A geo-grid scan and authority audit of your top 5 local SEO competitors — citations, backlinks, content depth, review velocity, GBP density, and ranking surfaces. The competitive map you didn't have.
Most local SEO programs run on guesses about the competitive set — who's ranking, why they're ranking, what they're doing that you aren't. The competitive map you act on is your hunch, not the data. The hunch is wrong more often than you'd think.
The competitor you think is your biggest threat probably isn't. The one who actually owns the map pack in your service area is a business you've never heard of.
The links, citations, and content driving their authority are invisible until you scan them. Most agencies guess; we map.
Categories they own that you ignore. Service-area keywords they target that you don't rank for. Content topics they cover that you missed.
Energy spent chasing a competitor who isn't actually beating you is wasted. The competitive map shows where to direct the resources.
We identify the actual SEO competitors in your service area (not the ones you assume), then run the full authority profile, content strategy, GBP density, and visibility position for each.
The agencies and businesses ranking for your top 20 keywords — including the ones you didn't know about. Sorted by overlap with your target queries.
Backlink profile, citation footprint, brand mentions, and review velocity — the cumulative authority signals that compound into ranking dominance.
Content topics, publishing cadence, top-performing pages, internal linking strategy — and the topical gaps where you can take ground first.
Their GBP photo count, post cadence, Q&A activity, attribute coverage, and review response rate — every signal Google reads as engagement.
Geo-grid scan for each competitor across your full service area — heatmapped, comparable, with the coordinates where you're losing identified.
How your competitors are being cited in AI engines — their entity profile, their mentions across knowledge graphs, and the queries that surface them.
The analysis runs the same six phases every time. Multi-market analyses scale with the number of service areas.
Define the actual competitive set — overlap with top 20 target keywords, map-pack co-occurrence, organic local co-occurrence. Top 5 competitors locked.
Per-competitor backlink profile, citation footprint, brand mentions, review velocity. The cumulative authority documented.
Topic mapping, top-performing pages, content cadence, internal linking patterns. The topical gaps surfaced.
Per-competitor GBP audit — photos, posts, Q&A, attributes, services, review response. The engagement signals scored.
Heatmapped geo-grid scan per competitor across your service area. Coordinate-level visibility comparison delivered.
90-minute delivery call with the competitive map, the gap analysis, and the realistic path to take the position.
Multi-location analyses run per service area, with a cross-market rollup that identifies system-wide competitors vs market-specific competitors. Franchise systems get the franchisor-level + franchisee-level analysis split.
Three layers — SERP overlap on your top 20 keywords (who's appearing for what you want to rank for), map-pack co-occurrence (who's in your local 3-pack with you), and organic local position. The top 5 by weighted overlap are the actual competitors.
Top 5 by default — the right size for actionable depth. We can expand to 10 for larger markets or franchise systems where the competitive set is broader. Pricing scales with the count.
Yes. Indirect competitors — businesses ranking for adjacent keywords or pulling traffic from your funnel — are included if they show up in the SERP overlap. They're separated from direct competitors in the report.
Yes. Per-competitor keyword overlap with your domain, the keywords they're ranking for that you aren't, and the keywords you're both fighting for. Documented in the gap report.
Yes — pre-expansion competitor analyses are common for multi-location and franchise brands evaluating new markets. The analysis surfaces the existing competitive landscape, the gaps to exploit, and the realistic entry timeline.
Once a year for stable markets, every 6 months for active competitive markets. The geo-grid can be re-scanned quarterly to track movement without redoing the full analysis.
Yes. Local SEO Competitor Analysis is one of four audits in the Local Intelligence engagement — the others being Local SEO Audit, PPC Audit, and PPC Competitor Analysis.
Yes. Per-competitor backlink profile, top linking domains, and the link-prospect overlap with your own profile. Linkable opportunities documented in the gap report.
Local Intelligence runs four audits total. This is one. The other three:
Your own local SEO — website, GBP, citations, schema, content, authority, ranking. The 100-point inspection of your assets.
Your paid spend, forensically audited — campaign architecture, conversion tracking, bid strategy, wasted spend.
Competitor ad creative, keyword targeting, estimated spend, landing pages — across Google Ads, LSAs, and Meta.
SEO across every organic surface — the compounding asset that widens the lead on its own.
Immediate visibility — the fast strike across every paid surface while the asset builds.
Organic and paid visibility, fully integrated and run by one specialist team. The fast start and the compounding moat, together.
A 30-minute strategy call to scope the analysis. We'll quote the fee, project the schedule, and outline the competitive set we'll be mapping for your market.