So where do you begin, there are many place you can start but I like to start at statistical
analysis sites like Alexa, Screaming Frog, or Quantcast.

When I use Alexa I will input a topic or product and see what auto-suggestions I get.

Or I can just click on the search button with the word money in and see what it brings up.

if you look at the top it gives me the keyword popularity and the competition for the keyword, I also have the website name and the main keywords being used if I click on any of the website names I get the following information.

It gives me their ranking plus bounce rate, page views and time on site the lower the bounce rate the happier Goggle is and the longer time on site and more page views the better ranking the site will get.

Below you can see what country the visitors come from as well as the keywords that the search engines are using to send traffic to the site.

Below you can see where the visitors are coming from and how many external sites link to them.

The above is about half the information that is displayed, as you can see there is a ton of
information that you can use.

Quantcast is another site you can try but unless the publisher is a big dog you won't get much information.

Screaming Frog is another good site they have a free version that you can download.

Below is a list of just some of the information you get.

With the above information you can dissect their sites and see what the content is a what type of content and keywords your need to beat then.