You search for the thing you do. Your competitor appears at the top. You don't. It's genuinely annoying, and I hear it all the time from small business owners. But the good news is this: if you understand why they're ahead, you can close the gap. And for most local businesses, the gap is closable.
Let me walk you through the most common reasons a competitor outranks you, and how to diagnose which one is actually your problem.
Their site has more relevant content than yours
This is the most common reason, and the most fixable. Google ranks pages, not websites. If your competitor has a detailed, specific page for every service they offer, and you've got everything crammed onto one page under "Our Services," they're going to win.
A competitor with individual pages for "kitchen installation Llandudno," "bathroom refurbishment Colwyn Bay," and "tiling services Rhyl" is going to outrank a competitor whose single services page mentions all three in two sentences each. Google can see the depth and specificity. You can't bluff it.
I worked with a North Wales roofing company who couldn't understand why a smaller local competitor consistently outranked them. When I read the competitor's content properly, their service pages were three times longer, answered questions like "how long does a flat roof last?" and "what are the signs you need a new roof?" inline, and included photos with descriptive captions. The roofing company's pages were two paragraphs and a contact form. We rewrote their main service pages over three months. Within five months they had overtaken the competitor on their main terms.
Read their content properly. Don't just skim it. How long is each page? Do they answer questions their customers would have? Do they mention specific locations, specific products, specific outcomes? That's the bar you need to reach, and usually exceed.
They have more backlinks, or better ones
Google treats links from other websites as votes. A site with 50 relevant, genuine links from respected sites will generally outrank a site with 5 links from random directories.
To check this, use Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker or the free version of Semrush. Enter your competitor's domain and look at how many referring domains they have (unique websites linking to them, not total links). Then do the same for your own site. If they have 40 referring domains and you have 8, that's part of the story.
What matters most is the quality and relevance of those links. A link from your local council's business directory, your industry trade association, or a local news article is worth far more than 20 links from low-quality link directories.
For local businesses in North Wales, the bar is often lower than you'd think. I've helped businesses get traction with a small number of very targeted, genuine links. It doesn't have to be a huge campaign.
Their technical SEO is in better shape
Technical SEO covers things like site speed, mobile usability, how clearly Google can crawl and understand the site, and whether pages are properly indexed. It's less visible than content, but it matters.
If your site loads slowly on a phone, if pages are accidentally blocked from Google, or if your site structure makes it hard for Google to understand what each page is about, you'll give away positions to a competitor who's sorted these things out.
Run your site and your competitor's site through Google's PageSpeed Insights. Check whether they've set up Google Search Console. If they rank significantly better and their site loads noticeably faster, that's a contributing factor.
They have an older, more established domain
Google has more trust in sites that have been around for a while and have consistently shown good content and links over time. A competitor who started their website in 2015 has a head start on a site launched in 2024, other things being equal.
This is the one factor you can't fix directly. What you can do is accelerate everything else. Strong content and genuine links built consistently will close the gap over 12 to 18 months. It's not instant, but it works.
They have more Google reviews
If the search results include a local pack (the map with three business listings beneath it), Google Business Profile signals matter a lot. The number of reviews, the overall rating, how recently reviews came in, and how complete the profile is all feed into who appears in those three positions.
Check your competitor's Google Business Profile. How many reviews do they have? How complete is their listing? Do they post updates? Do they have photos? If their profile is significantly more active than yours, that's likely why they appear in the local results and you don't, regardless of what your website does.
For a full explanation of how the local pack works and what influences it, read how the Google local pack works.
They're running Google Ads — but that's not why they rank organically
This one confuses a lot of people. If you search for something and your competitor appears twice (once in the ads at the top and once in the organic results below), it can look like the ads are helping them rank. They're not.
Google Ads and organic search are completely separate. Spending on ads does not improve your organic rankings, full stop. Google has been clear about this for years, and there's no credible evidence to the contrary.
What might be happening is that your competitor has done both: they've invested in their SEO so they rank organically, and they're also running ads for the same searches. That's a smart strategy, but the ads themselves aren't causing the organic ranking.
The competitor ranking factor nobody wants to hear
Sometimes a competitor ranks higher simply because they've been doing this longer and more consistently, not because their SEO is technically better. They have more pages, more reviews, more links, and more history. There's no shortcut to catching up. But there is a gap worth looking for: almost every established competitor has neglected something. Pages that haven't been updated in three years. A blog that stopped in 2022. A Google Business Profile with 40 reviews and nothing new in six months. Find what they've let slip and do it better. Competing against someone's strengths is slow. Competing against their inertia is much faster.
How to diagnose your situation properly
Rather than guessing, do a structured check. Here's what I'd do.
Start with the free version of Semrush or Ubersuggest. Enter your competitor's domain and look at which keywords they're ranking for and which pages are driving that traffic. Then compare those pages with yours. Is their content significantly more detailed? Are they covering topics you've ignored?
Then check their backlink profile using Ahrefs' free checker. Count the referring domains. Look at where the links are coming from. Are they listed on directories, featured in local news, or mentioned on industry sites? These are gaps you can fill.
Check their Google Business Profile. Search for what you do in your town, click on their listing, and look at the review count, the photos, the categories they've chosen. If you're barely registered and they're fully built out, fix yours first because it's free and fast.
Finally, read their actual pages. I don't mean skim them. Open the page that ranks for the term you want, read it properly, and ask yourself honestly: is my equivalent page better, more useful, or more specific? If the answer is no, that's where your effort needs to go.
What to do next
If you've done this analysis and you know where the gaps are, you have a clear direction: more detailed content on specific pages, a targeted effort to get genuine links, and a properly filled-in Google Business Profile.
If it's still not clear, or if you've tried some of this and nothing has moved, the problem is usually either technical (something is blocking Google from reading your site properly) or the keyword targeting is off (you're trying to rank for terms where the competition is too strong, and there are better opportunities nearby).
If your site isn't visible at all yet, read why your website isn't showing up on Google first, then come back to this.
For most North Wales small businesses I work with, the issues are content depth and a missing or incomplete Google Business Profile. Those two things alone, done properly, can shift rankings noticeably within three to six months. If you'd like a proper look at what's holding your site back, my SEO service starts with a specific diagnosis — not a generic report.
