How to analyze your paid search competitors with Semrush? Semrush is an online visibility management platform that offers solutions for SEO, paid search, and social media.
Want to analyze your competitors' keywords and ads on the Google Search Network and Display Network? In this article, discover the most useful features for spying on your competitors with Semrush.
Note: Semrush is a paid tool, but you can still access up to 10 searches per day with a free account.
I. Analyzing your competitors' ads on the Search Network
To get started, go to the Semrush website. We'll walk through the 3 essential tools for analyzing your competitors' keywords and ads on the Google Search Network.
To do this:
- Look at the left-hand column
- Click on "Advertising"
- Select the "Advertising Research" feature.
1. Access the "Advertising Research" page
Enter the domain name of one of your competitors' websites that you want to analyze.
Depending on the study you want to conduct, you can filter by "country" to get an overview of paid search activity in the country of your choice.
Here, as an example, we've chosen to analyze the website https://www.fedex.com/ in France.
2. The "Positions" tab
The first tab that appears is the "Positions" feature. Semrush gives you an overview of paid search trends for the selected website:
You can then discover:
- Paid keywords (that is, which keywords your competitor uses to show their text ads on the Search Network. For example, FedEx uses "fedex", "fedex tracking", "shipping carrier", etc.)
- The search volume for each keyword (for example, you can see that users searched for the keyword "fedex" approximately 110,000 times per month on the Search Network)
- The CPC (Cost Per Click), meaning the average cost your competitor pays when a user clicks on their ad triggered by a given keyword. (For example, for the keyword "shipping carrier", FedEx pays around $0.44 per click.)
- The URLs your competitor chooses to include in their ads (you can access each URL for every keyword they're targeting)
- An estimated traffic figure (breakdown of paid traffic by keyword)
- An estimated cost (the total cost of traffic generated by each keyword)
3. The "Ad Copies" tab
The second essential tab to analyze is the "Ad Copies" page.
Here, you get an overview of your competitor's ad copy. You can also see which keywords trigger each ad.
Simply click on the keyword count displayed below the selected ad, for example "Keywords: 24":
Above the ad copies, in the "Filter by product title" search bar, you can search for a specific keyword. For example, if you search for the keyword "Package", the tool shows you an overview of all ads containing that keyword:
In addition, to the right of the "Filter by product title" search bar, you'll notice the "Advanced Filters" option. Advanced filters are also very useful. They allow you to search for an ad by excluding or including a keyword in the title, description, or URL of the website you're analyzing.
4. The "Ad History" tab
The third tab worth analyzing is the "Ad History" tab.
Here, you can see the coverage percentage, meaning the percentage of ads shown for a specific keyword over the past 12 months (100% = 12 months). For example, the keyword "shipping carrier" triggered ad impressions 75% of the year.
You can also view the keyword's search volume, CPC, and last month's traffic.
Note: When the table shows "0" (blank cells), it means your competitor's ad for that keyword did not appear during the indicated month.
II. Analyzing your competitors' ads on the Display Network
As a reminder, Display ads are banner ads that appear on Google's partner sites (for example, Pixmania, Cdiscount, Amazon, Le Bon Coin, eBay, etc.)
To analyze your competitors' banners:
- Look at the left-hand column
- Click on "Advertising"
- Select the "Display Advertising" feature.
Enter the domain name of one of your competitors' websites that you want to analyze. Here, we'll continue analyzing FedEx.
You can also filter by "country" to get an overview of paid advertising in the country of your choice. In this example, we'll analyze FedEx's Display ads worldwide.
1. The "Overview" page
The "Overview" page you land on lets you discover your competitor's Display ad targeting strategy. For example:
- Audience by gender (male or female)
- Audience by age group (18 to 65+)
- Interests of users who saw the ad (e.g., media and entertainment, technology, news and politics, etc.)
2. The "Ads" tab
This page lets you see the various images, videos, and ad copy your competitor is using.
You can then analyze your competitor's various banners: dimensions, image or video used, the number of times the banner was seen, and the countries targeted by these campaigns.
In this article, you've discovered the most useful features for monitoring your paid search competitors (search and display) with Semrush.
When building your Search or Display ad campaigns, Semrush can genuinely help you identify your competitors' strengths and weaknesses.
Beyond that, the tool can also guide you on keyword positioning, audience targeting, ad copy ideas, banner inspiration, and more.
Want support with Google Ads, or with your digital marketing strategy more broadly? Don't hesitate to reach out!
By Candice Echavidre
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