SEO has become an essential part of internet marketing and competitor keyword research is a part of SEO. Although access to premium SEO tools is desirable for this purpose, it is not the only way to get this information. Here are some free tools to help you find information on the keywords being used by your competitors.
SEMRush
SEMRush is a useful tool that can provide you with a variety of information. By entering your competitor’s domain, you can find out the top ten keywords that your competitor’s website ranks for organically. The tool also provides information on their positions in the search results, traffic percentages for them and such other information.
Alexa
Alexa not only gives you the traffic score, but also the keyword queries that bring maximum traffic to a specific URL. The tool is easy to use. All you need to do is enter your competitor’s URL in the ‘Site Info’ tab. On getting the details, you can click on the ‘search analytics’ tab to find the top queries bringing high percentage of traffic to the site and the keywords on ascent or decline.
SEOmoz Term Extractor
A free account at SEOmoz will give you access to this and a variety of other SEO tools. On logging in, you will find the Term Extractor in the SEO Tools section. By entering your competitor’s URL, you can find information on one, two and three word phrases that they are targeting and the HTML elements in which those terms are found on their sites. You will also find some optimization tips at the bottom.