Sick of your competition outranking you on Google? There’s nothing worse than sitting on the sidelines, wondering how another business managed to score that coveted top search result.

While you may outperform the competitor in terms of business, Google is more concerned with who has the best website rather than the best business.

Search results tend to revolve more around things like the solid use of SEO, monthly traffic, and backlinks.

Not that any of this is rocket science, by the way—though it can sure feel like it after you’ve spent a few evenings squinting at analytics dashboards (most small business owners know the drill). Sometimes it almost looks random how Google ranks things, but dig a little, and you’ll spot the patterns. It’s usually a careful mix of those behind-the-scenes tweaks (people love to harp on keywords and meta tags) and a lot of patience—annoying, but true.

There’s also this weirdly addictive rush in checking your search position after you’ve made even the tiniest change, like switching up a page title or grabbing one new backlink. Nobody admits it, but we all secretly hope for instant jumps within a day—spoiler alert: that doesn’t usually happen. Still, it’s those small victories and the slow, steady shifts up the rankings that keep you hooked. You start noticing what your competitors are doing too, and, well, sometimes it’s just a game of who’s willing to tweak more often.

But this doesn’t have to be bad news.

The key to outranking your competitors lies in using this knowledge to your own advantage.