How to do an SEO competitor analysis

If another business shows up above you on Google, there is a reason, and you can usually find it. An SEO competitor analysis compares your site with the sites that outrank you for the searches you want, then lists the gaps in keywords, content, links and local signals. Here is how to do one, how to tell who your real competitors are, and where AI fits in.

What do you do in a competitor analysis?

You pick the sites that rank above you, compare them with yours on the things Google weighs, and turn the differences into a prioritized to-do list. A useful analysis ends with a plan, not a pile of exports. Here are the steps:

1. Choose 5 to 10 target keywords. Your most valuable service searches, such as "roofer costa mesa" or "orange county seo company."
2. Record who ranks. Note the top results in both the map pack and the regular results. The names that keep appearing are your search competitors.
3. Compare keywords. Use a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to see which keywords your competitors rank for that you do not. These are searches that have already proven to bring traffic.
4. Compare content. Open their ranking pages. Note length, structure, whether they show prices, FAQs, photos, reviews and location detail. Note which services have their own page.
5. Compare backlinks. Look for sites that link to two or more competitors but not to you, such as local directories, trade associations, suppliers or local news. Those are your best outreach targets.
6. Compare Google Business Profiles. Primary category, number and recency of reviews, photos, posts and services listed. Google's own guidance on local ranking says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that prominence draws on how many websites link to a business and how many reviews it has.
7. Check the basics. Page speed on mobile, clear titles, and whether their pages are easier to read on a phone.
8. Prioritize. Rank each gap by likely impact and effort, then start with the quick, high-impact fixes.

Review counts and freshness are worth recording in detail, because customers check them too. BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 US adults found that 47% of consumers won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% only care about reviews written in the last three months. If a competitor has 150 recent reviews and you have 12 from two years ago, that gap may matter more than anything on your website.

The backlink step often explains gaps the others cannot. Our post on whether backlinks are still relevant covers why links still matter and which kind to pursue. If you would rather hand the whole process off, our Costa Mesa competitor analysis studies your top three ranking rivals and delivers a roadmap in about 10 business days.

What does an SEO analysis do?

An SEO analysis shows why a site ranks where it does and what would move it higher. It checks how well Google can crawl and understand the site, how well each page matches the searches it targets, and how much trust the site has from links and reviews.

There are two common types, and they answer different questions:

• An SEO audit looks inward: broken pages, slow load times, missing titles, indexing problems, thin content. Our guide to what an SEO audit covers explains it in detail.
• A competitor analysis looks outward: what the sites beating you are doing that you are not.

An audit tells you what is broken. A competitor analysis tells you what good looks like for your market. Most businesses benefit from doing the audit first, so you are not building on a site with technical problems.

How do you find who your SEO competitors are?

Search your main service keywords and write down who ranks. Your search competitors are whoever appears in the top results for those terms, which is often a different list from the businesses you compete with for jobs.

A few ways to build the list:

• Search like a customer. Use a private browser window and search your top keywords. Check the map pack and the first page of results.
• Search from different spots. Map rankings change by location. A business on Harbor Blvd may dominate searches on the Westside and barely show up near South Coast Metro.
• Use a tool's competitor report. Ahrefs and Semrush list domains that share the most keywords with yours.
• Include nearby cities. For many services, businesses in Irvine, Santa Ana or Newport Beach take top spots for Costa Mesa searches.
• Ignore directories as models. Yelp, Angi and similar sites often rank, but you cannot copy their authority. Focus on businesses like yours, and treat directories as places to be listed.

Paid search data shows how crowded a market is. In Google Ads data for Orange County, "orange county seo company" gets about 320 searches a month at $30.45 per click. When advertisers pay that much for a click, the businesses ranking for it without paying are getting real value, and that is worth studying. Once you know who they are, local keyword research helps you find the searches they have not covered yet.

Is SEO being replaced by AI?

No. AI is changing what search results look like, but it has not replaced SEO. Google's AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT still pull their answers from web pages, and those pages are mostly ones that already rank. In an Ahrefs study of 1.9 million AI Overview citations published in July 2025, 76.10% of the cited pages ranked in Google's top 10 for the search, and another 9.50% ranked between positions 11 and 100.

What has changed is the format that wins. Pages that answer a question directly, show real expertise, and are cited by other sites are more likely to be used in AI answers. For a local business, the Google Business Profile, reviews and the map pack still matter most. AI is becoming another place to compete, though: the BrightLocal survey found use of ChatGPT and other AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% to 45% in a year. We cover this in more depth in is SEO dead with AI.

This is also a good reason to include AI results in your competitor analysis. Search your main questions and note which businesses AI Overviews mention. If competitors are cited and you are not, compare how their pages answer the question.

When to do it yourself and when to pay

You can do a basic version with free searches and a trial of a paid tool. It is worth paying when your market is crowded, when you have tried fixes that did not move rankings, or when you need someone to turn findings into a plan your team can follow. Our national competitor analysis service lists what a full report covers, and you can see what our Costa Mesa team includes in the local version.