Competitor traffic analysis tools help you answer questions like:
How much traffic do my competitors get? How many visitors, and from where?
Each year, you are granted a much larger list of competitors–direct and indirect–in perpetuity. As Leigh Mckenzie of Backlinko writes,
“Simply having a good product or service doesn’t cut it anymore. You need a rock-solid differentiation strategy.”
You aren’t getting anywhere near a solid differentiation strategy without knowing what your competitors are doing.
That’s where competitor analysis comes in. Now, competitor analysis can be as deep as you want it to be (and we keep covering most of these competitor analysis strategies, competitor analysis frameworks, and more).
To help you accomplish any level of competition analysis, however, you’ll need tools.
Each of the tools mentioned below provides you with features that help you accomplish your competitive analysis and competitive intelligence goals.
Each tool does it differently, but you’d arrive at a similar analysis.
Some tools stretch beyond traffic analysis and help you uncover other digital marketing strategies as well as extend to email marketing, ads, SMS marketing, landing pages, and more.
Starting right at the top then, here are some of the best competitor traffic analysis tools you can get your hands on:
Similarweb
Similarweb is on a quest to map every corner of the digital world and is one of the best tools to help you analyze competitor traffic.
It has more than 10 billion data signals collected daily, 2TB of data analyzed daily, and more than 10k traffic reports generated daily.
Competitor website traffic? Get data directly measured through first-party analytics (like from Google Analytics) of millions of websites and apps.
Some tools stretch beyond traffic analysis and help you uncover other digital marketing strategies as well as extend to email marketing, ads, SMS marketing, landing pages, and more.
Data on Similarweb also comes in through contributors' networks, public data, and partnerships with DSPs and ISPs.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs’ traffic checker, also known as Site Explorer, directly shows you the complete traffic profile of your competitors.
Ahrefs has several other features for you to track, measure, and improve your own search and content marketing efforts, of course.
Ahrefs provides you with traffic, link profiles, referring domains, and keywords your competitors are ranking for.
This is not to mention several tools you can use to achieve your SEO performance metrics and goals.
On Ahrefs, you can see the best content your competitors are ranking for, identify sources that drive the most traffic to your competitor's websites, and also gather information about ads that seem to work for your competitors.
Semrush
Among many tools available in Semrush’s toolkit, the competitor traffic analysis tool from Semrush makes it easy for you to identify traffic sources, and traffic trends, sort traffic by geolocation, understand your competitors’ digital efforts, uncover web journeys, dig up site audiences, and more.
With Semrush, however, there’s a lot more than just competitor traffic analysis.
Get access to your competitors’ search profiles, ads, top pages, top conversion rates, how they promote their business, social media profiles, and more.
Moz
Moz has always been a popular SEO tool giving you a myriad of ways to discover target keyword opportunities that your competitors are ranking for (but you still aren’t), identifying your top competitors on search, finding gaps in your content strategy, and also tracking your competitor rankings on search.
Moz is also a complete SEO management tool to help discover high-quality keywords, track rankings, fix technical SEO issues, identify search opportunities, discover keyword gaps, and much more.
Buzzsumo
Since competitor traffic is almost always dependent on content strategy, you’d want one eye out for how content is created, distributed, and shared across the web.
An easy way to stop relying on guesswork and get solid competitor intelligence, especially on popular content created by your competitors is to use Buzzsumo.
Among other things, Buzzsumo helps you identify what content works, the networks on which piece of content seems to work best, people who are sharing this content, and how your own content fares compared to that of your competition.
Get the low-down on your competitor’s most shared and best-performing content pieces, and dig into reports that show you average shares across networks, length of content, type of content, published dates, and more.
Panoramata
Panoramata gives you complete access to competitor tracking competitor marketing assets, and digital strategy analysis with one single platform.
Get access to real-time information on benchmarkss, spy on any company’s marketing strategy, and search through over 10k+ email campaigns, SMS messages, landing pages, and websites.
See your competitors’ websites, flows, traffic movements, and SEO profiles. Monitor ads, dig up brand profiles, and spy on to content calendars to see what your competitors are doing.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is competitor traffic analysis important?
Competitor traffic analysis helps you understand where your competitors are getting their visitors and which channels drive the most engagement. This insight allows you to refine your own strategies and uncover new opportunities to attract your target audience.
2. How do competitor traffic analysis tools work?
These tools use data sources like website analytics, backlinks, and search engine performance to estimate traffic and uncover trends. They provide insights into metrics like traffic volume, top referral sources, and keyword rankings.
3. Which competitor traffic analysis tool is best for beginners?
Tools like Similarweb and Buzzsumo are user-friendly and provide straightforward data visualizations ideal for beginners. They offer clear insights without requiring extensive technical knowledge.
