Getting lost in the maze of running an online business without a clue of how your competitors are shooting to the top? These free online tools will reverse engineer your competitors’ strategies and show you the way to long-term success.
Whether you have an online business or a brick-and-mortar store, it’s essential to make your brand presence felt online. And not only felt but done in a way that you can compete competently to attract more eyeballs and dollars.
In this post, we will break down by categories the free online competitor analysis tools with which you can dissect their strategy. A deep analysis of the keywords they rank on, the content type that gets a high position, how they perform on social media, and other factors can lead your business to achieve the success that might be eluding you.
Competitor Analysis Tools That Are Free To Use Online
Here are the main categories that you need to closely follow to check how your competition is faring:
Social media research, monitoring, and performance tools
These help you to check where on the social media map your competition is present and how well they are doing in terms of engagement and conversion rates.
1. Talkwalker
When so much happens in the digital space, you got to keep your eyes peeled on this space and your ears open. Get deep insights into the deepest hopes and fears of your consumers through Talkwalker.
The platform provides you with:
- Billions of social media conversations where you can plug in your brand.
- Monitor 40,000 brands that are making an impression on your target audience.
- Create and share automated reports that save 40% of your time so that you can focus on how your business can be the focal point of your target audience.
2. Social Blade
Social Blade is a window to the absolute number of followers, uploads, and tweets on the leading social media platforms of YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, and Instagram
What you get with searches on Social Blade are:
- A comparison between your business and competition regarding the number of followers and posts.
- Access to a worldwide database of content creators and users of social media platforms so that you know where people are spending time and their activities.
- You can take your brand a notch higher with the in-house YouTube consultants or spotting the right influencers.
3. LikeAlyzer
LikeAlyzer is one of the free competitive research tools that gives you a thorough look into your Facebook page activities. You can compare the analytics of your brand Facebook page with that of your competitors to identify the spaces where you can improve.
With LikeAlyzer, you can:
- Get insights into how you can increase your page follower number and engagement.
- Have your Facebook campaigns on the right track with the Instant Review Pages tool.
- Updated competitor Facebook page stats for a clear comparison and way forward strategy.
4. Klear
Nothing boosts your business and brand than a group of credible and reliable influencers. And this is where you can use Klear to:
- Get in touch with influencers categorized by their niche and location.
- Quantify potential influencers with scores to zero in on the ones with the most potential for your business.
- Access the latest trend data and how each influencer is performing across various social media platforms.
5. Social Searcher
Social Searcher allows you to get real-time alerts and insights into social mentions so you know why and where your brand has been mentioned. Maximize your social media presence in the most effective way that creates a positive brand image.
Use Social Searcher to:
- Analyze graphical interpretations of your social media posts that trigger consumer behavior either negatively or positively.
- Add trending hashtags to your ad posts to get more engagement.
- Get insights into top influencer strategies to include them in your marketing plan for better returns.
6. Followerwonk
Followerwonk is a one-stop solution for discovering, contacting, analyzing, and optimizing the social media landscape and its citizens for a brilliant online strategy.
The functionalities offered by Followerwonk are:
- Discover influencers on Twitter and compare your followers with that of your competition to ensure your business is on the right track.
- Analyze the location and behavior of your brand followers, what triggers their sentiments, and check the follower relationship health status with your brand versus your competitors.
- Check what your followers like and don’t like to optimize your posts accordingly to maximize brand engagement and following.
7. Google Trends
Google Trends shows you what’s trending online and what terms people are searching for in locations all over the world. With this free competitive analysis tool, you can:
- Search for any term to check whether you should create content around it.
- Look up the history of trending words, names, and terms.
- Discover leading influencer names by looking at who’s trending in your country and be ahead of your competition in roping in trending influencers to endorse your brand.
8. Daily140
Daily140 shares daily emails with you to show the activities of all those whom you follow on Twitter. Follow your top competitors and the leading influencers to set the right course for your online marketing.
