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How to identify if another website is doing seo?
Posted by on December 29, 2025 at 2:58 amSo I was doing some competition benchmarking.
There are some websites which are ranking way too higher than expected for some competitive keywords. I was infering these guys don't have that much too spend on seo.
But looks like I am wrong. Are there some fool proof checks I can do to identify whether they have an ongoing seo agency or inhouse. -
1 Reply
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Why does it matter to you?
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Better content.
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They will be beating you. Also, you don’t have to “do seo” to win and they don’t have to be “doing seo” to beat you
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Could look at their source code. Fancy schema markup is pretty common from an SEO agency (arguable how beneficial it is).
If you have access to ahrefs/similar can see if they have a lot of suspicious back links to their articles. An inflated DR score is a sign theyve been buying backlinks. Same with their GMB reviews. The cadence/volume of their blogs is probably indicative of involvement. Finally try doing a search of your competitors logo, might get lucky and find it on an SEOs we site advertising they do work for them. -
Use screaming frog to check their alt tags, meta info, and URL hygiene. Use SEMRush to check what keywords they’re ranking for, and what their position is.
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Semrush, look at backlinks and DA.
Look at titles and descriptions. You can easily tell if they have keywords
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Let’s say they do: what are you going to do?
Let’s say they don’t: what are you going to do?The only thing that matters is that they are beating you. Whether they do it because they hired someone, by coincidence, or by sheer luck, the result is the same. It is up to you whether you decide to do something or not. You cannot control their business, but you can control yours.
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Check their blogs. are they all structured with H1\H2\H3… and following a what\why\how-to-do SEO pattern？Are their pictures attached with clear Alt?
The most effective way is to check their website authority with tools like Ahrefs. If the score is high, they are probably doing SEO.
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if someone within the company decides to learn SEO, they can be successful without spending $$ on an expensive agency or new in-house hire
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For one thing it means they’re higher up then you in the search engines for the same keywords, but you could check for backlinks.
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Content on category pages. Huge array of transactional keyword targetted category pages. Check backlink profile in Ahrefs.
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Ahrefs or similar – look at backlinks. You can spot a bought guest blog or press release easily. Especially if they have 4000 backlinks, pretty likely they’re paying for them.
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If they are performing better it means they are doing SEO.
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There’s a Chrome extension that quickly scans the SEO score/rating on a website. This is your best bet.
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