There is a lot of hype surrounding local SEO.
A strategy to-do list can quickly fill up with duties that don’t take the big picture into account, from the most recent industry buzz talk to the subtleties of a particular website.
If you ignore your competitors, none of these tasks will matter.
A local SEO competition analysis can reveal:
- Who is leading the pack
- How did they achieve their success
- They have decided to focus their strategy there.
- How much work have they put into the ranking
- When can you surpass them
- You may succeed in even the most competitive search conditions if you comprehend the work and strategy employed by people who score highly locally
Identifying Your Regional Rivals
Local SEO rivals demand a different strategy than those in national markets.
Competitors typically target hundreds or thousands of keywords in a national SEO strategy. Most rivals often focus on 20 to 100 keywords while competing locally.
Because local SEO is defined by its physical community, it often has fewer keywords.
Local SEO supports a network of franchisees, small enterprises, and businesses that provide tangible goods and services. There is no SaaS, cloud-based architecture, or top national e-commerce website, contrary to national SEO.
Customers can purchase goods or services from nearby merchants, professionals, and enterprises. These companies can only provide goods and services to people in the surrounding area. Demand for garage door repair services offered by a neighbourhood business is constrained by the number of residents in that area who require such services.
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, competitive analysis for Local SEO soon becomes challenging when a business has multiple locations and 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.
Three Steps to Carrying Out A Local SEO Competitive Analysis
When performing a competitive analysis for local SEO, three local ranking variables are taken into account, including keyword search visibility:
- Compare closeness.
- Check the optimization of your Google Business Profile (GBP).
- Examine the content on the page.
1. Compare Closeness
Are you situated more remote from the city core than your main rivals? Does it even matter where you are about this information? It’s not like you can move for SEO purposes, after all.
It’s crucial to comprehend where you are about your competitors’ locations because proximity may explain why they rank first.
If proximity affects 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 ranked #1 (also known as your rival) in the Local Pack. Next, contrast the separation between your actual location and the city centre with your competition.
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 impede 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 quick 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 a more profound comprehension of your surroundings would better serve your plan.
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 detailed examination of all the elements influencing proximity-based rankings in a particular industry.
2. Assess GBP Optimisation
Google Business Profile is the leading player in local SEO, and everyone competes 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 most significant consideration when developing their local SEO strategy.
Compare your profile to your competitors’ GBP listings and evaluate the following ranking factors:
- Name
- The first category
- Several categories
- Reviews
The name, principal category, and reviews are all readily accessible on the profile, but using a tool like GMB Everywhere to view a company’s different GBP categories is necessary. The following are the main Google Business Profile ranking elements, but it’s also crucial to consider how much money rivals have spent on other GBP features:
- Description Images Inquiries and responses
- Products
- Services \sPosts
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 lovely, keeping clients updated on your company’s activities is always a good idea.
3. Examine On-Page Material
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.
Here are some considerations for a homepage or a destination page linked from GBP.
Homepage Questions:
- 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 a video, a Q&A, or other stand-alone content on the homepage?
Location Page Questions:
- The location page mentions any local services.
- Is the content unique to that page’s location?
- Does 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 to the rest of the website?
- Does the page contain local content (video, biographies, etc.)?
While by no means exhaustive, these inquiries are an excellent place to start and can give you insight into the level of money and strategy that went into a competitor’s website.
Small businesses like yours may improve every aspect of their search engine optimization with D’Marketing Agency assistance in order to rank better on search engines.
Wondering what we do? To find out more about our approach to search engine optimization, Contact D’Marketing Agency. When you’re ready, contact us so we can help with your SEO.
