A competitor outranks you on Google. Here's why, and what to do about it

Open a private browser window on your phone and search the way a customer would: “electrician Fishkill,” “med spa near Newburgh,” “roof repair Kingston.” Note who is in the three-business map box and who holds the first few organic results. Do it from a couple of different spots if you can; the box changes with location.

The businesses you find are often not the ones you think of as competitors. A one-truck operation with a finished profile can sit above a twenty-year company with a neglected one. That is useful information: it means the gap is fixable.

1. A more specific category. Their profile says “Roofing contractor.” Yours says “Contractor.” Google matches the specific one to roofing searches.
2. A finished profile. Every field filled, every town listed, photos added this month, questions answered, posts going up. Yours has six photos from the day it was made.
3. Reviews that are recent and specific. They get one a week that names the job and the town. You have forty from three years ago, none replied to.
4. A page for every service. They have a page about metal roofing. You have a bullet.
5. Real town pages. They have a page about their work in Warwick. You “serve the Hudson Valley.”
6. Consistency. Their name, phone, and address match everywhere. Yours has an old number on Yelp and a different suite on Facebook.

Look at the competitor's site and profile with this list in hand. You will usually find three or four of the six. Those are your to-do list, in the order they appear.

It is usually not a secret. It is not that they paid Google; the map box and organic results cannot be bought, though ads above them can. It is rarely a design difference, though a slow or template site does hurt. And it is almost never that Google dislikes you. Google is trying to answer a searcher's question with the business it can best verify, and the other business made itself easier to verify.

It is also not usually backlinks, at the local level. A Hudson Valley trade does not need a link campaign. It needs the six things above and a few real local mentions: the chamber, a local news piece, a partner's site.

Fix the profile this week: category, service area, photos, and start asking every customer for a review with the job named. That alone moves some businesses into the box within a month or two.

Then the site. Write a real page for each of your top three services and a real page for your three best towns. If the current site is on a page builder that cannot be made fast or readable, that is the point to rebuild rather than patch; see website redesign for how we handle the transition without losing what you already rank for.

Then keep going, monthly. The competitor who outranks you today is still adding reviews and photos. The gap closes when your pace passes theirs and stays there. That is what the Get Found and Grow plans exist for.