Competition Keyword Research: Find the Keywords Your Competitors Rank For (Ahrefs Tutorial)

0:00 Competition Keyword Research Overview
All right. So what we’re gonna do in this little training today is we are going to do competition keyword research. Um, essentially what this is, this is sort of step two part of the keyword research, um, whole thing. So essentially the five-step process of finding out what people are looking for, um, and then putting them on those search phrases, those keywords on your site. Um, and then from there, um, uh, go into the whole process of doing SEO. This is sort of the last part of step one, which is the competition keyword research. What this basically means is that you are finding out what your competition is ranking for. Um, so the whole idea is this. Um, going back to, remember I had told you, told you in the past that working with Google is sort of like falling in love. Um, you know how long it takes to fall in love with somebody, right? Like, you meet them, you send them text messages, you’re having coffee, maybe you’re, you’re taking them out for, to a movie. Um, you know, if you’re looking for a long-term relationship, you’re not gonna just rush into anything, right? Um, and, uh, so, and so it takes time to build trust. Well, the same thing happens with, um, your website. It takes time to, for your website to build trust with Google. And as that happens, um, then Google slowly begins to trust you just the same way it is where, you know, um, if you prove yourself to the person that, hey, you’re a safe person, you’re an emotionally stable person. You, um, might do silly voices, right? But you’re, you are, um, you know, a fabulous, safe person to be around. Um, and so, um, you’re really wanting to do that with Google, prove to Google that you’re a safe website, that you’re, um, you are who s- you say you are, and you’re really wanting to come out with good content that, um, is, uh, gonna be valuable to the web. And also, um, you’re wanting to rank with Google. So anyway, that’s kind of what we’re gonna be doing right now is just digging into competition keyword research.

2:03 Why Competitor Rankings Matter
The cool thing about this is this will show you what your competition is ranking for in Google. Um, and so they already have a trust with Google. Um, and they already, because they have a trust, um, then you can find out, hey, how does Google trust them? And you can look at data to find that out. So that’s pretty awesome. So let’s jump into this little teaching, um, this little PowerPoint. I’m gonna share my screen, and, uh, here we go. We’re gonna start the slideshow, and this is the competition keyword research. Um, so the whole idea is teaching you how to be visible and grow, um, so that we can rock and roll here. So our agenda in this little training is I’m gonna just do, do a quick little recap on keywords if you don’t know what I’m talking about, just a five-second recap there. Um, gonna recap the three kinds of searches out there so that you know your, what you, what you’re looking for. And then we’re gonna look at, um, you know, talking about why it’s important to look up the competition’s keyword, keywords, which I kind of already, you know, mentioned here, but we’ll go into a little more. And then we’re gonna actually do some live competition keyword research live in person. It’s gonna happen here now. Um, I, I don’t know why, but I lost my voice about a week ago. Um, I, I, I got sick. Um, and I have this voice now where I … It’s like this super creepy low voice that I’m like, "Yeah, get ready to learn competition." It almost sounds like a WWF. Um, so I might pull that out. I don’t know. I always like to mess around with voices. But anyway, um, so we’re gonna do competition keyword research. Um, so

3:47 Three Types of Search Intent
w- what are keywords real quick? Um, essentially they’re just search phrases, right? We’re putting into Google. You have different kinds of searches that I’ll talk to you about here. Um, but the real thing is, um, you know, if you’re … Let’s just say you’re a real estate lawyer. That’s gonna be on our example today. Um, I had a real estate lawyer client about a year ago. Um, and, uh, you know, as that’s, of course you’re looking to buy or sell a home, um, you need a real estate lawyer as part of the process. Um, and so the real thing is for that, for him, um, or her or w- whoever you are, um, the real thing is what is the searcher’s intention? So if somebody searches for a search phrase like how do I become a real estate lawyer, right? Well, that’s gonna be more of a, a informational type search. But if somebody types in real estate lawyer NYC, then that’s gonna be more of a direct kind of search. Um, so a transactional search or direct searches, we’ll just call them transactional searches so it doesn’t confuse you, that’s what we think of as sort of a buying keyword or a, a, a search that is really valuable. That person is ready to pull the trigger. They’re the closest to being ready to pull the trigger, um, and they’re ready to rock. Um, and an informational search, it’s just like, hey, they’re just kind of like looking up for some more information. They’re not necessarily gonna pull the trigger, and it’s gonna probably be more like a first touch, so to speak. Um, so you’re, you’re, you’re, you know, they’re gonna see you the first time and not have a lot of trust there, but, you know, begin to build trust. Um, and so that’s where like a blog post where you’re answering questions and providing value there. Um, and then navigational searches are something completely entirely different, um, you know. So today we’re gonna be looking at transactional searches for the lawyer. So, um, what about, you know, your competition’s keywords?

