You know who your competitors are. You see their trucks around town, you hear their names from customers who got other quotes, and you see them ranking above you on Google. But do you know what they are actually doing to outrank you? Tracking your competitors’ Google Business Profile strategy is one of the smartest things you can do for your local SEO, and most business owners never bother.
Why Competitor Tracking Matters
Local SEO is not about hitting some absolute score — it is about being better than the other businesses in your area. If you optimize your Google Business Profile to what you think is perfect, but your competitor is doing everything you are doing plus more, they win. You need to know what “more” looks like.
Competitor tracking tells you:
- What keywords and categories your competitors are targeting
- How many reviews they get per month (their review velocity)
- How they respond to reviews and what customers say about them
- How often they post updates and what kind of content they share
- What services and attributes they have listed
- When they make changes to their profile
Step 1: Identify Your Real Competitors
Your real competitors are not necessarily the biggest companies in your industry — they are the businesses that show up when your potential customers search for your services. Search for your top 5 to 10 service keywords on Google and write down every business that appears in the local pack. These are your GBP competitors, and they may be different from who you think of as competitors in the real world.
Step 2: Analyze Their Profiles
For each competitor, document:
Basic Information
- What primary and secondary categories are they using?
- What services do they list?
- How complete is their profile? (hours, attributes, description, photos)
- What keywords appear in their business description?
Review Profile
- Total review count
- Average rating
- Number of reviews in the last 30 days
- Do they respond to reviews? How quickly?
- What do customers praise or complain about?
Content Activity
- Are they using Google Posts? How often?
- What kind of posts — offers, updates, events?
- How many photos do they have? How recent?
- Do they have a Q&A section with answers?
Step 3: Compare Their Website SEO
Your GBP performance is connected to your website. Check your competitors’ websites for:
- Do they have dedicated service pages for each offering?
- Do they have location-specific pages?
- Are they blogging regularly?
- Do they have strong internal linking?
- Is their site mobile-friendly and fast?
This tells you where the gaps are. If a top competitor has 50 service pages and you have 5, that is a clear action item. If they are producing weekly blog content and you have none, that explains part of the ranking difference.
Step 4: Track Changes Over Time
A one-time analysis is useful, but the real value comes from ongoing monitoring. Competitors change their strategies. They run review campaigns, add new services, post more frequently during certain seasons, or update their photos. Tracking these changes over time reveals their strategy and helps you anticipate their next moves.
What to Monitor Monthly
- New reviews received (count and velocity)
- Rating changes
- New photos uploaded
- Google Posts frequency and content
- Category or service changes
- New pages on their website
Step 5: Find the Gaps and Exploit Them
Once you have a clear picture of what your competitors are doing, look for gaps:
- Review gap: If competitors get 10 reviews per month and you get 3, close that gap first
- Content gap: If competitors have service pages you do not, create them
- Category gap: If competitors use categories you have not added, add them
- Activity gap: If competitors post weekly and you never post, start posting
- Citation gap: If competitors are listed on directories where you are absent, get listed
Tools for Competitor Tracking
You can do basic competitor analysis manually, but it is tedious and you will not keep up with it. Manual tracking means logging into Google every week, visiting competitor profiles, taking screenshots, and trying to remember what changed. Most business owners do it once and never again.
Automated tools solve this problem. East13 includes built-in competitor monitoring that tracks your top competitors’ GBP activity, review velocity, ranking changes, and content updates automatically. You get a monthly report showing exactly where you stand compared to competitors and what actions to take.
Turn Intelligence Into Action
Competitor tracking is only valuable if you act on what you learn. Make it a monthly habit to review competitor data and identify one or two specific actions you can take to close a gap or extend your lead. Over time, these small advantages compound into dominant local rankings.
Do not compete blind. Know what your competitors are doing, do it better, and track your results to make sure it is working.