Competitor Deep Audit

Competitor Deep Audit

Overview

Identifies the real organic competitors of a target domain (not who the owner thinks competes, but who actually shows up in their SERPs), then for the top 5–8 competitors pulls a keyword-gap-analysis: keywords where competitors rank top-10 but the target does not, sorted by search volume × estimated traffic.

Output: a prioritized 30–100-item opportunity list for the next content roadmap.

When to use

• New SEO mandate intake — get the lay of the land
• Quarterly competitor review
• Content roadmap planning
• "Why aren't we ranking for X?" — find which competitor took the spot
• Validate / disprove gut-feel-competitor assumptions

Don't use for:

• Brand-positioning analysis (this is SEO-organic, not brand-share)
• Paid-search competitor analysis (different toolset — SEMrush Ads, SpyFu)
• Backlink-gap-analysis (separate workflow, use claude-seo:seo-backlinks)

Prerequisites

• DataForSEO API credentials (Labs endpoints — competitors_domain + domain_intersection)
• Optional: Sistrix API for cross-validation (domain.competitors.seo — needs API-Pro tier)
• Target domain + DE-market focus (location_code 2276; adjust for other markets)

Workflow

Step 1 — Identify real competitors via SERP overlap

const competitorsResp = await d4sPost('/v3/dataforseo_labs/google/competitors_domain/live', {
  target: 'example.com',
  language_code: 'de',
  location_code: 2276,
  limit: 25,
});

The response orders competitors by SERP-overlap (intersections) × keyword count × ETV. Top 5–8 entries = your real competitors.

Surprise factor: typically 30–60 % of real competitors are NOT the brands the owner names off the cuff. Often blogs, info-sites, marketplaces, or niche players that swallow long-tail traffic.

Step 2 — For each top competitor, pull their ranked keywords

const ranked = await d4sPost('/v3/dataforseo_labs/google/ranked_keywords/live', {
  target: 'competitor.com',
  language_code: 'de',
  location_code: 2276,
  limit: 500,  // wide net
  order_by: ['ranked_serp_element.serp_item.estimated_traffic_volume,desc'],
});

Step 3 — Compute the gap

For each competitor's top-ranking keyword (position ≤ 10):

• Check if your domain ranks for it (call ranked_keywords for your domain too)
• If you rank > 20 (or don't rank at all): this is an opportunity
• Compute "opportunity score" = searchvolume × (1 - yourposition/100) × competitorcounttop10

Sort by opportunity score, take top 100, that's your roadmap.

Step 4 — Cluster by content type

Bucket the opportunities:

• Category pages missing — keywords like "X-shop", "X-online-kaufen" with no matching category page
• Product gaps — competitor has product/variant you don't sell
• Content/blog gaps — competitor ranks with a guide/listicle, you have nothing
• Quick-win wonky URLs — you have a similar page that ranks poorly, just needs work

Output as a table:

| # | Keyword | SV | Your Pos | Best Competitor | Their Pos | Their URL | Gap Type | Action | |---|---------|----|---------:|------------------|----------:|-----------|----------|--------| | 1 | "outdoor jacke wasserdicht damen" | 5400 | — | bergfreunde.de | 3 | /jacken/.../damen-wasserdicht | category-missing | Build dedicated category page | | 2 | "merino socken test 2026" | 880 | 47 | outdoor-magazin.de | 2 | /test/merino-socken-2026 | content/blog | Write tested-buyer-guide |

Step 5 — Prioritize against capacity

A realistic content-roadmap fits 5–15 new pieces per quarter (depending on team size). From your top-100, pick:

• 3–5 high-volume category pages (highest impact)
• 5–10 blog/content gaps (medium impact, faster)
• 2–3 product-line expansions (if business allows)

Cross-validation with Sistrix (optional)

// Only available with Sistrix API-Pro tier — basic tier returns error_code 5001
const sxComp = await sistrix('domain.competitors.seo', {
  domain: 'example.com',
  country: 'de',
  num: 20,
});

Compare DataForSEO competitors vs Sistrix competitors — high overlap (>60 %) means your competitor set is robust. Low overlap → re-check both datasets, often signals a recent SERP volatility event.

Common pitfalls

| Pitfall | Mitigation | |---------|------------| | Treating Amazon / Wikipedia / Marketplaces as "competitors" | Filter them out — they're SERP-fixtures, not actionable competitors | | Going after very high-volume head terms | Usually impossibly competitive — focus on 100-5000 SV mid-tail | | Picking opportunities matching only blog content | If your URL slug structure is /blog/ then your e-commerce business may not benefit much from ranked blog posts — prefer category/product gaps | | Ignoring intent mismatch | Competitor ranks for "X review" — but you sell X, not review X. Check intent alignment | | Cost spiral | DataForSEO ranked_keywords with limit: 500 per competitor × 8 competitors = 4000 results. Cost: ~$0.20–$0.40. Cap reasonably. |

Cost estimate per audit

• DataForSEO competitors_domain (1 call): ~$0.01
• DataForSEO ranked_keywords (8 competitors × 1 call): ~$0.08–$0.40
• DataForSEO ranked_keywords for your domain (1 call): ~$0.01–$0.05
• Total: ~$0.10–$0.50 per competitor audit

Output for stakeholders

The audit produces two files:

1. competitor-audit-.json — raw data for further processing
2. competitor-audit-.md — markdown report with:

• Top 8 real competitors (table)
• Top 30 keyword gaps (table)
• 3 strategic recommendations (which page types to build, in what order)
• Estimated effort/impact

For a sendable PDF version, pipe through the seo-outreach-report pipeline.

Implementation

See competitor-deep-audit.example.js in this folder for a starter script. Configure target + competitors filter list (to exclude marketplaces/Wikipedia), run, get markdown report.

Real-world anchor data (anonymized 2026)

• DE mattress shop: identified 11 high-volume keyword gaps (~140k total SV/month) where 5/6 competitors had a dedicated category page but the target had only product-level content. Strategy: consolidate + amplify existing weak pages instead of building 11 new pages. ROI estimate ~30× over 12 months.

Related skills

• seo-outreach-report — for the polished decision-maker output
• post-core-update-recovery — when competitor analysis reveals broad authority gaps, not just URL gaps
• claude-seo:seo-competitor-pages — alternative implementation in claude-seo plugin (uses different methodology)

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: maxschottke-spec
• Source: maxschottke-spec/seo-survival-kit
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.