How To Perform A Content Gap Analysis On Your Website

You can perform a content gap analysis on your website in two ways. The first is the manual way, and the second is through the use of SEO software programs. 

I will show you how to do both. Note that using software is far better than going manual because software programs are data-driven, and the manual is prone to biases and errors.

The Manual Way to Do Content Gap Analysis

The first step is to map your consumer journey. You may not be selling anything, but you certainly are adding value to your readers. As such, you need to look at your website from the perspective of a reader. 

Readers want content that fulfills their desires. Therefore, you need to understand what readers are looking for. Only then will you succeed as a blogger. 

For example, let say that you have a physical fitness website. In this niche, you need to determine what readers need. 

Here is a sample checklist: 

• Ab exercises
• Leg exercises
• Bicep exercises
• Cardio exercises
• Meals and recipe
• Nutritional drinks

Once you have listed down the readers’ needs, you can check them against your existing content. If you do not have any content for ab exercises, then you need to produce some.

It would help if you visited other physical fitness websites and then looked at their content menu. Determine whether they offer content that would be of value to your readers. From there, build a content plan. 

The second step is to analyze Google’s first page for a particular keyword. For example, let us say that you are targeting the keyword “Ab Workouts That Work.” 

Type that keyword in Google, and then check the results on the first page. What you want to do here is to check the headlines. Do these headlines fulfill what the keyword is supposed to serve to the reader? 

If not, then you just found an opportunity to create content. One excellent example I can use is this keyword: do turtles eat snake eggs?

If you type that on Google search, it will never show any content relevant to that keyword on the first page. Instead, all the articles on the first page are about snakes eating turtles.

From here, I can say that writing an article that directly answers the question “do turtles eat snake eggs?” will certainly rank. Not only that, but it will also serve my audience if I were in the animal or reptile niche.  

The last step is to read the artless that are on the first page. In our example for ab workouts, you must read the articles found on the first page. Identify what they did right and what they did wrong. 

Write yours with a specific focus on the weaknesses of these articles. Your goal is to provide content that is either better or not available from these top-ranking articles. 

The Automated Way to Do Content Gap Analysis

There are many tools you can use to perform a content gap analysis. Examples are MOZ, AHREFS, Semrush, and many more. For this particular example, I will use Semrush. 

In SEO parlance, they refer to content gap analysis as keyword gap analysis. Since machines cannot really measure the quality of content, the content gap analysis they make is based on keywords. 

In Semrush, there is a keyword gap link on the dashboard. The way it works is you compare your domain with a competitor’s domain. After running a comparison, the tool will show you some keyword opportunities. 

Here is an example: 

As you can see, the top keyword opportunities for our example website are: 

• Shopify login
• Gumroad
• Fax Servies Near Me
• Fax Near Me
• DHL eCommerce

The keyword volume shows on the right, indicating the number of searches for that keyword in the last month. If you click on “WEAK,” you will see keywords that you already have on your site, but they have weak search performance. 

Now, if you click on VIEW DETAILS, you will see this:

From this table, you can see keywords missing from your site. You can also see the number of times the exact keywords were used in your competitor’s website, plus the monthly average search volume for it. The KD% means keyword difficulty, or how difficult it is to rank for that keyword.

From here, you can use that base keyword to look for topic ideas. Semrush has a Keyword Magic Tool. Let us say that we want to target “Squarespace pricing” as a keyword. 

We will paste that in the keyword magic tool, and we will see this: 

Besides the keyword, you will see intent. T stands for transactional, where the user is looking for something to purchase. N stands for navigational, where the user wants to find a specific page or site for information.

From here, you can craft articles according to the kind of user you are targeting. You will also see the keyword difficulty, search results for that keyword, volume, and CPC. 

Now, if you click on one of those keywords, you will see this: 

From here, you can begin crafting the kind of article you want to write. There are many keyword variations that you can use in the article. If the keyword is in question form, some people type this question on search. 

Further down, you will see this:

As you can see, these are web pages that have the exact keyword that you are analyzing. What you want to do now is to read the top ten and then write something better, longer, and more valuable. Of course, if you have no time to do this, you can always hire an affordable writer to do it for you. 

Summary: How to Perform A Content Gap Analysis On Your Website

Content gap analysis may sound scary, but really, it is nothing more than creating new content that is fresh and relevant to your target market. 

You can do it the manual way, or you can use a software program. Between these two, I strongly suggest that you use a software program. Not only does it show you what kind of articles to write, but it tells you how your competitors are performing on such content.