Sequel
SEO

Tear down a competitor's top pages

See which of a competitor's pages earn the most organic traffic, what each one ranks for, which formats and topics keep winning for them, and which of those the site has no answer to yet.

Install into your agent
  • What are competitor.com's top pages?
  • Which formats win links in our market?
  • Which competitor pages do we have no answer to?

The playbook

A competitor's top pages are a free content strategy: the topics and formats that already work in this market, ranked by how much they earn. The job is to read the pattern, not to copy the pages.

Steps

  1. Confirm the competitor. If the user has not named one, ask. Search competitors (the sites that outrank you) are often not the business competitors the user has in mind.

  2. Pull their top pages. ahrefs.top_pages with the competitor's domain as target, limit: 100, order_by: "traffic:desc". Each row has the URL, estimated traffic and value, ranking keyword count, and the lead keyword with its volume.

  3. Classify each page. From the URL and lead keyword, assign a format (guide, comparison, listicle, tool or calculator, template, glossary entry, product page, pricing, case study) and a topic. Fetch their top ten pages with your browsing to confirm the format and note structure, length, and whether the page is updated regularly. State that formats below the top ten were inferred from URLs.

  4. Find the pattern. Aggregate traffic and value by format and by topic. The finding is usually one sentence: "sixty percent of their organic value comes from comparison pages on topic X". That sentence is what the user needs.

  5. Map their pages against the site's coverage. google_search_console.query with dimensions: ["query", "page"] over 90 days ending 3 days ago, rowLimit: 5000. For each of the competitor's top 25 pages, search this result for their lead keyword. Three outcomes: the site ranks for it under position 10 (covered), the site ranks above 20 or gets impressions on an unrelated page (weak answer), or the keyword is absent (no answer).

  6. Compare the shape, not just the size. ahrefs.top_pages for the user's own domain with the same settings. Compare how concentrated traffic is in the top ten pages for each site, and how the format mix differs.

  7. Report. Their top 20 pages (URL, traffic, value, lead keyword, volume, format, and the site's answer: covered, weak, or none). The format and topic breakdown with the one-sentence pattern. Then five recommended pages to build, each with the format that wins for the competitor and the query it targets. Say which of their pages you are not recommending an answer to, and why.

Gotchas

  • Ahrefs traffic and value are modelled. They rank pages against each other well; they do not measure anyone's revenue. The user's own Search Console numbers are measured; the competitor's are not.
  • Their homepage and brand pages inflate the list. Strip pages whose lead keyword is their brand before computing the format mix.
  • Copying a page that ranks does not make yours rank. The recommendation is the format and the topic, plus what would make the page better than theirs.
  • Formats are market-specific. What wins in developer tools loses in consumer retail. Read the pattern from this competitor, not from a general rule.
  • Lead keyword is one of many. A page with 400 ranking keywords is not "about" its lead keyword alone. Check ahrefs.organic_keywords for the page URL before writing a brief around it.
  • For the links behind those pages, continue with competitor-new-backlinks, which shows who is linking to them and how each link was earned.

Install

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is a competitor top pages teardown?
An analysis of which pages on a competitor's site earn the most organic traffic and why. It covers content format, length, internal link depth, schema usage, and which queries each page targets. The output is a list of content opportunities and a profile of what works in your market.
How do I find a competitor's best organic pages?
Use Ahrefs to pull the competitor's top pages by estimated organic traffic. Then read the top 10 with your own browser: note the content format, the questions answered, and the depth of coverage. That combination shows what Google rewards on that topic and what you would need to do to compete.
How is a top pages teardown different from a keyword gap analysis?
A keyword gap tells you which queries you are missing. A top pages teardown tells you why a competitor's content earns those rankings: what format, depth and structure is working. The teardown informs how to build the content, not just what to build.
How many competitor pages should I analyze in a teardown?
The top 10 to 20 by traffic is the productive range. Below that, you get the most valuable pattern recognition. Beyond 20, you start seeing long-tail pages that succeeded for reasons specific to that domain rather than the topic.
Can an AI agent run a competitor top pages teardown?
Yes. With Ahrefs connected, the agent pulls the top pages, fetches them with its own browser, classifies each by format and structure, and returns a profile of what is working. Sequel provides the Ahrefs connection and the competitor-top-pages-teardown playbook.

Put this playbook to work

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