The benefits of using Daily140 are:
- Daily email summaries of competition brands, influencers, and follower activities to get the market pulse and adjust your strategy.
- Tracking the activities that are marked favorites or likes to plan your content accordingly.
9. MyTopTweets
With MyTopTweets, you can follow your competitors, influencers, and other brands to see the top 10 tweets from them. This gives you:
- The trending topics making waves on the relevant Twitter handle so that you can follow suit.
- An insight into what your competition is retweeting to help you craft a killer online strategy.
10. vidIQ
vidIQ is the most comprehensive video analysis online tool that you can use to take your channel to the next level. Here’s a glimpse of what you can do with vidIQ:
- Get daily ideas, keyword suggestions, and monitor competitor performance from a super-intuitive dashboard.
- Compare daily subscribers, average daily views, average subscribers per day, average public videos per day, and other metrics of your competitors to spot gaps and address them.
- Track the number of subscribers and the number of hours watched to turn your videos into money-making sources.
- Technology research tools
Find out which free technology tools are used by your competitors to drive their online business.
11. WhatRuns
At the click of a button, WhatRuns reveals the technology behind the running of a website. The advantages of using this free online competitor analysis tool are:
- Keeping track of the paid web apps of your competitors that make a positive difference in their business.
- How your competition websites track their visitors gives you a key insight into customer behavior online.
- Instant alerts when your competitor’s website starts or stops using a technology.
12. BuiltWith
BuiltWith shares an in-depth analysis of the technologies used on any website. These data help you identify if you’re missing out on any tech opportunities that can match your site performance to your competitors’.
Install BuiltWith to:
- Know how much money your closest competitors are spending to keep their site in top condition.
- Its Technology Trends reveals how changes occur over time in the use of technology and it covers more than 53k technologies.
- Discover which of your competitor websites use hosting, shopping carts, and other sales technologies to increase their revenues.
13. Wappalyzer
Another website technology identification tool, Wappalyzer helps you to unravel the tech mysteries of your top competitor websites and facilitate your online presence for maximum business revenues. The key benefits of using this website competitor analysis tool are:
- Discovering which technologies are the driving force behind the best competitor websites.
- Track which websites are changing their technologies and the resulting performance.
- Create lists of leads using Wappalyzer as it shows which technologies they use so that you can reach them with your niche.
Market intelligence tools
For any business, you need a virtual watchtower from where you can spot all that’s going on in the market that will affect your business.
14. Crayon Intel
Crayon is a competition and market intelligence platform that guides your business in the right direction with its superior tracking and analysis tools. With Crayon by your side, you can:
- Use more than 100 data points to see every move your competition makes and take informed marketing decisions.
- Smartly analyze your competition using only the pertinent information instead of wasting time on unnecessary analyses.
- Trigger your team to collaborate and make progress together to gain a competitive edge.
- Website change tracking tools
When your competition website changes elements within it, you should be aware of the reasons and the impact these changes have on the industry and the business entities.
15. Visualping
When technologies get outdated, websites use new or updated versions to power up their site and their business. Use Visualping to:
- Set on auto-pilot your competitor’s website changes and analyses.
- Get instant alerts through emails and messaging apps to website changes to track and tweak your business strategy.
Competitor ad performance tools
With these types of tools, you can check your competitors’ ad formats and how these perform in terms of audience engagement and generating leads.
16. Moat
Moat enables you to map where you and your competitors are posting ads and if they are resulting in reaching the right audience, lead generation, customer engagement, and other KPIs. With Moat you can:
- Formulate prospect planning so that you can reach the maximum leads for business growth.
- Use advanced measurements to analyze how well your prospects and customers are engaging with your and your competitor’s ads.
- Measure ROI of ad spends against leads and sales gained.
17. AdBeat
Adbeat offers a full arsenal of the advertising sphere broken down by advertiser profile, advertiser ads, and others. This online competitor analysis tool helps you to:
- Track when competitors are increasing or decreasing their ad spending.
