Your competitor ranks higher because Google currently sees their website and Google Business Profile as more relevant and trustworthy than yours for that search. That's fixable.
Common reasons a competitor outranks you:
- Their Google Business Profile is fully optimised and has more reviews
- They have dedicated service pages you're missing
- Their website loads faster and performs better technically
- They've built more local citations and backlinks over time
A quick audit will tell you exactly which gaps to close. In most cases it's not that the competition is doing something clever. They're just doing the basics consistently.