on the landing page, which turns the competitor’s evasion into your differentiator. Build a ten-day WhatsApp follow-up so your response matches the best in the market. Review at ninety days on local rankings, cost per enquiry and enquiry-to-visit rate.
This is the exercise students on our course do for a real business near them, and it is the kind of live project that moves a fresher’s salary.
The mistakes that waste the day
a) Copying instead of finding the gap
Copy their formats and channels. Never copy their offer.
The most common mistake is to finish the analysis and copy the biggest competitor. That puts you on their ground with a smaller budget. The analysis exists to find what they do not do, or do badly: the missing fees page, the slow follow-up, the ad that avoids the real question. Copy their formats and channels by all means, because those are proven; never copy their offer or their positioning.
⚠ Avoid This
Do not build your keyword list from a national platform’s rankings. They rank for 88,000 terms because of authority you will not have for years. Compare yourself to competitors within about three times your size.
b) Treating estimates as facts
Third-party numbers show scale, not precision. Only your own data is exact.
Third-party traffic and keyword numbers are estimates and can be 30% or more off, especially for small sites. Use them to understand scale, who is twice your size and who is half, and never to argue about precision. The only exact numbers on the sheet are your own, from Search Console and your ad accounts, which is one more reason to set those up before you start.
c) Doing it once
A snapshot goes stale in a quarter. The refresh is cheap once the sheet exists.
An analysis is a snapshot, and online markets move quarterly. The competitor who stopped advertising may be back; the page cited in the AI Overview changes; a new local rival launches. Put the refresh in the calendar every ninety days. Because the sheet already exists, the refresh takes three hours, and it is where the compounding advantage comes from. The same discipline applies to your own content; when we rebuilt our brand recognition guide, the first step was rerunning this analysis.
The short version
A competitive analysis in digital marketing is a day’s work with free tools that replaces guesses with evidence. Pick five competitors across direct, search and indirect. Benchmark five numbers each, find the keyword gap, audit their content, read their ads in the public libraries, map their social and follow-up, and check their backlinks and reputation. Compress it to a one-page SWOT and three moves with owners and dates, and rerun the sheet every quarter.
What is competitive analysis in digital marketing?
Competitive analysis in digital marketing is the process of identifying who competes with you online, measuring what they do across search, content, paid ads, social media and email, and using the gaps to set your own plan. It covers three kinds of competitor: direct (same product, same market), search (whoever ranks for your keywords, which may include publishers and YouTube channels) and indirect (a different solution to the same problem, such as free content against a paid course).
How do you do a competitive analysis in digital marketing step by step?
Seven steps. Pick five competitors from incognito searches of your main keywords plus the rivals your sales team names. Benchmark five numbers per competitor: traffic and channel split, keywords ranked, domain authority, social cadence and live ads. Find the keyword gap, the terms two or more competitors rank for that you do not. Audit their five best pages and check who is cited in AI Overviews. Read their live ads in the Meta Ad Library and Google Ads Transparency Center. Map their social posting and their email or WhatsApp follow-up by enquiring as a customer. Check their backlinks and reviews. Then compress it into a one-page SWOT and three moves.
Which tools are used for competitor analysis in digital marketing?
Free: Google Search Console, the Meta Ad Library, the Google Ads Transparency Center, Similarweb’s free tier, Ubersuggest’s free searches, Google Trends and the Wayback Machine. Paid, at 2026 starting prices: Semrush ($139.95 a month, the agency standard with keyword and backlink gap reports), Ahrefs ($29 starter, $129 full), SpyFu ($39, competitor PPC history), Moz Pro ($99) and SE Ranking ($129). A complete first analysis can be done with the free tools alone.
How often should you do a competitive analysis?
Every quarter as a fixed calendar item, plus before any launch or new service, whenever rankings, ad costs or lead volume move without an obvious reason, and whenever a new competitor appears in your ad auctions or search results. The first full analysis takes about a day; the quarterly refresh takes two or three hours because the benchmark sheet already exists.
How do you find your competitors’ keywords?
Use the keyword gap report in Semrush or Ahrefs, which lists terms competitors rank for that you do not. On a free budget, export each competitor’s top keywords from Ubersuggest’s free searches and compare them in a spreadsheet. Sort by volume and then by buying intent, so that a term like “course fees Mohali” outranks a broad “what is digital marketing” term. Take the top twenty as your next content list.
What should a competitive analysis report include?
Keep it short: a five-line summary naming the competitors, what each does best and your three moves; the benchmark sheet with you on row one; the twenty-keyword gap with the page you will build for each; one page of screenshots of each competitor’s longest-running ad with its offer and landing page; one page of content and reputation gaps; and the three moves, each with an owner, a date and the number it should change.
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