You may have heard by now that Moz launched a new feature within Keyword Explorer last week. We heard your requests, and we're super-excited for you to check out the new addition. The tool has been expanded to allow you to search by URL: an easy way to understand what keywords an exact URL, subdomain, or entire domain is ranking for.
As Rand pointed out, this feature of Keyword Explorer is multifunctional and can solve a lot of different problems. For this blog post, I'll cover a workflow for identifying low-hanging fruit when it comes to your competitors' keywords.
The question of "How do I utilize competitive data to my advantage?" is one we hear a lot as SEOs. How do we know what a competitor is ranking for, and how can we use that to help direct our own strategy? Many great SEO tools out there tap into what can be described as a keyword universe — a database of keywords the tool maintains that a given site can rank for. In this universe of keywords, you can search to see how your site performs. You can also search any other site to see how it performs, which is where the competitive data comes into play. Our new feature does just that.
If you want to follow along, hop into Keyword Explorer! The search bar will allow you to:
- Search by keyword (as you always have!)
- Search by root domain
- Search by subdomain
- Search by exact page
Follow along in Keyword Explorer
Find keyword opportunities at the intersection point
For this example, I'll use local Seattle doughnut shop Top Pot Doughnuts. Since we know the doughnut game can be a competitive one, Top Pot might want to get an idea of the keywords that a few other Seattle shops are ranking for. The competitors I've used are in a similar geographical area and sell similarly delicious products.
Start by entering the URL into Keyword Explorer. To keep it broad, I'd recommend beginning with the "root domain" function. You'll be pulled into a Site Overview for your domain — including the number of ranking keywords each site has, the top positions the keywords sit in, as well as the Page Authority and Domain Authority of the site you searched for. You'll see a sneak peek of the top ranking keywords beneath that.
Drop two competitors into the two boxes up at the top, and click "Compare sites." The tables will populate with data on the two competitors' sites, and the top ranking keywords for all three.
Click through to the full report of Top Ranking Keywords. You'll see a Venn diagram and two columns added in with competitors' data. Click on any of the overlapping areas in the Venn Diagram to see the keywords that you and one or both competitors have in common.
We've now entered into an ideal spot in that keyword universe we talked about earlier — a list of keywords that your site is ranking for that your competitors are also ranking for. This is the intersection point where you can find perfect keyword opportunities. Where is the competitor doing well that you are not?
(Side note: You're not starting from scratch here, because you're already ranking for these keywords. This means there's a great opportunity for improvement in an area where you likely have some content or some authority.)
A great next step is to click on the header to sort by one of your competitor's highest rankings. Identify the keywords that each competitor is ranking best for — those might be an area for you to focus on. Are these keywords applicable to what you do? If the answer is yes, there are a couple good courses of action: Add them straight into a Moz Pro campaign to start tracking your ranking progress, or add them into a Keyword Explorer list for further investigation.
If you do add these into a Keyword List, you might want to pop into the list and sort by metrics like Difficulty or Organic CTR. This will help you determine how to prioritize the new keywords.
Tracking and taking action in Moz Pro
Once you've discovered these competitive keywords, push them into a Moz Pro campaign! That way, you can measure a baseline for keyword performance and get ready to track your improvements against it over time. You can either add them to a campaign manually in the Add & Manage Keywords section, or add them to a campaign directly from Keyword Explorer.
Stay organized by labeling your keywords. You may want to label them by product, service, or even by the name of the competitor that was ranking for them back in Keyword Explorer. Once a label (or multiple labels) are in place, you can filter by those labels within the campaign to see which keywords are seeing movement, and which ones you may still need to spend more time on.
Jump into the SERP features section of your campaign, and filter by label to view the new keywords you've added in. Do any of the new keywords have a featured snippet opportunity? Use that knowledge to dictate how you structure the content for those topics. (Don't know what I'm talking about? Not to worry. Here's a great glossary of SERP features, what they mean, and how to become featured.)
And there you have it! We hope Keyword Explorer's new addition will help you through the journey of keyword research, from start to finish. Let us know how this flow is working for you.
Start exploring Keywords by Site
Can't get enough keyword research in your life? Check out our workshops through Moz Training for a deeper dive into best practices and strategies.
I work a lot in french! Even though, this tool offers great insights. Still, I can't wait for the day that your french keywords index expand! Great Job Moz!
