In this AI era, websites are creating more content than ever before. This also means the competition among sites for the same keywords is stiffer. You must stand out from the heap of content churned out daily to rank well on the search engines.
One of the best ways to do that is by conducting a content gap analysis. This can help you find gaps in your or other site’s content. You can, in turn, improve on it and outrank the sites.
What is Content Gap Analysis?
When you do a content gap analysis, basically, what you are doing is to check for holes in your current content. You check for missing pieces in your content that must be aligned with your site’s needs or target audience.
You can also do a content gap analysis to find new keywords worth targeting. The analysis may check into the following:
- Landing pages
- Blog posts
- Webpages
- Social media content and more
Why Content Gap Analysis is Important
Finding and filling holes in your content can strengthen your SEO and marketing strategy. This can help your site to perform better in the search ranking. It can also help you become an authority online so more people can find your site, products, or services.
Content gap analysis can also help you to:
- Find topics that your readers will resonate with
- Optimise content for the best results
- Improve conversion by adding lead magnets to your site
- Discover low-competition niches or sub-niches
- Respond to customers’ needs at different stages of the sales funnel
- Identify high-value content that drives traffic to your site
- Improve visibility on search engines.
How to Do a Content Gap Analysis
Here are the steps to follow when doing a content gap analysis:
Analyse the SERPs
The main reason why you are publishing content is because you want to rank on Google. Therefore, if you would like to rank well on the search engines, you will need to check the content on the search engines. You might realise that most of the content out there may be:
- Outdated
- Complex
- Lacking details
- Not usable
- Not impressive enough to be shared
Once you discover this, your goal should be to fill these gaps. Pay special attention to the top 3 results. Is there information these sites cover that needs to be added to your content?
Consider if there is a new angle of articles that you can cover. Find a new way to cover these topics, including case studies, anecdotes, and insights that bring your articles to life. When you do that, you will have a great post that will likely rank well on the search engines.
Analyse Your Content
Analyzing the content on your site that is not performing well can help you discover the areas to improve. You will also realize that not all visitors to your site are looking to buy products. Some of them are just looking for information.
Most sites do not have content for all the sales funnel stages. They only have blog posts to bring in a wider audience. But to convert visitors into buyers, they also add money keywords.
This can result in content gaps for people between these categories. When doing content gap analysis, you should check whether you also have content for the consideration and decision stage on top of the other two categories. Basically, the four stages of the sales funnel that your content should cover are:
- Awareness content. This aims to provide your audience with a solution to a problem they may be facing. The informational content addresses the problem without selling to the reader.
- Consideration. In this stage, people compare different solutions to their challenges. The content to create in this stage may be in the form of “comparison guides,” “best of,” “reviews,” etc.
- Decision. This is where the money pages are. It includes the sales pages, service pages, and more.
- Success. This aims to provide the customers with their desired results.
You should ensure your readers don’t miss content in any of these stages.
Improve Meta titles and Descriptions
Once you have identified the pages with gaps, you will have a good idea of the content to create. You will also see the existing content that needs improvement. Now, you can focus on the website meta titles and descriptions as they impact SEO. Consider if there are some quick improvements that you can make to improve traffic. If your content is on page 2 of Google, you can improve its ranking with these small details.
Remember to analyze the page and query combination ranking highly and consider those with a low CTR. You can increase the CTR by adding high-quality meta descriptions and titles. Even as you try to improve your ranking, you should not forget to make the most of your current rankings.
Use SEO Tools to Find Content Gaps
While you can do content gap analysis manually, this will take a lot of time and effort. Using the best free SEO tools is an easier way of doing so. There are also great paid tools like Ahref and Semrush, some of which have a content gap feature. All you need is to enter the url of your competitor, and they will show you a list of keywords they rank for.
Final Thoughts
One of the ways in which you can detect gaps in your content is by doing a content gap analysis. This can help you create a strategy for content development. In turn, you will provide value to your audience and bring more customers.
When combined with an SEO audit analysis, this can help you rank better. By following the steps in this article, you can easily identify gaps in your content and create useful content that will help rank on the SERPs.
