How do I check whether why competitor pages are ranking before mine?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Rob Baker: HNY! How do I check whether why competitor pages are ranking before mine?
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  Richard Brus: Use SeoProfiler to compare with competitors or use Serpbook to check your own rankings..
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  Rob Baker: +Richard Brus ;Thanks for sharing your knowledge.  ;Have added you to my circles. ;
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  Rob Baker: +Richard Brus ;Have signed up for SEOProfiler - what's the most NB thing to look for?
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  Greg Baka: Hi +Rob Baker - you could also try Moz.com's free Open Site Explorer at http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
  But no tool will tell you exactly why other sites rank better. Besides links there are also on-page factors. And there can be almost invisible things like old sites that now 301 redirect into a new active site. There are many many things that effect ranking - Google does not tell anybody - so we're just guessing...
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  Richard Brus: Yes your right, no tool will ever do it all for you. I once used to use ibusinesspromoter (IBP) too and this is also a very comprehensive seo tool. There's a trial version too. It's the most expensive seo tool on the market at $500 and by memory it had some very good comparison features. SeoProfiler is probably the best of the cheaper options.
  
  Quality link checkers will also show the 301 redirects too. They can't really be hidden from a backlink profile unless the site is blocking the ip's of backlink crawlers or using plugins like spider spanker. I have another rule for seo too & that is; keep your eyes of your competitors ass and focus on the road ahead. Every minute spent reverse engineering your competitors strategies is a wasted minute that you could have been creating content - links - or social chatter. Just keep building.
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  W.E. Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:18:37 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/how_do_i_check_whether_why_competitor_pages_are_ranking_before_mine
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  Rob Baker: +W.E. Jonk ;Much thanks! Quality of website v competitors, age of site, links and possible audit are what's important it sounds.
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  Greg Kristan: There is also a good tool called SpyFu. You can put your site against your competitors and see the keywords they rank for vs you vs keywords you share together ;