5:39 Finding Competitors in Google Maps
Well, um, so you know, the point, first point here is that your competitors are already ranking for Google for keywords that you can actually rank for. What? Yep. You could actually rank for, um, the keywords that your competition is ranking for Um, I was actually just looking at this yesterday, um, for a real estate client, not a real estate lawyer, but a real estate client. And I was looking at keywords that they are already ranking for or the competition is ranking for. And, and that data tells me, hey, here’s how I can help this real estate client rank. Um, so remember the trust, remember building a relationship. It takes time to build a relationship. Your competition is, they’re already ranking. They’ve already had that trust. They’ve already built up that trust. And now they’re ready, um, now they’re already ranking. So you can actually find out what they’re ranking for and make that a part of your strategy. Um, so this whole competition keyword research reveals all. It tells you what they’re ranking for, what position they’re ranking for, and also what page they’re ranking for. Um, and so, um, I would definitely make this as part of your, um, first step, your step one of keyword research. Find out, um, you know, what your competition is ranking for, and then include some of those keywords in your strategy. So in this case, I’m going to look at this example here. This is a, um, real estate attorney, um, that I found up in New York City. And we’re going to actually, um, find out what they’re ranking for. And then if I were a real estate attorney in New York City, then I could be using, um, you know, these same keywords. So this, this same, regardless if you’re an artist or a local business, um, or, you know, a lawyer or a service company, or even if you’re an e-commerce store, this, all of this really applies, um, across the board. This is a technique I’m going to teach you how to do this. So let’s go into, um, let’s go into actually doing it. So, right. Um, so what I’m going to do here is I’m going to be looking at a tool. I’m going to be using a tool called Ahrefs.

7:47 Running a Site Through Ahrefs
I like to call it Ahrefs. Um, you know, Ahrefs, um, I just like the way in the UK, they say the word H. So, um, what I did was I, I, um, you know, I did real estate, um, went to Google and I typed in real estate attorney, or let’s see, lawyer NYC. So because I’m based in Asheville right now, I don’t really have a good sense of what is actually shown at the top of Google in New York City. Um, and that’s because Google knows that, hey, I’m based out of Asheville. I’m not in New York City. So they’re showing me ads that are local ads. Um, now some of these might be New York, but some of these are local. And then I see, um, here I see actually real estate attorneys. Um, and, uh, and then I actually see informational searches here, but these searches here, because I’m in Asheville, I’m not in New York City. All of these searches aren’t really a sense of who’s showing up at the top of Google. The best way to do that is to look at maps. Um, and so what I did was I clicked on more places, which loads the maps result. Um, and this is where I found these guys. They had, um, let’s see, it was, it was Robert and Arnov. Robert and Arnov Associates. Um, so they had six reviews. Um, I picked these guys. so here’s where I found them. Okay. So this works with any website across the board. Um, so interestingly enough, they’re not totally secure here. Um, so this is just a side note here, but see this HTTPS, um, about, uh, in the middle of 2018, Google said, listen, all websites need to be secure. And if you’re not secure, then you’re not going to rank as well. Um, and so they have gone secure, but this little arrow here says, you know what? Thanks for playing. You’re not totally secure. Parts of this page are not secure such as images. I don’t know. Um, so this means that they’re not quite done. Um, and, uh, there’s an error here. Um, anyway, but this is what I’m going to be doing. So what you need to do is you, you copy this and you go into Ahrefs. You sign up for it. I think it might be a hundred bucks a month. Sign up for it. And you put the URL in here. And, and so what I see here is, um, a whole bunch of information. Um, and I’ll just hit the highlights here. I’ll zoom in just a little bit.

