How to Beat Competitors Outranking You Online: A 6-Step Action Plan

You’ve built a solid business, deliver great results for your customers, and yet when you search for your services online, your competitors show up first. It’s frustrating—and it’s costing you real money every single day.

Every time a potential customer searches for what you offer and clicks on a competitor instead, that’s revenue walking out the door. The good news? Being outranked isn’t a permanent condition. It’s a problem with specific causes and actionable solutions.

This guide walks you through exactly how to diagnose why competitors are beating you in search results and what to do about it. We’ll cover competitive analysis, technical fixes, content gaps, and the strategic moves that actually move the needle. No fluff, no theory—just the steps that work.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Identify Exactly Who’s Outranking You and Where

You can’t fix a problem you haven’t properly diagnosed. The first step is understanding precisely who’s beating you and for which search terms.

Start by opening an incognito browser window and searching for your core services. Type in the exact phrases your customers would use: “plumber in [your city],” “personal injury lawyer near me,” or whatever applies to your business. Take screenshots of who appears in the top three organic results and who shows up in the local map pack.

These are your primary competitors—the businesses stealing clicks that should be yours.

Next, use Google Search Console to see which queries you’re ranking for but not in top positions. Navigate to the Performance report and sort by average position. Any keyword where you’re ranking between positions 4-20 represents an opportunity—you’re close enough that strategic improvements could push you to page one.

For deeper analysis, tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or even free options like Ubersuggest can show you the complete keyword landscape. Enter your competitor’s domain and you’ll see every keyword they rank for. Export this data and compare it against your own rankings. Our guide to the best SEO tools covers additional options for competitive research.

Create a simple spreadsheet with three columns: Keyword, Your Position, Competitor Position. Focus on high-intent keywords—terms that indicate someone is ready to buy, not just browsing. “Emergency plumber” is more valuable than “how to fix a leaky faucet.”

Here’s the thing: local pack rankings and organic results are different battles. The local map pack prioritizes proximity, Google Business Profile optimization, and reviews. Organic results below the map focus more on content quality, backlinks, and technical SEO. You might be losing in one area but competitive in another.

Understanding this distinction helps you prioritize where to focus your efforts. If competitors dominate the local pack, your Google Business Profile needs work. If they’re winning in organic results, it’s a content and authority issue.

Set up monthly tracking for your top 20 target keywords. This becomes your scoreboard—the metric that tells you whether your efforts are working.

Step 2: Analyze What Your Top Competitors Are Doing Right

Now that you know who’s beating you, it’s time to reverse-engineer their success. Think of this as competitive intelligence, not copying.

Start with their content strategy. Visit their website and note every page they’ve created. Most local businesses that rank well have more than just service pages—they’ve built comprehensive resource sections, location-specific pages, and educational content that answers customer questions.

Look at their blog or resources section. What topics do they cover? How in-depth are their articles? How frequently do they publish? Many businesses discover their competitors have 50+ pieces of content while they have five pages total. That’s a gap that needs closing.

Next, examine their on-page optimization. View the page source and check their title tags, meta descriptions, and header structure. Are they using your target keywords naturally throughout their content? How are they structuring their service descriptions? What calls-to-action are they using?

Pay attention to their unique value propositions. What makes them claim to be different? “24/7 emergency service,” “family-owned since 1985,” or “free estimates” aren’t just marketing fluff—they’re strategic positioning that resonates with customers. What’s your equivalent differentiator?

The backlink profile reveals a lot about authority. Use Ahrefs or Moz to analyze where their backlinks come from. Are they getting links from local news sites, industry associations, or supplier websites? These are realistic targets you can pursue too.

Look for patterns in their link sources. If three of your top competitors all have links from the same local business directory or industry publication, that’s a signal you should be there too.

Check their Google Business Profile optimization. How many reviews do they have? How quickly do they respond? What categories are they listed under? Are they posting regular updates? The businesses dominating local pack results typically have 50+ reviews with consistent recent activity. Understanding solutions for managing online customer reviews can help you close this gap.

Document everything in your competitive analysis spreadsheet. You’re looking for the gap between where you are and where they are—that gap becomes your action plan.

This brings us to the next crucial piece: fixing what’s broken on your own site before trying to outdo competitors.

Step 3: Fix Technical Issues Holding Your Site Back

You could have the best content in your industry, but if your site has technical problems, search engines won’t rank it. Period.

Start with a comprehensive technical audit using Google Search Console. Check the Coverage report for any crawl errors, indexing issues, or pages that Google can’t access. If important pages aren’t being indexed, they can’t possibly rank.

Common culprits include robots.txt files that accidentally block search engines, noindex tags left on pages from development, or broken internal links that create dead ends. Fix these immediately—they’re low-hanging fruit that can improve rankings quickly.

