How To Do a Keyword Gap Analysis

Organic traffic drives rapid growth, but most markets are saturated, and it’s not always easy to gain new customers through search due to this. With so many competitors, how do you gain a foothold?

The answer is to target low-hanging fruit through an SEO gap analysis. By looking for valuable keywords you’ve missed, you can maximize the return on your SEO investment. 

What Is a Keyword Gap Analysis?

A keyword gap analysis compares the keywords your site currently ranks for against those your competitors rank for. When they rank for a keyword you don’t, that’s a gap — and a new potential ranking opportunity.

These gaps may represent keywords you’re targeting that you aren’t ranking well for or for which you haven’t yet created content. 

Of course, just identifying gaps doesn’t offer a lot of insight, which is why a keyword gap analysis also looks at other factors, including:

• Search volume. How many searches does the keyword attract? Higher search volumes often lead to more competition, but targeting terms with limited volume may not offer a positive return on your time.
• Keyword difficulty. How hard will it be to rank for the keyword? More competitive keywords are harder to rank for, especially if you don’t have a high domain authority.
• SERP features. Do competitors hold positions in snippets and other SERP features relevant to the keyword? This, too, is a gap you may want to target.

Why Is a Keyword Gap Analysis Important?

Quality keyword research involves a variety of different techniques. A keyword gap analysis is one way to identify terms you may not have come across otherwise and provides insight into how your competition is structuring their content creation.

A keyword gap analysis can help you:

• Reveal low-hanging fruit. Chances are, there are lucrative keywords you aren’t targeting. Often, these are long-tail keywords — lengthier and highly specific terms that are more difficult to find through standard keyword research. 
• Uncover missed opportunities. If you don’t use keyword research as a tool for content ideation, you’ve likely missed some surprising topics.
• Deciding content direction. Keyword gaps give you a better idea of what types of content you should create. 
• Reach competitive parity. Inevitably, you’ll need to target several keywords your rivals already rank for and follow some of the same strategies to tap into your ideal audience. 

Keyword gap analysis can also help you spot changes in consumer sentiment or trends that you may not have been aware of.

How To Do a Keyword Gap Analysis

How To Do a Keyword Gap Analysis With Ahrefs Organic Competitors

Ahrefs provides competitive insights you can use to build out your SEO content strategy. If you’re not sure who you should consider a competitor, you can let Ahrefs highlight some potential domains for you.

1. Start by entering your domain into the Site Explorer tool.

2. Once the dashboard comes up, click on “Organic competitors” under the “Organic search’ drop-down.

Ahrefs will provide a graph showing your estimated organic traffic and organic traffic value as compared to the top five domains it considers as your competition.

In addition, it provides a table featuring twenty competitors and estimates for how many keywords they’ve captured and their associated traffic.

Click on the numbers in one of the keyword columns to view a content gap analysis between the domain you input into Site Explorer and the competitor you click.

Now you can see a list of keywords your site isn’t ranking for that your competitor is.

Not all of these keywords will be worth targeting, but they can help you spot content gaps and provide insight into your competition’s keyword strategy.

How To Do a Keyword Gap Analysis With Ahrefs Content Gap

If you have particular sites you want to assess your site against, enter your URL into Site Explorer. When the Overview report appears, click on “Content gap”

Now you can enter multiple competitors’ URLs to assess. Click “Show keywords” when you’re ready to generate the report.

This view shows only the keywords for which at least one of your competitors is ranking in the top ten but you aren’t.

I like to winnow down the list by looking at keywords with a lower keyword difficulty since these terms tend to be easier to rank for. I also look for themes — semantically related terms with identical search intent that can be used interchangeably on a page. Once I’ve got some good keyword ideas, I return to my content strategy to flesh out worthwhile topics.

Doing a Keyword Gap Analysis With Semrush

Semrush makes it easy for you to perform detailed research into your competitors’ SEO tactics. Plus, the platform also provides tools to help you determine who those potential competitors are if you don’t already have that information.

To find relevant competitors through Semrush:

1. Navigate to the Organic Research tool.

2. Enter your website URL and run a search.
3. Click the competitors tab at the top of the results page.

This tool isn’t 100% accurate, so use your discretion. Visit the sites shown to determine which are truly your competitors. 

