Sometimes a small target can get a very tough competition. This is what we call seo! You may think that a local niche is very easy but it turns out to be way too difficult than your expectations. For the time being if we take some local niches in UK and in other parts of the world like cleaning services, solicitors, local dentists and other similar small businesses, they all are competing against one another for first page ranking on google.

To be honest, these are pretty fierce niches to compete with.

But, if you analyze your Local seo Competitors the right way, you can dig in the weak points and optimize your website with better local search terms. It is all about digging deep into your competitor’s listings, citations and links, and then reverse engineer them to outrank them.

We know it sounds pretty messed up! For that reason, we have explained a proper process on analyzing the Local seo competitors.

1: Identifying the Local Competitors

Even before starting the research part, you have to FIND your competitors. Think of the keywords in your Local Niche that your prospective customers are likely to use to find your business in the listings.

So, if you are starting an seo campaign for a new dental clinic in any city, let say Manchester, you will start by optimization process. You have to check all the businesses you will be competing in the top search results.

2: Find Listings and Citation Opportunities

Citations and reviews are very helpful in local seo. You have to find your competitor’s reviews, their citations and listings as well.

To do this, you can either use a paid software or do it manually.

• Simply Google your competitor’s brand name and check their review websites, address, phone number and directories.
• You can use Moz Local for spying the citations and discover more about them.
• You can also use Signup for scanning hundreds of directories and review websites and easily locate their listings, citations and reviews in no time.

Save them all in a spreadsheet or Google Docs. When you start optimizing your own local business, you will build the same citations as on competitors site.

3: Examining Backlink Profile

When it comes to local seo there are two core things to consider. First is to optimize the site for Google’s three pack map listing. This is the reviews and citation part. The second is to optimize for the organic results. They appear below the Google’s map pack.

You should analyze your competitor’s backlink profile using paid tools Majestic or Ahrefs. This will give you an idea on how to continue with your backlinking. Of course, we cannot replicate every link but it still helps in the long run.

4: Analyzing On-Page Content

Finally, you being a new Local Business, it will be quite difficult to outrank your competitors because they have more reviews, links and citations. It can take you a hell lot of time to get to their level and build authority.

With a proper on-page content on your local business website, you are always ahead of your competitors. When you optimize your site for on-page seo, you already put your site ahead of the local competitors.

Once you have analyzed your competitor’s backlinks, the next thing is to check the on-page content. This can be done by firstly checking the target keyword which in our case is Dentists in Manchester.

Check if they use it in page title in H1 and h2 tags and in the content as well. Also, you have to open their images and see if they are also optimized with the correct titles, filenames and alt text. All of these factors count in the on-page content of your local Business.

Don’t forget to check your competitor’s top-ranking pages’ content. A recent data shows that long pages rank well in Google search results. You can easily outrank them if you create more and detailed content that is engaging and helpful for your readers.

Though we believe that it is quite rare to outrank the local competitors in organic listings with just on-page alone, however; if you work on to improving your entire website’s content and follow the above-mentioned points, you can possible gain advantage when you’ll be building links and local citations for your business.

Give us a Chance to Rank!

Local seo is one of the toughest field! At the same time, it can drive some lucrative inbound leads to your business. It is only possible if you are sitting at the top. Beating your competitors with no prior experience can take your precious time and efforts.

So, allow us to rank your local business in the top of search listings. Contact us today by email or phone!