SEVOsmith - The Strategy Architect - Competitor Analysis & Content Clustering with n8n and DataForSEO

The AI-Powered Competitor Intelligence Engine That Writes Your Content Strategy For You

Stop spending weeks on competitor research and content planning. This n8n workflow automates the entire process—from discovering market leaders to generating a complete Pillar and Cluster content strategy ready for production.

🎯 1. What You Get

A complete n8n automation workflow that transforms raw market data into an actionable content strategy document + production-ready spreadsheet.

Perfect for:

• 🏢 SEO Agencies managing multiple clients
• 📈 Content Strategists building topical authority
• 🚀 Startup Founders entering competitive markets
• 💼 Freelancers offering SEO strategy services

🎁 Bonus: Part of SEVOsmith Ecosystem

This Strategy Architect workflow integrates seamlessly with:

• SEVOsmith Content Engine - Automated content production
• SEVOsmith Keyword Orchestrator: From Raw Data to Strategic Report

✨Examples:

Strategy__golden-retriever-market-domination__2025-12-28.md - Google Docs

SEVOsmith_Content_Planner_Shared - Google Sheets

🎯 2. User Input & Strategy Modes

The workflow starts via a Form with three distinct operational modes to suit your specific goal:

🔭 Mode A: Topic Explorer (Market Research)

• Input: Seed Keywords (e.g., "AI CRM", "Vegan Leather").
• Goal: "I want to enter a niche but don't know who the players are."
• Logic: Auto-discovers the top 100 organic competitors via DataForSEO, filters out directories (Yelp, Clutch), and isolates the true market leaders.

🛡️ Mode B: Domain Defender (Gap Analysis)

• Input: Your Website URL.
• Goal: "Who is stealing my traffic?"
• Logic: Identifies direct rivals who rank for the same keywords you do, allowing you to close content gaps.

🎯 Mode C: Manual Analysis (The Sniper)

• Input: Specific Competitor Domains (comma-separated).
• Goal: "I want to reverse-engineer competitor-x.com specifically."
• Logic: Bypasses discovery APIs to perform a surgical audit on the exact domains you provide.

✨ Key Features

• ⚡ The "Competitor Collector": A smart aggregation engine that merges API discovery with manual inputs, removes duplicates, filters out non-business giants (Wikipedia, LinkedIn), and prioritizes the most relevant threats.
• 💎 "Money Page" Forensics: Instead of crawling entire sites, the system identifies the specific URLs driving the highest Estimated Traffic Value (ETV) and extracts their winning keywords (Page 1 rankings only).
• 🧠 Semantic Strategy Engine: An AI Agent acts as a Senior SEO Strategist, organizing scattered keywords into a logical Pillar & Cluster Architecture to build topical authority.
• 🛡️ Smart Data Upsert: When saving to Google Sheets, the workflow intelligently merges new data with old data—ensuring you never overwrite rich historical metrics with empty data from a quick manual run.
• 📂 Dual-Stream Output: Simultaneously generates a Strategic Strategy Document (MS Word) for stakeholders and an Actionable Content Database (Google Sheets) for production teams.

⚙️ How It Works

1. The Extraction Loop

For every identified competitor (from any Strategy Mode), the system executes a recursive analysis cycle:

1. Fetch Top Pages: Retrieves the top 5-10 pages sorted by traffic value.
2. Extract Winning Keywords: Pulls the top 50 keywords ranking on Page 1 for those specific URLs.
3. Intent Filtering: Automatically discards "Navigational" (Branded) keywords to focus purely on Commercial and Informational opportunities.

2. Strategic Synthesis (The AI Agent)

The cleaned market data is aggregated and sent to a Master Strategist AI. The AI analyzes content gaps and outputs:

• Market Opportunity Score: Total addressable volume and difficulty.
• Content Architecture: 3-5 Core Pillars and supporting Cluster articles.
• Quick Wins: A list of High Volume / Low Difficulty keywords to target immediately.

3. Production & Delivery

The workflow splits the AI's output into two parallel workstreams:

• Stream A (The Document): Converts the Markdown strategy into a formatted HTML/Word document, names it dynamically (e.g., Strategy__Client-Name__Date.docx), and saves it to a designated Google Drive Folder.
• Stream B (The Database): Parses the article plan into structured JSON and appends it to Google Sheets (Content_Plan tab) for project management.
• Notification: Sends a summary Email with direct links to the Strategy Doc, Research Report, and Spreadsheet.

🛠️ Tech Stack & APIs

• Data Source: DataForSEO (serp_competitors, competitors_domain, relevant_pages, ranked_keywords).
• Intelligence: Google Gemini / OpenAI (via LangChain).
• Logic: Javascript (n8n Code Nodes) for complex data flattening and file handling.
• Storage: Google Drive & Google Sheets.
• Notification: Gmail.

📊 Output Data Model (Google Sheets)

The workflow populates two specific tabs:

1. Raw_Competitor_Data (The Evidence):

• Competitor & Target Page
• Keyword, Search Volume, CPC
• Difficulty & Top Bid
• Ranking Value ($) & Yearly Trend

2. Content_Plan (The Action Plan):

• Article ID & Type (Pillar/Cluster)
• Primary Keyword & Secondary Keywords
• Purpose / Angle & Priority