How to conduct a local SEO competitive analysis?

Local SEO provides small business the opportunities to compete against big names with a relatively smaller budget. But just because you can trump the corporations doesn’t mean that your organic rankings can always surpass other local competitors.

Therefore you should keep an eye on the SEO performance of your competitors. Take the time to do local SEO competitive analysis, not only to see what works for them and what doesn’t, but seek for opportunities to target less competitive keywords. In this article, let’s walk through the key steps of performing a local SEO competitive analysis.

#1. Identify the local SEO competitors

Many small businesses mainly target keywords that are most relevant to their business and forget to see how competitive those keywords are. Just like the regular SEO keyword practices, you need to take traffic, intent and competition into consideration. Without one, the others are bootless.

Let’s say that you have a dentistry clinic. First off, list down 3-5 keywords that you want to target the most on a spreadsheet.

Then conduct a Google search for each of the keywords with your desktop. List the top five results for each keyword in the (1)map listings, (2)organic results and (3)paid search results. Note down the company name and website of each result.

Next, do exact the same thing with your smartphone because the search results are usually different on desktops and mobile devices. Now take a look at the list, the company names that appear several times are your local SEO competitors.

#2. Review local competitors’ SEO tactics

Firstly, take a look at your competitors’ efforts in the map rankings. Do they have more local positive Google reviews and photos than you do? Do they have an owner verifies profile? It is correlated with positive Google My Business performance.

What’s more, check the number of times a competitor’s name is mentioned in the local citations. The citation includes name, address and phone number. Compare it with yours.

Search for the name of the competitors and see what shows up. Make a list of the websites that mention the name of your competitors. Is it possible to have your business name mentioned by those website as well?

Use a crawler tool to check your competitors’ on-page SEO factors such as title tags (which indicate the keywords they try to target), meta descriptions, headings, the length of blog posts, content update frequency and so on. In additions, look at the competitor’s site performance such as mobile optimization, page loading speed and navigation.

Don’t forget the off-page factors. Links are the critical ranking factor that differentiates one business from another, even when it comes to Google My Business rankings. There are many tools that reveal the links pointing to your competitors’ sites. See if they have more quality links than you do. How often do they receive inbound links? Are those quality inbound links relevant to their business?

Then take a look your competitors’ social media profiles. Do they have strong social media presences? Do they have large social media community that is active and engaged? How often do they post new content on social media?

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