- Adding relevant publishers to their current panel to attract more customers and improve business revenues.
- Media where the ads are run by your competition as well as the traffic sources.
Website research, backlink, keyword, and SEO free tools
A deep dive into the keywords your competitors are ranking on, the strength and quality of their backlinks, the content type that grabs the attention of the bots and humans – all these and more metrics form the backbone of digital marketing. The following tools show you details of your competitors’ behind-the-scenes tactics that make them rank high.
18. Alexa
The Competitive Website Analysis of Alexa allows you to:
- Comb through your competition websites to get info nuggets like ranking keywords, organic traffic numbers, and backlink profile quality.
- Compare your website content to that of your competitors to spot gaps and utilize the opportunities.
- Check out your share of voice versus competition to help you narrow the differences and reach the next level.
19. SEMrush
The suite of Competitor Analysis Tools from SEMRUSH is just what you need to unveil what goes on behind your top competitor websites. You can conduct a host of analyses like:
- Competitor traffic metrics to guide your marketing strategy for better ROIs.
- Keyword research and rank analyses to spot opportunities and increase the organic traffic numbers to your site.
- Paid campaign monitoring, brand mentions, and social media tracking to discover what tickles your audience into more engagement and conversions.
20. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is one of the leading all-in-one free online tools that pack a real punch. Let’s see what it does to enable you to get ahead of the competition without breaking your back.
- A complete domain overview of your competitor’s website to get an insight into their social media marketing, SEO, and content marketing strategies.
- Discover the keywords your competition is ranking on to help you get your content planning to the next level.
- Perform backlink data analysis of your competition so that you can reach out to the right influencers and bloggers to help your site rank higher.
21. Moz
Moz is a powerful tool that can reveal many aspects of your competitor’s website and marketing strategies that put them on the top of the ranking hierarchy. Try Moz to:
- Check which keywords, content, and pages of your competitors are ranking high.
- Show details of your competitors’ backlink profiles so that you can set your sight on better ROIs through more relevant and high-quality backlinks.
- Check out the social media metrics of your main competitors to outdo them in no time.
22. Siteliner
Siteliner is an easy tool that shows you the skeleton and the detailed report of a quick scan of any website. With this tool you can:
- Find the strengths and weaknesses of competitor websites to rewrite your digital marketing strategy.
- Improve your page load time, page size, text to HTML ratio, and other metrics to be at par with the leading competitors.
- Spot the internal and external links on your competitors’ websites and analyze them to improve your own.
23. Rank Signals
Backlinks are a key part of building your page ranking. Thus, with a free backlink checker online tool like Rank Signals, you can:
- Check out the backlinking strategy of your industry sites and follow the best practices.
- Identify the key metrics of your competitors across Facebook, Twitter, and other social media and redefine your social media strategy.
24. Similarweb
Similarweb is another SEO competitor analysis tool that shares both topline metrics and a full report when you search for any website. The following is a glimpse of how you can use Similarweb:
- Identify the areas where your competition is doing better than you – organic traffic, global rank, category rank, main referring sites, and other metrics.
- The organic keywords the competition is ranking on.
- Social media traffic percentage, the topics that the audience is interested in, and similar websites that the audiences visit to get a better insight into the online behavior of your target group.
25. Open Link Profiler
If you want an extensive breakdown of your competitors’ backlinking tactics, the Open Link Profiler is just the right tool for you. Why? Because:
- The number and percentage of unique links, homepage links, trusted links, and most importantly, the link influence score show you that backlinking is not just a number game. Whether these have any impact on your site and your business is also something to analyze.
- The SEO tools conduct a range of analyses to measure the gaps between your and your competitors’ sites so that these can be narrowed and your sales revenues increased.
26. Majestic
With Majestic, you can just type in any competitor’s website address to get insights into all the important metrics in minutes. Examples include:
- Backlink numbers and quality score to check if your backlink strategy is the right one.