Once you know your main competitors, head over to the Keyword Gap tool next. 

Enter your website URL again, followed by the URLs of up to four competitors. You can also choose between root domains, subdomains, and subfolders, making it easy to filter down to just a site’s blog or a specific category of product pages. Click “Compare” to run the analysis.

The Keyword Gap tool lists several categories on the results page, including the following:

• Shared Keywords: Look for opportunities to improve your rankings above your competitors. Perform a content gap analysis to determine ways you can make your content better.
• Missing Keywords: These are terms that all of the competitors entered are ranking for that you aren’t. These are the gap terms. Apply filters to limit these to keywords matching your search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent needs.
• Weak and Strong Keywords: These tabs list keywords both you and your competitors rank for but limit the results to terms you rank lower or higher for. This information is useful for content optimization.
• Untapped Keywords: These are keywords that at least one of your competitors rank for that you don’t. You can view these as gap terms too.

You can filter the results further within any keyword tab, limiting the output to terms that meet a specific search volume or difficulty rating. Choose the filters that match your needs and export the whole keyword list or a selection of terms as needed.

What To Do With a Keyword Gap Analysis

So you’ve completed your keyword gap analysis and have a results page full of potential keywords. Now what?

Before using this data, you’ll need to subject it to further processing to eliminate irrelevant terms and group everything in a way that’s easy to work with.

1. Gather a List of Potential Keywords

The first step to refine the keywords you’ve found through competitive analysis is to export them into a list. To do this, take a look at the available options. You can usually export the list as a spreadsheet, so choose a format that works with the other tools you intend to use.

The other benefit of a spreadsheet is that you can filter and sort the data in various ways beyond what’s available through the content gap tool you’re using. For example, you can adjust any data column in Google Sheets to sort your keywords by search volume and other metrics.

2. Group Keywords Into Themes

Grouping keywords can help you identify worthwhile themes so you can better plan your content.

To organize your keywords into appropriate themes:

1. Identify core themes that match your business. If any keywords fit these core themes and have sufficient search volume, consider planning new pillar content around them.
2. Cluster all related keywords. For example, for a theme about smart home technology, you’d group queries such as “what is a smart home” and “benefits of smart homes.”
3. Analyze the search intent. Keywords such as “how to grow tomatoes” will require different content than keywords such as “best varieties of tomato seeds” despite having a similar overarching theme. That’s because the former carries informational intent, and the latter is commercial.

SEO tools, like Semrush’s Keyword Manager, can automate the clustering process. However, you’ll still need to manually review everything before using the data for content planning.

You can also use the following prompt with ChatGPT:

3. Pick Out the Best Opportunities

Not all keywords are worth targeting, so you’ll need to refine your results to identify the most valuable. To do this:

• Filter out keywords that aren’t related to your primary pages or that aren’t of interest to your target audience. 
• Remove keywords that have too high of a keyword difficulty, or put them on the backburner unless they represent an important opportunity for you to showcase your expertise to your target audience.
• Balance the search volume against the difficulty rating. Targeting multiple keywords with lower volumes may be more worthwhile if you’re likely to rank high on the SERPs for these terms.

4. Put Your Research Into Action

Use your keyword gap analysis to:

• Plan new pillar content. Base this content around the head keywords you’ve found or integrate relevant long-tail keywords into a chosen topic.
• Boost your blog strategy. Uncovering keyword opportunities is like finding a treasure map. Integrate new keywords into your blog strategy to better compete in your industry.
• Update old content. Fresh content generally ranks higher in Google. However, there’s more to it than just changing the date. Look for opportunities to expand on old content with new information and keywords that match its theme.
• Expand topic clusters. Create new subtopic pages to support existing pillar pages.
• Optimize for featured snippets. Work relevant keywords into short-form answers within your content to gain featured snippets.
• Create FAQ sections. Add FAQ sections to existing pages to optimize for question-style keywords related to your keyword theme.

Take Your Keyword Research to the Next Level

Keyword research and SEO gap analysis are important tools for identifying ranking opportunities and establishing a well-rounded keyword strategy. They help you grow your search presence and make it easier for potential customers to find your products and services.

If your keyword strategy isn’t helping you connect with your target audience, getting it on track is crucial for future SEO success. Schedule a free consultation to discover how our keyword research services can help you reach your goals.