Tools to Find Your Competitors Keyword Rankings

June 17th, 2008 by Ann Smarty | 20 Comments

Before I start reviewing available tools showing which keywords your competitors rank high in Google, let me describe how you can use this information:

do not just copy-paste your competitors’ keywords, use it as additional help for your keyword research;
compare which keywords your competitors optimized their pages (i.e. tried to rank for) and which keywords they ended up ranking for. Thus you’ll be able to avoid their mistakes.

1. SEO Digger (paid with free trial) will show you Google keyword position, check date (International style: DD/MM/YYYY) and Wordtracker rank:

SEO Digger

2. SpyFu (paid with free trial) spies for both your competitors’ organic search rankings and Google Adwords campaign keywords:

organic search rankings

3. KeywordSpy (paid with free trial) will show you both the keyword your competitor ranked for and the total number of results returned for this keyword. While the tool does have some really user-friendly interface, it lacks some sorting options.

KeywordSpy

4. KeywordRemix (if the tool is back, please comment) also offers some interesting data on keyword rankings such as total number of results in Google, Google News and Google Blog Search competition, data age and synonymous phrases (the tool also has some bugs: it shows one and the same key term multiple times):

KeywordRemix

Final note: all these tools showed me different keywords. So my advice is to try all of them before you decide which one is better for you.

Comments

20 responses so far ↓

Andrey on Jun 17, 2008 at 9:15 am

I found this tool to be very useful and cool…
Ankit on Jun 18, 2008 at 4:36 am

Thanks ann for sharing !!
website design on Jun 18, 2008 at 6:34 am

om - What keywords do your competitors target? Find it out.
Brandon Adcock on Jun 18, 2008 at 7:49 am

Spyfu FTW. I have found it to be scary accurate
Kien on Jun 18, 2008 at 10:02 am

Exactly what I’ve been looking for! TY!
Marketing Minefield on Jun 18, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Some excellent tools there. I’ve always found that KeywordSpy works well but wasn’t actually aware of KeywordRemix… will try that out shortly.
Michael on Jun 22, 2008 at 9:26 pm

Just tried KeywordRemix and found the results very interesting. Thanks for the advice. Am learning something new everyday.
Street Signs on Jul 7, 2008 at 5:14 pm

Thanks for the info. This is what I needed.
Best SEO Practices on Oct 22, 2008 at 1:49 pm

Thanks Ann, very useful as usual.
visiblenet on Nov 2, 2008 at 10:52 am

Very interesting list Ann, great job rounding all these up and relaying it to all of your readers. Recently we developed our own too for use in-house that was primarily intended for keyword and ranking research. I have found it to also make a pretty decent competitor tool for anyone interested in learning what keywords they are targeting and where they might rank on G, Y and M. Thought your readers may be interested in trying it out. We encourage feedback so please let us know what you all think.

http://www.visible.net/tools/keywords/

(Note: the link above is reported to have viruses.)
SEO levne on Nov 13, 2008 at 6:17 am

The last note is really fun: “Final note: all these tools showed me different keywords.” But anyway, they seem like great tools, thank you for the article.
Sheyne BRanconnier on Jan 23, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Research your online competitors (adcopy, adwords, and landing pages) here for free.
There are no limitations on the number of results nor how many times you can use the service and it is completely free.
Andrew on Jan 29, 2009 at 5:09 am

If you’re already using adwords in some form then a great way to check these tools is to see what they say about your own campaigns.

Comparing their results to what you know your doing shows how reliable they are.
Paul Morales on Feb 23, 2009 at 1:14 pm

Thanks! I found these tools useful for both PPC and SEO. Awesome find!
Money Maker Webtools on Mar 11, 2009 at 9:30 pm

Yup, these are also my picks for keyword research. You can use these tools for regular SEO or for making targeted Adsense Websites
Rick on Apr 14, 2009 at 9:42 pm

http://www.visible.net/tools/keywords/

is coming up with a online virus, beware
IWG on May 14, 2009 at 6:30 pm

http://keywordremix.com/domain-tool/ appears to be a parked page now.
Ann Smarty on May 15, 2009 at 3:14 am

@IWG, thanks, the post is edited.
Pro Web Desin Studios on Jun 21, 2009 at 3:21 pm

Good little tool with semrush. I don’t think their info on search volume is correct though. For we design they said the average monthly search volume was only 18,000 but in my Googe account they say that the search volume is 2 million nationally and 4million globally, so not sure what to think about that.
Pro Web Desin Studios on Jun 21, 2009 at 3:22 pm

This is crap. What is it with everyone and their no-follow tags in the links of blogs. I thought that was the whole point of blogs to trade links post articles and generate good indexing and backlinks.