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Keeping tabs on your competitors can get tough, but it’s an essential duty that helps you outmaneuver them. The thought of checking numerous websites and social media pages is wearying enough, but it isn’t as hectic as it seems.
Businesses rely on software tools to track their competitors’ content and separate the essential information from the noise. These tools scan the content on your behalf and alert you about key updates, e.g., a new promo from your rival.
Your competitive monitoring tool does most of the work while you focus on strategizing to beat the competition. Selecting the right tool is usually the hardest part, but it’ll be easy because you’ve arrived at the right place.
The best competitive monitoring tools
1. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a prominent search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing platform. It’s best known for analyzing websites to suggest SEO improvements, like relevant keywords and internal links, but competitive analysis is also a key feature.
With Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool, you can enter any competitor’s URL to analyze their traffic. It will display the source of the URL's traffic (search, social media, or direct), the top keywords driving traffic, the estimated number of visits, and the backlinks. If your competitor runs search ads, you’ll see the keywords they’re bidding for.
Like all analytics tools, Ahrefs pulls data from many sources and evaluates your competitors based on this data.
Its data isn’t 100% precise, but it gives a good enough hint of your rival’s content strategy. You can then use this hint to strategize how to outdo them.
2. Semrush
Semrush is a digital marketing platform similar to Ahrefs. However, while Ahrefs focuses on SEO, Semrush offers broader social media and content monitoring features. You can use it to analyze both your competitor’s website and social media pages.
In Semrush’s Competitive Analysis tool, you can enter your competitor's URL and view detailed reports on their traffic, advertising strategies, social media content, and Google Maps rankings (where available). In my experience, Semrush goes much deeper than Ahrefs with its analysis.
Along with monitoring, you can set up email alerts for your competitor’s activities. In my case, I chose to receive an alert whenever my competitor posted new content on Facebook and Instagram. This smart alert kept me updated on their new promos.
3. Sprout Social
Sprout Social was built specially for social media analytics. It lets you spy on rivals’ social media posts, audience growth, and engagement. You’ll generate reports for every social media platform, for example, one for Instagram and another for X. Then you can compare these reports side by side with your performance.
I like Sprout Social mainly for its in-depth, intuitive reports. It doesn’t just deliver raw data– your competitor’s social media performance is broken into charts and lists to make it easier to understand. You can filter the data by platform, keyword, hashtags, and timeframe.
However, with prices starting $199 per seat per month, Sprout Social isn’t suitable for small businesses on limited budgets. That’s why I’ll explore a free tool next.
4. Google Alerts
With Google Alerts, you can monitor the whole internet for your competitor’s content. Let’s just say, your competitor can’t hide anymore. However, Google Alerts deals with content posted directly on websites, not social media content.
You can create a custom alert for any topic, in this case, your competitor’s name, and you’ll receive email updates whenever the competitor gets mentioned in news articles.
This way, you’ll always know which new products and promos your rival has announced. You can receive daily, weekly, or on-the-go alerts. Likewise, you can control which region to receive updates from.
Google Alerts is completely free to use, unlike the other tools mentioned above. It doesn’t provide in-depth analytics, but it keeps you updated with day-to-day information about your competitors.
5. Similarweb
Similarweb is a broad SEO and web analytics platform with many features. For this guide, I’m focusing on its Website Traffic Checker feature, where you can enter a competitor’s domain and analyze their traffic statistics.
Similarweb estimates your competitor's traffic sources (social, search, etc.), audience intent, top search terms, and the websites linking to them.
Data is displayed in interactive charts that make it easy to sift through. You can add up to 5 competitors on the same chart and compare their traffic metrics to yours. Similarweb sends weekly email summaries about your chosen competitors’ website performance.
Apart from tracking specific competitors, Similarweb provides curated lists of the top-ranking websites in every niche. You’ll use this information to identify competitors you didn’t know about in the first place.
6. Backlinko
Backlinks are hyperlinks that link to a website, whether yours or a competitor’s. They’re a vote of confidence that makes search engines boost a website’s rankings.
Your competitors have invested much in building backlinks, and you want to do the same. But, how do you figure out which sites their backlinks come from, so that you can target similar sites for your own backlinks? Backlinko, an SEO tool, does that for you, and it’s free to use.
You can enter any website on Backlinko’s Competitor Analysis module, and you’ll see the estimated number of referring domains, the top referring sites, and the backlink growth over the past year.
This information is displayed in intuitive lists and charts that are easy to understand. Along with Google Alerts, Backlinko is a must-have free competitive analysis tool.
7. Wayback Machine
Sometimes, you need to dig into your competitor’s past for strategic information. Your competitors’ websites have undergone many changes over the years, and knowing these changes helps you learn which strategies worked for them and which didn’t.
The Wayback Machine provides a straightforward way to dig into a competitor’s website history. Enter any website in the search menu, and you’ll see previously archived versions dating back to 1996 if the website is that old.
To illustrate, here’s the search result for TechRadar.com, with archives dating back to 2008 when this site was created. I picked a random snapshot from March 2008, and here’s how TechRadar looked then:
Comparing the above picture to TechRadar’s current site, you can learn a lot about this website’s current strategy.
Comparing versions from 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2020, and onwards gives you even more information. You can do the same from your competitor’s website.
8. Visualping
Visualping is the ultimate website spying tool. It tracks your selected websites and sends email alerts whenever a change is made to any of them.
Think of it as your personal assistant keeping tabs on a rival’s site. Whenever a competitor tweaks their website, e.g., adds a new product, you’ll be quickly alerted via email or SMS.
Here’s how it works:
You’ll take a screenshot of your rival’s web page.
Visualping’s AI system will analyze this web page and suggest alert ideas. For example, for TechRadar.com it suggested alerts for when a new product review is added or when the top featured article is updated.
If the suggestions aren’t okay, you can create custom ones. Then, choose the frequency at which Visualping will send you email alerts (hourly, every 3 hours, daily, etc.). Enter your email and click Start Free Monitoring.
Like many things, Free Monitoring isn’t entirely free. Visualping offers a free plan that lets you track up to 5 pages. However, you’ll need a paid plan to receive smart alerts for 6 pages or above.
Why monitor your competitor’s website and social media pages?
I’ve discussed the best tools for tracking your competitor’s website and social media pages, and receiving smart alerts for specific changes. But why do that in the first place, and what data should be tracked? The answer is all about strategy.
With intense competition, you have to outdo or at least imitate your competitors’ strategies. If your main rivals are promoting discounts, you should do the same to avoid losing customers.
If they run search ads targeting specific keywords, it’s advisable to do the same. You can’t outdo every one of your competitors’ strategies, but awareness is the first step in selecting which strategies to focus on.
Website traffic, social media engagement, news articles, product announcements, and structural website changes are key competitive monitoring benchmarks.
I’ve described how to monitor and receive alerts about these benchmarks, so it should no longer be an issue for you.
