How to Audit a Competitor's SEO (And Close the Gap in 90 Days)

September 29, 202512 min readBy the GlowRank Team

Every local market has one: the med spa that always ranks first. You search "Botox [city]," they're #1. You search "microneedling [city]," they're #1. You search "laser hair removal [city]," they're probably in the top three.

Most practices look at this and assume the competitor has a bigger budget, better backlinks, or a secret agency relationship. Usually, they don't. Usually, they've just done three or four specific things well, and you can figure out exactly what those things are in a focused afternoon of work.

This post walks through how to audit a competitor's SEO end-to-end, identify exactly where their advantage comes from, and build a 90-day plan to close the gap.

Step 1: Define the right competitor (it's not always who you think)

Before you audit anyone, pick the right target. This is not "the practice I personally think of as my rival." It's "the practice ranking above me for my most valuable search terms."

Open a clean browser (incognito, logged out of Google) and search the top five treatments you offer plus your city. Note the #1 organic result for each. The practice that shows up most often across those five searches is your real competitive target, sometimes it's the rival you expected, often it's a practice you've barely thought about.

Step 2: Audit their Google Business Profile

Start here because GBP drives most of their local pack wins. Pull up their profile and note:

• Number of Google reviews (total and recent, how many in the last 90 days)
• Star rating
• Number of photos on their profile
• Primary category and secondary categories
• Services list completeness
• Description length and specificity
• Posting frequency (click on their "Posts" tab if visible)
• Q&A section, how many questions, whether the business answers them

Now compare each of these to your own profile. In most competitive audits, we find two or three big gaps here, usually review volume, review recency, or photo count. These are the fastest to close.

Step 3: Audit their site structure

Go to their website and look at how it's organized. Specifically:

• How many dedicated treatment pages do they have? (Check the navigation and footer.)
• Does each treatment page target a city, or is it a generic national page?
• How long are their treatment pages? (Word-count them roughly, 500 words? 1,500?)
• Do they have a blog? How often do they post? How recent is the last post?
• Do they have before-and-after galleries, provider bios, or a clear medical director page?

This is usually where the real gaps emerge. A competitor who's ranking #1 often has 15+ dedicated treatment pages while their rivals have 3. They have a blog updated monthly while rivals posted twice in 2023 and then quit.

Step 4: Audit their on-page SEO

Pick their top treatment page (usually Botox) and open your browser's "View Source" or use a free Chrome extension like Detailed SEO. Look at:

• Title tag: Does it include treatment + city? How is it formatted?
• Meta description: Is there a CTA? A phone number? Pricing hint?
• H1: Does it match search intent clearly?
• H2 structure: What questions/topics do they break the page into?
• Internal links: Do they link out to related treatments, blog posts, consultation form?
• Schema markup: Do they have MedicalBusiness, LocalBusiness, or FAQPage schema?
• Image alt text: Are images tagged meaningfully?

Do the same audit on your equivalent page. Note every place they do something you don't.

Step 5: Audit their backlinks

Use a free tool like Ubersuggest, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, or Moz Link Explorer (limited free searches) to pull their backlink profile. Look at:

• Total number of linking domains
• Top 10 most authoritative linking sites
• Local links, chambers, local news, local partnerships
• Industry links, aesthetic journals, supplier sites, product manufacturer directories
• Any unusual high-authority links that look like they'd be replicable (podcasts, guest posts, interviews)

Most of the time, a top-ranking competitor has 20–50 meaningful linking domains while rivals have 5–10. That gap isn't unclosable, but it takes intentional work.

Step 6: Build the gap list

Now synthesize. You should have, roughly, four categories of gaps:

1. GBP gaps, review volume, photos, services, posts
2. Content gaps, missing treatment pages, thin treatment pages, blog frequency
3. On-page gaps, title tags, schema, internal linking, FAQ sections
4. Off-page gaps, backlinks from local and industry sources

Most competitive audits produce 20–40 specific items across these four categories.

The 90-day closing plan

You can't fix 40 items at once. Here's a realistic 90-day sequence:

Days 1–30: Foundation (GBP + existing pages)

• Close every GBP gap you identified. Add services, categories, photos, description.
• Set up a systematic review request process targeting 2–4 new reviews per week.
• Rebuild your top-three treatment pages to match or exceed your competitor's depth.

Days 31–60: Content depth

• Build or rebuild 5–7 more treatment pages, each city-targeted and 1,200+ words.
• Add schema markup (FAQPage and MedicalBusiness at minimum) to every treatment page.
• Start weekly GBP posts. Batch a month at a time.

Days 61–90: Authority building

• Start systematic local link outreach, chamber, local press, event sponsorships.
• Launch or re-launch the blog with 4–8 pillar-supporting posts.
• Measure rankings weekly for your top 10 target keywords and adjust.

At 90 days, most practices following this plan move from page 2 to page 1 for their primary treatment+city queries, pick up several 3-pack positions they didn't have before, and close most of the review and content gaps identified in the audit. The one thing that always lags is backlinks. Those compound slowly, and you should expect that dimension to take six to twelve months to meaningfully shift.