10:27 Reading Organic Keyword Data
So this here, this UR is URL rating. This is how strong they, their homepage is in Google. Okay. So every website, if you’ve watched the domain reputation, um, you know, training, go back and watch it if you haven’t. But that tells you, um, that every website has a number to scale of one to a hundred, right? And, um, so brand new websites are going to have a zero or N/A. And then over time, you know, this number can grow between five and 15 points a year. Um, so they’ve 35. So this is a good seven to 10 years of growth kind of is what I’m seeing here. Um, the domain, the DR is their domain rating. Um, and that’s your overall reputation. That’s a 24. Um, so, so, um, they’ve got, you know, 2000 backlinks from 178 other websites. But what I really care about here is this part here, organic keywords. This is telling me not the entire pictures, the entire pictures. I randomly put S’s on things. I don’t know. I promise I’ve not had anything to drink. I don’t really drink about that much. I guess I’m so fabulous. I don’t have to drink. Um, but anyway, so, um, but this is not the entire pictures. This is not the entire pictures, but this is just some of it, um, or most of it. So this is telling me that they’re ranking for their, his name, which makes sense. Um, then Long Island real estate lawyer, real estate lawyer Queens, real estate lawyer in Long Island. So he’s the middle of Google’s second page for this, which means it’s not generating a lot of traffic here. So what I’m seeing here is volume in this column here. This is how many people a month are looking for this. This is sort of how much it costs if you’re doing ads. This cost per click is what this column is. This KD is the keyword difficulty. How difficult is it to rank for this keyword? Now, that being said, I don’t really trust these numbers because it’s really hard to Part of the way Google works is that they’re not going to necessarily give you the entire picture. They’re using something called RankBrain, which is artificial intelligence to determine how difficult keywords are to rank. So because really it’s all in Google’s brain, basically, I don’t pay attention to KD keyword difficulty. I really just look at volume and then also traffic. So this is saying that Long Island real estate lawyer gets 350 searches a month and that’s generating around 22 visitors a month for this. Now, if this keyword were at the top and it’s in position six, which is the middle of Google’s first page, right? There’s 10 positions on a page. And it’s ranking for this keyword here or this page here. So this is the actual page that’s ranking for Long Island real estate lawyer. And I can see the page here.

13:25 Exporting Keywords to a Spreadsheet
So if this keyword were at the top of Google, it would probably be generating 100 traffic, but it’s in position six. So it’s near the middle of Google’s first page. The higher you get, the more traffic. And you might get about 50% traffic, maybe 60% traffic. It’s like position one, two, or three. So anyway, just showing you that. And once again, this is the keyword column here. This is how much traffic it’s generating. This is the keyword difficulty. This is your cost per click. This is how much traffic it’s generating right now in this column. This is where it is in Google. And one to 10 per page. So 13 would be the top of the Google second page. This is what page is ranking. You can actually click on this one to see where it is in Google. It’ll show you like essentially will show you kind of where it has been over time. So anyway, this is a ton of great data. So if I’m a real estate lawyer in the great city of New York, I would then click on export. Okay. So export is going to give us a spreadsheet. It’s going to show us that we can start marking up a spreadsheet. So I want to show you one other thing. This is showing here that it’s ranking for 368 total keywords in the U.S. And it ranked them for a couple other random keywords in other areas, right? So I’m going to click on export and that’s going to give me options here. Do I want a quick export? Do I want a full export? If you click on full export, it’ll let you get up to 30,000 rows. Rolls? 30,000 rolls? 30,000 rows. Start export. So we’re starting export. Download will open it up and you need to have Excel like a boss. I don’t think we say that any longer like a boss. Okay. So here’s our spreadsheet. Now I have a little macro that will kind of snip and snap and make this thing a little nice and pretty just like that. So all I’ve just kind of done is put a filter on it and put a heading on it and centered things. So and then I’m going to just kind of finish up my little make it look nice and pretty. All right. So now I have a beautiful spreadsheet. Now don’t if you’re not a spreadsheet person, become one really. You don’t have to stay in the spreadsheet land, but just overcome your fear of spreadsheets. Face it head on and realize that there’s a ton of data here that you can put into a Word document. You can write into a notebook. Don’t freak out. Okay. So some people like, oh my gosh, I used to be that person that didn’t like spreadsheets, but I started realizing there’s a ton of data here. So so what I really care about in this next process here

