My Secret Weapon: The Best Free SEO Tools to Spy on Your Competitors and Steal Their Rankings
The analytics graph was a flat line.
It was mocking me, I swear. A perfectly horizontal green line that screamed, “Nothing you’re doing is working.” Every morning, I’d open my laptop with a little flicker of hope. And every morning, that hope was crushed by the same stagnant, soul-crushing data. I was writing my heart out. I was posting consistently. I was doing everything the gurus told me to do.
But nothing was changing.
Then, one Tuesday, fueled by too much coffee and desperation, I started looking at my main competitor. Their blog was… everywhere. They were ranking for everything. Their traffic graph, I imagined, looked like a rocket launch. What was their secret? Did they have some magic formula I didn’t? It felt so unfair.
And that’s when a new thought popped into my head. A slightly mischievous, slightly devious thought. What if I stopped guessing? What if, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I just… looked at their wheel? That was the day I stumbled upon the idea of using the best free SEO tools to spy on your competitors and steal their rankings.
It sounds a little sneaky, I know. But it was the single biggest turning point in my entire journey.
So, if you’re staring at your own flat line right now, stick with me. This isn’t about some black-hat trickery. It’s about being smart. It’s about learning from those who have already figured it out. And believe it or not, you can start doing it today, for free.
Okay, But How Do You Actually Spy on Someone?
My first attempts were, frankly, a disaster.
I remember thinking I was some kind of digital detective. I’d go to my competitor’s website, right-click, and hit “View Page Source.” I’d stare at the cascade of code, hunting for some hidden clue in the meta tags. It was completely useless. I didn’t know what I was looking for, and even if I did, it wouldn’t have told me what I needed to know.
It felt like trying to understand a novel by only reading the publisher’s copyright page.
The real secrets aren’t just sitting there on the page. They’re hidden in the data behind the page. Things like: What keywords are actually bringing them traffic? Who is linking to their articles and giving them authority? What questions are their customers asking that I’m completely ignoring? Answering these questions is the core of a good competitor keyword analysis. But for a long time, I thought that kind of information was locked away behind thousand-dollar subscriptions.
I was wrong. It just takes knowing which digital doors to knock on.
It’s Not Spying, It’s… Smart Borrowing
Let me reframe this for you, because “spying” can feel a little bit icky.
Think of it like this. Imagine your competitor is the most popular baker in town. Their chocolate chip cookies are legendary. You’re a new baker, and your cookies are… fine. They’re okay. But they aren’t flying off the shelves.
Now, you wouldn’t break into their kitchen and steal their recipe book. That’s wrong.
But you could stand in line, buy one of their cookies, and taste it. You could try to figure out the ingredients. Is that dark chocolate or milk chocolate? Do they use brown sugar or white sugar? Maybe a hint of cinnamon? You’re not stealing their intellectual property. You’re just doing research on the finished product that they’ve put out for the whole world to see.
That’s exactly what we’re doing here. Their rankings, their keywords, their backlinks—it’s all public information. We’re just using a few clever tools to gather it all up and analyze it. We’re buying the cookie to figure out the ingredients. We’re not sneaking into the kitchen. And the first ingredient we need to look at is who is vouching for them. For that, you need a good backlink checker tool.
My Arsenal of (Totally Free) Digital Crowbars
Alright, let’s get to the good stuff. The actual tools.
Over the years, I’ve tried dozens of them. Many promise the world but deliver very little in their free versions. But these three? These are the ones that have consistently given me actionable insights without ever asking for a credit card. They are the foundation of my entire competitive research strategy. These are, from my humble perspective, some of the best free SEO tools to spy on your competitors and steal their rankings.
And I’m going to show you exactly how I use them.
The All-in-One Powerhouse: Ubersuggest
If you’ve been in the SEO world for more than five minutes, you’ve probably heard of Neil Patel. His tool, Ubersuggest, has a pretty generous free tier that gives you a fantastic overview of a competitor’s domain. It’s the perfect starting point.
