What to Do When Your Competitor Ranks Above You

You've searched "electrician near me", and there's the bloke from two suburbs over sitting above you. Again. It's a genuinely annoying feeling, especially when you know your work is as good as his.

The good news is there's a sensible way to look at this that doesn't involve copying him or trying to outsmart Google. Here it is.

First: don't panic

Google results change from person to person, so what you see may not be what your customers see.

The same search can return different results depending on:

• Where the person is standing
• Exactly what they typed ("emergency electrician" and "electrician" are different searches)
• What device they're on
• How competitive that particular search is

So a competitor sitting above you for one search, from where you happen to be standing, doesn't mean they're above you everywhere. Before you conclude anything, try searching from the middle of the area you actually work in, and try the words a customer would use rather than the ones you'd use.

It also says nothing about who's better at the job. Usually Google just has more, or clearer, information about them right now.

Have a proper look at what they've got

Everything you need is public. Open their Business Profile and their website, and go through it honestly. You're looking for the gaps in your own setup, not something to copy.

• Their profile: is it fully filled in? Right category? Services listed out? Service areas set?
• Their reviews: how many, how recent, and do they reply to them?
• Their photos: real work, or three stock images from 2019?
• Their website: does it say plainly what they do and where? Separate pages per service?
• Their work: are there actual finished jobs on there?

More often than not you'll find two or three obvious things they've done and you haven't. That's your list. It's usually shorter and more boring than people expect.

Tidy up your own profile first

This is where the quickest wins are, because plenty of profiles are half-finished. Right primary category, every service listed individually, accurate service areas, real hours, your own photos, and a steady trickle of genuine reviews.

If you want the detail, 5 simple ways to show up better on Google is the short version, and how Google Maps works for tradies explains what the map is actually weighing up.

Make your website more useful than theirs

That means more useful, rather than flashier.

Someone comparing two tradies is trying to answer a handful of questions fast: do they do the thing I need, do they come to my suburb, have they done it before, and how do I get hold of them?

A homepage that opens with "Quality workmanship you can trust" answers none of those. "Residential electrician servicing Adelaide's southern suburbs" answers two of them in eight words, and the rest of the page can handle the others.

To be clear, wording alone won't move you up the results, and anyone who tells you it will is overselling. The point is being understood: by the customer first, and by Google as a by-product.

Give people reasons to trust you

This is the bit tradies often undersell, and it can be the actual gap between you and whoever's above you.

• Genuine reviews: often the most persuasive thing on the page
• Photos of your own finished jobs: never stock or someone else's
• A real "about": who you are, how long you've been at it, your licence number
• Contact details that are easy to find: phone visible without scrolling
• Answers to the questions you get asked on every quote: do you charge a callout fee, how long does a job like this take, do you clean up after yourself, are you insured

That last one is worth more than it looks. Every question you answer on the page is one the customer doesn't have to ring three businesses to ask, and you're the one who already answered it.

People are letting you into their house or spending real money. Anything that makes you look like a settled, accountable business does more work than you'd think.

Cover the work you actually do

One page listing everything is one page. A page per main service can each turn up for a different search: switchboard upgrades, emergency electrical, hot water repairs, blocked drains, renovations, extensions, whatever's genuinely on your list.

Mention the areas you really service, and only those. There's a trade-by-trade breakdown of what's worth spelling out if you want a starting point.

You're not trying to beat Google

It's worth being clear about what the job actually is, because it changes what you spend your time on.

There's no search engine to outsmart here. Google is trying to work out which businesses are genuinely relevant to someone nearby, and it's doing that from whatever information it can find about you. Every "trick" is really just an attempt to fake information, which is why tricks tend to stop working and can take the business down with them.

The actual job is much duller and much more reliable: make it easy for Google to understand your business, and easy for a customer to choose it. Those two things usually pull in the same direction. If you're ever unsure whether something's worth doing, ask whether it makes life easier for the person who'd ring you. If it doesn't, it's probably not worth doing for Google either.

Which is why the shortcuts don't work

When you're frustrated, the shortcuts look tempting. They're not worth it.

• Don't buy reviews, and don't write your own
• Don't stuff keywords into your pages or your business name
• Don't list addresses or suburbs you don't actually work from
• Don't copy a competitor's pages
• Don't buy backlinks off someone in your DMs
• Don't build a hundred thin suburb pages

Any of it can get found out, and the downside is losing a profile you've spent years building. More often, the businesses above you have just filled everything in properly and been at it longer.

Give it time

None of this is instant, and anyone who gives you a date is guessing.

A profile you finished this week doesn't get reassessed this afternoon. Reviews accumulate one job at a time. A new website needs to be around a while before it counts for much. The competitor above you may simply have been doing this for six years. That's not a gap you close in a fortnight, and it's not a sign you've done anything wrong.

What you can control is whether the work is done. Close your gaps, keep the reviews coming, and judge it over months rather than mornings.

Then stop watching them

Checking your rankings every morning is a good way to ruin your week without changing anything. Once you've got your list of gaps, close them and get back to work.

The questions worth asking are all about your own business:

Leave their pages alone. Find your own gaps and close them one at a time.

And remember ranking isn't the whole job

It's easy to fixate on position, but turning up is only the start.

Someone finds you. Now they've got to work out whether you do their job, whether you come to their suburb, whether you've done it before and how to reach you. If the answer to any of those is unclear, you can be sitting first and still lose the job to whoever's third with a decent website.

Plenty of businesses turn up in search and still don't get many enquiries. It's worth making sure you're fixing the right part of the problem. If you can't find yourself at all, work through the usual causes first.

The short version

You don't need to become an SEO expert, and you don't need to beat anyone. You need to get the basics right and make it easy for Google (and your customers) to understand what you do, where you do it and why you're worth ringing.

It's a list of ordinary jobs, and none of it is a dark art.

If you've got no time for any of this

The profile side is genuinely yours to do. It's free and it takes an afternoon. Start with how to get your business on Google if you haven't already, and don't pay anyone a monthly fee for it.

The website half is where plenty of tradies stall, and it can be the difference you're looking at when a competitor's above you. Often they're no better at Google; they've just got somewhere for people to land. If you're weighing that up, profile vs website lays out what each one does.

That's the part ONYA handles. We build the site, you pay monthly instead of a big bill upfront, and your web address set-up (you buy the domain, about $20–$50, in your name), hosting and ongoing care come with it. It's $0 upfront, from $49/month, and usually live within 7 days of getting your photos and details. We can't promise you a position above anyone, and nobody honestly can. We can make sure that when someone does find you, there's something decent there.

Have a look at our example sites (two real client sites, the rest concepts) or how it works, and if it stacks up, tell us what you do and we'll sort the rest.