Here’s how to locate your top local rivals online and figure out what it will take to beat them. There is a plethora of talk about local SEO.
A strategy to-do list can easily fill up with duties that don’t take the big picture into account, from the most recent industry trend talk to the subtleties of a particular website. If you don’t pay attention to your competitors, none of these tasks will matter.
A local SEO competition analysis can reveal:
Who holds the top spots and how did they get there. We must also choose a plan of action for that. Whether they will easily surpass them and succeed in their target.
Even in the most competitive search contexts, you can succeed if you comprehend the work and strategy employed by individuals who perform well locally.
Identifying your regional competitors
Local SEO rivals demand a different strategy than those in national markets. Competitors typically target hundreds or thousands of keywords in a nationwide SEO strategy. The majority of rivals often focus on 20 to 100 keywords while competing locally. Due to the fact that local SEO is defined by its physical community, it often has fewer keywords.
A network of small enterprises, franchisees, and tangible products and services are supported by local SEO. Contrary to national SEO, there isn’t a prominent e-commerce platform, SaaS, or cloud-based architecture.
Customers that purchase from local merchants, professionals, and enterprises will receive the service or product in their neighborhood. These companies’ offerings are restricted to the needs of the people living in the surrounding area.
Demand is constrained to the number of persons in the community who require garage door repair if a local firm provides that service.
Finding competition is simple because local SEO is restricted to a local area. Decide on 5–10 main keywords, then check to see who ranks top. However, when a business has multiple locations, competitive analysis for local SEO soon becomes challenging.
Every area has different difficulties. Even though local competitive analysis only takes a tiny subset of terms into account, these keywords are nonetheless impacted by the difficulties of local search.
How to do a competition study for local SEO in 3 steps
Keyword search visibility is taken into account in the context of three local ranking criteria when performing a competitive analysis for local SEO:
If proximity will affect your campaign, a fast search for your main keyword can reveal this. Check the distance between the confirmed location and the city centre for the GBP that is ranked #1 (also known as your rival) in the Local Pack. Next, contrast the separation between your confirmed location and the city centre with that of your rival.
If your competitors are also Service Area Businesses (SABs), you won’t be able to find out how far their address is from the city centre if you are a Service Area Business (SAB). The distance between your verified location and the city centre should still be recorded in these circumstances.
Proximity may be impeding development if your website continues to have difficulty improving its local rating in the future. You might need to adjust your target location if your confirmed address is occasionally too far away from it for it to rank.
To determine how much distance counts in your particular market, a short check of competition proximity is all that is necessary during a competitive study for local SEO. However, you can learn from this initial assessment that your plan would be better served by a deeper comprehension of your surroundings.
Consider performing a full proximity audit as a future step if a more thorough investigation of closeness would be beneficial. For instance, if you look at distance, GBP, and on-page approach but still can’t figure out why a competitor ranks well, you might think about a thorough proximity audit. The proximity audit is a more thorough examination of all the elements influencing proximity-based rankings in a particular industry.
Google Business Profile optimization evaluation
Google Business Profile is the leading player in local SEO. Everyone is competing to be the Local Pack’s #1–3 player. Because GBP’s profile is prominently displayed at the top of search results, competitors frequently give it the greatest consideration when developing their local SEO strategy.
Compare your profile to your competitors’ GBP listings and evaluate the following ranking factors:
- Name
- Primary category
- Other categories
- Reviews
The name, primary category, and reviews are all readily apparent on the profile, but using a tool like GMB Everywhere to see a company’s additional GBP categories is necessary. Those are the main ranking elements for Google Business Profile, but it’s also crucial to consider how much money rivals have spent on extra GBP features:
- Description
- Photos
- Questions and answers
- Products
- Services
- Posts
A few changes to your GBP categories may help your Local Pack rankings if rivals are only ranked based on reviews and location. However, it will probably take a lot of work to surpass a #1 ranking opponent if they have filled out their profile with every detail and regularly post.
In the end, a Google Business Profile should provide users with as much information as possible about the company. Although rankings are wonderful, it’s always a good idea to keep clients up to date on your company’s activities.
Consider the on-page content
For the Local Pack, on-page SEO is a significant ranking indicator. What does that competitor’s website with the top rating look like? To begin, click the Website icon located right in the Local Pack.
When examining rival websites, you’ll often notice two different kinds of sites linked to GBP:
Homepage for a company with just one location.
Location page for a company with multiple locations.
A homepage’s material is frequently organised differently from a location page’s content:
For an idea of how much work has to be put into your website, look at the homepage or location page of your competitors. How much money has your rival’s website and/or location page received?
Here are some considerations for a homepage or a destination page that is linked from GBP.
Homepage issues:
- How many service pages are there in the navigation?
- Does the website seem to be mobile-friendly and modern?
- Does the website provide accolades, praise, or client feedback?
- Is the website using title tags that are optimised?
- Is there video, a Q&A, or other stand-alone content on the homepage?
Location page questions:
- The location page mentions any local services, right?
- Is the content unique to that page’s location?
- Exists a CTA that users can access and use with ease?
- Are there optimised title tags on the location page?
- How is this location page linked from the rest of the website?
Does the page contain local content (video, biographies, etc.)?
While by no means exhaustive, these inquiries are a good place to start and can give you insight into the level of money and strategy that went into a competitor’s website.
Putting the data together and taking a broad view
You have information about a competitor’s location, currency, and website. It’s time to study this data and come up with a local SEO strategy.
The most effective local SEO plan is specific to the industry. Competitors in that industry have made varied investments in content optimization, linkage, and even real estate. While an SEO to-do list will always exist, a competitor analysis can assist identify the tasks that will have the largest impact.
