Content Gap Analysis: How & Why To Do It

When your website ranks for the right keywords, you capture valuable organic traffic that can translate directly into leads, customers, and revenue. But if your competitors are ranking for keywords you’re missing, they’re winning business that could’ve been yours. 

That’s where a content gap analysis becomes essential. This strategic process helps you identify which valuable keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t, reveals topics your target audience is searching for throughout their buyer journey, and uncovers underperforming content that needs optimization. By closing these gaps, you can capture more organic traffic, improve your competitive position, and ensure you’re visible wherever your potential customers are searching. Here’s what you need to know to perform a content gap analysis.

What is a content gap analysis?

A content gap analysis is the process of finding relevant topics you haven’t covered or could cover better to improve your search results. Essentially, you’re filling in the gap between the topics you’re ranking for already and those that could be valuable for you to rank for. 

You can do this by auditing your organization’s current content performance and comparing it to competitors. First, you’ll look at the terms your competitors rank for that you don’t. Then, you’ll identify topics you need to add to your content strategy to address all stages of the customer journey. Finally, you’ll look at your existing content that’s not ranking highly, and develop a plan to close the gap between your content and the competitor content that’s beating it.

Content gap analysis vs. competitor keyword gap analysis

Content gap analysis and competitor keyword gap analysis are different but related concepts:

• Competitor keyword gap analysis. A keyword gap analysis is the process of comparing all the keywords your competitors rank for against the keywords your own content ranks for. 

• Content gap analysis. Content gap analysis includes a comparison of your keyword capture with that of your competitors’, but it also looks at your existing content to identify underperformers and topics that you (and your competitors) could be missing entirely that your target audience is searching for in their customer journey.

How to conduct a content gap analysis

1. Run a keyword gap analysis
2. Audit your existing content
3. Map the buyer journey
4. Create a road map
5. Analyze underperformers
6. Review your content regularly

Here is a step-by-step guide on conducting a content gap analysis:

1. Run a keyword gap analysis 

Use keyword research tools to identify keywords that your competitors rank for, but you don’t. These tools allow you to see how many people search for those terms each month (search volume) and how hard it would be to rank for them (keyword difficulty). From there, you can prioritize which competitor keywords you want to compete for with new or improved content.

2. Audit your existing content

Next, audit the content across your entire website, including landing pages and blog posts. In a spreadsheet or other project management software, pull key details about each page, like:

• Page title (or H1)

• URL

• Focus keyword

• Meta title

• Meta description

• Content type (e.g., blog post, product description, case study)

• Content format (e.g., long-form or short-form text, video, infographic, etc.)

• Date last modified

• The primary call to action (CTA) (e.g., to buy something, subscribe to the newsletter, etc.)

• Content performance metrics (like organic traffic, bounce rate, and conversion rate)

You can export many of these data points from SEO tools like Google Search Console and/or your content management system (CMS).

Identify the underperforming content in terms of average rank and monthly organic search traffic so you can set it aside for optimization.

3. Map the buyer journey

Next, think about your potential customers and what their buyer journey looks like. What are their pain points, and what types of questions are they asking at various stages of the sales funnel? 

To uncover those kinds of audience insights, learn as much as you can about your audience. Survey existing customers and brainstorm the different questions they might be asking. These will give you ideas for new keywords to target.

Then, input those keyword ideas into a keyword research tool and assess them for volume and difficulty. 

4. Create a road map

Once you’ve identified content gaps in your existing content suite, you can decide which opportunities will have the most impact on search rankings and conversion rates. Even if you uncover a large number of gaps, it doesn’t mean you need to create all of that content or overhaul all of your existing content at once.

Consider factors such as search volume and keyword difficulty, and prioritize addressing the gaps that would make the biggest impact on your traffic and conversions. Once you’ve identified the new content you want to create or the existing content you want to update, you can add them to your content calendar to streamline the publishing process. 

5. Analyze underperformers

Now you’ll dig into the details of the underperforming content you want to update. For each underperforming page, look at the competitors that are outranking it on the search engine results page (SERP). Pay attention to how well they answer the user’s question. What information are competitor pages offering that your content isn’t? Is the competitor content better organized, more scannable, or more enriched with multimedia elements like graphics or videos? 

Note your insights for each page, and synthesize them into a plan to update your content to be more competitive.

6. Review your content regularly

A content gap analysis is not something you can only do once. It’s important to run this process regularly, ideally every six to 12 months, so you can make sure your content is still timely, relevant, and competitive. Because new sites pop up all the time and competitors will also be updating their content, you’ll want a way to spot changes between full reviews. 

Luckily, some of this can be automated. SEO tools can track your keyword rankings and alert you when competitors start outranking you, and Google Analytics can send automated reports about drops in traffic or new keywords your site is appearing for. These alerts also help you judge how urgently you need to dive back in with a full content gap analysis.