The benchmark for your Local SEO is the three businesses holding the local pack for the searches that bring you work. That pack is the short block of map results Google sets above the ordinary listings, and competitor research finds out exactly what those three have that you don’t. What it returns is a prioritised list of gaps, in the order worth closing them.
The uncomfortable part comes early, because those three are frequently not the businesses you think of as competitors. The firm across the road you have watched for a decade may not be in there at all.
The rest of this is the comparison itself, and what to do with the sheet once it is full.
What is Local SEO competitor research?
Local SEO competitor research is the structured comparison of your local signals against the businesses holding the top local pack positions for your priority queries. Priority queries are the five to 10 searches, each with a suburb attached, that bring you customers.
The comparison covers their Google Business Profile, their review signals, their on-site local content and their citation profile, each one set beside your own.
The output is a prioritised list of the gaps most likely to move your position, ordered by what each costs to close.
Identifying the competitors that actually matter
The businesses worth analysing are the ones appearing in the local pack for your priority queries. You find them by running those queries cleanly and writing down the three names that come back each time.
The pack decides who gets the call, so the pack decides who you measure yourself against. The firm across the road may not appear anywhere. A business two suburbs away, carrying a more specific primary category and 40 recent reviews, owns the query that brings you the most work.
That discovery stings, and it is the most useful thing the research produces.
Fix the query list first, while nobody has seen a ranking yet. Then search each one from a clean session at a defined location, the same way a Local SEO baseline is captured. The capture method matters, because a careless capture hands you a competitor set belonging to somebody else.
Then look at which names recur. A business in the pack for one query and absent from the rest is a weaker benchmark than one holding a position across all of them.
The recurring names are the ones that go on the sheet.
Those businesses are your competitors as far as the Local SEO signals that decide these positions are concerned, whatever the rest of your business thinks of them. The three local ranking factors behind every pack position explain why they sit where they do.
- Write down the five to 10 queries that bring you customers, before looking at a single result.
- Search each one cleanly and record the three businesses in the pack.
- Put the names that recur across several queries on the sheet.
The four signal areas to compare against a competitor
Four areas carry the comparison, and each one asks the same question of every signal in it. Are they ahead of you, level with you, or behind?
Their Google Business Profile, field by field. Start with the primary category. A competitor using a narrower one than yours marks a gap that costs nothing but the two minutes it takes to change your own. From there the profile reads quickly, since completeness, the wording of the description and the way the service area is drawn are all visible to anyone who opens it.
Photo volume and the date of the newest one say whether anybody is still minding the listing, and post frequency says much the same thing again. Review count and the date of the last review close the pass.
Most of it takes a few minutes per competitor, and the audit you run on your own profile applies just as well to theirs.
Their review signals. Record volume, recency, average rating and whether they answer what they get. Review volume is one of the most reliable predictors of pack position I have found. It is usually the most visible gap between a business and the three sitting above it.
Write the gap down in absolute numbers, then translate it into time. A competitor on 120 reviews against your 30 is not a gap you close this quarter, and knowing that sets the rate a review programme has to run at.
The rate is the number worth carrying into the plan.
Their on-site local content and schema. Read their website for the local content yours is missing, meaning suburb names in ordinary text, service-area pages and pages written for the searches people make in each place. Check whether LocalBusiness schema is there and how much of it has been filled in, then set their site beside yours page for page.
This comparison is usually the starkest of the four. A competitor running a page for each suburb it serves, written for the searches made there, is doing on-site work the businesses below it have not started.
Their citation profile. Find where they are listed that you are not, and whether their listings agree with each other where yours disagree. This is the slowest part of the research and often the most revealing, since citation work leaves no mark on the front of a website.
A competitor who has done the citation and review work that builds prominence will not be advertising the fact anywhere you can see it.
- Build a sheet with one row per signal and one column for each competitor, plus one for you.
- Mark every cell ahead, level or behind, and record the size of the gap alongside it.
- For review volume, write the number and the months of steady asking it implies.
Turning your competitor comparison into a plan
Sort every gap on the sheet into one of three groups, then close them in that order. Quick and high impact comes first, then the sustained work, then the content.
