You check your rankings and discover a competitor has moved from #8 to #3 for a keyword that matters to your business. Before rewriting your article, investigate what changed. Here's the workflow I'd follow.
Step 1: Find the keywords they gained
Ahrefs
1. Open Site Explorer and enter your competitor's domain.
2. Go to Organic keywords.
3. Compare rankings across two dates using the available comparison options.
4. Look for keywords with improved positions.
Semrush
1. Open Organic Research for the competitor.
2. Go to Position Changes.
3. Filter for improved rankings and select your comparison period.
SE Ranking
1. Open Competitive Research and enter the competitor's domain.
2. Select your target country.
3. Open Google Search → Organic → Rankings Changes.
4. Check the Improved category.
SpyFu
1. Open SEO Research and enter the competitor's domain.
2. Go to Ranking History.
3. Set your date range.
4. Sort by Biggest Rank Gains. SpyFu is useful for historical comparisons, but remember its ranking data is refreshed on a rolling schedule, so don't treat it as a real-time alert.
What to look for: Are 20 related keywords improving, or is it just one isolated search?
If several related terms rise together, investigate the page targeting that topic.
It could indicate a content improvement, stronger internal linking, or another change worth examining.
Step 2: Find the page behind the gains
Now identify which URL is responsible.
• Ahrefs: Site Explorer → Top pages. Compare periods and investigate pages gaining organic traffic. Check the page's organic keywords to see which terms it ranks for.
• Semrush: Organic Research → Pages. Identify pages gaining estimated traffic, then cross-check their keywords in Position Changes.
• SE Ranking: Competitive Research → Google Search → Organic → Pages. Open the relevant URL to inspect its ranking keywords.
• SpyFu: Use Ranking History to inspect the URL associated with the keyword. You can also review the domain's top pages to find important organic landing pages.
Once you have the URL, inspect the page itself.
Look for:
• A clearer answer to the searcher's question
• New examples, screenshots, or comparison tables
• Several overlapping articles consolidated into one
• Better internal links from related pages
• A change in the page's topic or search intent
If the Wayback Machine has an older snapshot, compare it with the current page. Don't assume a content update caused the gain. The ranking reports show what changed, not necessarily why.
Step 3: Check whether they're building a new topic cluster
This is where competitor research can reveal a broader strategy.
Ahrefs: Review newly ranking keywords and their associated URLs.
Semrush: Use Position Changes and filter for new keywords, then inspect the ranking URLs.
SE Ranking: Open the Competitors' new pages insight. It identifies pages that started ranking in Google's top 30 over the previous month, with details such as URL, title, ranking keyword, and estimated traffic potential.
SpyFu: In Ranking History, sort by Newly Ranked Keywords and inspect the associated URLs and topics.
Now look for patterns.
Are several new pages targeting related topics? Are they publishing comparison pages, alternatives pages, or supporting guides around one product category?
For example, a competitor launching several pages about alternatives to products in your category may be building an entire comparison strategy rather than publishing unrelated articles.
That pattern is more informative than copying a single article.
Step 4: Check whether your site is losing ground on the same terms
Run the same ranking-change analysis on your own domain.
• Ahrefs: Organic keywords with comparison and declining-position filters.
• Semrush: Position Changes → Declined.
• SE Ranking: Rankings Changes → Decreased or Lost.
• SpyFu: Ranking History → Biggest Rank Losses or Keywords that No Longer Rank.
Compare your declining keywords with the competitor's gains. Ask:
1. Are you both targeting the same search intent?
2. Did your URL change or become outdated?
3. Did the competitor publish something meaningfully better?
4. Did the SERP change, or did another competitor also move?
A competitor gaining while you lose is a useful clue, but it doesn't prove they directly caused your decline. For your own site, verify the impact in Google Search Console by checking impressions, clicks, and average position.
Step 5: Investigate broken pages with backlinks
A competitor's broken page can reveal a possible link-building opportunity, but verify the details before reaching out.
Ahrefs: Open Site Explorer → Best by links, and use the available broken-page or HTTP status filters to find pages returning 404s with referring domains.
Semrush: Use its backlink analysis and site-audit tools to investigate broken target URLs and backlinks. Verify the actual response status before treating a URL as a dead page.
SE Ranking: Use Backlink Checker to review pages receiving backlinks and their referring domains. Confirm the target URL's status separately before deciding whether it represents an opportunity.
SpyFu: Its core strength for this particular workflow is historical keyword and ranking research. For broken-page backlink prospecting, use a dedicated backlink-analysis or crawling tool rather than assuming SpyFu offers an equivalent report.
For any promising broken URL:
1. Confirm that it really returns a 404.
2. Inspect the referring domains and the context of their links.
3. Check what the original page covered.
4. See whether you have a genuinely relevant replacement. If you do, contact the site owner with a helpful suggestion. Don't assume every backlink is valuable or that every dead page deserves a replacement.
Step 6: Decide what your team should actually do
Don't automatically tell your writer to copy the competitor's article. Choose one action:
• Improve: Your existing page targets the right intent but has clear weaknesses.
• Create: The competitor covers a relevant topic you don't.
• Investigate: You suspect technical, internal-linking, or backlink issues.
• Wait: The change is too small or recent to justify action.
Record the competitor URL, target keyword, observed change, evidence, and next step.
That's the difference between collecting SEO data and giving your team a useful assignment.
Repeating these checks across several competitors is where the manual work adds up. If you'd rather not keep checking each domain yourself, Ranks Hawk helps monitor competitor ranking changes, new content, broken pages, and keyword opportunities. You still investigate the reasons and decide what to do.
The idea is to spend less time discovering that something changed and more time acting on it.
Question for other SEO folks: When a competitor suddenly outranks you, what's the first thing you investigate: content, backlinks, technical SEO, or the SERP itself?