What can I monitor about competitors with site audits?

Technical health scores, page speed, mobile usability, new/removed pages (via sitemaps), title and heading changes, schema adoption, and security posture. Combined over time, these reveal where rivals invest before rankings reflect it.

How often should I audit competitors?

Weekly for contested URLs is the sweet spot; daily for money pages during campaigns or after a rival redesign. More frequent than that adds noise, not signal.

Do I need to be a developer to use the Scanly API?

Basic scripting comfort helps (API keys, cron jobs, JSON), but the playbook needs only a few dozen lines: schedule calls, store results, diff scores, send alerts. No backend infrastructure required.

How to Use the Scanly API to Automatically Monitor Your Competition

Manual competitor checks die after two weeks — nobody opens five rival sites every Monday forever. The fix is automation: scheduled API audits, score diffing, and alerts that tap you on the shoulder only when something actually changed. Total setup: one afternoon. Total upkeep: one hour a month. Try a manual baseline first with a free Scanly audit of your site and your top rival, then automate with the playbook below. Background reading: competitor SEO analysis guide and monthly audit routine.

The 4-step monitoring system

Step 1: Define your watchlist (30 min, once)

Pick 3–5 true SERP rivals — sites ranking for your money keywords — plus 1–2 aspirational leaders. For each, list the 3–5 URLs that compete directly with yours (service pages, top posts). Ten to twenty URLs total is plenty; breadth beats depth here.

You get: competitors.json: domains, URLs, and the keywords each contests.

Step 2: Schedule recurring audits (1 hour, once)

Run a full audit per URL weekly (daily for the homepage and money pages during active campaigns). Store every run with a timestamp — history is the whole point. A simple cron job or scheduled GitHub Action calling the API is enough; no infrastructure to babysit.

You get: A growing time series of scores per URL: SEO, speed, accessibility, security.

Step 3: Diff and alert on what matters (1 hour, once)

Compare each run against the previous one and fire alerts only on meaningful moves: score swings ≥5 points, new pages appearing in their sitemap, title/H1 rewrites on contested pages, sudden speed improvements (new CDN? new theme?), or schema additions. Alert fatigue kills monitoring — threshold ruthlessly.

You get: Slack/email alerts like "Rival X: +8 speed score, new FAQ schema on /pricing".

Step 4: Turn intel into a monthly counter-plan (1 hour/month)

Monthly, review the trendlines: where are they investing? Copy the tactic, not the content — if they added FAQ schema everywhere, schema your pages; if their LCP halved, audit your own pipeline. File one counter-move per rival per month into your roadmap.

You get: One-page monthly brief: rival moves, your counter-moves, expected impact.

What to watch (and what to ignore)

Signal	Why it matters	Alert threshold
Overall score swing	They shipped something big	±5 points
New sitemap URLs	New content offensive	Any new money-page URL
Title/H1 rewrites	New keyword targeting	Changed contested pages
Speed jumps	Infra upgrades (CDN, rebuild)	LCP improvement >1s
New schema types	Rich-result land grab	Any new schema

Ignore: single-point wobbles, blog-post churn, and vanity metrics. Monitor inputs (what they shipped), not outputs (their rank today) — inputs predict next quarter.

🔍 Baseline My Site + Rivals

Frequently Asked Questions

Is auditing competitors' sites allowed?

Yes — requesting a public URL and reading its public headers, markup, and sitemap is exactly what browsers and search engines do. You're observing public signals, not accessing anything private.

How do I avoid alert fatigue?

Threshold aggressively (±5 points, contested pages only), batch alerts into one daily digest, and review trendlines monthly instead of reacting to every ping. Ten quiet weeks and one loud alert is the system working.

Conclusion

Competitor monitoring fails when it depends on willpower. Define the watchlist, schedule the API, alert on thresholds, and counter-move monthly — an afternoon of setup for permanent early warning.

How to Use the Scanly API to Automatically Monitor Your Competition

The 4-step monitoring system

Step 1: Define your watchlist (30 min, once)

Step 2: Schedule recurring audits (1 hour, once)

Step 3: Diff and alert on what matters (1 hour, once)

Step 4: Turn intel into a monthly counter-plan (1 hour/month)

What to watch (and what to ignore)

Frequently Asked Questions

Is auditing competitors' sites allowed?

How do I avoid alert fatigue?

Conclusion

See what your rivals shipped this week

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