Benchmarking against competitors answers a question your own numbers can't: are you winning or losing the queries that matter in your market. Pick the two or three shops you actually lose customers to, measure share of voice and keyword gaps in Ahrefs or Semrush, and cross-check your own positions in Search Console.
Your traffic can climb every month and still leave you losing, if a competitor is climbing faster on the terms that drive walk-ins. Benchmarking is how you catch that. The trap is comparing yourself to the wrong sites, so the first decision matters more than the tooling.
Pick competitors you actually compete with
Not the national brand with a hundred locations, and not a random shop three states away. Your real competitors are the dispensaries a local searcher sees alongside you for "dispensary near me" and your top product terms. Search your money keywords from a local IP, see who keeps showing up, and that short list is who to benchmark. Benchmarking against a giant you'll never outrank just produces a depressing chart and no action.
Measure share of voice, not raw rankings
Share of voice in Ahrefs or Semrush estimates the slice of total clicks for a keyword set that each site captures, weighted by position. It is a better single number than a rankings list because it accounts for how much traffic each position actually earns. Build a keyword set of your core commercial terms, add your competitors, and read who owns what share. A rival at 40 percent share on your product terms while you sit at 12 is a clearer signal than any individual ranking.
Run the keyword gap
The keyword gap report shows terms your competitors rank for and you don't. This is the most directly useful benchmark output, because it hands you a list of pages to build. Filter it to commercial and local intent, ignore the informational noise you don't want, and you have a prioritized content plan drawn straight from where competitors are eating your lunch.
Cross-check against your own Search Console
Third-party tools estimate; Search Console knows. For the terms the gap analysis surfaces, check the Performance report to see where you already rank and get impressions but few clicks. A term where you sit at position 8 with real impressions is a faster win than one where you don't rank at all, because moving from page two to the top of page one is easier than starting from nothing.
A worked example
A single-location client felt they were "doing fine," and organic sessions were flat but positive. Share of voice on their 30 core product terms came in at 15 percent against a nearby competitor's 38. The keyword gap showed the competitor ranking on 20 concentrate and edible terms the client had no page for. Search Console showed the client already at positions 6 to 11 on eight of those with impressions but almost no clicks. We built and strengthened those eight first, because they were nearly there, and left the from-scratch terms for later. Same market, but now the comparison told them exactly where to push.
Key takeaways
- Benchmark only against the shops you truly compete with locally; comparing up to a national brand yields no usable action.
- Share of voice beats a rankings list because it weights each position by the clicks it actually earns.
- The keyword gap report is a ready-made content plan: the commercial terms competitors rank for and you don't.
- Cross-check gaps against Search Console; a term where you already sit on page two is a faster win than starting from zero.
Frequently asked questions
What metric should I benchmark instead of rankings?
Share of voice, which estimates the portion of total clicks for a keyword set each competitor captures, weighted by position. It is a stronger single number than a rankings list because it reflects how much traffic each position actually earns, so a competitor's dominance shows up as one clear figure.
How do I turn a benchmark into an action plan?
Run a keyword gap report to list the commercial and local terms competitors rank for and you don't, then cross-check those against your Search Console Performance report. Terms where you already sit on page two with impressions are the fastest wins, so prioritize those before building pages from scratch.
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