Comparing against competitors

Tracking your own rankings is half the picture. The competitive view shows you where competitors out-rank you, where you're winning, and the keywords nobody is dominating yet.

Add a competitor

1. Rank Tracking → Competitors → Add competitor.
2. Enter the domain (e.g. ahrefs.com). No subdomain unless you want subdomain-level tracking.
3. Optionally name them (e.g. "Ahrefs (primary)") for cleaner reports.
4. Save. The competitor is automatically scanned across all your existing tracked keywords.

Side-by-side view

Rank Tracking → Competitive matrix shows rows = keywords, columns = your domain + each competitor, cells = current position. Sort by:

• Position delta (you minus competitor) – find the keywords where you're biggest behind.
• Competitor change over time – find competitors rising fast.
• SERP feature opportunity – find keywords where AI Overviews or featured snippets are up for grabs.

Share of voice

Share of voice (SoV) is the percentage of total possible impressions a domain captures across your tracked keyword set, weighted by Google's estimated CTR per position. Rank Tracking → Share of voice shows:

• Your SoV today.
• Each competitor's SoV today.
• Trend over 30/90/365 days.
• Per-group breakdown if you tagged your keywords with groups.

Gap analysis

Find keywords competitors rank for that you don't. Rank Tracking → Gap analysis → pick a competitor → set min position threshold (default 10). We pull their public-data keywords (where available) and intersect with your tracked set.

Competitor limits per plan

API access

bash
curl https://api.semoptimiser.com/v1/competitors/comp_42/rankings \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_live_..."