When I was working as a growth engineer at a devtool startup, one of my first wins came from reverse-engineering a competitor’s SEO strategy using this exact trick.
Within a few weeks, we identified content gaps, built pages targeting high-value keywords, and started outranking them for a few core terms—without paying for any SEO tools.
How & Why This Works
Google Keyword Planner (yes, the one inside Google Ads) doesn’t just help you find new keywords—it also reveals what Google thinks a website is about. That means if you plug in your competitor’s domain/page, you get a peek into all the keywords they rank for… and how Google classifies them.
Step-by-Step Process
- Go to ads.google.com
- If you don’t already have a Google Ads account, you’ll need to create one. It’s free, and you don’t need to run any ads.
- Once you’re in, click the wrench icon (Tools & Settings) in the top menu bar.
- Under “Planning” click “Keyword Planner”.
- Click “Discover New Keywords” → Switch to “Start with a website”
- Paste Competitor’s URL. You can either fetch all the keywords for domain or just enter a page URL to get keywords for a page for more targeted study.
- Set Your Target Location & Language. You can narrow down to specific countries, states, or even cities.
- Hit “Get Results” and you will get
- Keyword suggestions (based on what Google sees on their site)
- Monthly search volume
- Competition level (Low, Medium, High)
- And other ads related info that you can ignore at this stage.
How to Use This Data
- Find keyword gaps: Cross-check with your own site. Any keyword they rank for but you don’t = potential content ideas or SEO tweaks.
- Discover new topics: Look at high-volume, low-competition keywords. These are content goldmines.
- Validate assumptions: Maybe you thought they were targeting one segment—turns out they’re also chasing another niche.
Pro Tips
- Run this once a month for your top 3–5 competitors.
- Save/export the keyword lists and track them over time.
- Combine this with your own Google Search Console data for a full SEO gap analysis.
Time to go Spy mode…