Page speed matters more than most businesses realize. Google uses it as a ranking factor, and more importantly, slow sites kill conversions. Run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights and pay attention to both mobile and desktop scores.

If your site takes more than three seconds to load, you’re losing potential customers. Common fixes include compressing images, enabling browser caching, minimizing CSS and JavaScript, and upgrading your hosting if you’re on a budget shared server.

Mobile optimization isn’t optional anymore. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to ensure your site works properly on smartphones. Check that text is readable without zooming, buttons are large enough to tap easily, and navigation works smoothly on small screens.

Many local business sites were built five years ago and haven’t been updated. If your site isn’t responsive or forces mobile users to pinch and zoom, you’re automatically losing to competitors with modern mobile experiences.

Site architecture affects how search engines understand your content. Your most important pages should be no more than three clicks from your homepage. Create a clear hierarchy with your main service pages linked prominently, supported by detailed subpages and educational content.

Internal linking matters too. Every page should link to related pages using descriptive anchor text. This helps search engines understand relationships between your content and distributes authority throughout your site. Implementing proven SEO optimization techniques ensures your technical foundation supports your ranking goals.

Fix duplicate content issues. If the same content appears on multiple URLs, search engines don’t know which version to rank. Use canonical tags to indicate the preferred version, or consolidate duplicate pages into one comprehensive resource.

These technical foundations must be solid before investing heavily in content or link building. You’re building a house—start with a strong foundation.

Step 4: Close the Content Gap Between You and Competitors

Here’s where most local businesses fall short. They have a homepage and a few service pages, while competitors have built comprehensive content libraries that establish topical authority.

Conduct a content gap analysis by comparing your site’s pages against your top three competitors. List every topic they cover that you don’t. These gaps represent opportunities to capture traffic they’re getting and you’re missing.

Focus on high-intent topics first. If you’re a personal injury lawyer and competitors have detailed pages about “car accident settlements,” “slip and fall claims,” and “workers compensation,” but you only have a generic “practice areas” page, that’s your roadmap.

Create comprehensive, genuinely helpful content for each service you offer. Don’t just list what you do—answer the questions potential customers are asking. What does the process look like? How long does it take? What should they expect? What makes your approach different?

Many businesses underestimate how detailed their content needs to be. A 200-word service description won’t outrank a competitor’s 1,500-word comprehensive guide. Go deeper. Provide real value that helps people make informed decisions.

Build topical authority by creating supporting content around your core services. If you’re an HVAC company, don’t just have pages for “AC repair” and “furnace installation.” Create content about “signs your AC needs repair,” “how to choose the right furnace size,” and “HVAC maintenance schedules.”

This supporting content serves multiple purposes. It captures people earlier in their research phase, builds trust by demonstrating expertise, and signals to search engines that you’re an authority on these topics.

Update and improve existing pages that underperform. If you have a page ranking on page two for a valuable keyword, it’s easier to improve that page than create something new. Add more detail, update outdated information, improve the formatting, and add internal links from other relevant pages.

Location-specific content works exceptionally well for local businesses. If you serve multiple cities, create dedicated pages for each location—not just thin pages with the city name swapped out, but genuinely useful content about serving that specific area.

Include local landmarks, neighborhood names, and area-specific information that demonstrates you actually operate there. This helps with both local pack rankings and organic results for geo-modified searches.

The businesses dominating search results aren’t just creating more content—they’re creating better, more comprehensive content that actually helps their target audience. That’s your standard.

Step 5: Build Authority Through Strategic Link Acquisition

Content and technical optimization get you in the game. Authority signals—primarily backlinks—help you win it.

Start by auditing your current backlink profile. Use Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to see every site linking to you. Look for toxic links from spammy directories or low-quality sites. These can hurt more than help. Use Google’s Disavow Tool to tell search engines to ignore these problematic links.

Now identify realistic link opportunities in your industry. The best backlinks come from relevant, authoritative sites in your geographic area or industry. Think local news sites, chamber of commerce, industry associations, and complementary businesses.

Local citations matter significantly for local businesses. Ensure your business is listed accurately on major directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Better Business Bureau, and industry-specific directories. Consistency is critical—your name, address, and phone number must match exactly across all listings.

Look for link opportunities your competitors have already validated. If they have links from local news coverage, industry publications, or supplier websites, those same sources might link to you too. Reach out with a genuine story angle or valuable contribution.

Create linkable assets that naturally attract backlinks. Original research, comprehensive guides, local market reports, or useful tools give other sites a reason to link to you. A local real estate agent might create a neighborhood guide that local bloggers and news sites reference.

