How to Check What Your Competitors Are Doing Online, for Free

You do not need a paid tool to learn what your competitors do online. Most of their marketing is public. You only need to know the right places.

This guide shows a method that takes about two hours. It uses free sources. At the end, you will have one page of notes that tells you what to copy, what to avoid and where the gap is.

Choose five competitors, not fifty

A long list wastes time. Pick five businesses that sell what you sell to the same customers.

Use two sources. First, search on Google for the thing you sell and the city your customers live in. List the businesses that appear in the top results. Second, ask three recent customers who else they checked before they chose you. Customers know your real competitors better than you do.

Add the names to a simple table. Use one row for each business and one column for each thing you will check.

Read their website like a customer

Open each website on your phone. Most of your customers use a phone, so this is the true view.

Count how many seconds the page takes to load. Read the first screen and ask one question. Do I know what they sell and where they work? Look for a price, a phone number and a clear button to contact them. Note what they promise and what proof they show. Proof means reviews, photos of real work, named clients and years in business.

Then look at the page address of each service page. Businesses that name a service and a city in the page title often plan to rank for that search. You can see their plan without a tool.

Check how they look on Google

Search for your own main service and your city. Do not use a private window, because location changes the result. Note who appears in the map results and who appears in the normal results.

Click each map result. Check the star score, the number of reviews and the date of the latest review. A business with many recent reviews will usually rank above a business with old ones. Check the photos and the list of services. Note which categories they chose.

This takes ten minutes and often shows the biggest gap. Many small businesses have a profile that is half empty.

Check if they pay for ads

Two free tools show paid ads. The Meta Ad Library shows the ads that a business runs on Facebook and Instagram. Type the business name and read the ads. The Google Ads Transparency Center shows the ads that an advertiser runs on Google.

Note three things. Does the business run ads at all? How many ads has it run, and for how long? What offer does it use? An ad that runs for months usually works well enough to keep.

If a competitor runs no ads, you can learn from that too. It can mean the channel is open to you. It can also mean the channel does not pay in your trade, so test with a small budget first.

Watch their social media for a month

Do not judge a page by one good post. Follow each competitor for four weeks.

Record how often they post and what type of post receives the most comments. Note whether they answer comments. Note what they sell in the posts and what they only share for fun. A page with thousands of followers and no comments is a weak page, so do not fear it.

Read the comments under their posts. Customers say what they want and what annoys them. That is the best free research you will find. List the questions that nobody answers. Each one is a topic for your own content.

Turn the notes into three decisions

A table of facts does nothing until you act on it. Read your notes and make three decisions.

First, choose one thing that every competitor does and you do not. This is a gap in your basics, so fix it first. Second, choose one thing that no competitor does and customers want. This is your chance to stand out. Third, choose one thing that competitors do and you will skip, because it costs more than it returns.

Repeat the check every quarter. Markets move, and a competitor who was weak last year can improve fast.

When to ask for help

This method shows you what competitors do. It does not show their traffic, their keywords or their sales. A paid tool and a trained analyst can fill those gaps.

If you want a second view, you can book a free digital marketing consultation. If your notes show that competitors win on search, our SEO services in Lagos explain how we close that gap.

Before you change your plan, check that your own marketing works. Our guide on how to measure your marketing without a full analytics setup shows how to do that.