What Is A Content Gap Analysis?
A content gap analysis is a content strategy and an SEO technique to find gaps in your website’s content sets. It maps out your customer’s primary questions, goals, and concerns throughout their purchase journey and then measures against your current content offerings to find gaps.
Two types of gap analysis are typically performed; internal gap analysis and competitive gap analysis. We will explain both; however, this article will address how to do a competitive gap analysis to take Google traffic and search share from your competition.
What Is An Internal Website Gap Analysis?
Keeping customers loyal to your brand involves creating quality content, and addressing why customers continue to find your company’s helpful information should be among your top priorities.
An internal content gap analysis aims to find gaps in content where users are underserved or are searching for something on your website that you don’t have content to address. Once this is identified, the next step is creating great content to serve users better, increase engagement, and help create a better experience once they get to your website.
What Is A Competitive Keyword Gap Analysis?
Looking into the realm of content that your competition has been creating might unlock some hidden potential for future blog posts and articles. This SEO content gap analysis and audit work have been around for years, regardless of your website’s stage, whether you’re a startup or your brand.
A competitive gap analysis is an SEO strategy that aims to identify gaps in keywords that the competitors are ranking for – and which you are not – that you can create content for to organize better than them and steal their organic traffic and search engine rankings.
The process answers three primary competitive SEO questions:
- First, which keywords are your competitors ranking for that you are not?
- Second, what must you do to take traffic and search share away from your competitors?
- Third, what content must you create to beat your competition in the SERPs?
How To Do A Competitive Content Gap Analysis In 10 Simple Steps
- Use a tool such as SEMrush to export all the keywords your competition ranks for.
- Delete all rows except Keyword, Ranking, Search Volume, and URL – these are the only ones you need.
- Organize the list by URL to find the content that is ranking for the most number of keywords.
- Scrub the list to remove any URLs that are not relevant.
- Analyze the content – explore each URL ranking to determine the topics written about (H2 & H3 tags). Then, compare how competitors used SEO tactics to rank in search results.
- Analyze the keywords that each URL is ranking for within the top 20 SERPs (if this data set is too small, you can do the top 50 or even the top 100) – these will be keywords to add to the article where it makes sense.
- Organize the keywords for each URL by search volume – this, combined with step 5 above (and step 8 below), will give you an idea of primary and secondary topics and long-tail keywords to include in your blow article.
- Utilize a keyword research tool to find additional keywords about the topic that can be used to expand on the competitor’s article.
- Create a new and improved article that goes above and beyond what the competitor has written. Your creative team should be able to add a fresh spin on what value the competition has created.
- Repeat these steps on as many competitors or industry websites as possible.
How Often Should a Gap Analysis Be Performed?
We recommended performing a CGA four times yearly and conducting the analysis at least once each quarter. This will provide insights into the following quarters’ content creation strategy and how to better serve website users.
By conducting a regular CGA for each quarter, your content will continue to evolve, and your business goals will be easier to achieve. You’re making the responsible decision to take steps to keep your website fresh. Keep readers interested in coming to your site to find the needs that your brand intends to serve.
Tools for Comparing Your Content to Competitors
Looking through content to compare with multiple competitors will help you gain insight, but managing it is complex. Luckily, the digital age of marketing has presented business owners with various tools to help alleviate some of the stress of conducting a successful CGA.
SEMrush – This company provides SEO tools for competitive businesses. Their product offerings include tools to help gain more organic traffic, tools to help audit your content for backlink usage, and a device called Competitive Advantage that will analyze your content compared to competitor materials.
Following Up After CGA Is Complete
The point of creating a CGA is to achieve results with future content. Use the information gained from each CGA to inspire an enlightened perspective when creating new content for your website in the future. As we advance with new ideas for keyword use and ideas from analyzing competitor content will make a difference in achieving goals for future projects.
In addition to making a stride to create better content in the future, the CGA you perform for each quarter should go towards improving previous content. The content you analyze with each CGA may be altered to improve its ranking in search engines by changing the keywords used in the metadata of the analyzed web pages. Your company’s relationships with other businesses and individuals will contribute to helping minimize the gap in your previously released content. Feel free to reach out if you need help with your enterprise SEO or content creation.