Here’s my simple, step-by-step process.
First, you go to the Ubersuggest website and pop your competitor’s domain name (like competitor.com) into the search bar. The first thing you’ll see is a dashboard that gives you a quick snapshot. It shows organic keywords, monthly traffic, and domain authority. This is your baseline.
But the real magic happens when you click on “Top Pages by Traffic” in the left-hand sidebar. This report, my friend, is pure gold. It literally shows you a list of their most successful articles. It tells you which pages on their site are bringing in the most visitors from Google.
Think about that for a second. No more guessing what topics resonate with your audience. Your competitor has already spent the time and money figuring it out for you. Now you have a proven list of content ideas. You can see the exact headlines and URLs that are winning. This is the beginning of a proper SERP analysis, and it takes about 30 seconds to do.
It’s like the baker handing you a list of their best-selling products. Why would you try to invent a new pastry when you know for a fact that everyone loves their croissants?
Finding Gold in Their Digital Endorsements
Okay, so Ubersuggest showed you what is ranking. But it doesn’t always tell you why. A huge part of the “why” comes down to backlinks.
Backlinks are basically votes of confidence from other websites. When a reputable site links to your competitor’s article, they’re telling Google, “Hey, this is a great piece of content. You should trust it.” The more high-quality votes a page gets, the higher it tends to rank.
This is where my next favorite free tool comes in: Ahrefs’ Free Backlink Checker.
Ahrefs is a titan in the SEO industry, and their full suite is very expensive. But their free backlink checker is an incredible gift to the community. Just like with Ubersuggest, you simply enter your competitor’s domain or the specific URL of one of their top-ranking articles.
The tool will then spit out a list of other websites that are linking to that page.
I’ll never forget the first time I did this. I was analyzing a competitor’s blog post that was outranking me for a keyword I desperately wanted. I ran it through the Ahrefs tool and saw they had a link from a well-respected university’s resource page. A lightbulb went off in my head. My article was good, but it didn’t have that kind of authority behind it.
So, I looked at their article and I looked at mine. I realized my article was a bit outdated. I spent a weekend updating it, adding new data, and creating a few custom graphics. Then, I reached out to the person who managed that university resource page. I sent a simple, polite email. I showed them my newly updated, more comprehensive resource and gently asked if they might consider adding it.
And you know what? They did. Two weeks later, my ranking shot up. That one simple discovery, made possible by a free tool, changed my entire trajectory. This is where you can begin some basic content gap identification—seeing what kind of authority they have that you don’t.
The Instant X-Ray Vision: SEOquake
The first two tools are great for deep-dive analysis. But what about when you’re just browsing the web and want a quick snapshot? That’s where SEOquake comes in.
SEOquake isn’t a website; it’s a free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and others. Once you install it, it gives you an instant SEO toolbar on any page you visit. It’s like having a pair of x-ray specs for the internet.
When you perform a Google search, SEOquake automatically adds a bar of data underneath every single search result. You can instantly see the page’s authority, the number of backlinks, and a ton of other metrics. This is incredibly useful for quickly sizing up the competition on the first page. You can see, at a glance, who the heavy hitters are and who might be vulnerable. It gives you immediate organic traffic insights right there on the search results page.
But my favorite feature is the “Page SEO Audit” button. When you’re on a competitor’s article, you can click this button and get an instant on-page analysis. It checks their title tag, meta description, heading structure, and more. You can see if they’ve properly optimized their page.
Often, you’ll find that even top-ranking articles have made simple mistakes. Maybe their images are missing alt text, or their heading structure is a mess. These are small cracks in their armor. They are opportunities for you to create a page that is not only better in substance but also technically superior. A true understanding of how to structure a blog post can give you a massive edge here.
Having the Data is Great. But Now What?
So, you’ve used the tools. You have a list of your competitor’s top keywords, their best backlinks, and a full analysis of their on-page SEO. You’re sitting on a mountain of data.
