Your search competitors aren’t the firms you pitch against.

Because SERPs are populated by whoever answers the query best, which routinely means directories, marketplaces, review sites, publishers, forums and Reddit threads rather than the firms you pitch against. Analysing only your commercial rivals misses the sites actually occupying your target results, and the strategic conclusion changes completely: sometimes the correct move is getting listed on the directory that owns the SERP, not trying to outrank it.

SERP-level competitor identification per query cluster (who actually appears), content-pattern analysis (what page types and depth win, and why), technical and authority comparison, keyword-gap review read for patterns rather than exported wholesale, backlink-source analysis focused on repeatable earning routes, and a candid assessment of which positions are realistically contestable given your authority. It ends with a gap list ranked by winnability, not a data dump.

By comparing the delta rather than the destination: how far the leaders sit ahead on authority, content depth and topical coverage, and whether that distance is closable with the budget and time available. Some head terms are simply not worth attempting for years, and saying so protects budget for the terms that convert anyway. The most useful output of most analyses is the concede list.

Routes, not targets. Chasing individual links competitors have is mostly futile; identifying how they systematically earn coverage (data studies, sector press relationships, tool assets, community participation) is repeatable. We map the earning patterns behind their strongest referring domains and check which are reproducible for your business, then feed those into the link plan rather than compiling a wish list of URLs.

Increasingly yes: prompt-sampling your money questions across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews shows which sources engines cite, which is a different competitive set again (often review platforms, comparison sites and well-structured specialist content). Being absent there while ranking in classic search is now a common blind spot, and the fixes differ from ranking work.

Deeply once a year, lightly each quarter inside a retainer, and immediately after major SERP shifts or a competitor's visible strategy change. Continuous rank-tracking of competitors is cheap and useful; continuous deep analysis is a consulting habit that bills well and changes little, because competitive positions move slowly outside genuine market disruption.

Standalone analyses from £850 for focused markets, £1,500-£2,500 for multi-service, multi-market or enterprise scope including AI-answer sampling. Included as part of audits and retainer onboarding, since strategy without competitive context is guesswork with a spreadsheet attached.