When I review my competitor's SEO overview, I can see which keywords are helping them earn clicks to their site. Since their keywords and rankings are displayed for the domain, I don't know which of their pages are pulling in more traffic than others. That information is important if you are trying to figure out which topic to prioritize in your own content development.
Just like how you want to know which keyword pulls in the most traffic for a competing site, you'll also want to know which page gets them the biggest portion of their traffic. Here's the solution...
The SpyFu Top Pages section shows you a competitor's most productive pages, listed in order of organic clicks to the page from a SERP. You can also see which keywords those pages rank for.
(If you prefer a video format, try this tour of the Top Pages tool here.)
How to Get There
To get there, search a domain in the SpyFu search bar. Choose "SEO Research" and choose the "Top Pages" section in the drop down menu or by clicking the tab.
What You Will Find
Think of what you see on SpyFu's SEO overview when you search a domain. Among other things, you can see a domain's full set of keywords that it ranks for and how many clicks they get from all of those rankings.
This section breaks that information down into page-by-page detail.
So while you can see keywords for warbyparker.com, you can also see them specifically for warbyparker.com/home-try-on, including click estimates from those rankings.
That's an important detail, because different metrics shine light on what's happening with the page.
For example, most of the direct clicks (visits) to Hubspot will likely go to its home page, hubspot.com. If you measure clicks from a search results page, though, that's a different outcome.
Because then you are measuring the impact of Hubspot's SEO efforts--how much traffic they get from people finding them on searches.
In that sense, their top performing page is hubspot.com/facebook-marketing.
Next, you will find the second-most visited page and the keywords that this specific page ranks for--and so on and so on.
All Pages vs New Pages
The Top Pages feature lists (in order) that pages that bring in the most organic traffic thanks to search result. By default, it shows all pages that match the domain (or URL) that you entered, but the New Pages option offers another point of view.
The New Pages sort will single out the pages that just started ranking. This is a helpful way to catch your competitor's latest focus. You can see the more recent topics that they've started to target and consider them for your own strategy.
Keywords
When Hubspot ranks for the keyword "facebook marketing," we roll that up as one of hubspot.com's keywords since the domain ranks for it. When it comes to the actual page that ranks, hubspot.com/facebook-marketing is the result that Google lists on the SERP for this search.
On the right side of the Top Pages results, you can find the keywords that each page ranks for.
This is a great illustration of how the pages are listed in order of organic traffic that they get, not the number of keywords.
The home page (hubspot.com) ranks for more keywords than the Facebook Marketing page does (hubspot.com/facebook-marketing) at more than 3000 keywords to 475. However, those 475 are more valuable. They are a combination of having more searches (higher search volume) and the page ranking higher for them. That places them in a spot to gain more traffic from those rankings.
Click the keyword button to see all of them for the page.
Now you have a keyword list broken out for that specific page.
Notice that these keywords are listed in order of most clicks. While you can see the entire list, these at the top are the searches that send the most traffic to this page.
We've included other metrics to help you understand more about these keywords. Remember that next-generation metrics like "organic clicks" and "not clicked" help you make strategic moves on this keywords as well as prioritize the ones you go after.
A Note About Metrics
The metrics at the top of the page count the organic clicks from the SERPs. These won't match figures from Google Analytics that include clicks from ads or internal clicks.
Keywords at a Glance
We load the first 10 results by default, but (when you are logged in with a premium membership) you have access to the full keyword list. Use the action buttons at the bottom to expand your list to the next results.
You can also export the page's keywords, but you might want to narrow your list before you do. That's where the filter comes in.
Keyword Filter
Now that you have their top-performing content, get more targeted with your mission.
First, you started with "I want to know which of my competitor's pages brings them the most traffic."
Now, let's zoom in: " I want to know which of those top pages rank for a specific keyword or topic that I might be chasing."
You can do that, even if your topic is broad. Let's look at Runners World.
Just like with our first example of Hubspot, the first results for runnersworld.com include their top pages, in order of organic clicks. If you filter that with word "recovery" here's how those results change:
Now it shows pages from runnersworld.com that rank for "recovery" or keywords with "recovery" in them like "ice bath for recovery."
The keyword filter limits results to:
Pages that rank for that keyword
Pages that rank for keywords that include the letters or phrase you typed.
Point #2 allows you to use partial filters like "recov" to narrow your results to keywords like recovery and recover.
(Note that the rolled-up metrics for all results will change to roll-up only the filtered results.)
This is helpful when you have an idea of what topic you'd like to target. Topics can have dozens or even hundreds of keywords. Repeating deep research on them will grow tedious, and you'll probably lose the big picture.
This will give you a sense of the kind of content you should try to emulate for your own content plan.
Study a subcategory or topic
This is another way of filtering your results for a more focused study.
The Masterclass site gets more than one million monthly visitors to its expert-run lessons. I noticed that they have a hierarchy of arranging their lessons into Articles and Classes.
If you want to find only the top-visited classes (and leave out the articles), you can limit your results to URLs that start with that path.
Typing masterclass.com/classes into the search bar will give you results that start with that path. These will be any pages under the "classes" category as long as their URL is formatted that way. (Your filter that we mentioned above still works, but now it works on those narrowed results.)
This works only when the site's page structure separates topics or categories into their own path. You might see this for a site's blog (spyfu.com/blog) or product category (lendingtree.com/auto).
That's especially helpful if you're a smaller site looking at content from a site that covers more territory than you do.
And try it on your own page
This doesn't replace Google Analytics for your own content, but it sure speeds up part of your research. This helps you tie specific keywords to each piece of content that ranks.
Type your own site into the search bar for Top Pages. It should help you spot some areas of opportunity pretty quickly.
Then you can:
Nurture and promote your most valuable content -- try promoting your most valuable content or increase your shares on social media.
Optimize your high-traffic pages for conversions -- make sure that the content addresses the right stage of the conversion funnel. Give your readers the information they need at the time, and add calls to action.
Capitalize on emerging keyword rankings and internal links -- The filter has been helpful in keeping our related content together. It helps you think of internal links when you create new content.
Spot gaps where you aren't ranking -- This is another use for the filter. Not only can you test keywords your competitors have, you can also see rankings that you do get. Then you can improve upon your pages in hopes of boosting your rankings.
The Top Pages tool is a big part of our own content development and nurturing process. Watch this video for a tutorial on how to take it even further. It shows you what to watch for when you are emulating your competitor's content, how to weigh potential backlink targets, and even how to identify good internal link opportunities on your own page.