# Competitor research for a founder: one afternoon, no subscription

Your search rivals are rarely your business rivals. They are whoever holds the ten results for the questions your buyers ask. Here is how to find them, what to read, and the one page to write at the end of it.

Updated 2026-09-15 · Source: https://porteur.ai/guides/seo-competitor-research

## Your search rivals are not your business rivals

You compete for customers with three companies. You compete for the first page with fifteen sites, and most of them do not sell anything like your product.

- Review sites and directories, which rank for "best X" and "X alternatives" in almost every category.
- Big publications and content sites that wrote the explainer once and never lost it.
- Forums and communities: threads that answer the question in one sentence.
- Documentation of adjacent tools, which ranks for the task, not the product.
- Your actual competitors, usually on their own brand queries and their comparison pages.

> Chasing the company you fear in sales meetings is how founders waste a quarter. Chase the sites that hold the results you want.

## Find them in twenty minutes

1. **Write down ten real queries** The ones your buyers type: the category, "best X", "X alternatives", the two or three jobs your product does, and one problem query.
2. **Search each in an incognito window, in your main country** Personalisation and location change results, so a clean window and the right country matter more than any tool.
3. **Write down every domain in the top ten** One column per query. Ten queries, a hundred rows, twenty minutes.
4. **Count the repeats** The domains appearing on four or more of your queries are your search rivals. Usually there are three to six.
5. **Note the features** Which queries show an AI Overview, People also ask, videos or a shopping row. Those take clicks whatever your position.

If your own site already ranks on some of these, open the Performance report and read the queries where you appear beyond position ten. Those are the fights you are already in.

## What to read about each rival, and where

| Source | What it tells you | Cost |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Their sitemap.xml | Everything they publish, the families they build, what they maintain | Free, ten minutes |
| Their titles, from the results pages | Which queries they target and how they phrase the promise | Free |
| A site: search of their domain with a keyword | Whether they have a page on a subject, and which one Google prefers | Free |
| The pages that rank against you | The intent Google assigned, the depth expected, the questions answered | Free, and the most useful hour |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | Backlinks with a comparison against another domain, and keyword volumes | Free with a verified site |
| A backlink index's free tier | Their referring domains, which is where your first links can come from | Free tier or a paid suite |
| Their pricing and comparison pages | How they position against you, and which objections they answer | Free |

The sitemap is the single highest-value file. It is their content plan, published, and it shows which families they invested in and which they abandoned by the dates in the lastmod values.

## What to copy, and what to ignore

| Copy | Ignore |
| --- | --- |
| The page families that clearly earn: comparisons, alternatives, the job guides | Their volume of thin posts. A big site can carry pages you cannot |
| The questions their pages answer, which come from the same results pages you read | Their word counts as a target. There is no length that ranks |
| The structure of the pages that outrank you: the order of sections, the tables, the examples | Their design, their tone, their claims about themselves |
| The places that link to two of them and not to you | Their paid links, if you can see them. You would be buying the risk |
| Their naming: the words buyers use for the category | Their brand queries. You cannot have those |

The rule: copy the shape of what works, never the text. A page that repeats what the top ten already say has nothing to earn, and Google's guidance asks what a page offers beyond the obvious.

## The one page you write at the end

Research that does not end in a decision was entertainment. Write this page, keep it in the repository, and read it when you plan a quarter.

1. Our search rivals: three to six domains, with what kind of site each is.
2. The ten queries, with who holds the top three and whether a feature sits above them.
3. The families they hold that we do not: comparisons, alternatives, job guides, tools.
4. The five pages we will write first, each with its query and the intent from the results page.
5. The ten sites that link to two rivals and not to us.
6. What we will not chase, and why.

> The last line is the one that saves the quarter. Writing down what you are not chasing stops you drifting into it in week three.

## What a paid suite would add

The free method gives you the decisions. A suite gives you speed and coverage, which matter once you are choosing between forty pages rather than five.

- Every query a rival ranks on, instead of the ten you sampled.
- The gap between two sites computed for you, rather than read off a sitemap.
- Volume and difficulty estimates on hundreds of terms at once.
- A backlink index deeper than the free tiers, with the pages that link and the anchors used.
- Rank tracking over time, which no free tool gives for rivals.

None of it changes what to do on the first five pages. Buy it when the bottleneck is choosing, not when the bottleneck is writing.

## When to redo it

- Every quarter, as a twenty-minute recheck of the ten queries: who moved, who appeared, which features are new.
- After a core update, because the mix of sites on a results page can change without anything on your site changing.
- When you add a product or a category, since the rivals for the new one are usually different people.
- When a page of yours stalls at positions five to fifteen: read the four pages above it, specifically, and write down what they have that you do not.

## Questions

### How do I find my SEO competitors?

Search ten queries your buyers actually type, in an incognito window in your country, and list every domain in the top ten. The domains that appear on four or more of those queries are your search rivals, whether or not they sell anything like your product.

### Can I do competitor research without paying for a tool?

Yes, for the decisions that matter. The results pages, their sitemaps, their titles, site: searches and the free backlink data in Bing Webmaster Tools and Search Console cover an afternoon's work. Paid suites buy speed and coverage, not different conclusions.

### What is the most useful thing to read on a rival's site?

Their sitemap.xml. It lists everything they publish, shows which page families they invested in, and the lastmod dates show what they still maintain.

### Should I copy a competitor's page?

Copy the shape, never the text. Take the structure, the questions answered and the format that ranks, then add what only you have: your data, your worked example, your first-hand experience.

### How often should I redo this?

A short recheck each quarter, and again after a core update or when you enter a new category. The full afternoon is worth repeating once a year.

## Read next

- [How to analyse a competitor’s keywords, with and without a tool](https://porteur.ai/guides/analyze-competitor-keywords): A fast way to find competitor keywords you can win: read their sitemap and titles, then confirm gaps with a tool and pick only queries you can match.
- [Read a rival’s sitemap: their whole content plan in one file](https://porteur.ai/guides/read-a-rivals-sitemap): Open a rival’s sitemap, spot their page families, see what they update, and turn it into a list of pages you can build and win.
- [Keyword gap analysis: the searches your rivals hold and you do not](https://porteur.ai/guides/keyword-gap-analysis): See how to find rivals’ search traffic you could win, filter it to your product, group it into pages, and turn gaps into briefs you can ship.
- [Backlink gap: the sites that link to your rivals and not to you](https://porteur.ai/guides/backlink-gap): Find the sites that link to rivals and not to you. Read the page, make the ask, and track new links. A practical backlink gap workflow.
- [Competitor keyword analysis by hand, with free data](https://porteur.ai/guides/competitor-keyword-analysis): Choose the right rivals, read their sitemaps, pull free keyword clues, find the gaps, and turn them into pages you can ship this week.
- [The best free SEO tools in 2026, by the job they do](https://porteur.ai/guides/best-free-seo-tools): The free SEO stack that works in 2026: what “free” really means, the right tool for each job, and what you still miss without a paid suite.
- [Link gap](https://porteur.ai/glossary/link-gap): Link gap means sites that link to your rivals but not to you. Here is why it matters, how to find it, and how to turn it into links.

Paste your URL and the free check names the rivals holding your searches and the ones within reach, in about thirty seconds, without a subscription. Free check: https://porteur.ai/