Great article and love the Venn diagram. By being able to click through and instantly get the shared keywords you instantly remove 90 percent of the noise. If you do much keyword research you know that a majority of the time is removing the noise.
One gentlemen mentioned he wasn't ranking for anything yet so he would wait. That isn't an issue since you can just enter your competition and instantly get a list of keywords that your competition is ranking. That right there is a nice pot of goal that you can begin mining right from the start.
Thanks Thomas! Glad to hear you're loving the Venn diagram. Great points as well about bringing in that competitive insight.
Good contribution, in the end there are times that we focus on the keywords that we think users are looking for, without really measuring other more interesting ones and with a higher ROI.
Thanks
Great point, Richard. Satisfying user intent is always the end goal, but should be backed by data and competitive insight as much as possible :)
My website is relatively brand new so unfortunately there is not data for me yet. (Ranking keywords = 0).
I will check it out again in few days because it is a really great tool.
Thank you Hayley!
Another tool to spy on the competition. In the end who does not work with data is why he does not want
Couldn't agree more, but tools like these turnout out to be a great help to stay up-to-date.There is a saying-" its never late to do the right thing", the keyword search feature is something that should have been done a long time ago. Since MOZ finally updated their software i'd like people to know about another software RANKWATCH which did this about 4 years ago. I think you should look into that.
A nice visual way of analysing the data - I plan to increase content production for my site - ideally to increase the number of keywords it ranks for, so this kind of information will come in useful.
Really digging the Venn diagram view and the ability to easily switch between various combinations of competitors. One feature that would be REALLY helpful (in addition to expanding to other countries) would be the ability to filter the keyword lists by specific strings. An obvious use case for that would be to filter out brand names -- I want to see how the comparisons look with non-branded keywords only. Another use case: Let's say I and my competitors have multiple product categories in common. It would be helpful if I could filter on some of the major head terms representing each of those product categories separately. Yes, I guess I could download the full keyword lists into Excel and filter from there, but who wants to do that?
Hey John, great feedback there. Filtering would be extremely helpful in those use cases. I'll take this request to our product team, in case that might be something we can consider in the future.
No much data for non US site. My website is not new, and don't have date....
The tool is US-based at the moment, but we do have plans to expand that in the future.
Good contribution, within the finish there square measure times that we have a tendency to concentrate on the keywords that we predict users square measure searching for, while not very measure different a lot of fascinating ones and with the next ROI.
I really like that Venn diagram feature, it makes doing keyword gap analysis and common keyword analysis really efficient. Most tools require a few more steps to get that data, really happy Moz made this a priority feature. I plan on testing this tool out soon and will report back on what my favorite features are.
Completely agree, John! So glad to hear you're liking it so far. We'll look forward to hearing more about your favorite features.
Great information here! Thanks for sharing!
I think keywords are always the hardest part to optimize but as always you have clarified many doubts with your article
Good post Haley !!
It seems super important to find the right keywords for each niche market. Although we have created content focusing on some of them, I think that every so often, for a maximum of 2 months we should take a turn and try to improve them.1.
I think your article is very useful, Hayley. My business needs it, really. And I also love the graphics that you created, too.
This is that about which I was looking for. Actually I am a beginner to SEO category blog.
Thank you so much to show me this tool in Moz
Another great tool to spy on the competition. I have few keywords. :)
Thanks a lot for your practical advice one can put into use immediately.
Unfortunately for non US domains that are not huge its simply not working (Keyword Search with root domain). I keep getting nonsense results (keywords that even don't show up on the page) or then "There are no results for your search".
I really would LOVE to be able to put this feature into action also over here on the other side of the Atlantic (Europe...).
Thanks for your feedback, Cesare! You're right that the tool is US-centric at the moment, though we do have plans to expand it in the future to include additional countries' data. :)
Good job! Sometimes I wish there would be easier ways. Anyhow, thank you for sharing! Quite useful.
How quickly is data available for relatively new websites? Is there a way to speed up of offering insights to newbies?
Our keyword corpus refreshes every 2 weeks. As soon as your new site is ranking, we should be able to pull those in within just a couple weeks!
Thanks a lot for your advice, One question, Are those tools for keyword searches accurate?
Anyway,Thank you and have a great week!
Cool tool. Look forward to playing with it.