SEO doesn’t stay static for long, and sometimes your strategy needs a little push to keep up. While watching your competitors outperform you can be difficult, it’s also a useful indicator that you’re missing out on hidden keyword opportunities. In situations like this, it’s time to conduct a keyword gap analysis.
In this guide, we’ll break down what keyword gap analysis is, why it’s important, and how to use it to fine-tune your content, improve rankings, and drive organic traffic.
What is Keyword Gap Analysis?
Keyword gap analysis is a strategic SEO process that compares your website’s ranking keywords with those of your competitors. The goal is to identify keyword gaps, i.e., keywords for which your competitors rank that you don’t.
By performing a keyword gap analysis, you can:
- Discover new keyword opportunities
- Identify content gaps on your website
- Gain insight into your competitors’ SEO strategies
- Improve your search engine rankings and increase organic traffic
It’s important to note that keyword gap analysis is different from content gap analysis:
- Keyword gap analysis focuses on specific search terms and phrases.
- Content gap analysis examines broader topics and subject areas.
Both analyses work together to provide a complete view of your SEO opportunities and help you develop a more effective content strategy.
The importance of keyword gap analysis in SEO
Now that we understand what keyword gap analysis is, let’s explore why it’s crucial to any effective SEO strategy. By comparing the keywords your website ranks for with those of your competitors, you can uncover valuable opportunities to improve your search engine visibility and increase organic traffic.
Here are the reasons why keyword gap analysis is so important for SEO:
- Reveals untapped keyword opportunities.
- It helps you understand your competitors’ SEO strategies.
- Allows you to identify content gaps on your website.
- Provides insights to refine and optimize your existing content.
- It informs your content strategy and helps prioritize the creation of new content.
When you perform a keyword gap analysis, you look for keywords where your competitors rank well and you don’t. These gaps represent key opportunities to create new content or improve existing pages to improve your rankings.
An effective SEO gap analysis goes beyond keywords and includes:
- Types and formats of content your competitors are successfully using.
- On-page optimization factors.
- Link profiles and link building strategies.
- Technical elements of SEO.
By identifying these gaps across multiple SEO factors, you can develop a comprehensive strategy to close the gap with your competitors and improve your organic search performance.
Remember, keyword gap analysis is an ongoing process. The SEO landscape is constantly changing, with competitors adjusting their strategies and new opportunities emerging. Regular analysis helps you stay ahead of the curve and continually refine your approach.
How to do a keyword gap analysis
Now that you know what a keyword gap analysis is, let’s talk about how to conduct one.
Follow these six steps and you’ll be on your way to outperforming the competition in no time.
1. Choose your competitors
You can’t perform a keyword gap analysis without identifying your competitors. A competitive analysis reveals your competitors’ keywords.
For example, let’s say you have a budgeting app that helps people manage their finances.
You can find the most relevant competitors by searching for phrases like:
- “Student Budget App”
- “Budgeting app that connects to the bank”
- “Budgeting App for Couples”
Google’s autocomplete feature is a great way to do this.
When analyzing search results pages (SERPs), make a list of all relevant organic competitors ranking for key keywords. Avoid paid search results.
Choosing competitors instead of major publications helps you identify unique, more valuable keywords for better ranking opportunities.
It also ensures that the content gap remains relevant and doesn’t include keywords outside your niche.
2. Identify keyword gaps
To discover keyword gaps, you need to analyze which terms your competitors are ranking for and compare them with those used by your website. This will allow you to identify opportunities for improvement and optimization.
You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner or more advanced platforms like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to perform this analysis.
Steps to identify keyword gaps:
- Enter your competitor’s URL into the tool you’re using. This will generate a list of keywords their website is ranking for.
- Filter relevant keywords based on criteria such as search volume, competition level, and relevance to your business.
- Compare to your own website: Look for keywords that your competitor is ranking well for that you aren’t using yet, or where you could improve your ranking.
- Identify different types of opportunities:
- New Keywords: Keywords that your site isn’t using at all.
- Underperforming Keywords: Keywords that you appear for, but in very low positions in the SERPs.
- High-potential keywords: Keywords with high search volume and low competition that could represent a growth opportunity.
In addition to the tools mentioned above, you can complement your analysis with:
- Google Search Console, to see which terms are already generating impressions and clicks on your site.
- Google Trends, to evaluate the trend and seasonality of certain keywords.
- Google related searches and autocomplete, which can reveal valuable terms that users frequently search for.
This analysis will allow you to discover strategic opportunities to optimize your content, improve your ranking, and attract more organic traffic.
3. Prioritize relevant keywords
Whether you used Keyword Planner or a combination of tools to identify keyword gaps, you need to filter and prioritize the most relevant keywords.
You can identify the most important keywords by prioritizing them according to the following criteria:
- Business Potential: How relevant is the keyword to your business?
- Search volume: How many people search for that keyword per month?
- Traffic Potential: How much traffic can that keyword generate?
- Ranking Difficulty: How easy is it to rank for that keyword or phrase?
4. Group keywords into clusters
Keyword clustering involves organizing relevant keywords based on search intent and similarity in search results pages (SERPs).
This allows you to create a single page instead of multiple. It also helps avoid content cannibalization and unnecessary keyword overlap.
Additionally, grouping keywords and relevant content contributes to content relevance and can strengthen topical authority.
It’s a good idea to create a spreadsheet with your keyword research to analyze search intent and similarity across SERPs, which will make clustering easier.
There are four main types of search intent:
- Informational: The user wants to learn more about a topic or product, for example, “what is a budgeting app?”
- Navigational: The user searches for a specific page or website, for example, “NerdWallet website.”
- Commercial: The user is interested in making a purchase, but needs more information, for example, “best budgeting apps for managing money.”
- Transactional: The user is looking to make a specific purchase, for example, “buy the budgeting app.”
5. Create high-quality content
You can spend a lot of time finding the right keywords and organizing them into content clusters, but if your content is poor, you’ll struggle to rank.
Instead of writing content just for the sake of writing, every piece you publish should provide value to your readers. It should be useful.
According to Google’s Useful Content Guidelines, you should:
- Focus on creating content for people first.
- Avoid generating content just for search engines.
So, while SEO is still important and should guide your articles, it’s not everything: you can’t stuff your article with keywords just to try to rank high on Google. The same goes for updating and improving your content.
When updating or creating new content, be sure to include keywords in these four key elements for effective on-page optimization:
- URL: The address of the web page.
- Meta Title and Description: The title and description that appear in search results.
- Headings: Subheadings that divide your article into easier-to-read sections.
- Main content: The body of the article.
6. Track the performance of your content
You’re not done once you publish new content with your new keywords.
For your content strategy to be effective, you must constantly monitor and track its performance.
Updating and improving content is a great way to increase organic traffic to your website. In most cases, updating content is easier than writing it from scratch.
But how do you know which items to update?
You can use the Performance Report in Google Search Console (GSC).
To do this, open GSC and click the Performance tab in the left sidebar. You can filter your pages using key metrics such as:
- Impressions and clicks.
- Click-through rate (CTR).
- Average position in the SERPs.
Then, compare the performance of your content to identify drops in traffic.
Keyword gap analysis is a powerful tool in your SEO arsenal, helping you uncover valuable opportunities to improve your search visibility and outperform your competitors.
By following the steps we’ve outlined—from identifying competitors and gathering data to implementing insights and continually monitoring progress—you can develop a solid, data-driven SEO strategy.