Leverage relationships you already have. Do you sponsor local sports teams? Participate in charity events? Belong to industry associations? These existing relationships often translate into backlink opportunities—you just need to ask.

Guest posting on relevant industry blogs can work, but focus on quality over quantity. One link from a respected industry publication is worth more than ten links from random low-quality blogs. Provide genuinely valuable content, not thinly-veiled promotional pieces.

Local sponsorships and community involvement create natural link opportunities. Sponsoring a local event, supporting a charity, or participating in community initiatives often results in links from event pages, news coverage, and organization websites.

The key is consistency. Building a strong backlink profile takes time. Focus on acquiring a few high-quality links each month rather than chasing hundreds of low-value links. Quality beats quantity every time.

Track your progress monthly. Watch your domain authority score and the number of referring domains. These metrics should trend upward as your link building efforts compound.

Step 6: Accelerate Results with Paid Search While SEO Builds

SEO is a long-term investment. It takes months to see significant movement in organic rankings. Meanwhile, you’re still losing customers to competitors every single day.

This is where paid search becomes your strategic advantage. PPC advertising puts you at the top of search results immediately while your organic rankings build momentum.

Start by targeting your core service keywords with Google Ads. When someone searches for “emergency plumber in [your city],” you can appear in the paid results above organic listings. You’re capturing that customer today, not six months from now.

The beautiful thing about running paid and organic strategies simultaneously is they reinforce each other. PPC provides immediate data about which keywords convert best, what messaging resonates, and which landing pages work. Use these insights to inform your SEO content strategy. Our Google Ads optimization guide walks through the specific steps to maximize your paid search ROI.

Target competitor brand terms strategically. When someone searches for your competitor’s business name, you can appear in the paid results. This captures people who are already in buying mode but haven’t made a final decision yet. It’s competitive, but effective.

Use PPC to test new service offerings or markets before investing heavily in SEO. If you’re considering expanding into a new service area, run paid ads first. If they convert well, you know it’s worth building organic content around that topic.

The combined visibility of appearing in both paid and organic results increases overall click-through rates. Customers see your business multiple times on the same search results page, building familiarity and trust. This phenomenon—called “double dipping”—significantly improves conversion rates.

Measure your combined ROI from integrated search marketing. Track leads and revenue from both channels separately, but also analyze how they work together. Many businesses find that customers who see them in both paid and organic results convert at higher rates and have better lifetime value.

As your organic rankings improve, you can gradually reduce PPC spend on keywords where you rank well organically. This creates a transition from paid to organic traffic, reducing your customer acquisition costs over time while maintaining visibility.

The businesses that dominate their markets don’t choose between SEO and PPC—they use both strategically to maximize visibility at every stage of their growth. Learning how to launch online advertising for local businesses gives you the framework to execute this dual strategy effectively.

Putting It All Together

Beating competitors who outrank you online isn’t about one magic trick—it’s about systematic execution across multiple fronts.

Start with your competitive audit to understand exactly who’s beating you and why. Fix technical issues that prevent your site from performing at its best. Close content gaps by creating comprehensive resources that establish topical authority. Build quality backlinks that signal credibility to search engines. Use paid search to capture revenue immediately while your organic strategy builds long-term equity.

The businesses dominating search results aren’t necessarily better than you—they’ve just been more strategic about their online presence. They’ve invested in the foundations that drive sustainable growth rather than chasing quick fixes that don’t last.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Expect to see initial improvements within 60-90 days, but significant ranking changes typically take 4-6 months of consistent effort. The key is starting now and staying consistent.

Track your progress monthly using the metrics that matter: keyword rankings for your target terms, organic traffic growth, leads generated from search, and ultimately revenue from organic channels. These numbers tell you whether your strategy is working.

Remember that search algorithms constantly evolve. What works today might need adjustment tomorrow. Stay informed about major algorithm updates, but don’t chase every minor change. Focus on the fundamentals: create genuinely helpful content, build a technically sound website, and earn quality backlinks from relevant sources.

The investment you make in outranking competitors pays dividends for years. Unlike paid advertising where you stop getting results the moment you stop paying, organic rankings continue generating traffic and leads long after the initial work is done.

Ready to stop losing customers to competitors? Start with Step 1 today—identify who’s outranking you and create your competitive tracking spreadsheet. That single action begins your journey from being outranked to dominating your local search results. If you’re struggling to understand why you’re not getting customers online, addressing these competitive gaps is often the missing piece.

Stop wasting your marketing budget on strategies that don’t deliver real revenue—partner with a Google Premier Partner Agency that specializes in turning clicks into high-quality leads and profitable growth. Schedule your free strategy consultation today and discover how our proven CRO and lead generation systems can scale your local business faster.