Competitor Keyword Research

This drill identifies every keyword pattern where prospects search for competitors by name and produces a prioritized list of comparison page targets. These keywords represent solution-aware buyers actively evaluating options — the highest conversion-intent organic traffic available.

Input

• Your product category (e.g., "CRM", "project management", "cold email")
• A seed list of 3-10 direct competitors (names and domains)
• Optional: existing GSC data showing competitor-related queries you already appear for

Steps

1. Build the competitor list

Start with your known competitors. Expand the list using ahrefs-keyword-research:

• Query Content Explorer for pages ranking for "{product category} alternatives" — extract every product name mentioned
• Query Content Explorer for "{product category} vs" — extract all comparison pairs
• Use clay-company-search to find additional competitors: search Clay for companies in your product category with >100 employees or >$1M funding

Target: 15-30 competitors. Include direct competitors (same category, same buyer), indirect competitors (different approach to the same problem), and adjacent tools (partial overlap in functionality).

2. Map keyword patterns per competitor

For each competitor, research these keyword patterns using ahrefs-keyword-research:

| Pattern | Example | Intent | |---------|---------|--------| | {competitor} alternative | "Salesforce alternative" | Actively seeking to switch | | {competitor} alternatives | "Salesforce alternatives" | Comparing multiple options | | {competitor} vs {your brand} | "Salesforce vs HubSpot" | Direct head-to-head evaluation | | {your brand} vs {competitor} | "HubSpot vs Salesforce" | Same, reversed | | {competitor} vs | "Salesforce vs" | Looking for any comparison | | {competitor} pricing | "Salesforce pricing" | Evaluating cost, may be dissatisfied | | {competitor} review | "Salesforce review" | Validating or questioning current choice | | {competitor} competitors | "Salesforce competitors" | Market landscape research | | best {category} for {use case} | "best CRM for startups" | Category comparison, not brand-specific |

For each pattern, pull: volume, keyword_difficulty, traffic_potential, cpc.

3. Score and prioritize

Use clay-table-setup to create a Clay table with one row per keyword target. Calculate a priority score:

priority = (traffic_potential * 0.4) + ((100 - keyword_difficulty) * 0.3) + (cpc * 10 * 0.2) + (brand_familiarity * 0.1)

• traffic_potential: estimated clicks if you rank top 3
• keyword_difficulty: lower is better (easier to rank)
• cpc: proxy for commercial intent (higher CPC = buyer is closer to purchase)
• brand_familiarity: 10 if the competitor is well-known in your market, 5 if moderately known, 1 if niche

Sort by priority score. The top 20-30 keywords are your first batch of comparison pages.

4. Map page types

Assign each keyword to a page type:

| Page Type | URL Pattern | When to Use | |-----------|-------------|-------------| | 1:1 comparison | /compare/{competitor}-vs-{your-brand} | Competitor has >500 monthly volume for "vs" queries | | Alternatives page | /compare/{competitor}-alternatives | Competitor has >200 monthly volume for "alternative" queries | | Category roundup | /compare/best-{category}-for-{use-case} | Multiple competitors in one use case with combined volume >300 |

5. Identify content angles per page

For each page target, note the content angle the page must address:

• Why are searchers looking? (dissatisfied with competitor? evaluating for first time? upgrading?)
• What do they need to see? (feature comparison table, pricing comparison, user reviews, migration guide)
• What is our strongest differentiation? (price, features, ease of use, support, specific use case fit)

Store these notes in the Clay table — they become the content brief for each comparison page.

Output

A Clay table (or JSON/CSV export) with one row per comparison page target, containing:

• target_keyword, page_type, url_slug
• competitor_name, search_volume, keyword_difficulty, cpc, traffic_potential
• priority_score
• content_angle (why searchers look, what they need, our differentiation)
• related_keywords (other queries this page should also target)

This dataset is the direct input to the comparison-page-creation drill.

Triggers

• Run once at play start to build the initial keyword target list
• Re-run monthly to discover new competitors and trending queries
• Re-run when a new competitor enters your market