A quick, high-impact gap closes with a single change, and that is the rough test for the group. This group holds a narrower primary category, a service area set to the suburbs you genuinely work in, and a major directory the competitors hold and you are missing from.
The sustained group cannot be hurried, review volume above all, and only a steady acquisition programme closes it at whatever monthly rate the gap implies. Start it in the same week you find it, because the months are the whole cost.
The content group is the local intent pages the competitor has and you don’t, and it moves at the speed of a writing schedule.
The research says what to aim at, and the plan says what order to do it in. Starting with the biggest gap because it looks biggest buys you six months of chasing reviews while a 10-minute category fix sits unmade.
I have watched that happen more than once.
- Sort every gap into quick and high impact, sustained effort, or content work.
- Close the first group this month, and start the second now.
- Put dates against the content work, in a schedule somebody owns.
How far past the local pack to aim
The sheet records what the leaders hold today, so pick two or three signals and aim beyond what it shows. It is a snapshot, and a snapshot has nothing to say about whether a competitor is still building or coasting.
A competitor who reached 120 reviews over three years of steady asking will be on 160 by the time you reach 120, if they keep going.
They usually keep going.
So let the research inform the plan without capping it. Where a signal is cheap to build and the competitors are merely adequate at it, go past them. Review recency and a sharper category cost little more to overtake than to match.
In 20+ years of watching local pack positions change hands, the businesses that overtook an entrenched competitor did it by beating them on two or three signals. Matching them across everything is the slower road, and I have rarely seen anyone finish it.
- Ask of each gap whether the competitor is still building that signal or coasting.
- Pick two or three signals where you aim past the leaders instead of drawing level.
- Treat the sheet as a starting position, and date it.
Re-running the competitor comparison each quarter
Run the priority queries again each quarter and update the same sheet, and the movement becomes visible on its own. Pack positions shift, new businesses open, and the ones already there either invest or stop.
A single snapshot serves the programme that starts from it. Repeated quarterly, it keeps the work pointed at the businesses ahead of you now. The competitor you benchmarked yourself against in the summer may have been replaced by winter.
Once the sheet exists, the update is an hour.
That quarterly review is one of the fixed points in an ongoing Local SEO programme.
- Re-run the priority queries every quarter and note any new names in the pack.
- Update the existing sheet instead of starting a fresh one, so the movement stays visible.
- Re-prioritise the plan on what the new sheet shows, whenever the competitors change.
FAQ
How do I find my Local SEO competitors? Search the five to 10 local queries that bring you the most work, each from a clean session at a defined location. Record the three businesses in the pack for each one. The names that recur across several queries are your Local SEO competitors, whether or not you think of them that way.
What should I compare in a local SEO competitor analysis? Four areas, each set against your own. Their Google Business Profile field by field, starting with how specific the primary category is. Their review volume, recency, average rating and whether they answer what they get. Their on-site local content and schema, compared page for page. And the citation sources carrying them that you are missing from.
How do I close the Local SEO gap on competitors? Sort the gaps into three groups and work them in order. Close the quick, high-impact ones this month, meaning the category, the service area and any major directory you are missing from. Start the slow ones immediately, review volume above all, because they are measured in months rather than weeks. Schedule the content work with dates against it, then re-run the comparison each quarter.
How often should I redo Local SEO competitor research? Quarterly, once the comparison sheet exists, because by then the update is about an hour of work. Positions shift, new businesses arrive, and the competitor you measured yourself against in January may be gone by June. Updating the existing sheet is what makes the movement visible.
TL;DR
- The benchmark for your Local SEO is the three businesses in the local pack for your priority queries.
- Find them by running those queries cleanly. They are often not the businesses you watch.
- Compare four areas: the Business Profile field by field, review signals, on-site local content, and the citation profile.
- Review volume is one of the most reliable predictors of pack position I have found, and usually the most visible gap.
- The output is a prioritised plan, with quick gaps first, slow signals started now, and content work scheduled.
- It is a snapshot. Aim past the leaders on two or three signals, and run it again each quarter.
If you’d like to understand specifically what separates your Local SEO signals from the businesses currently outranking you, get in touch with JB.
