How to Outrank Your Competitors on Google

You search for what you offer in your town — and there they are. The same two or three businesses, sitting at the top of Google every single time. Meanwhile, you're buried on page two, or not showing up at all.

It feels unfair. But in most cases, there's a logical reason why they rank higher — and a clear path to getting ahead of them. This guide walks you through how to find out who your real online competitors are, what they're doing that you aren't, and how to close the gap.

Step 1 — Find out who's actually beating you on Google

Your competitors in Google search results aren't always the businesses you think of as competition in real life. The business that beats you on Google might be a newer company, a different type of provider, or even an industry directory rather than a direct competitor.

Here's how to find out who you're actually up against:

1. Open a private/incognito browser window (so your search history doesn't affect results)
2. Search for the main thing you offer, plus your location — for example: "dentist Liverpool" or "wedding photographer Melbourne"
3. Write down the first three businesses that appear in Google Maps (the "local pack") and the first three that appear in the regular search results below
4. Repeat for 3–5 different search phrases your customers might use

The businesses that keep appearing across multiple searches are your real online competitors. Those are the ones worth studying.

Step 2 — Look at their Google Business Profiles

The Google Business Profile — the listing in Google Maps — is often the first thing to compare. Click on each competitor's profile and notice:

• How many reviews do they have? If they have 150 and you have 12, that's a significant gap. Reviews are one of the strongest signals in local search.
• What's their average rating? A 4.9 with 80 reviews will almost always outrank a 4.2 with 200.
• How complete is their profile? Do they have lots of photos? Are their services listed in detail? Do they post updates regularly?
• What categories are they using? You can't see their exact categories, but you can infer from their description and services what they've selected.

Often, the difference between you and a top-ranking competitor comes down to reviews alone. If that's the case, the fix is straightforward — but it takes consistent effort.

Step 3 — Study their websites

The second major area to examine is their website. Open your top competitors' sites and ask yourself these questions:

You don't need to copy what they're doing — you need to understand why it's working and then do it better. A competitor might rank well because they have a detailed "emergency" service page. Your opportunity is to create one that's more thorough, more helpful, and better designed.

Step 4 — Identify your easiest wins

Once you understand what your competitors are doing, you'll usually find a mix of small gaps and big ones. The small gaps are worth starting with — they're faster to close and can move you up quickly.

Common quick wins include:

• Creating a service page that they have and you don't
• Setting up a review-collection process so you start catching up on Google reviews
• Completing the sections of your Google Business Profile that are currently empty
• Adding your location to more pages on your website
• Creating a page targeting a suburb or neighbourhood that competitors haven't covered

Step 5 — Play the long game on the harder stuff

Some advantages your competitors have are hard to match quickly. A business with 300 reviews built up over five years isn't going to be overtaken in a month. A website with 50 pages of content won't be beaten by a site that adds three new pages.

That's okay. The goal isn't to win overnight — it's to make consistent progress. Every review you collect, every page you create, every directory you get listed in is a brick in a wall that gets harder and harder to knock down.

Businesses that outrank their competitors over time usually do it through persistence, not tricks. They get the basics right, improve consistently, and keep a close eye on what's working.

How to track whether you're making progress

It's hard to know if you're gaining ground if you don't know where you started. A few simple things to monitor:

• Google Business Profile insights: Check weekly how many people viewed your profile, clicked your website, or called you directly from Google.
• Your position in local search: Every month or so, do the same incognito searches you did in Step 1 and note where you now appear relative to competitors.
• Website traffic: If you have Google Analytics set up, watch whether organic (Google) traffic is growing over time.
• Review count: Track how many reviews you have each month and whether you're closing the gap on competitors.

Improvement in local search is rarely dramatic. You might move from position 7 to position 4 over three months and then to position 2 over the next three. Small movements consistently in the right direction are the goal.

The shortcut: know exactly where the gaps are

Everything above requires time and manual research. It's all worth doing — but the challenge is knowing which gaps matter most and which competitors are worth focusing on.

If you'd rather skip the guesswork and get a clear picture of exactly where you stand relative to your real competitors, what they're doing better, and which gaps would have the biggest impact if you closed them — that's precisely what a search visibility report does.

You can also work through our local SEO checklist to make sure you've covered the fundamentals before focusing on competition, or read our guide on why your business might not be showing up on Google if you're still getting to grips with the basics.