/competitor-deep-audit

name: competitor-deep-audit
description: 'Use when an e-commerce or content site wants to deeply understand WHO their organic competitors are (often surprising — not the brands they think) and WHERE the competitors outrank them — e.g. "competitor analysis", "keyword gap analysis", "who outranks me", "Wettbewerber-Lücken", "wo verlieren wir gegen die Konkurrenz", "content opportunities from competitor SERPs". Produces a prioritized opportunity list (keyword + search volume + competitor URL + your current position) for the next content-roadmap quarter. Triggers also from "Sistrix Konkurrenten" or "DataForSEO competitors".'
user-invocable: true
argument-hint: '[domain]'
allowed-tools: [Read, Write, Bash(node:*), Bash(curl:*)]
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: Max Schottke
  version: '0.5.4'
  category: marketing

Competitor Deep Audit

Overview

Identifies the **real organic competitors** of a target domain (not who the owner thinks competes, but who actually shows up in their SERPs), then for the top 5–8 competitors pulls a **keyword-gap-analysis**: keywords where competitors rank top-10 but the target does not, sorted by search volume × estimated traffic.

Output: a prioritized 30–100-item opportunity list for the next content roadmap.

When to use

• New SEO mandate intake — get the lay of the land
• Quarterly competitor review
• Content roadmap planning
• "Why aren't we ranking for X?" — find which competitor took the spot
• Validate / disprove gut-feel-competitor assumptions

**Don't use for:**

• Brand-positioning analysis (this is SEO-organic, not brand-share)
• Paid-search competitor analysis (different toolset — SEMrush Ads, SpyFu)
• Backlink-gap-analysis (separate workflow, use claude-seo:seo-backlinks)

Prerequisites

• DataForSEO API credentials (Labs endpoints — `competitors_domain` + `domain_intersection`)
• Optional: Sistrix API for cross-validation (`domain.competitors.seo` — needs API-Pro tier)
• Target domain + DE-market focus (location_code 2276; adjust for other markets)

Workflow

Step 1 — Identify real competitors via SERP overlap

const competitorsResp = await d4sPost('/v3/dataforseo_labs/google/competitors_domain/live', {
  target: 'example.com',
  language_code: 'de',
  location_code: 2276,
  limit: 25,
});

The response orders competitors by SERP-overlap (intersections) × keyword count × ETV. Top 5–8 entries = your real competitors.

**Surprise factor:** typically 30–60 % of real competitors are NOT the brands the owner names off the cuff. Often blogs, info-sites, marketplaces, or niche players that swallow long-tail traffic.

Step 2 — For each top competitor, pull their ranked keywords

const ranked = await d4sPost('/v3/dataforseo_labs/google/ranked_keywords/live', {
  target: 'competitor.com',
  language_code: 'de',
  location_code: 2276,
  limit: 500,  // wide net
  order_by: ['ranked_serp_element.serp_item.estimated_traffic_volume,desc'],
});

Step 3 — Compute the gap

For each competitor's top-ranking keyword (position ≤ 10):

• Check if **your** domain ranks for it (call ranked_keywords for your domain too)
• If you rank > 20 (or don't rank at all): this is an opportunity
• Compute "opportunity score" = search_volume × (1 - your_position/100) × competitor_count_top10

Sort by opportunity score, take top 100, that's your roadmap.

Step 4 — Cluster by content type

Bucket the opportunities:

• **Category pages missing** — keywords like "X-shop", "X-online-kaufen" with no matching category page
• **Product gaps** — competitor has product/variant you don't sell
• **Content/blog gaps** — competitor ranks with a guide/listicle, you have nothing
• **Quick-win wonky URLs** — you have a similar page that ranks poorly, just needs work

Output as a table:

| # | Keyword | SV | Your Pos | Best Competitor | Their Pos | Their URL | Gap Type | Action | |---|---------|----|---------:|------------------|----------:|-----------|----------|--------| | 1 | "outdoor jacke wasserdicht damen" | 5400 | — | bergfreunde.de | 3 | /jacken/.../damen-wasserdicht | category-missing | Build dedicated category page | | 2 | "merino socken test 2026" | 880 | 47 | outdoor-magazin.de | 2 | /test/merino-socken-2026 | content/blog | Write tested-buyer-guide |

Step 5 — Prioritize against capacity

A realistic content-roadmap fits 5–15 new pieces per quarter (depending on team size). From your top-100, pick:

• 3–5 high-volume category pages (highest impact)
• 5–10 blog/content gaps (medium impact, faster)
• 2–3 product-line expansions (if business allows)

Cross-validation with Sistrix (optional)

// Only available with Sistrix API-Pro tier — basic tier returns error_code 5001
const sxComp = await sistrix('domain.competitors.seo', {
  domain: 'example.com',
  country: 'de',
  num: 20,
});

Compare DataForSEO competitors vs Sistrix competitors — high overlap (>60 %) means your competitor set is robust. Low overlap → re-check both datasets, often signals a recent SERP volatility event.

Common pitfalls

| Pitfall | Mitigation | |---------|------------| | Treating Amazon / Wikipedia / Marketplaces as "competitors" | Filter them out — they're SERP-fixtures, not actionable competitors | | Going after very high-volume head terms | Usually impossibly competitive — focus on 100-5000 SV mid-tail | | Picking opportunities matching only blog content | If your URL slug structure is /blog/ then your e-commerce business may not benefit much from ranked blog posts — prefer category/product gaps | | Ignoring intent mismatch | Competitor ranks for "X review" — but you sell X, not review X. Check intent alignment | | Cost spiral | DataForSEO ranked_keywords with `limit: 500` per competitor × 8 competitors = 4000 results. Cost: ~$0.20–$0.40. Cap reasonably. |

Cost estimate per audit

• DataForSEO competitors_domain (1 call): ~$0.01
• DataForSEO ranked_keywords (8 competitors × 1 call): ~$0.08–$0.40
• DataForSEO ranked_keywords for your doma