Why does my competitor rank above me?
Six usual causes. Twenty minutes with their site open next to yours will tell you which.
SHORT ANSWER
Six common causes: they have more and fresher reviews; their Google Business Profile is more complete; they have pages targeting the specific searches you only mention in passing; their site is faster or works better on a phone; they are physically closer to where people search from, which you cannot change; or their site has been around longer with more links pointing at it. The twenty-minute comparison below identifies which, and four of the six are fixable within a season.
The twenty-minute comparison
- Search the term you are losing. Note who is above you and in what order.
- Open their Google profile next to yours. Compare review count, review recency, photo count, and whether attributes are filled in.
- Open their site. Count pages. Note whether they have pages for the attraction, big rigs, monthly, and seasonal.
- Open both sites on your phone. Time them.
- Run both through the free checker and compare the results.
What you will usually find
Most often it is reviews and profile completeness, not anything clever. A competitor with 180 recent reviews and 40 photos beats a park with 45 reviews from two seasons ago, regardless of website quality. The second most common finding is that they have a page for the search and you have a sentence.
The one you cannot fix
Proximity. If they are in town and you are eleven miles out, they win searches made from town. Stop fighting that one and win the searches you can: the attraction, the highway, the specific features, the guest types. A rural park competing on "RV park [town]" against an in-town park is spending money on a search it will not win.
What to do first
Whichever gap is largest in the comparison. If it is reviews, start asking after every stay, this week. If it is pages, write the one for the search you most want. If it is the profile, spend an hour filling it in completely. Do one thing properly rather than five things halfway.
Related questions.
How many reviews do I need to outrank a competitor?
There is no number. Recency and steadiness matter more than total. A park getting a few new reviews monthly beats one with more reviews that all stopped two years ago.
Can I outrank a park that is closer to town than mine?
Not usually for town searches. You can win attraction searches, feature searches, and highway searches, which are often higher intent anyway.
How long does it take to catch up to a competitor?
Three to six months for organic search. Map results can shift in four to eight weeks if the gap is profile completeness or reviews.
Should I copy what my competitor is doing?
Learn from the structure, not the words. Copying their copy is both useless for ranking and obvious to guests who look at both.
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