16:20 Highlighting and Prioritizing Keywords
is if I’m a real estate attorney. Right. And I’m I want to rank for keywords. I really care about what keywords are not his name. Right. Not his branding, but what keywords are valuable that I could go after. So I usually just go down this list and start highlighting ones that are good. Long Island real estate lawyer. So that’s an intentional type search. That’s in a transactional search. Real estate lawyer, Queens, Long Island, Long Island. So all of these look good. And so I would highlight these yellow. Now that tells me that that’s a good search. Now, if he let’s just say, you know, I don’t know where he’s based out of. Right. So if he’s in Brooklyn and let’s just say that real estate lawyer in Brooklyn is like, you know, he’s based out of Brooklyn. I might highlight this orange saying, hey, this is like the best keyword of all of these. I want Brooklyn. And so you go down this list and you highlight keywords and you can actually then as you’re doing this, look and see how well they’ve sort of optimized different pages for keywords. OK, so this kind of gets into step two, which is, you know, putting the keywords on the pages. Right. So let’s look at this page for a second. Real estate lawyer, Brooklyn. I’m going to look at this page and. Real estate lawyer, Brooklyn. OK, so notice here that it’s ranking for real estate lawyer, Brooklyn, but there’s nothing here. I don’t see real estate lawyer, Brooklyn. If I just do a search for real estate lawyer, Brooklyn. Nope, it’s not in there. So, so this is, this website is not really fully optimized, or they haven’t put

18:08 Checking Page Optimization Against Keywords
that keyword in here. So in the, in the ideal world, the keyword would be at least once in a heading and once in the title. I do have– I do see real estate lawyer Brooklyn Heights, so technically it is, like, in there, but it’s not… You know, it’s better to have the keyword kind of all in one area. Um, but if they were to come back and say, um, you know, "Hire us, hire a real estate lawyer in Brooklyn who cares," or something like that, like a nice heading with the keyword in it, and maybe add the keyword once or twi- one more time in the content, that would be ideal. Anyway, so that’s kind of what this whole process is, is going down this list, and let’s just say Long Island, New York was a great keyword. Um, highlight it, um, if you think it’s a great keyword. Uh, I like to highlight it orange. Um, and then I’ll kind of sometimes just look at some of these pages and just look at how well optimized is the competition. Um, so it just says Long Island. You know, it doesn’t say real estate lawyer Long Island, and I don’t even think this is a– If I look at this, inspect element, um, this is an H1. It is an H1. So this is a heading, um, but it doesn’t have the keyword in it. So if I were this client and I s- and I, and, and I actually wanted to, I could actually add these keywords into the heading, once in the heading and once in the content, and add it into the title and description of the snippet, of the page snippet, which is this. Um, you just go to Google and the page snippet, um… Just gonna get into this real quick. We’re gonna hit this really in the second, in the next s- training. This is the page snippet or just the search result. So Long Island real estate lawyer in Nassau County. Um, so the keyword needs to be once in the title here, and then once in the description here i- in the ideal world. So you can modify that. We call that the meta title, meta description, or you can just think of it as the title and description of the page.

20:08 Building Your Final Keyword List
So anyway, this whole process is going down this list, finding these, um, and, uh, and then just highlighting ones that are good. And then later on, you could put these into a list that you’re, you s- you could say, "Hey, I want to rank for these keywords." Um, and so that’s really kind of it. It’s, it’s really kind of basic, um, uh, or at least it seems basic to me. Find out what your competition is ranking for and, uh, highlight the, um… Download a spreadsheet, highlight those keywords, um, and then, um, ma- put those into a list. Um, so hopefully this training made sense, and, um, I’m glad to be back doing some quick little training with you guys. As always, just put your comment or question below the video, and I’ll answer it. And, uh, we’ll see you in the next training. Thanks.