What a research project should produce
Not a profile of each competitor. A list of gaps you can act on.
The useful output looks like: these six search terms produce work in your area, three competitors rank for them and you do not, here is the page each one needs.
The useless output looks like: a slide per competitor describing their brand positioning.
The questions worth researching
Where do they appear and you do not? Directly actionable. Every gap is a page.
What do they publish and what does it earn? Not what they post most — what actually attracts search traffic. Those differ, often dramatically.
How do they handle the objection you struggle with? Price, timescale, warranty. Their answer tells you what the market has been trained to expect.
What does their review profile look like? Volume, rating, recency, and what customers praise or complain about. Competitor reviews are the cheapest market research available — customers describe exactly what they wanted and did not get.
Are they bidding on your name? Worth knowing, and usually cheap to counter.
Which competitors to include
Three or four, and specifically the ones appearing in results your customers see — not the largest firms in the trade.
Check it yourself: search your main service plus your area from a phone, and note who comes up. Businesses regularly discover a competitor they had never heard of occupying the results they assumed were theirs.
What drives the cost
Number of competitors. Each is a full pass.
Depth. Checking rankings is quick. Analysing content performance, ad activity and review sentiment across several competitors is a real piece of work.
Whether it ends in a plan. Research that stops at findings is half a project. The valuable half is deciding what to build in response.
The honest caveat
Competitor research can produce a strategy of imitation, which is a poor position. Being the fourth business saying the same thing as the first three is not a strategy.
The best use is finding what nobody is saying. The gaps in a competitive market are usually not services — they are questions everybody leaves unanswered because answering them is awkward. Price is usually one of them.
The free version
Search your three main terms with your city. Note who ranks, read their top pages, and read their recent reviews. An hour, no cost, and it produces most of the actionable findings for a small local business.
Getting it done properly
If the free hour raises more questions than it answers, that is the point at which a real project is worth commissioning.
Frequently asked questions
What should competitor research produce?
A list of actionable gaps — the terms they rank for and you do not, with the page each one needs. Not a brand profile per competitor.
Which competitors should be researched?
The three or four that actually appear when your customers search, which is often not the biggest names in the trade. Check by searching your main service plus your area from a phone.
What is the most underrated source?
Competitor reviews. Customers describe precisely what they wanted and did not get, which is the cheapest market research available to a local business.
What is the risk of competitor research?
Ending up with a strategy of imitation. Being the fourth business saying what the first three say is not a position. The best findings are the questions nobody is answering.