I Dissected the Top Local Competitor in Ahrefs — Copy Their Exact Strategy

You're doing everything right — optimizing your GBP, building citations, collecting reviews — and that one competitor is ranking number one for every keyword your business is trying to own. What do they know that you don't? Here's the truth: they left a blueprint. Every backlink they earned, every page structure decision they made, every schema tag they installed — it's all sitting inside tools like Ahrefs right now, fully visible to anyone willing to look.

If you're new here, welcome to The Branding Agency channel, your source for local SEO that actually works. I'm your host, Steve, and thanks so much for making us part of your marketing education today. I've run this exact audit for dozens of clients, and in nearly every case the gap between the business ranking number one and the one buried on page five comes down to three or four very specific decisions — decisions you can see, copy, and execute. In this video I'm walking you through that entire process step by step. And here's the bonus: this same audit works for AI search. The signals that put you in Google's AI Overviews are almost identical to the ones that put you on page one. One audit, two wins.

Before we get into the steps, I want to address AI search directly, because this is where local SEO is shifting fast. Ahrefs now has a tool called Brand Radar. It tracks how often a brand or website is being mentioned inside AI-generated responses — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews. You can run your top competitor through it and see exactly how much AI visibility they have and where it's coming from. Those AI mentions don't happen randomly. They're driven by the same signals that produce traditional rankings: backlinks, page authority, schema, content depth. If your competitor is getting pulled into AI answers for local service searches in your city, it's because they've already won the authority game on the fundamentals.

Open your number one ranking competitor in Ahrefs and go straight to their backlink profile. There are three things you're looking for. First, referring domains — not raw backlink count. One website linking to them ten times counts as one referring domain, and this number tells you their actual authority level. Second, which pages are getting links. A lot of businesses have almost all their links pointing to the homepage, but the businesses ranking at the top of the map pack have backlinks pointing to specific service pages and location pages. That's how they rank for "plumber in Concord" and not just their brand name. Third, who is linking to them — specifically local authority: Chamber of Commerce listings, local business association pages, industry directories, local news mentions. A backlink from the Concord Chamber of Commerce carries a completely different signal than a generic directory submission.

If your competitor has 47 referring domains and you have 12, you know your gap — and more importantly, you can see exactly where their links came from. Those are linkable assets you can go get too. The number one mistake I see here: businesses try to close the backlink gap by blasting directories. Five highly relevant local links will outperform 50 generic ones every single time. Start with quality and local relevance.

Next, pull their top pages report. This shows every page on their site ranked by organic traffic. Start with their URL structure — is it keyword and location specific? Something like "HVAC repair Concord CA" versus "services page 7." The businesses ranking at the top make intentional URL decisions: primary keyword in the URL, city in the URL, clean and readable.

Now click into their highest-traffic page. Look at the H1 heading — is the primary keyword in the H1? Is the city name in the H1? Google reads the H1 as the main topic declaration for the entire page, and if it's missing, that's your gap. Look at the H2 and H3 subheadings — are they structured as questions? Something like "How much does HVAC repair cost in Concord?" is a perfect H2. It matches exactly how people search and how AI Overviews pull direct answers. Then look at content depth. If the number one ranking page has 1,200 words and yours has 300, Google has dramatically more to work with. This is how enterprise SEO agencies structure websites — they're reverse-engineering the format Google has already decided is the best answer for that query. You can do the exact same thing.

This is the step almost nobody looks at during a competitor audit, and it's one of the highest-leverage moves in local SEO. Schema is structured code on a page that tells Google in plain terms what type of business this is, what services they offer, and where they operate — think of it as Google's cheat sheet for your business. Use Google's Schema Markup Validator, paste your competitor's URL, and it'll show you every schema type they have installed.

Here's what you're looking for. Business-type schema — not just generic local business. A plumber should declare plumber schema; an HVAC company should declare HVAC business. That specificity tells Google exactly which ranking categories you qualify for. Service schema listing their specific services with descriptions — this is what feeds AI Overviews when someone asks what an HVAC company actually does. And FAQ schema — if they have a FAQ section with FAQ schema installed, that content is eligible to be pulled directly into AI-generated answers at the top of the results. If your competitor has all three and you have none, that's a significant part of why they rank above you. Schema removes ambiguity, and Google rewards clarity.

The last technical layer, and one of the most overlooked, is how they move authority around their own website. Your homepage is almost always your most authoritative page — it receives the most external backlinks and the most direct traffic. The question is where that authority goes from there. The businesses ranking in every city they serve aren't leaving this to chance: their homepage links directly to their core service pages, their service pages link to location pages, and their location pages link back to service pages. It's a deliberate authority loop, and Google follows it exactly as intended.

In Ahrefs, pull their internal backlinks report. The pages receiving the most internal links are the ones they're signaling to Google as most important. Compare that to your own site. If your location pages for multiple target cities have zero internal links pointing to them from your main pages, Google has no reason to treat them as priorities — you're not telling it where to look. This is a fix you can make today, no tools or developer required. Go to your highest-traffic page, add one sentence, and link it directly to your key location pages. That single change starts moving authority where it needs to go.

Let me come back to AI search and show you something most people aren't doing yet. Inside Ahrefs, pull up Brand Radar on your top competitor — it tells you how often their brand or site is being cited in AI-generated answers across the major platforms. If they're showing up consistently and you're not, that gap has a cause. Three things drive those mentions. First, demonstrated expertise: content that answers questions with genuine specificity — real details about the problem, the diagnosis, the process, the outcome. That depth signals authentic experience to an AI model, and it's not something you can fake with filler. Second, consistent mentions across the web — not just backlinks, but mentions in local news articles, community blogs, and business association write-ups. Third, reviews containing natural location and service language, like "best HVAC company in Concord" written organically by a real customer. Run Brand Radar on your competitor first — that number, how many AI mentions they have versus you, is your AI-search gap in one metric.

Here's the priority order when you run this audit. First, close the backlink gap — identify the five most authoritative local links your competitor has that you don't, and go get those. Second, match their top-ranking page: URL structure, H1 with primary keyword and city, H2s structured as questions, and content depth at least as comprehensive as theirs. Third, implement schema — business type, service, and FAQ — using Google's Schema Markup Validator to see exactly what they have. Fourth, fix your internal linking with a deliberate authority loop connecting homepage to service pages to location pages and back. Fifth, build your web mentions by finding where they're referenced outside their own site and creating the same mentions for your business. Every one of these is a proven lever, and unlike guessing what Google wants, you're working from direct evidence.

If you want me to go deeper on any one of these — the schema buildout, the location page structure, the backlink outreach approach — drop a comment and tell me which one. Already have a website but not ranking in your target cities? We run full local SEO campaigns for service-area businesses: multi-city strategy, location page audits, and ongoing ranking management, and I personally oversee every account. Subscribe for a new local SEO strategy every week. I'll see you in the next one.