TL;DR: A competitor ranks above you for a search when Google judges their page a better match for that search than yours. In our view the gap normally sits in one of three places: the page itself, the links and reputation behind it, or how easy it is to use. Compare the top results for one search you want to win, close any page-level gap first, and treat links as the slower job.
It is frustrating to put effort into SEO and still see a competitor sit above you. The useful thing to know is that Google ranks pages, not businesses. Google says its ranking systems work at page level, with some site-wide signals feeding in, so a competitor can beat you on one search and sit below you on another.
That makes the problem smaller than it feels. You are not trying to outdo a whole company, only to work out why one of their pages beats one of yours for one search. This guide is for a competitor who has been ahead of you for a while. If you used to rank above them and have slipped, see why SEO results suddenly drop. If it is visits rather than positions that have fallen, why organic traffic drops looks at it from that side.
First, Check What You Are Comparing
Make sure the competitor is beating you in the organic results. Google labels paid ads as “Sponsored”, so an ad above the free listings is not a ranking. For local searches, Google also shows local results, which it ranks mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is how far each business is from the person searching, so a competitor can win a local search simply by being closer, and no content change will fix that. If that is your situation, our guide to ranking better in your local area is the better place to start.
If it is an organic result, pick one search that matters to your business and open the top three results next to your own page. Compare the pages themselves, not the homepages, because the page is what gets ranked.
Top Tip: Write one sentence for each of the top three results saying why it deserves to be there, such as “answers the question in the first paragraph” or “shows prices”. Then write the same sentence for your own page. If you can’t find a difference on the page itself, the gap is probably in links and reputation, so look there next.
Their Page Answers the Search Better
For most businesses we would look here first, because it is the part you control most directly. Google’s checklist for helpful content asks whether a page gives a substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic, and whether it offers substantial value compared with other pages in the search results. Your competitor’s page is one of those other pages. Four things are worth checking:
- The kind of page. If the top results are all service pages and yours is a blog post, or the reverse, yours may be the wrong kind of page for the search. Our guide to search intent shows how to read this from the results.
- What they cover that you do not. Prices, examples, a comparison, answers to the questions people ask next. Add what is missing and genuinely useful. Google says it has no preferred word count, so length for its own sake will not help.
- The words they use. If their page uses the wording people search and yours uses your own industry terms, they may simply be matching the search better. A competitor keyword gap analysis shows which searches a rival ranks for that you do not.
- How current it is. Google says it has freshness systems that show newer content for searches where people would expect it, so an out-of-date page is at a disadvantage on those topics. Changing a page’s date without changing the content does not count: Google lists that as a warning sign.
Then make your page better, not just longer or a copy of theirs: give the reader something the other pages don’t have.
Wildcat Digital Example: An engine manufacturer client reported a drop in phone calls from their side, despite an increase in engagement metrics and events on our reporting, whilst we were uploading the first few pages of their website optimisation.
Upon review, we found that the homepage, for example, was performing well organically against businesses with branded terms in their name, but was still lacking presence in AI search and LLMs.
To tackle this, we took a look at some of the competitors ranking above our client in the live search results and through Semrush to see what elements we could incorporate.
Examples of what we found included:
- Interactive onsite calculators
- Very clear service page structure and navigation menu
- Less marketing fluff, more of immediately getting to the who, how and what of the business.
- Trust signals: accreditations, business achievement figures, faces behind the business.
In finding the differences between our client and those performing better, we’ve adapted the roadmap to return to the already optimised pages, and increase the elements that appeal more to the updated methods of search in the current landscape. Our aim is to increase the number of conversions both organically and through AI search, by adding both quality content that will be considered helpful by search engines, and key elements that are commonly picked out by AI and used to choose citations.
They Have Stronger Links and a Better-Known Name
Links are the slower job. Google says it has systems that look at how pages link to each other to work out what pages are about and which might be most helpful, and that PageRank, one of its core ranking systems when it launched, continues to be part of them. That guide does not say how much weight links carry, so treat a competitor’s link advantage as one possible reason, not a proven one.
