competitor-deep-audit

Competitor Deep Audit

Overview

Identifies the real organic competitors of a target domain (not who the owner thinks competes, but who actually shows up in their SERPs), then for the top 5–8 competitors pulls a keyword-gap-analysis: keywords where competitors rank top-10 but the target does not, sorted by search volume × estimated traffic.

Output: a prioritized 30–100-item opportunity list for the next content roadmap.

When to use

• New SEO mandate intake — get the lay of the land
• Quarterly competitor review
• Content roadmap planning
• "Why aren't we ranking for X?" — find which competitor took the spot
• Validate / disprove gut-feel-competitor assumptions

Don't use for:

• Brand-positioning analysis (this is SEO-organic, not brand-share)
• Paid-search competitor analysis (different toolset — SEMrush Ads, SpyFu)
• Backlink-gap-analysis (separate workflow, use claude-seo:seo-backlinks)

Prerequisites

• DataForSEO API credentials (Labs endpoints — competitors_domain + domain_intersection)
• Optional: Sistrix API for cross-validation (domain.competitors.seo — needs API-Pro tier)
• Target domain + DE-market focus (location_code 2276; adjust for other markets)

Workflow

Step 1 — Identify real competitors via SERP overlap

const competitorsResp = await d4sPost('/v3/dataforseo_labs/google/competitors_domain/live', {
  target: 'example.com',
  language_code: 'de',
  location_code: 2276,
  limit: 25,
});

The response orders competitors by SERP-overlap (intersections) × keyword count × ETV. Top 5–8 entries = your real competitors.

Surprise factor: typically 30–60 % of real competitors are NOT the brands the owner names off the cuff. Often blogs, info-sites, marketplaces, or niche players that swallow long-tail traffic.

Step 2 — For each top competitor, pull their ranked keywords

const ranked = await d4sPost('/v3/dataforseo_labs/google/ranked_keywords/live', {
  target: 'competitor.com',
  language_code: 'de',
  location_code: 2276,
  limit: 500,  // wide net
  order_by: ['ranked_serp_element.serp_item.estimated_traffic_volume,desc'],
});