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How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit - Moz Blog

Moz Blog <mozblog@newsletter.feedpress.com> Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 4:00 PM
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How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive

Audit
Posted by MiriamEllis

Why are those folks outranking me in Googles local pack?

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. Youve got to stack Business A up
against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess
as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, Id like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which
factors Ive investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included:
a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this
audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company
trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant
players weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

Its my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why this person is outranking
that person, and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a
population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Pings Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah
Restaurant in Googles local pack for the search term. We dont look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher
creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Pings Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Googles Local Pack for the search
term?

The comparison chart

*Where theres a clear winner, its noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP Pings Chinese Cuisine Yet Wah Restaurant

248 Northgate Dr. 1238 4th St.
San Rafael, CA 94903 San Rafael, CA 94901
(415) 492-8808 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL http://pingsnorthgate.com/ http://www.yetwahchinese.com/

Local Pack rank 1 2

Organic rank 17 5

Organic rank among 8 1

business-owned sites
*Remove directories and
review platforms from the
equation, as they typically
shouldnt be viewed as direct
competitors

Business model eligible for Yes Yes

GMB listing at this address?
*Check Googles Guidelines if
unsure:
https://support.google.com/
business/answer/3038177...

Oddities Note that Pings has redirected
pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com.
Pings also has a www and non-www version of
pingsnorthgate.com.
A 2nd website for same
business at same location with
same phone number:
http://yetwahsanrafael.com/.
This website is ranking directly
below the authoritative (GMB-
linked) website for this business
in organic SERP for the search
in question.

Business listings

GMB review count 32 38

GMB review rating 4.1 3.8

Most recent GMB review 1 week ago 1 month ago

*Sort GMB reviews by "most
recent" filter

Proper GMB categories? Yes Yes

Estimated age of GMB At least 2 years old At least 6 years old

listing
*Estimated by date of oldest
reviews and photos, but can
only be seen as an estimate

Moz Local score 49% 75%

(completeness + accuracy +
lack of duplicates)
*Tool:
https://moz.com/local/search

Moz Local duplicate findings 0 1 (Facebook)

*Tool:
https://moz.com/local/search

Keywords in GMB name chinese restaurant

Keywords in GMB website Nothing at all. Just home page Yes

landing page title tag

Spam in GMB title No Yes: restaurant not in website

*Look at GMB photos, Google logo or street level signage
Streetview, and the website to
check for inconsistencies

Hours and photos on GMB? Yes Yes

Proximity to city centroid 3.5 miles 410.1 feet

*Look up city by name in
Google Maps and see where it
places the name of the city on
the map. Thats the city
centroid. Get driving
directions from the business to
an address located in the
centroid.

Proximity to nearest 1.1 mile 0.2 miles

competitor
*Zoom in on Google map to
surface as many adjacent
competitors as possible. Can
be a Possum factor in some
cases.

Within Google Maps Yes Yes

boundaries?
*Look up city by name in
Google Maps and note the
pink border via which Google
designates that citys
boundaries

Website

Age of domain March 2013 August 2011

*Tool:
http://smallseotools.com/
domain-age-checker/

Domain Authority 16 8
*Tool:
https://moz.com/products/pro/
seo-toolbar

GMB Landing Page 30 21

Authority
*Tool:
https://moz.com/products/pro/
seo-toolbar

Links to domain 53 2
*Tool:
https://moz.com/researchtools/
ose/

DA/PA of most authoritative 72/32 38/16

link earned
*Tool:
https://moz.com/researchtools/
ose/

Evaluation of website Extremely thin, just adequate to identify Extremely thin, almost zero text
content restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of on homepage, menu link goes
the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by to another website.
*This is a first-pass, visual gut virtue of a sentence on the homepage and
check, just reading through the menus in real text.
top-level pages of the website
to see how they strike you in
terms of quality.

Evaluation of website Outdated Outdated, mostly images

design

Evaluation of website UX Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs Can be navigated, but few
directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly
*Tool:
https://search.google.com/
test/mobile-friendly
Basic mobile design, but Googles mobile-friendly Basic mobile design passes
test tool says both www and non-www cannot be Googles mobile-friendly test
reached because its unavailable or blocked by
robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos,
Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be
further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL
is http://pingsnorthgate.com/#2962. Both this URL
and the other domains are failing Googles test.
Evaluation of overall onsite Pretty much no optimization Minimal, indeed, but a little bit
SEO of effort made. Some title
*A first-pass visual look at the tags, some schema, some
page code of top level pages, header tags.
checking for titles,
descriptions, header tags,
schema, + the presence of
problems like Flash.

HTML NAP on website? Yes Yes

Website NAP matches GMB No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive) Yes
NAP?

Total number of wins: Pings 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Pings in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at
the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Pings has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing
page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that
leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Pings has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work,
their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isnt properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site
content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site
passes Googles mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wahs superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wahs moderate efforts
with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Pings superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wahs website is also a couple
of years older than Pings.

All that being said, Yet Wahs organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Pings
local win? Pings has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links,
and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if its not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Pings superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be
winning the day for Pings. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of
optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wahs organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be
contributing to Pings local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings,
they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see
local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, Ive come up with a working theory, but Im not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask
questions like:

Is Pings better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?
In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Pings links more that Yet Wahs on-page SEO in
determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The
industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess were seeing proof of that here.
Why isnt Google weighting Yet Wahs superior citation set more than they apparently are? Pings citations are
in bad shape. Ive seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels
weird here.
Why isnt Google punishing Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it?
That seems like it should matter.
 Why isnt age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wahs domain and GMB listing are
significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but its not moving the local one.
Could user behavior be making Pings the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic
audit.* See below.

*I dont have access to either restaurants Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so
perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or
clicks-to-website that would make Pings local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, youd
want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brands accounts and tools, and whatever data
your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and
June of this year, YetWahs traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Pings saw a
drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or
complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Pings has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each
business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With
both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what
we have here is a close race. While Id love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a
consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Pings:

Pings needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesnt want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be
resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content
Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Pings should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one
A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Pings should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Pings in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that,
Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain
Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the
website
Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special
Consider adding the word Restaurant to their signage, so that they cant be reported for spamming the GMB
name field.
Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Pings.

And, with either client being mine, Id then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that
came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Pings or Yet Wah in the local pack,
and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, theres a tremendous chance for any Chinese
restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all
cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star
reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are
no players who cant be bested.
My sample case has been, as Ive said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched
dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business youre hoping to assist. But the basic process is the
same:

1. Look at the top-ranking business.

2. Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).
3. Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.
4. Contrast these findings with those youve charted for the company youre helping and youll be able to form a
plan for improvement.

And dont forget the user proximity factor. Any companys most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary
either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it
happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two
remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, its vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are
serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be
anywhere in the country or the world. This doesnt just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In
California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a
Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you cant just think hyper-locally; youve got to see the bigger local picture. And
youve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve
it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? Whats working best for your agency in doing local audits
these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have
any further theories as to how Pings is winning the local pack, Id love for you to share them in the comments.

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