A competitor that has been online longer has usually had more time to earn links, which is part of why established names are hard to catch. To see the gap, put both domains into a backlink tool such as Semrush, Ahrefs or Moz and compare how many different websites link to each. Moz also publishes a score called Domain Authority for this kind of comparison. It is a Moz score, not a Google one, and Moz says it is not a direct Google ranking factor, so use it to compare sites at a glance, not as a target.
What matters more than the number is why the links exist. Look at which of your competitor’s pages attract links from other sites, and whether that is a study, a guide, press coverage or a directory. That shows what other sites find worth linking to, and whether you have anything comparable. Avoid shortcuts: Google’s spam policies list buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam, and say sites that break them may rank lower or not appear in results at all.
Reputation sits alongside links. Google’s helpful content guidance asks whether someone who researched a site would come away thinking it is well-trusted or widely recognised as an authority on its topic. That is worth asking about both sites. For most smaller businesses we would not try to out-brand an established competitor head on. A narrower topic where you can be clearly the best answer is a more realistic place to win.
Their Page Is Easier to Use
Google says its core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience, and that Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics for loading performance, interactivity and visual stability, are used by its ranking systems. Good scores don’t guarantee a top ranking, though, and Google says it will still show the most relevant content when page experience is poor. When there is lots of helpful content for a search, a great page experience can contribute to success, so in our view it matters most when your page and your competitor’s answer the search equally well.
To compare, open both pages on a phone. Which loads first, which is easier to read without zooming, and which gets in the way with pop-ups or heavy ads? Google’s page experience guidance also asks whether pages are served securely and avoid intrusive interstitials, and Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report shows how your own pages score. Our guide to UX and SEO covers the usability side.
“When a client tells us a competitor is outranking them, the first thing they usually say is that the competitor must have more links. Sometimes that’s true, but more often the problem is the page itself. On a recent audit, a client’s service page was a short block of sales copy, while the page above it answered the questions people were actually searching for: costs, timescales and what the process involves. The competitor had fewer referring domains than our client. We rewrote the page around what searchers needed before we looked at links at all. My advice is to compare the pages side by side first, because a page that doesn’t answer the search won’t be rescued by backlinks.”
Eviee Taylor, SEO Senior Executive
Ranking FAQs
Should I copy what the top result does?
Use it to see what searchers expect, not as a template. Google’s spam policies describe copying content from other sites, changing it only slightly and republishing it as abusive scraping when it is done to manipulate rankings, and a copy would at best only match their page. Aim to add something they don’t have.
Does a bigger competitor always win?
No. Google says good site-wide signals do not mean all content from a site will always rank highly. A bigger competitor can still have a weak page for the search you care about.
How long will it take to overtake a competitor?
There’s no fixed timescale, because it depends on which gap you’re closing. Page changes can be picked up as soon as Google recrawls the page, while building links and reputation usually takes much longer. Google’s own guidance on hiring an SEO says it typically takes four months to a year to put improvements in place and see a potential benefit. If a competitor is far ahead on links, plan for the longer end.
Why do I see different results from my colleagues or customers?
Google’s results can vary with location, language, device and search history, so the order you see may not match what customers see. For a more reliable picture, use the Performance report in Google Search Console, which shows your average position for each search, or a rank-tracking tool that checks from a set location.
How Wildcat Handles Ranking Gaps
If your site is not ranking as well as it should, Wildcat’s SEO service includes a specialist audit of the health of the site as one of the first things we do for a new account. The audit is there to tell us why the site is not ranking and to build a roadmap to work from. Our SEO page says a solid strategy should include keyword research and mapping, quality content and technical tasks, and that content has to be better than your competitors’ to rank highly.
To find out which gap is holding you back, book a free consultation and talk it through with our growth team. It helps to bring the one or two searches you most want to win and the competitors you think are ahead of you. If you would like a first look at your own site before speaking to anyone, the free website assessment is a short questionnaire that shows where your site may have room to improve.
Kezia Humphries
SEO Executive
