When you’re competing against thousands of other websites for Google search engine result page (SERP) rankings, your SEO content strategy can’t exist in a vacuum. You need to understand what your competition is doing, so you can do the same thing better and rank as a result.
SEO Content Gap Analysis can help you achieve this. It refers to the process of evaluating your content to see if it has any “gaps” as compared to the content that is performing well in SERPs.
Maybe your content lacks visuals that reduce its readability. Or maybe it doesn’t cover the topic in quite as much detail. Maybe there are key secondary keywords missing or the information is not presented in the most actionable way. Identifying all such areas where your content falls short and improving upon those can significantly improve SEO performance.
In this blog, we will teach you to perform SEO gap analysis to improve your existing content and overall content strategy. We’ll also suggest tools you can use and tips that can help you maximize your efforts. Let’s dive in.
Because 68% of purchases begin with a Google search, everyone wants to capitalize on SEO. There are typically thousands of content creators vying to rank for any particular keyword. But the thing is, 90.63% of all content gets zero traffic from Google.
What makes the 9.37% winners? They typically have a leg up on the competition.
Their content matches the search intent most closely, is valuable, offers unique insight, and is actually helpful. And even though it costs more time and resources to create content that’s truly better for readers, it’s one of the only ways organizations can maximize their chances of winning long-lasting search rankings.
As you’d guess, this has a direct impact on your SEO performance and the business’s bottom line.
Leveraging insights from your competition’s website is a big component of understanding how you can outperform it. Because it’s not just about keeping up with them; it’s about setting your content apart.
Here’s how monitoring your competition can help your Content strategy stay agile:
Improving every page can’t be a priority for you, especially if you have a huge website. So, start by identifying web pages with the most potential.
These will be keywords that are already ranking between position 10 and 100.
You can also identify pages that were performing well before, but the performance has slowed down over time. Their performance can likely be enhanced with fresh updates.
Note: During the audit, also take time to identify all pages that bring in zero traffic. If the content is poorly written, you may be better off just starting over or merging two topics into one. Don’t bother with content that doesn’t match search intent at all.
Once you have identified which pages need to be improved, look for inspiration to improve it.
Start by looking at web pages already ranking on page 1 for your target keywords. If they are there, they are doing something right. Your job is to identify what that is so you can leverage it for your own growth.
Here are things to look out for:
Improving on even some of these areas will only make your content better and give you a leg up to outrank the competition.
Just producing good content isn’t always enough to win in search results. For competitive keywords, you will also need to see if they get more backlinks than you do or use any on-page tactics that you don’t.
Pay attention to the anchor text they use, the number of backlinks that point towards this particular web page (and the whole domain), and the number of internal and external links. Also, see if they are using any keywords or entities that you aren’t using.
If their load speed is significantly faster, or UX is much cleaner — take note.
Take advantage of these insights to get your site on par with your competitors in terms of authority, user experience, and SEO best practices.
Based on your research, define clear content goals for each piece of content you select for improvement. Prioritize the topics and keywords that are most important for your business, but also have high ranking potential.
Then, develop a content plan that outlines what content needs to be created or improved. Finally, set a schedule for content production and publication.
Craft high-quality content that addresses your audience’s needs, and implement on-page SEO techniques for better search visibility.
Regularly monitor your content’s performance after you make adjustments. It may take a few weeks for positions to change. If nothing happens, go back to the drawing board and make adjustments accordingly.
While you can absolutely do an SEO gap analysis on your own, SEO tools can help you do this at scale and much quicker. There are three types of tools you can use to perform different parts of the SEO gap analysis:
Keyword gap analysis tools are designed to help you discover relevant and valuable keywords your competitor’s ranking for that you aren’t. You can compare your website’s keyword portfolio against up to 5 competitors.
Here are the best tools for this:
The way to perform keyword gap analysis varies across tools, but the logic remains the same: you can see the positions they occupy for different target keywords and uncover keywords you don’t target at all. Some tools like Semrush will also recommend you add certain secondary entities to enhance your page for that particular keyword.
The way to perform keyword gap analysis varies across tools, but the logic remains the same: you can see the positions they occupy for different target keywords and uncover keywords you don’t target at all. Some tools like Semrush will also recommend you add certain secondary entities to enhance your page for that particular keyword.
Competitor analysis tools allow you to identify your competitors, compare their strengths and weaknesses, and make data-driven decisions to improve your own strategy. Here’s how they can help:
SEO content gap analysis allows you to get “quick wins” from SEO. Rather than spending resources on creating content from scratch, you can get more organic traffic by simply leveraging your existing content and improving its performance.
At the heart of this process is the logic that you can simply do better at SEO by creating better content that already exists for that search query.
You can improve your own content by learning from your competitors, who can be a great source for learning what works and what doesn’t. By staying competitive, your business is also better suited to adapt to new trends and maximize its connection with its target audience.