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If we talk about website optimization, keyword research is an essential part for both PPC marketing and search engine optimization success. The internet is choke full of articles by search marketing experts who tell you that it is necessary to optimize your site for the terms that people are actually searching for.

But when it comes to finding those terms and turning them into profitable keywords, this whole process is no easy feat. You have to put a huge effort to prepare a robust keywords list for your website.

But here's the thing...

Keyword research doesn't have to be that hard. Especially, when you're in a market where there are lots of your competitors already ranking well on search engines, you can easily find keywords that are guaranteed to bring results.

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How? By spying on your top competitors and uncovering their targeted keywords.

In this post, I'm going to share with you three easy-to-use tools that can help you do exactly that with just a few clicks.

3 tools to uncover your competitor’s keywords.

Before I share the tools with you, it's important to know which of your competitors are performing well on search engines. A simple Google search will help you find out. Just search your primary keyword on Google (e.g. If you offer online business consulting, type in "Online business consultant") and you'll get a list of a handful of your competitors. Pick at least five companies from the first page and you're good to go. Alternatively, you can use SEMRush or Ahrefs for this purpose. .

Now that you have the list of your top competitors, here are the tools you can use to uncover their keywords with simple steps:

1. Webbee SEO Spider (Free + Paid).

Webbee is the world's most inclusive SEO spider that helps you analyze your website architecture to understand and monitor technical SEO issues.

Now, this tool has a key feature called “Keyword Intelligence Mode”, which helps you audit keywords on your website. It shows you keyword conflicts on Links, Titles and Headings. The upside here, though, is that you can use it to find your competitor's keywords too.

Related: This Tool Puts Your Keyword Campaigns Into Overdrive

Follow these steps to find your competitor's keywords using Webbee SEO Spider:

  • Download and install the tool on your system.
  • Put your competitor’s website under “Keyword Intelligence” mode and hit start. The tool will automatically start scraping keywords of the given website and the results will look something like this:

These are the keywords your competitor is targeting in titles, headings, and anchortexts. Download them when the crawl is complete.

Get search volume for these keywords from Google Keyword Planner and filter out the best and most relevant keywords to target on your website.

That’s it.

2. SEMRush (Paid).

SEMrush is the online research tool for online marketing professionals. It can help you find out how your competitors are performing on search engines. You can use this tool to identify the organic and paid keywords of your competitors.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

  • Go to SEMRush.com and insert your competitor’s website URL in the bar.
  • Filter your results by clicking on "Top Organic Keywords". It will show you the list of keywords with their current rankings (as shown in image):

Download the list of these keywords, filter out the relevant ones and use them to optimize your website. Using the same process, you can also download the keywords that your competitors are using for paid marketing (Google Adwords).

3. Ahrefs (Paid).

Ahrefs, like SEMRush, is an online tool that allows you to find out your competitor keywords. Here are the steps you can follow:

  • Login to Ahrefs.com
  • Navigate to Site Explorer
  • Enter your competitor’s website URL and hit search.
  • Now click on “Organic Keywords” section and you will see the list of keywords with latest rankings, as you can see in the image:

Now simply export these keywords and filter out the best keywords for your website and optimize your site accordingly.

Related: How to Save Your PPC Budget by Using Negative Keywords

With the combination of these three tools you can prepare a great list of profitable keywords. For more keywords that people are searching, you can also use Google Keyword planner. It can help increase the soundness of your list.

Next, use these keywords to optimize your website. The better you optimize, the better your results will be in terms of impressions, ranking and traffic.