How to study a competitor's site by hand

Choose who to look at

Search the way a customer would, using the words they would type, and note which businesses appear. Those are your real competitors online, even if they are not the ones you think of across town.

Pick three to five. Include a close match and one larger company so you can see the range. Use a private window and note the town, since results change with location.

Skip national brands that do not serve your area, and skip directories and review sites that fill the results. You want businesses a customer could realistically choose instead of you, because those are the pages your own visitors are comparing yours against.

Map what pages exist

Open the main menu and write down every page. Does each service have its own page? Are there pages for areas, prices, questions or proof such as past work? Missing pages are often missing answers.

Compare that with your own site. Our page on site structure explains how a clear set of pages helps readers and search engines. Gaps in their structure are chances for yours.

Notice the depth as well as the count. One page that lists ten services in a paragraph each is different from ten pages that each answer a real question. Look at how pages link to one another, and whether you can reach every service in two clicks.

Read the pages as a customer

Open a service page and ask what you would want to know before calling. Is the price range, the process or the service area stated? Can you tell what makes them different, or is it vague wording any firm could use?

Note what is clear and what is missing. A page that answers a question well deserves credit. A page that avoids the obvious one shows where a more honest page of your own could help someone.

Look for proof as well. Do they show real photos of their own work, name the kinds of jobs they do, or explain how they handle a problem? Proof that is specific is hard to fake, and its absence is a gap you can fill with your own honest examples.

What to write down

Keep a simple table with one row per business. A written record turns an hour of browsing into something you can act on a month later, when memory has gone.

• Which services have their own page and which share one
• What questions each page answers near the top
• What proof is shown: photos, credentials, named projects
• How a visitor can get in touch and how many steps it takes
• How the site looks and loads on your phone
• What the page title and description say in search results

Look at the technical basics

View the page on a phone and note how fast it feels to open. Check whether the address is secure, whether the text is readable without zooming, and whether the contact button works. Our page on Core Web Vitals explains how speed is measured.

You do not need a paid tool to see the rest. Read the headings on a page: is there one clear main heading with sensible sub-headings, as in our guide to heading tags? Then read the title and description in the search result, which our page on title tags covers.

Last, check whether each service has its own readable address, as URL structure describes, and click through to see how pages link to each other. Note what you find in the same table as the rest.

Turn notes into a plan

Choose three things. A page they lack, a question they dodge, a kind of proof you can show better. Write each as a task for your own site, in your own words, based on your own work.

Never copy their text or claims. Duplicate wording does you no good and can cause trouble. The purpose is to learn what customers need and then answer it with facts only you have.

Put the three tasks on a calendar, and when each is done, look at the same competitors again. Sites change, and a study you made a year ago will have gone stale. A short repeat visit every few months keeps your picture of the field accurate.