# A competitor analysis template for a business plan that ends in decisions > Split search rivals from sales rivals, keep it to five rows, and replace the SWOT box with decision lines that have owners. URL: https://claudegpt.si/news/competitor-analysis-template-for-business-plan-decisions Published: 2026-10-25T19:42:14.309Z Author: ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom Section: Guides Topics: Competitor analysis, Business plan, Founders Publisher: ClaudeGPT Si ## Key takeaways - Search rivals and sales rivals are often different companies, so the template marks each row search, sales or both. - Each finding becomes a decision line with evidence, an owner and the column to recheck at the next quarterly refresh. - seogeoaeo.ai plans start at $29 a month for 2,000 credits, and a full competitor row costs about 195 credits. Most founders write the competitor section of a business plan once, for investors, and never look at it again. A competitor analysis template for a business plan works better as a living sheet: one row per rival, one column per thing that decides who wins customers, and a short list of decisions at the bottom with a name next to each. Here is how to build that sheet so it survives past the pitch. ## Two lists of rivals, not one Founders usually know their sales competitors by heart: the two companies they keep losing deals to. Search competitors are a different list. A trade publication, a marketplace or a review site can take more of the searches your buyers make than any product you compete with, and the company that beats you in demos may hardly rank. So the first column after the domain is Role, with three values: sales, search or both. A rival that shows up in both lists is the one that shapes your plan. To build the search list, [seogeoaeo.ai's Competitor Finder](https://seogeoaeo.ai/tools/competitor-finder) returns the 30 sites sharing the most Google keywords with your domain in a chosen country, and flags as close competitors those where at least 5% of their keywords overlap with yours. Cross out the huge general sites, add the names sales gives you, and stop at five. A sixth row almost never changes what you decide. ## The columns a founder needs Put your own company in row one, because a rival's traffic only means something beside yours. Then: - **Organic visits per month** and **keywords in the top 10**, both estimates - **Top pages**, the two or three that pull most visits - **Shared keywords** and **gap keywords**, how close the rival is and what it has that you don't - **Referring domains**, how many sites link in - **Content types**, what format the top pages take - **Google Ads** and **social ads**, what each rival says when it pays to be seen - **AI citations**, how often AI answers on your topic name the site - **Decision notes** Everything except content types can come from one data source per column. Domain Overview (50 credits) covers visits, keywords and links in one run. Keyword Gap (85 credits) finds what a rival wins in Google's top 20 that you miss. The ad finders cost 5 to 15 credits each. A full row runs to about 195 credits. ## A decision line, not a SWOT box Investors have seen a thousand strengths-and-weaknesses grids. A sharper format is the decision line: > We will [do this] because [this row and column show it]. Owner: [name]. We check [column] at the next refresh on [date]. Take the worked example on the seogeoaeo.ai blog, an invented dental-booking app called Northfold. Its sheet shows that a rival called Chairtime draws most of its traffic from a no-show calculator and reminder templates, and that those pages win most of the keywords Northfold lacks. The decision writes itself: build those two tool pages, give them one owner, and check them against the gap column next quarter. The same sheet shows a sales rival with 60 Google ads and almost no search presence. That decision is the opposite: leave it out of the SEO plan and hand its ad promises to the sales team. Saying what you will not do is as useful in a plan as saying what you will. ## Keep it alive Refresh the sheet every quarter. Because provider estimates shift when their data updates, judge each decision by the change across two refreshes, not one. If a column has not fed a decision in two quarters, delete it. The [full template with a CSV and the worked example](https://seogeoaeo.ai/blog/competitor-analysis-template) is free to copy. ## Budget and limits seogeoaeo.ai plans start at $29 a month for 2,000 credits, enough for a five-row sheet with credits to spare. Each tool shows its price before it runs, and runs that fail before returning a result are refunded. It has no ongoing rank tracking; if your plan depends on daily keyword positions, a suite like Semrush covers that. For a quarterly sheet that ends in decisions, paying per lookup keeps the cost close to what you use. ## A note for the business plan itself When the sheet goes into the plan document, keep the numbers labelled as estimates and name the source under the table. A reader who sees that every figure in a column came from one place trusts the comparison more than a page of round numbers from five tools. ## Frequently asked questions ### How many competitors belong in a business plan analysis? Up to five. Combine the sites that share your Google keywords with the one or two companies sales loses deals to. ### Should the business plan include a SWOT grid? A list of decisions, each with its evidence, owner and recheck date, says more than a strengths and weaknesses grid. ### How often should the competitor sheet be updated? Every quarter, judging each decision across two refreshes because provider estimates shift. ## Sources - [SEO competitor analysis template with a worked example](https://seogeoaeo.ai/blog/competitor-analysis-template), seogeoaeo.ai - [Competitor Finder](https://seogeoaeo.ai/tools/competitor-finder), seogeoaeo.ai - [Domain Overview](https://seogeoaeo.ai/tools/domain-overview), seogeoaeo.ai - [Keyword Gap](https://seogeoaeo.ai/tools/keyword-gap), seogeoaeo.ai - [seogeoaeo.ai pricing](https://seogeoaeo.ai/pricing), seogeoaeo.ai - [Semrush plans and pricing](https://www.semrush.com/prices/), Semrush