SEO competitor analysis for a local business starts with the search your customer runs, then studies the competitors who show up. You compare the searches they rank for and pay for, their ads, landing pages, Google Business Profile, and reviews. In a short video on competitor keyword gaps, I show how to find searches they pay for but lack pages for.
What is SEO competitor analysis for a local business?
SEO competitor analysis is the work of studying the businesses that show up for your service and city, then finding what you can do better. Google's local ranking guide says local results weigh relevance, distance, and prominence. Use those three lenses to compare yourself with each competitor.
I'm Joshua Albanese, founder of Spearleaf, and I run this exercise first for every service business. One owner summed up the starting point: "I searched my business on Google, and nothing showed up". The businesses that did show up are your starting data.
The goal is a short list of gaps you can close, ranked by which ones lead to phone calls. You do not need an expensive tool for the first pass. A private browser window, a keyword tool, and a spreadsheet will carry you a long way.
How to find your real local competitors
Your real local competitors are the businesses a customer sees for your service and city, which may differ from the rivals you assume. In my August 2026 study of 216 US markets, 92.0% of businesses ChatGPT displayed had an address in the asked city. Search from your own service area and list who appears.
Write down every business in the paid ads, the Map Pack, and the top organic results. Directories and national sites often hold organic spots, so note them, but focus on the businesses you lose jobs to. Those are your direct competitors.
One reviewer wanted "basic SEO help to make a new website show up in Google searches". Knowing exactly who holds those spots today turns that wish into a target you can measure.
How to run an SEO competitor analysis in six steps
- Search your service and city in a private window, the way a customer would, and note the ads, the Map Pack, and the organic results.
- List the top five businesses that appear, then add the two or three rivals you already lose jobs to.
- Visit each website and write down the services, cities, and keywords that appear in their page titles and headings.
- Put each competitor's website into a keyword tool to see which searches they rank for and which searches they pay for.
- Read their ads and landing pages, then compare their Google Business Profile, categories, review count, and rating with yours.
- Ask ChatGPT who it recommends for your service and city, log the answer with the date, and pick the gaps worth building first.
Find the searches competitors pay for but do not rank for
The most useful keyword gap for a local business is a search a competitor pays for but has no strong page for. Paying for a click every day is a sign the search brings them customers. A missing or thin page means the organic spot is still open.
Enter a competitor's website into a keyword tool and compare the searches they buy ads on with the searches they rank for. Any paid search with no strong organic page is a candidate. Favor searches with clear buyer intent, such as a service plus a city.
Paid clicks cost money every time. One owner wrote, "I was getting ALOT of clicks and no calls," after paying an agency to run ads. A strong page of your own can earn the same searches without paying for each visit, and the page stays yours once it is built.
Study competitor ads and landing pages
Competitor ads show you what customers in your market respond to. Read the promises and benefits they repeat, such as speed, warranties, or financing. In a short video on finding your competitors' marketing strategies, I walk through five steps, from an incognito search to their landing pages.
Google's Ads Transparency Center shows the ads an advertiser has run, which ran in a region, and the last date each ran. Search a competitor's name there to see their messaging over time, without clicking a single paid ad.
Then open the landing pages those ads point to. Look at the service pages, testimonials, and FAQs, and note what each page asks the visitor to do. If you later decide to compete on paid search too, Google Ads management works best alongside the organic pages you build from this research.
Compare your Google Business Profile and reviews with local competitors
The Map Pack is often the first thing a local buyer sees, so compare each competitor's Google Business Profile with yours, field by field. Check their primary category, services, photos, hours, and how often they post. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.
Reviews deserve their own columns: count, rating, and the date of the newest one. In my study, the lowest-rated business on ChatGPT's local panel had a median rating of 4.8 in every city tier. The smallest review count ran from a median of 50 in small cities to 95 in mid metros.
Use those figures as a rough bar, not a target to stop at. Closing a profile or review gap is the core of local SEO for service businesses, and it usually moves faster than building new pages.
Competitor website checks that matter for local SEO
Page speed
Load each competitor's key pages on your phone. Google's Core Web Vitals guide suggests the main content load within 2.5 seconds.
One page per service
Count how many services each competitor gives its own page. A competitor with one page per service usually covers more searches than one with a single services list.
Social proof
Note testimonials, review widgets, project photos, and named team members. These show a visitor that real customers chose this business, and they are easy to compare side by side.
Internal links
See whether their pages link to each other, and which local sites link to them. Links from your other pages and backlinks from other sites both help Google find the page that matters.
Check who ChatGPT names when customers ask about your competitors
More customers now ask ChatGPT who to hire, so add its answer to your competitor analysis. Ask it who the best [service] in [city] is, then ask who it would recommend and why. Note every business it names, and whether yours is one of them.
Log the answer more than once. In my August 2026 study, only 48.2% of businesses ChatGPT showed were shown again when I asked 4 to 9 days later (469 of 974). Google's local pack held steadier, at 0.82 overlap against ChatGPT's 0.36.
A competitor that appears in ChatGPT week after week is doing something worth studying. For how the two systems pick differently, read my comparison of ChatGPT vs Google for local businesses.
Your competitor analysis sheet in eight columns
Copy these columns into a spreadsheet and fill one row per competitor.
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Business name and website.
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Where it appears: ads, Map Pack, organic results, and ChatGPT.
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The main searches it ranks for.
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Searches it pays for with no strong page behind them.
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The main promise and offer in its ads.
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Primary category on its Google Business Profile.
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Review count, rating, and the date of the newest review.
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Service pages, testimonials, FAQs, and page speed.
Turn your competitor analysis into a short build list
Sort the gaps by which ones are closest to a phone call. A paid search with no competitor page usually comes first, because demand is proven and the organic spot is open. Profile and review gaps come next, because they feed the Map Pack.
Then build one thing at a time and measure it with the local SEO metrics that matter: calls, form leads, and booked jobs. Rankings and traffic are useful signals, but they are not the scoreboard.
This method tells you what to look at. If you want the diagnosis of why a specific rival sits above you, read the five reasons a competitor outranks you on Google. Run the full analysis again every quarter, because local results and AI answers both shift.
Get help acting on your SEO competitor analysis
I run this analysis at the start of every engagement, then build the pages, profile work, and reviews it points to. Our SEO services cover Google, the Map Pack, and AI search optimization for ChatGPT and Gemini.
Talk to Spearleaf about SEO services
Joshua Albanese is the founder of Spearleaf and runs a competitor analysis like this at the start of every client engagement. He also ran the August 2026 study of 216 US markets cited here.
- The diagnosis side: why a competitor outranks you on Google.
- Start here: why you are not in the Map Pack.
- Weigh both: local SEO vs Google Ads.