This is the point where most people get overwhelmed and quit.
They see the data, they get intimidated, and they go back to guessing. Please, don’t do that. The data is just the starting point. The real work is turning that information into a strategy. It’s about taking what you’ve learned and creating something even better.
This isn’t about plagiarism. It’s about inspiration. Your goal should never be to create a carbon copy of your competitor’s article. Your goal is to see what made them successful and then build upon it. Improve it. Make it your own. For a long time, I was looking for a free SpyFu alternative, and I realized that combining the data from these separate free tools essentially gives you the same power.
Finding the Cracks in Their Armor
Your competitors are not perfect. I promise you. Even the biggest sites have weaknesses, and your job is to find them.
One of the best ways to do this is to look for content gaps. Using a tool like AnswerThePublic (another fantastic free resource), you can see all the questions people are asking related to a certain topic. Compare these questions to your competitor’s top-ranking article. Are there any important questions they failed to answer? That’s your opening. You can create an article that covers everything they did, but also answers those missing questions.
Another strategy is to look at the comments section on their blog posts. What are people confused about? What follow-up questions are they asking? These comments are a goldmine of ideas for how you can improve upon their content.
Finally, look at the dates. Is their top-ranking article from three years ago? Perfect. A lot can change in three years. You can create a new-and-improved version with the most up-to-date information, case studies, and statistics. According to a study by HubSpot, updating old content with new information and images can significantly increase its organic traffic.
You should also pay attention to the keyword difficulty score that tools like Ubersuggest provide. Don’t just go after their biggest, most competitive keywords. Look for the ones with a lower difficulty score. These are often long-tail keywords that they rank for almost by accident. You can create a dedicated, focused article on that topic and often outrank them in a matter of weeks.
A Quick Word on Not Being a Jerk
This is important. The goal here is to learn and improve, not to tear anyone down or engage in shady tactics.
Never, ever copy their content directly. That’s plagiarism, it’s illegal, and Google will penalize you for it into oblivion. Also, don’t engage in negative SEO, like trying to build spammy links to their site to hurt their rankings. It’s unethical, it rarely works, and it just makes you a bad citizen of the internet.
The entire mindset should be one of abundance. Their success doesn’t mean you have to fail. There is plenty of room on the internet for multiple high-quality resources on the same topic. Your job is to earn your spot at the top by providing more value than anyone else. Think of it as a friendly rivalry that pushes everyone to be better.
It’s about understanding the ethics of digital marketing and playing the long game.
Your Turn to Become the Competition
Look, I get it. When you’re just starting out, the world of SEO feels impossibly big and complicated. It feels like a game rigged in favor of the people who have been playing for years.
I felt that way for a very long time. I was just throwing content at the wall and hoping something would stick. It was exhausting and demoralizing.
But learning how to use these simple, free tools changed everything for me. It took the guesswork out of the equation. It gave me a roadmap. Instead of wandering in the dark, I suddenly had a flashlight and a compass, all borrowed from the people who had already navigated the path ahead of me.
This process turned my flat line into a steady, beautiful climb.
It won’t happen overnight. It takes work. But now, it’s work with a purpose. It’s strategic. You’re no longer just creating content; you’re creating content with a proven model for success. You’re using the best free SEO tools to spy on your competitors and steal their rankings—ethically and effectively.
So my challenge to you is this: Pick one competitor. Just one.
Run their website through Ubersuggest. Find their single best-performing article. Then, run that article’s URL through the Ahrefs backlink checker. See who is linking to it. Finally, use SEOquake to analyze their on-page SEO.
Just do that. It will take you less than 15 minutes.
I promise you, the insights you gain from that one simple exercise will give you more clarity and direction than the last hundred articles you’ve read about “how to blog.”
Now it’s your turn. Who’s the one competitor you’re going to look at first? What’s the one thing you’re hoping to learn? Let me know in the comments below.
