🤔 Why This Matters

Your competitors have already done months or years of keyword research and content creation. Their ranking data is public — Ahrefs shows exactly what is working for them. Instead of guessing what to write next, reverse-engineering a competitor's keyword strategy gives you a proven content roadmap.

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Free Template Included

Use this alongside the SOP steps

Download .xlsx

Organic Keyword Reverse Engineering Worksheet

Two-sheet worksheet: Ahrefs Import tab (competitor keyword data) + Keyword Buckets tab (group keywords by intent and map to pages).

Reshma

SEO & GEO Manager, Unlearn Academy

Mentor Insight

“When we started building Unlearn's SEO, the first thing I did was run this SOP on Aviv Digital, which was the most established digital marketing school in Kerala at the time. Their top pages were: a general 'digital marketing course Kerala' page, a Kochi-specific page, and a salary guide. We saw the salary guide was getting traffic but it only had 400 words and no actual data. We created a 1,800-word salary guide with real graduate outcomes, real salary ranges, and Kerala-specific context. Within 3 months, ours outranked theirs for 6 related salary keywords. That one page now drives more organic leads than any other page on the site.”

Result: Salary guide outranked competitor in 3 months for 6 keywords. Now the top organic lead source.

⚠️ Before You Start

Ahrefs account (or Semrush)

2–3 competitor websites identified (see SOP 010 if needed)

Download the Organic Keyword Reverse Engineering Worksheet

Phase 1 — Identify the Right Competitor

Choose the right competitor to reverse-engineer

The competitor you choose matters. Use this criteria: ✓ Good competitor to reverse-engineer: • Similar business size (DR within 15 points of yours) • Targeting the same audience in the same geography • Ranking for keywords you want to rank for ✗ Bad competitor to reverse-engineer: • Wikipedia, national newspapers, or global platforms (impossible to replicate) • Businesses targeting a completely different audience • Sites with DR 80+ when you have DR 20 (too far ahead) For Unlearn Academy: reverse-engineer Aviv Digital, Blucampus, or other Kerala-based digital marketing schools — not IIDE or Coursera.

Ahrefs Site Explorer

Analyse the competitor's top organic pages

Open Ahrefs → Site Explorer → Enter the competitor's domain. Click 'Top Pages' in the left sidebar (under Organic Search). This shows which pages get the most organic traffic for this competitor. For each of the top 10–20 pages, note: • Page title and URL • Estimated monthly organic traffic • Number of keywords the page ranks for • Top keyword (highest traffic keyword for that page) Paste these into the Ahrefs Import tab of the Organic Keyword RE Worksheet. Ask: Do we have a similar page? If yes — is it ranking? If no — should we create one?

Identify keyword gaps — what they rank for that you don't

In Ahrefs → Site Explorer (competitor domain) → Click 'Organic Keywords'. Filter: • Positions: 1–20 (first 2 pages of results) • Volume: 100+ monthly searches • KD: under 40 (realistic to rank for) Export this list → Import into the Organic Keyword RE Worksheet → Ahrefs Import tab. Then go to Ahrefs → Content Gap tool: • Enter YOUR domain as the primary site • Enter 2–3 competitors as the comparison sites • This shows keywords competitors rank for that YOU don't These keyword gaps are your content opportunities — topics your audience is searching for where you have no presence yet.

Ahrefs Content Gap Tool

Group keywords into buckets and build your content roadmap

In the Organic Keyword RE Worksheet → Keyword Buckets tab. Group all discovered keywords by search intent: • Same intent = same bucket = same page • Different intent = separate buckets = separate pages Prioritise buckets by: 1. Business value (commercial / transactional intent keywords first) 2. Keyword Difficulty (under 30 for new sites, under 50 for established) 3. Search volume (higher is better, but not at the expense of high difficulty) Each bucket becomes one content item in your roadmap: • Existing page: optimise it for this bucket using Yoast (SOP 014) • No existing page: create a new page targeting this bucket This roadmap can fill 3–6 months of content creation without any guesswork.

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Pro tip: Check if the competitor's top-ranking page is outdated, thin, or missing Kerala-specific context. If it is — creating a better version gives you a realistic chance to outrank them even with lower domain authority.

✓

SOP Complete

You've completed all steps. Document your before/after results and add this to your portfolio as a case study.

Quick Reference

🧐 Where

Ahrefs Site Explorer and the Organic Keyword Reverse Engineering Worksheet (download below).

🗓 When

When building your initial content strategy, when looking for new keyword opportunities, or every 3 months to monitor competitor movement.

👤 Who

SEO specialist or digital marketing strategist.

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