If your business isn’t showing up in Google’s local results, it’s easy to assume competitors just have better SEO. But there are a lot of factors that affect local rankings, and you may find yourself outranked by a competitor who has better reviews, more local relevance, more complete business information or a more useful website.
That’s why local SEO competitor analysis should be less about copying your competitors and more about understanding why Google considers them relevant and trustworthy.
For multi-location and small business, a structured analysis can uncover actionable opportunities that are much easier to take advantage of than generic SEO advice.
Table of Contents
Meet Your Real Local Competitors
Begin with the words people will actually type into a search engine to find your business. Experiment with variations such as “plumber in Dallas,” “dentist near me,” or “Italian restaurant in Austin.”
Check the local map pack and organic results. Make a note of the businesses that show up multiple times over a few searches.
Don’t depend on one search. Results vary by location, device and exact query. They may be different locally.
If you’re a multi-location business, repeat this process in each market. A competitor that is dominant in one city may be barely visible in another.
Check Out Their Google Business Profiles
Once you’ve identified your main search competitors, check out their Google Business Profiles.
Start with the basics:
- Primary & Secondary Categories
- Description of the business
- hours & holiday hours
- Pictures
- Products or services
- Q&A
- Google Posts, where relevant
- Location information
Pay special attention to the main category. If a number of well-ranked competitors are using a category that more accurately describes one of your core services, review your own category choice.
But don’t just choose categories because competitors do. They should represent your business well. Also watch for patterns.
- Do the top players have many more pictures?
- Do they refresh their profiles? Are they clearly showing the services that customs search for?
These observations can reveal areas worth improving on your own profile.
Reviews Beyond the Stars
Reviews are also an important competitive signal, but the average rating doesn’t tell the whole story.
Benchmark your review volume, rating, recency and content against businesses that rank above you.
A business that has a 4.9 rating and 80 reviews may have less overall review presence than a competitor with a 4.6 rating and 900 reviews.
See how often competitors get new reviews and what customers say about them. You may see multiple mentions of particular services, neighborhoods, products, or customer experiences.
This language can give you valuable insight into what your customers value and how they naturally describe your industry.
Don’t try to manipulate reviews by asking customers to use specific keywords. The objective is to understand customer expectations and improve the experience that generates genuine feedback.
Confirm Citations and Business Information
Then, look at how your business information is presented on relevant directories and local websites.
Verify your business name, address, phone number, website and other key information is consistent.
You’re not copying every directory your competitors have. Search for reputable, relevant sources such as local organizations, industry directories, professional associations, and platforms that customers actually use.
For businesses with multiple locations, check each location separately. A single piece of wrong or out-of-date information can create unnecessary problems.
Researching your competitors can also uncover useful local directories or industry-specific listings that you might have missed.
Their Website, Location Pages Compare
Your Google Business Profile isn’t all that’s competing in local search. Your website should also demonstrate relevance to the services and locations you target.
Have a look at the pages that pop up for your key searches. Look at the competition that ranks higher than you.
See:
- Page titles and headings
- Service definitions
- Information about location
- Links internally
- Contact information
- Questions & Answers
- Native references
- Page usefulness and depth
Say you are a contractor and want to target a few cities. Your competitors might have specific location pages with useful details about the services they provide, the areas they cover, frequently asked questions, and samples of local projects.
If your pages are just a generic paragraph on a page with differing city names, there is room for much more useful content there.
This local SEO competitor analysis can help to systemize how to look at these competitors more closely.
Identify Ranking Gaps
In competitor research, the last thing you should try and do is make your business exactly like #1.
Look for gaps.
Perhaps the competitors’ Google Maps profile receives many hundreds of reviews a month, but poor service pages. Your site may have high-quality content, but a poor Google Business Profile listing.
You may have a strong listing, but miss out on a range of relevant local citations.
Categorize these as solvable challenges.
Start with simple corrections like fixing business information, filling out all fields of your GMB listing, updating worn out website content, adding a few more internal links or fixing up weak service page content.
Then shift to long-term tactics such as earning valuable citations, regularly accumulating real customer reviews, building out location pages and creating valuable local content.
Watch Lower Rivals Too
It’s appealing to center on businesses with rankings over your own; in contrast, companies beneath your current rankings merit the similar sort of attention, if not more. The business currently positioning fourth possibly has a rapidly climbing profile.
It could likewise possess fewer client reviews but significantly superior location page text, additional convincing cites, or a much more industrious public profile.
Examining these businesses and will help you to see upcoming competitive dangers sooner rather than later; they’ve got the capacity to assume leadership without caution.
By evaluating these businesses, you’ll discover useful strategy information on what’s working in your locality now; you’ll see trends in progress, enabling you to beat potential rivals, especially in the lower-placed section of the listings.
Convert Your Competitive Data into Priorities
A competitive landscape scan is just of worth if the data extracted leads to concrete and relevant business improvement actions.
Once you’ve assessed several of the surrounding competitions, narrow your focus to the three to 5 biggest shortcomings that provide opportunity & they can easily and reliably be addressed at the local and even company level, rather than all at once.
Regardless of this, don’t assume the competitor with rankings above everyone has every competitive component sorted – local rankings as of old or even modern day generally is not all that elementary as those rankings suggest, just as the opposite is also possible- top quality reviews don’t at all times make best text, even strong authority doesn’t automatically offer best profile etc…
The basic motive here has little to do with anticipating precisely what Google wants but instead on how you decide what best steps are going to yield the maximum business outcomes based on the current state of affairs inside your space for advertising & promotions.
As you reiterate this evaluation method from occasion-to-occasion local search engine optimization evolves from merely guessing what Google likes into a clear, proactive business technique.