- Historic versus new referring domains and links with the option to remove low-quality links and compete with the leaders in your niche.
- Link graphs and profiles to give you at-a-glance analyses of the site types and networks related to your or your competitors’ sites.
27. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is one of the forerunners when it comes to a comprehensive competitive analysis, keyword research, and SEO functions that any business needs. Check it out to:
- Compare content between your site and your competitors’ to see what type of content triggers positive behavior from customers.
- Get a deep understanding of Facebook post type, length, and publishing time and how followers react to it.
- Identify where your competitors lag and take advantage by taking their place and meeting consumers’ needs.
28. Website Grader
Website Grader is a tool from HubSpot that scans your site when you enter the site and your email address. Using this free online competitor analysis tool, you can:
- Check the SEO, performance, security, and responsiveness score of your site and address all the scope for improvement to drive more traffic.
- Get a detailed report of the errors on your website and recommended actions to increase conversion rates.
Branded mention tools
Such tools help you track where your competitors’ brands are mentioned so that you can firm up your backlink strategy and be present on the major online channels.
29. Feedly
Get Feedly to follow every step in the social media space and report back to you on brand mentions and trends. With Feedly you can:
- Save time by feeding the AI assistant – Leo – what’s important for your business so that you don’t need to scour the Net for relevant info.
- Organize all the pertinent brand and industry info in one place for easy access.
PPC and Content Marketing tools
When you spend money on paid campaigns and content marketing, you become accountable for every dollar you spend. The following tools help you measure ROI against ad spends for a better marketing strategy.
30. Searchmetrics
Searchmetrics provides data-driven actionable reports to improve your PPC campaigns and drive traffic to your website. This tool has the following key benefits:
- It taps the right audience with the right messages to get the right responses to increase conversions.
- In-depth competitive market analyses on the search intent and keywords used so that you can tweak your content strategy and maximize the SEO results and advertising ROI.
31. iSpionage
This outstanding tool helps you discover the ads run by your competitors. iSpionage enables you to:
- Analyze winning design and copy strategies that are increasing engagement and lead conversion rates for your top competitors.
- Discover when your competitors are adding new PPC keywords and changing their ad formula to get more business revenues.
Email performance tool
Emails form an essential part of the digital marketing strategy. However, it’s not easy to get high open rates that generate leads and higher conversions. That’s why an email performance tool is there to make things more effective.
32. mailcharts
Thanks to mailcharts, you can deep-dive into the email marketing strategy of your competitors and craft one for your business to go a notch higher. With mailcharts, you can:
- Plan your email campaigns more effectively with the recommended designs and copy.
- Analyze the competitive data to guide your email marketing campaign to run through the right journey.
Final Words
Living in a cocoon when you’re running a business is the worst thing you can do to your enterprise. You need aids to tell you what’s up with your top competitors and the activities they do online to be more successful.
That’s why this list of 30+ free online competitor analysis tools has been compiled to come to your assistance. Pick any or a few of these to regularly conduct competitive studies to fix the mistakes and improve your online efforts.
Sujan Sarkar is one of the co-founders of OneLittleWeb. He leads the agency with over a decade of experience.
In 2018, he founded OneLittleWeb, driven by a vision to fill a void in the industry, providing top-quality SEO and backlink services.
His impressive track record includes crafting over 25,000 backlinks for more than 1100 clients, generating over 1 billion in traffic. This has earned him a significant presence in the SEO realm.
He successfully leads a dedicated team of 65+ SEO professionals, focused on helping SaaS and Enterprises scale their organic traffic.
Sujan firmly believes that the best backlinks are not paid for but earned through high-quality content and strategic relationships.
Every day, he works tirelessly to position your business at the forefront of your customers’ minds, striving to elevate your brand’s visibility and authority.
His daily inspiration centers around securing client features on top-tier publications like Forbes, MSN, BBC, Yahoo, and many more. He leverages the right SEO strategies to achieve this mission.