Millions of businesses around the world are competing for the top spot in search engines.
You are competing against them to get your website at your customers’ fingertips.
One strategy for getting to the top is to outperform them, and in order to do that, you need to know what they are up to. Incorporate their strategies, and then top them. That’s when you call up Website Squadron’s SEO Spy.
He will gather the intel you need to outperform your competitors.
In this post, you will
The first thing the Website Squadron SEO Spy does is identify intent and target keywords that you want to rank for. This way, he knows what to go after.
Armed with your intent and keywords, he analyzes your key competitors and which ones you can outrank. Knowing both the keywords and competitors that one can outrank is an essential skill.
With intent, keywords, and a beatable competitor list in hand, he examines your and their websites under a magnifying glass, devising a strategy to get you ahead.
Once he has his strategy, he devises an action plan to outperform them on all fronts
Below we will get into the finer details of how exactly he does this.
Website Squadron’s SEO Spy is a versatile individual.
He is creative. He has to look at a web page the way everyone else does, and then approach it from different angles.
He has an analytical mindset and works methodically. He sticks to the general plan but veers off from it where necessary.
He is acutely focused on the details. One missed backlink, keyword, or Call To Action could make the difference between ranking number 12 and number 8.
He has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. SEO tactics and strategies change constantly, and he has to keep abreast of the latest trends and test results that come out of the market.
He has to cast his web wide and broad, and make that web smaller and smaller to hone in on the task at hand.
Finally, he is open-minded, collaborates, and learns from other SEOs constantly.
An SEO spy skillfully incorporates several strategies that have as an outcome higher quality and quantity, at scale.
His strategies create high-quality content that stands out above the competition.
These strategies include skyscraping, extensive keyword analysis, ethical competitor insights, and strategic incremental enhancements.
Instead of producing more content or more backlinks, he focuses on making sure every sentence and link is the best it can be.
Him combining these strategies, has led to a system that ensures ranking improvement.
The blending of skyscraping, keyword analysis, competitor insights, and scaling produces results that perform well on search engines.
SEO Spy will use Google and Bing search to find out who your competitors are.
With your target keywords noted down, he will search for results in both search engines and note which websites appear at the top of the results.
Rankings are fluid, so only examining the top 3 is shortsighted; the top 20 is a better idea.
These high-ranking sites typically successfully reach your intended audience and represent your main competitors in the SEO landscape, but it could also be because your competitors have strong backlinks.
Next, he analyzes these top-ranking pages to identify the elements that help them outperform you. He examines their content quality, site structure, and use of keywords and backlinks.
If he decides that the page is a worthy advisory, he puts it on his list.
There are a number of free and paid SEO Spying tools we incorporate.
The number one tool, that is free, Google search and Bing search.
Google Search and Bing Search remain fundamental, free methods for manually examining competitor rankings. They offer you the current state of affairs. Search for your keyword and see who comes up in front of you.
SEMRUSH offers a comprehensive, multi-tool suite covering nearly all aspects of online visibility. Inside their platform, you can manually supply competitors, and the platform will compare your keywords’ rankings and backlinks to them.
Ubersuggest has the capability to look at keywords and rankings of your competitors, and is cost-effective.
Ahrefs excels in deep and fast backlink analysis and organic keyword research.
SpyFu is ideal for analyzing your competitors’ paid and organic keyword strategies.
A “gap” refers to something, such as a topic, keywords, backlinks, content, or some technical SEO practices, that your competitors have capitalized on, but your website has not.
Finding gaps is the search for understanding what they have. What exactly contributes to your competitors outranking you for search queries?
Once you see which competitors rank higher and note where they do better, it’s time to use skyscraping.
Skyscraping means finding out what others do better than you and then creating better content, stronger backlinks, and improved technical SEO for your website.
By filling these gaps, and doing better on all fronts, you can outrank them.
Ranking your website in a competitive industry is about understanding where your competitors have an edge over you, and closing those gaps.
By using SEO Spy tactics, we identify the keywords, content strategies, backlinks, and technical SEO elements that we need to incorporate and improve on.
Once we documented these gaps, the next step is skyscraping. We take what your competitors do well and creating even better content, try to get stronger backlinks, and fine-tuning your technical SEO setup.
This systematic approach not only fills the gaps but also gives you the upper hand, steadily pushing your website toward the top of search engine rankings.
Around 3 hours.
We combine human ideas with AI.
But to be clear, we do not just throw something at AI and let the AI write it.
The SEO Sergeant focusses on keywords, and pays very little attention to what competitors are doing. He ensures that your message gets out.
SEO Spy is more concerned with what your competitors are doing.
This post was written by Zahid Hassan on 5 April 2025.
This page was last updated on 7 April 2025 by Christiaan Gouws.
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