Can someone help me analyze 2 of my competitors?

I have 2 competitors who seem to be promoting their businesses in 2 totally different ways and its distracting me in my own approach.

One is doing hardcore seo/backlinking/press releases everything you can think about they do it.

Right now if I search "basement waterproofing" (from my location in NJ) this specific competitor shows up as number 1 all the time.

Their site is:


They have something like 13,000 backlinks, are always getting reviews all over the web, I think it will be impossible to ever really compete against them as they are a LARGE company with locations all over the US.

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Competitor #2 is the total opposite.

I know the owner as my brother use to work for him. The guy owns a small company, has a total of 6 backlinks pointing to his site, basic stuff like bbb, youtube, twitter, etc.

He barely has any reviews from what I can tell, just 1 on his google places, and a couple somewhere else.

HOWEVER, this guys google places has ALWAYS showed up at the top of the searches.

I have NO IDEA how he does this, because he doesn't actually seem to be promoting his site at all.

The only promoting I've ever seen him do was on a blogspot and twitter account. The point is, he seems to be doing nothing, but HOW is his google places always showing up in search results?

His site doesn't rank well organically, but his google places does.
Here is his site:



His google places:


So my main problem here is WHAT I should be focusing on to promote my website, which is here:



The way I see it, if I try to rank my site organically like the first site, I have a very long road ahead of me.

Yet I see the second competitor has done very little, but for some reason his google places ALWAYS ranks well.

Does anyone know WHY his google places ranks so well?
Someone told me his website has great on page SEO. All I see is a bunch of keywords stuffed in his footer.

I'm not an SEO expert so I don't really know how he did it.
Is it sheer luck?

Should I focus more on ranking my website or my google places?

I know our site lacks good on page SEO, but even if we fix it, I don't see our google places ranking up with healthwaynj.

If this was you, how would you approach this? I'm just not sure if I will have better luck trying to rank our google places, or our website.

I'm rather jealous that this guy seems to have spent no time building backlinks, but still has the luxury of being on page 1.

I just can't understand how he did it. If ANYONE has any idea what this man has done, I could really use some advice. My brother use to be friends with him, and said he always got most his leads from his google places.

How can I get my google places ranked like his?

Thanks - Red