How do you choose competitors for SEO benchmarking?

Choose competitors for SEO benchmarking by identifying the websites that compete with your pages in the search results for the same target keywords, search intent, audience and location. A business does not need to sell the same products or services to be an SEO competitor. If it consistently appears alongside your site for important searches, its content, rankings and visibility can provide a relevant benchmark.

Start with search competitors, not just commercial competitors. Your sales team may identify businesses offering similar products, but search results often include a wider group of websites. These may include publishers, directories, comparison sites, professional bodies, marketplaces, consultants or businesses serving an adjacent need. They may not be direct commercial rivals, yet they can compete for the visibility your pages need.

Use your priority keyword set to find these search competitors. Review the domains that appear repeatedly for terms connected with your products, services, topics and target customers. Give greater weight to competitors appearing for commercially important searches and to those ranking near your pages, rather than treating every visible domain as equally relevant.

Assess each potential competitor against the same criteria. A useful competitor for benchmarking will usually share several of the following characteristics:

• Keyword overlap: the site ranks for a meaningful proportion of the search terms that matter to your SEO programme.
• Search intent: its pages address the same purpose behind a search, such as researching a problem, comparing options or making a purchase.
• Audience: it targets the same type of customer, sector, role or level of expertise.
• Geography: it competes in the same country, region, city or service area.
• Business relevance: its visibility could influence the discovery, consideration or selection of your products or services.
• Content scope: it publishes pages covering topics and stages of the customer journey that are relevant to your strategy.

No single criterion is sufficient on its own. A large information site may share many keywords but have little commercial relevance. A local provider may be highly relevant to your business but appear only for location-specific searches. Consider the combined picture when deciding whether a domain belongs in your benchmark.

Separate competitor types to avoid misleading comparisons. It is often useful to maintain more than one competitor group rather than placing every domain into one list. A practical structure includes:

• Direct search competitors: businesses with similar offerings that compete for the same transactional and service-led searches.
• Content competitors: sites that rank for your informational topics and compete for awareness, even when they do not sell an equivalent product.
• Authority competitors: domains with strong visibility across your subject area that influence the results you are trying to enter.
• Local competitors: organisations competing in the same geographic search market, including those whose wider offering differs from yours.
• Emerging competitors: domains gaining visibility in your priority areas and likely to become more significant over time.

This grouping makes the results easier to interpret. You can compare direct competitors when assessing commercial performance, content competitors when identifying topic gaps, and emerging competitors when monitoring changes in the search landscape. It also prevents a high-authority publisher from distorting a comparison intended to assess commercial rivals.

Match the search environment to your own reporting. Rankings vary according to location, language, device, search features, personalisation and the type of page being assessed. Choose competitors using the same market and search conditions applied to your own SEO reporting. For a UK service business, for example, a site visible only in another country should not normally be treated as a primary benchmark. Similarly, a domain that ranks on desktop but not for the mobile searches relevant to your audience may require separate consideration.

Review the actual search results rather than relying only on domain-level visibility data. Look at the pages ranking for your target terms and ask whether they satisfy the same intent as your page. A domain may appear relevant at an overall level while ranking with a different type of content, such as an editorial guide where you are assessing a product page. Page-level relevance is essential for a reliable comparison.

Prioritise competitors by strategic importance. You do not need to benchmark every domain that appears in search results. Begin with competitors that meet several of these conditions:

• They rank consistently for your highest-priority keywords.
• They appear in results where your pages currently underperform.
• They compete for valuable commercial or lead-generating searches.
• They publish content covering gaps in your current topic or customer journey coverage.
• They operate in the same market and serve a comparable audience.
• They are gaining visibility in areas that support your business objectives.

A smaller, carefully selected benchmark set is usually more useful than a long list of loosely related domains. Too many competitors make it difficult to distinguish meaningful movement from normal search volatility. Keep a broader discovery list if useful, but identify a focused primary set for regular reporting and action planning.

Do not select competitors solely because they rank above you. A high-ranking domain is not automatically a suitable model for your SEO strategy. It may have a different business model, a much broader topic focus, a substantially different audience or a level of brand recognition that is not comparable. Its performance can still offer useful observations, but it should be labelled as an authority or aspirational benchmark rather than treated as a direct rival.

Likewise, avoid choosing only the businesses you already know. Familiar commercial rivals may have limited search visibility, while less obvious sites may capture demand through guides, category pages or location content. Let keyword and search-result evidence determine the benchmark set, then apply commercial judgement to refine it.

Use your own data to validate the selection. Compare candidate domains against your organic keyword coverage, ranking distribution, landing pages and search intent groups. Look for repeated overlap rather than a single shared term. If a site competes with you across several strategically important areas, it is more suitable than one that appears for an isolated query.

It is also helpful to record why each competitor was included. Note the relevant market, keyword group, intent type and competitor category. This creates an auditable benchmark and makes future reviews more consistent. When a domain is removed or replaced, you can explain whether the change reflects a shift in strategy, search behaviour, market coverage or actual search visibility.

Review the competitor set regularly. Search results change as competitors publish new content, expand their services, enter new locations or improve their technical SEO. Your own priorities may change as well. Reassess the list when launching a new content area, entering a new market, changing your service offering or seeing substantial movement in important search results. Keep a consistent core group for trend analysis, while adding or testing new domains when the search landscape changes.

The final benchmark should therefore combine commercial understanding with evidence from the search results. Select domains that compete for the same demand, distinguish them by role and relevance, prioritise those connected to your objectives, and review the set as your market evolves. This produces comparisons that explain where visibility is being won or lost and which SEO improvements deserve attention.