Competitor analysis is only useful when it produces decisions. A list of what three competitors are doing is trivia; a map of where they are strong, where they are exposed, and which gap you can realistically take is a plan.
The most valuable finding is usually the negative one: the competitor everyone in your office worries about is invisible in search and buying nothing in paid, while a company nobody mentions is quietly taking the traffic.
What the analysis covers
- Organic footprint: their ranking keywords, top pages and estimated traffic value
- Paid activity: what they bid on, their ad messaging, how long campaigns persist
- Content and topic coverage, with the gaps nobody has claimed
- Backlink profiles and the citation sources you could plausibly earn too
- Positioning and pricing comparison, in their words rather than yours
- A prioritised opportunity list: defend, attack or ignore, with reasoning