If you’re doing domain analysis right, it can become a great source for steady insights.
The best way to start finding any information on a domain in Semrush is with the search bar in Domain Overview.
Once you enter a domain you can immediately see all of the data we have on the particular domain.
This may be overwhelming to you at first as this can be quite a bit of information to take in at once. The best way to understand and engage with competitor website analysis is to break it down piece by piece and analyze each section.
Organic Search
First, let’s start by looking at a domain‘s organic search traffic. This is the place to be when it comes to understanding just the organic side of your search.
For this particular case, let’s take a look at the organic search traffic for Adidas. As you can see Adidas.com currently has 21.1 million worldwide organic searches.
It’s important to keep in mind that this is an average monthly number, based on the keywords we have found for this domain.
In addition to traffic volume, organic search data will let you analyze the number of keywords, traffic cost, branded traffic, and non-branded traffic.
Keywords show you the number of keywords bringing users to the domain while Branded and Non-Branded traffic shows their respective traffic.
Finally, Traffic Cost shows you the amount you would need to pay monthly to rank for these keywords in Google Ads.
You will also notice next to each number in this list there is a percentage. This is telling you what percentage change has been made to the given category based on the last update conducted.
Positive changes will be shown in green as negative changes will be listed in red.
Keywords are updated differently depending on search volume. For more information on how we update our keywords, please take a look at our FAQ.
Paid Search
When you are looking at a domain from a Paid Search perspective, you will be revealing your competitors’ bidding information. In this example, we can see that Adidas has 309.9K visits in traffic, specifically from paid search traffic. Just below that number, you will see this traffic is coming from 2.44K keywords.
When you click on this paid search traffic number you’ll be brought to the Advertising Research report. Here you will gain an even more in-depth analysis of a domain’s paid traffic. You will see the keywords, traffic, and traffic cost. The percentage change represents the difference since the last update.
If we want to see how this occurred, we can go to the Advertising Research Position Changes report to see what changed in their keywords since the last update was conducted.
Backlinks
Under Backlinks, you will find the websites that are linking to the domain you queried. For Adidas, you can see that there are 34.5 million backlinks. This is based on the data for 38.4 trillion backlinks that we currently carry in our system.
Display Advertising
The number for Display Advertising refers to AdSense data. If you are not aware, AdSense is advertising on other websites. Semrush has a crawler that will be able to verify the data for this report.
The Display Advertising Overview report will break down this data even further. We can see that Adidas has 4.5K ads running with 5.5K different publishers.
By researching your competitors, you can then determine where they are doing advertising and take advantage of this information. As with the other sections, we can see the percentage of change since the last update for the domain.
Organic Search Traffic
If you keep scrolling down, you will see the Organic Search part of the Overview page. As you scroll down you will notice the highlighted organic search traffic widget at the top of the dashboard. As you continue to scroll down, these widgets will highlight to match the section you are in.
The first widget in the organic research section is top organic keywords. This shows the top keywords for Adidas and their volume, CPC, and traffic %.
If we move to the right, we can see how their positioning is distributed amongst their keywords. This shows us how many keywords they have that they are ranking within the Top 3 positions, how many within positions 4-10, 11-20, 21-50, and 51-100.
Moving further down the page you will see the top competitors for Adidas. We can see these competitors displayed in the graph to the right, representing each competitor in a bubble.
Each bubble’s position will vary based on their keywords they are ranking for and their traffic. The more the bubble moves to the top, the more traffic they will be receiving from Organic Keywords. The more the bubble moves to the right, the more keywords they will be ranking within the Top 100 results.
The last portion of this report refers to Branded Traffic. This is based on the Organic Keywords the domain is already ranking for.
By reviewing the keywords the domain is ranking for Organically, Semrush reports how many of those keywords are branded keywords and reports the information associated with them.
We can see the amount of traffic coming from these keywords, how these relate to the non branded keywords for the domain, along with the traffic trend the keywords have been experiencing.
Paid Search Traffic
The same concept we applied to the Organic Search section can be applied to the Paid Search section. You will see a similar type of information that was displayed in Organic Search for top Keywords and Competitors is displayed the same way for Paid Search.
The same goes for the competition position maps and position trend distribution.
The other main difference between Organic and Paid is the Sample Ads section at the bottom. This will show you your competitors’ Ad Copy for their Paid Search efforts.
By selecting the “View Full Report” button on any of these sections, you will be redirected to another report in our software and reveal more information on the given section you selected.
Backlinks
The backlinks section of the Overview page will reveal a snapshot of what backlink information we were able to find for a domain. The first subsection listed will be the backlinks, which will list out a sample of individual backlinks pointing to the queried domain. Within this section, we can review the Link URL along with the referring page title.
Next to this data, we can see a circle diagram breaking down keywords by follow to no-follow. We can then also see what type of backlinks this domain has pointing to them through the diagram listed below.
We can reveal more about the domain’s backlinks by reviewing the Top Anchors section. This will show us what anchor text is used the most in their backlinks. This can help when determining what a domain uses to draw in its audience.
This will also tell us how many domains use this particular anchor as well as how many backlinks use it. Next, the referring domains will be shown, which coincide with the backlinks shown. This is telling you how many domains are linking to the domain queried. We can then review the domain’s indexed pages.
When reviewing these pages, this does not necessarily mean what Google has indexed. This information is coming from our own sources so this is telling you what indexed pages Semrush found for the queried domain.
Display Advertising
The last part of this Overview page lists the Display Advertising information. The first section of this report displays the Latest Publishers. This tells us what websites are publishing ads for the domain that is being queried.
We can see how many ads the domain is displaying along with how that ad total is split between text ads and media ads. We can see the samples of these ads below for each type.
The Landing Pages section tells us which landing pages the domain is using in its advertisements.
Conclusion
Domain Overview can provide you with a number of top-level insight into your competitors. Utilizing the steps above are just some of the many ways in which Domain Overview can help you close the gap with your competition. Use this domain analysis tool for both organic and paid data to ensure you’re leaving no gaps unfilled.
Now that you’re aware of how to expose your competitors you can take full advantage of it and see what you can dig up this vital information.
How to Expose Your Competitors With Semrush
Go to Semrush Domain Overview, enter a domain and follow the steps below.
Step 1. Look into your competitor’s organic traffic in the Organic Search tab. See their top organic keywords, main organic competitors, branded traffic trend, branded/non-branded keywords distribution.
Step 2. Analyze how they are utilizing their paid search in the Paid Search Traffic tab. Discover their top paid keywords, main paid competitors, examples of ads they are using.
Step 3. View the backlinks report to see where they are linking in the Backlinks tab. Get detailed information on follow/nofollow links, backlink and anchor types, referring domains, indexed pages.
Step 4. See where your competitors are using their AdSense in the Display Advertising tab. See their latest publishers and landing pages for display ads, top paid keywords, and examples of image and text ads.