Content Gap Analysis: A Strategy for More Efficient SEO When Good Content Just Isn’t Enough

What is a content gap analysis? It is a strategic method of finding gaps in the content on your website compared to others in the industry. To simplify, it helps you identify what content topics or keywords your competitors are ranking for, but you aren’t yet! These gaps can be found when you’re creating your website, content, or even doing keyword research. You can utilise them to optimise your content to ensure that your website matches every keyword search related to your industry or business and eventually increase your chances of ranking higher on Google’s search results.

SERPs result when searching SEO Thailand on Google, Rank higher with content gap analysis.

Why Is a Content Gap Analysis Important?

Finding content gaps greatly helps your SEO as it allows you to keep up with your competitors. You can observe your competitors’ business direction and see how their SEO performs. You can also determine which keywords you should prioritise by checking how many keywords in your repository your competitors have already ranked for on Google’s first page. Content gap analysis helps you plan your content marketing strategy so you can create content that includes the keywords of your competitors.

When Should You Begin Your Content Gap Analysis?

You can do it as soon as you start your SEO so that you can plan your keyword research and identify the keywords to include in your content later on.

Ahrefs SEO tool for finding keyword difficulty (SEO keyword related)

How Do You Find Content Gaps?

You can find content gaps in two ways:

  1. Observational Research

    This is similar to doing market research before launching your business, but you specifically study your competitors for SEO purposes. It may take some time to go through your competitors’ websites that rank on Google’s first page to study their website structures, user experience, strengths and weaknesses, and factors that allow them to rank on the first page of Google. It’s useful to keep these questions in mind: is their navigation menu design effective? Is their website layout on both PC and mobile appealing to the users? Does the website load quickly? Is their content mostly informative, instructive, or directly for selling purposes? Is the tone of their content playful, formal, or sarcastic with modern slang? These questions will help you identify gaps in their content that you can fill.

  2. Use Tools

    This way is perhaps more suitable for those who need to perform SEO more methodically, like SEO agencies or freelancers. It’s also useful for marketing teams that need deeper insights that other free tools can’t provide.

Ahrefs is one of the most popular tools used to find content gaps. It can identify which of your competitors’ keywords have already ranked on Google’s first page. You can then include those keywords in your content to boost your rankings or beat your competitors.

If you want your website to appear in Google’s search results, a content gap analysis is a great way to make this happen. It may take time, but it will be with it if you analyse the data and fill the content gaps accordingly.