Competitors outranking you on Google? How to catch up
It stings when a rival with a worse website sits above you. It's rarely luck, and it's rarely permanent. Here's how to work out why they're ahead and which gaps you can close first.
By RankNovo Editorial Team
6 min read
Key takeaways
Google ranks the business it has the strongest evidence for, not always the best one, and that evidence can be built.
Your real competitors are whoever shows up for your searches, including directories and chains.
Compare pages, reviews, links and site speed side by side, then close the biggest gap first.
Win specific searches first, be clearly different, and track the gap monthly.
Spot your biggest gap
Search your main keyword, open the top competitor, and fill in what you can find. Reviews and rating are on their Google listing. For pages, search site:theirwebsite.com and note the rough result count.
First, a reality check that helps more than it hurts. Google doesn't rank the best business. It ranks the page or listing it has the strongest evidence for, based on relevance, how well known and trusted it looks, and, for local searches, how close it is. A competitor can beat you without being better at what they do. They may just have been online longer, collected more reviews, or explained their services more clearly. All of that is learnable.
1. Find out who your real competitors are
The business you think of as your rival and the ones Google treats as rivals are often different. A directory, a comparison site or a national chain might be taking your spot. And the shop down the road that you worry about may not appear at all.
How to fix it
Search the five or six phrases a customer would use to find you. Write down every business and website on the first page, including the map box and the ads. Those are your competitors for search, whether or not they compete with you in real life. The ones that appear most often are your priority.
2. Check the results from a fair position
Results change with where and how you search. Your own searches may favour sites you've visited, and local results shift street by street. If you only check from your office, you may be seeing a skewed picture.
How to fix it
Search in a private window, with a location set near your customers. Check from a few spots across your service area, or ask a friend in another part of town to do it. Note where you appear in each place, and whether it's in the map box, the main results, or neither.
3. Compare their pages with yours
Often the answer is simply that they have more useful pages. They may have a page for each service, one for each town they cover, and guides answering common questions, while you have a single page listing everything.
How to fix it
Open their site and list every page type: services, locations, pricing, FAQs, blog posts, case studies. Mark what they have that you don't. Pay attention to depth as well as count. A short page is easy to beat with a clearer and more complete one. Then build your own versions, written from your experience and in your own words.
4. Match the kind of page Google prefers for that search
If the top results for a phrase are all guides and you have a sales page, or they're all service pages and you have a blog post, you're offering the wrong format. Google is trying to match what searchers want.
How to fix it
Look at the top five results for each keyword and ask what they are: a guide, a list, a service page, a comparison, a local listing. Create the format that's winning, then add something the others lack, such as clearer pricing, better examples, honest limitations, or local detail.
5. Look at reviews and your Business Profile
For local searches, reviews and profile quality are often the biggest gap. If a competitor has hundreds of reviews and a steady flow of new ones, and you have a handful, that alone can explain why they sit in the map box and you don't.
How to fix it
Compare review counts, ratings, how recent the latest ones are, and how often the owner replies. Check their categories, photos, services and posts. Then close the gap steadily: ask every happy customer for a review, reply to all of them, complete every section of your profile, and keep it active. Never buy or fake reviews, and never post fake negative reviews about a rival. Both can get listings removed or lead to legal trouble.
6. See who links to them
Links from other trusted sites are a major reason older businesses stay ahead. If they have mentions from local news, associations, suppliers and directories, and you don't, Google has more evidence that they're established.
How to fix it
Many SEO tools show a limited number of a competitor's links for free, and paid tools show more. Look for patterns: directories, local organisations, sponsorships, press, partners, guest articles. Choose the ones you could realistically earn too, and go after them one by one. Skip cheap bulk link packages. They're risky and rarely work.
7. Compare the experience on their site
Search rankings aren't only about content. If your site is slower, harder to read on a phone, or confusing to navigate, visitors leave and your pages struggle to hold their place.
How to fix it
Open both sites on your phone and time how long each takes to load. Run both through Google's PageSpeed Insights. Notice which one explains things better and makes it easier to get in touch. Fix your slowest, clunkiest pages first.
8. Be honest about what you can win, and when
Some gaps close slowly. A competitor that's been around for a decade, with thousands of links, won't be overtaken in a month for the most competitive phrase. Throwing everything at that one keyword is a common way to burn months.
How to fix it
Pick battles you can win. Go after more specific searches first: a particular service in a particular town, a particular type of customer, or a particular problem. Win those, build up reviews and links, and then take on the bigger terms. Meanwhile, use paid ads or other channels to get leads while the organic work builds.
9. Learn from them without copying them
Studying a rival is smart. Copying their text isn't. It's weaker than the original, it can be treated as duplicate content, and it gives you nothing that sets you apart. People choose a business for a reason, so give them one.
How to fix it
Write down what you do better or differently: faster response, specialist knowledge, clearer pricing, better guarantees, a particular type of customer you serve well. Put that on your key pages, in your listing, and in your reviews. Win on being clearly different, not on being a copy.
10. Track the gap monthly
Rankings move slowly and noisily, so judge progress over months, not days.
How to fix it
Once a month, repeat your searches from the same spots and note your position and your competitors'. Keep a simple sheet with your review count, theirs, your pages and theirs. Check Search Console for impressions and clicks on your target phrases. If the gap shrinks month by month, you're on track.
When a competitor ranks higher, but it isn't your problem
Sometimes the better question isn't "why are they above me" but "are those searches bringing the right customers?" A competitor may rank for broad phrases that bring browsers, while you could win more business from specific ones. Focus on the searches that produce enquiries, not on beating someone for the sake of it.
What to do this week
List your real search competitors, run the gap finder above for the top one, and pick the single biggest gap. If it's reviews, send requests to your last ten customers. If it's pages, write the most valuable missing one. If it's speed, fix your three slowest pages. One focused gap closed beats ten started.
Frequently asked questions
Rankings depend on more than design. Reviews, links, age, page coverage and location all play a part, and a plain site can win on those.
It depends on the gap and how competitive the search is. Specific local searches can move in a few months. Broad, competitive ones can take much longer.
Only if they break platform rules, such as fake reviews or a keyword-stuffed business name. Most of the time they're simply doing the basics better, so focus on your own gaps first.
Ads can bring leads while you build organic strength, but they stop when your budget does. Treat them as a bridge, not a replacement.
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