Find the three competitors taking your 3-Pack spot. Audit them. Build the 90-day plan to overtake them.
The SEO competitors are the three businesses currently ranking in the Google 3-Pack and the top three organic results for the queries that drive your highest-intent leads. They are not necessarily the businesses you think of as your competitors. A plumber competing for 'emergency plumber Marbella' competes with whoever ranks for that query, regardless of whether they share a customer base.
The right way to find them is to run a SERP audit for the 10-15 queries that drive your best customers. The audit returns the current top 3-Pack and the top 3 organic results, which is your real competitive set.
Run a SERP audit. The audit checks the top 10-20 results for each of your highest-intent queries, captures the ranking URL, the ranking business, and the format (3-Pack, organic, AI Overview, featured snippet), and returns a single spreadsheet with the competitive map mapped. The audit is the input to the competitor analysis.
I run the SERP audit as the first deliverable of every competitor analysis engagement. The audit takes about 60 minutes and is a one-off deliverable; the gap analysis and the 90-day plan are the engagement work.
Three steps. First, the SERP audit (who ranks, for which query, in which format). Second, the gap analysis (what do they have that I do not, in the GBP, the website, the citations, the reviews). Third, the 90-day plan (the three highest-impact gaps, ranked by impact, with a fixed-fee engagement to close them). The whole engagement is a 1-2 week project.
I deliver the three steps as a single report, with the SERP data, the gap analysis, and the plan in a single PDF. The report is built to be read in 15 minutes and actioned in 90 days.
Pick the one you can realistically overtake inside 90 days. The strongest 3-Pack competitor gets the most work, but the easiest overtake is usually the second or third slot. The right strategy is to pick the competitor whose weakest gap matches your strongest lever, then close the gap.
I run the gap analysis as part of the engagement, with the three competitors ranked by 'overtake difficulty' and the 90-day plan written for the chosen one.
You do not beat them on review count; you beat them on review velocity and review quality. A profile with 80 reviews, a 4.8 average, and 5 new reviews per month outranks a profile with 200 reviews, a 4.2 average, and no new reviews in 6 months. The shift is the strategy: faster, more detailed, more recent reviews.
I run the review audit as part of the competitor analysis, with the current count, the velocity, the response rate, the average rating, and the gap to the working benchmark for the business type.
You beat them on specificity. A bigger budget buys more reach; it does not buy a better GBP, a faster website, or a cleaner entity layer. For a local business, the higher-use lever is the local SEO work, not the ad spend. The competitors that outspend you on ads usually underspend on the entity layer, which is the gap to attack.
The competitor analysis report calls out the entity-layer gap explicitly. It is the most underused lever for small businesses competing with larger ones.
Pick the gap, not the surface. If the competitor has a stronger GBP but a weaker website, the website work will move the 3-Pack faster than another GBP post. If the competitor has a stronger website but a weaker entity layer, the citation work will move it. The right answer is the gap, ranked by impact, addressed in order.
I run the gap analysis as part of the engagement, with the three highest-impact gaps, ranked by impact, with the 90-day plan written for the chosen one.
A monthly SERP audit, run on the same day each month, with the same query panel, returned as a single spreadsheet with the 3-Pack and the top 3 organic results for each query. The trend is the answer. A competitor who is rising is a competitor you should be watching; a competitor who is flat is one you can plan around.
I deliver the monthly SERP audit as part of the engagement, with the trend data and the 'competitors to watch' list flagged in the report.
A content gap analysis is the comparison of your website's content against the content of the top three competitors, on a query-by-query basis. The output is the list of queries where the competitors rank and you do not, with the type of content they are using to rank (a service page, a blog post, a FAQ block, a video). The gap is the content you need to publish.
I run the content gap analysis as part of the competitor analysis engagement, with the priority content list and the 90-day plan to close it.
Run the same query panel against ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, and record which competitors the assistants cite. The output is a list of which competitors own the AI citations for your highest-intent queries, with the source each assistant used. The gap is the entity layer and the content layer the competitors have that you do not.
I run the AI citation audit as part of the competitor analysis engagement. The audit feeds into the GEO and content plans for the next 90 days.
I run competitor analyses for established local businesses across the Costa del Sol (Marbella, Estepona, Puerto Banus, San Pedro de Alcantara, Mijas, Fuengirola, Benalmadena, Torremolinos, Malaga) plus international clients. Reply within 24 hours.
Pick the option that fits. I read every message and reply within 24 hours, every working day.
The SEO competitors are the three businesses currently ranking in the Google 3-Pack and the top three organic results for the queries that drive your highest-intent leads. They are not necessarily the businesses you think of as your competitors. The right way to find them is to run a SERP audit for the 10-15 queries that drive your best customers.
Run a SERP audit. The audit checks the top 10-20 results for each of your highest-intent queries, captures the ranking URL, the ranking business, and the format (3-Pack, organic, AI Overview, featured snippet), and returns a single spreadsheet with the competitive map mapped. I run the SERP audit as the first deliverable of every competitor analysis engagement.
Three steps. The SERP audit (who ranks, for which query, in which format). The gap analysis (what do they have that I do not, in the GBP, the website, the citations, the reviews). The 90-day plan (the three highest-impact gaps, ranked by impact, with a fixed-fee engagement to close them). The whole engagement is a 1-2 week project.
Pick the one you can realistically overtake inside 90 days. The strongest 3-Pack competitor gets the most work, but the easiest overtake is usually the second or third slot. The right strategy is to pick the competitor whose weakest gap matches your strongest lever, then close the gap.
You do not beat them on review count; you beat them on review velocity and review quality. A profile with 80 reviews, a 4.8 average, and 5 new reviews per month outranks a profile with 200 reviews, a 4.2 average, and no new reviews in 6 months.
You beat them on specificity. A bigger budget buys more reach; it does not buy a better GBP, a faster website, or a cleaner entity layer. For a local business, the higher-use lever is the local SEO work, not the ad spend. The competitors that outspend you on ads usually underspend on the entity layer, which is the gap to attack.
Pick the gap, not the surface. If the competitor has a stronger GBP but a weaker website, the website work will move the 3-Pack faster than another GBP post. If the competitor has a stronger website but a weaker entity layer, the citation work will move it. The right answer is the gap, ranked by impact, addressed in order.
A monthly SERP audit, run on the same day each month, with the same query panel, returned as a single spreadsheet with the 3-Pack and the top 3 organic results for each query. The trend is the answer. A competitor who is rising is a competitor you should be watching; a competitor who is flat is one you can plan around.
A content gap analysis is the comparison of your website's content against the content of the top three competitors, on a query-by-query basis. The output is the list of queries where the competitors rank and you do not, with the type of content they are using to rank. The gap is the content you need to publish.
Run the same query panel against ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, and record which competitors the assistants cite. The output is a list of which competitors own the AI citations for your highest-intent queries, with the source each assistant used. The gap is the entity layer and the content layer the competitors have that you do not.