Understand the market before you plan the work.

Search opportunity analysis asks where a site can realistically gain visibility, not only what people search for. Google does not publish a method for sizing an opportunity, so this section is general explanation rather than Google guidance. Three things usually go into it: demand (how many people search), difficulty (how hard the results are to enter) and the site's own ability (what it is technically and editorially able to do about it). A topic with large demand and results held by far stronger sites is a different proposition from a smaller topic the site could cover well.

Google's own data is the starting point for what a site already has. The Performance report in Search Console shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position, and groups them by query, page, country, device and other dimensions. It describes only what the site has already appeared for, so it says nothing about demand the site has never been shown for. Google also notes that results are specific to the time, place, device and recent history of the person searching, so a query list is not a promise of position.

Demand is not fixed either. Google's guidance on debugging traffic drops lists seasonality and changing interests as causes of falling traffic, and suggests checking a query against Google Trends to see whether a change affected the whole web or only one site. The same check helps when judging an opportunity: a seasonal peak looks very different from steady demand.

The SEO Starter Guide adds that there are no secrets that automatically rank a site first, and that changes can take hours to several months to show. An analysis should state its evidence and uncertainty, not a promised outcome.

Google has no documentation page on competitor analysis, so nothing in this section is attributed to Google. What follows is general explanation.

In search, a competitor is whoever holds the results for the searches you want, which is not always the business you compete with commercially. Publishers, marketplaces, directories and forums can all sit between a site and its customers. Looking at who actually appears, and what kind of page each one is, shows what the results reward: guides, product listings, comparison tables, tools or something else.

The useful questions are specific. What does each ranking page cover, and what does it leave out? How is the competing site organised, and how deep does it go on the topic? How does it use links between its own pages? Comparing the answers with your own site shows gaps worth filling and areas that are too well held to contest in the short term.

Google's guidance on helpful, reliable, people-first content asks whether content provides substantial value when compared to other pages in search results. That is a fair test to apply to your own pages after the comparison, and a reason not to copy what already ranks. Authority is a separate part of the comparison: who links to competitors and why not to you is covered under analysis first in Authority & Link Building.

Keyword research finds the words people use when they search. Search intent is what they are trying to do when they use them: learn something, compare options, buy, find a place or reach a particular site. The same phrase can carry different intent, and the results Google shows for it are a practical clue to which intent it is serving.

The SEO Starter Guide makes the point about vocabulary with an example: some people search for "charcuterie" while others search for "cheese board", and people who know a topic well use different words from newcomers. It advises anticipating those differences and writing with readers in mind. It also says not to worry about missing every variation, because Google's language matching systems can understand how a page relates to many queries even if it does not use the exact terms.

That has a practical consequence. A keyword list is a record of vocabulary and demand, not a list of phrases to repeat. The intent behind a group of terms decides what kind of page should exist for them, and whether one page or several is right. That decision feeds directly into planning the content and the structure described in shaping the site.

Keyword research also sits alongside the other evidence, not above it. Demand tells you that people search; the opportunity analysis and the competitor comparison tell you whether the site can do anything about it.