How to perform SEO Content Gap Analysis like a Pro?

What is SEO Content Gap Analysis? 

Content gap analysis is the process of assessing existing content topics to determine if there are gaps or lost opportunities that can be improved. Performing content gap analysis is a smart way to find a “gap” in your content and aims at attracting more traffic, transforming more leads into customers, and adding more value to your target audience. It helps in finding new opportunities and understanding how to update older content that can significantly improve your SEO, including rankings and organic traffic.

By choosing to hire SEO experts you can have a thorough analysis of the existing content, to identify where your readers may be lacking valuable resources that may buy time. You may also find opportunities for new keywords that you are not currently investigating in your existing content.

Why Is Content Gap Analysis Important? 

The main reason to investigate content gaps is to improve content performance in terms of SEO and social sharing. Below are some strategies you can use to get the most out of your content gap analysis. Your discoveries from this process mainly lead to:

• Updation of existing content
• Creation of new content based on viewer insights

Content gap analysis often includes the following research:

• Web page
• Blog articles
• Social media content
• Home page
• Ebooks and downloadable files
• Other content resources

Performing content gap analysis is important for finding content gaps, thus making it easier for users to find and buy websites.

How do a Content Gap Analysis and SEO Work Together? 

If you contact a professional SEO company, it helps you identify and analyze website content auditing and SEO content gap analysis. This helps you generate ideas for your campaign topics and keywords. This process consists of two main steps:

• Which keywords are ranked by competitors, but not by you?
• Which keywords are used by your competitors to stay on the first page and which keywords keep you on other pages?

As a result of the research, the data studies by the SEO company can provide a clear direction for content improvement. 

Mapping Your Content to the Buyer’s Journey 

You must map your business content to the buyer’s journey, which means you need to be aware of the problem, aware of the solution, and the final decision-making stage of the purchasing process. When performing a content gap analysis, you need to determine if you have content at each stage of awareness, review, decision, and success of the goal-achieving process.

1. The Awareness page targets keywords related to the problem the viewer is facing. This content is designed to address this issue and provide valuable information, but it cannot immediately turn your followers into customers.
2. At the consideration stage, people compare different solutions to their problems. You can read comparison guides, reviews, or “best” posts. You can create content that compares your service/product to that of your competitors, or you can simply present your brand as one of many solutions in a summary post. 
3. In the decision phase, most “money” pages like sales pages, and service pages, are displayed. These act as a final checkpoint before a lead purchase from you or contacts you. These pages are more branded than the content of your awareness and consideration.
4. Finally, successful content is used to reassure customers that they are getting the results they want. This can be a simple thank-you page or a follow-up email sequence that connects to continuous support or asks for reviews.

Performing a content gap analysis will help you see if you have content for every offer on your website at every step of your buyer’s journey. An SEO company helps you map your content to the buyer’s journey

The two main strains of content gap analysis in SEO: 

There are two main directions for SEO content gap analysis:

1. Competition-based content gap analysis

The first and the most common version is created through competitive analysis. This is the easiest way to get started with the right tools. including:

• Find keywords that rank your page
• Find keywords that are ranked on competitors’ pages
• Create a list of unranked competitor keywords
• Practice your theory, assuming why your site is not ranked by these terms

2. Market-based content gap analysis

The second type of content gap analysis includes more raw keyword surveys. It’s about finding loopholes in what your competitors aren’t doing, not just what you’re not doing. This method is more difficult to automate and often requires critical and creative thinking. It often includes:

• A clear idea of who your audience is and what their needs and desires are
• Perform a keyword search to find topics or questions that aren’t answered in an article, page, or resource.
• Assume why your site is not ranked by these terms and put your theory into practice 

4 Steps to Conducting a Content Gap Analysis 

Content gap analysis doesn’t just screen blog posts to see if you’ve missed an interesting content idea. There is a simple step-by-step process to find clear gaps in your content and close the gaps in your content strategy. That’s how it’s done:

1. Map Out Your Buyer’s Journey

You must cater to important viewer questions, and draw out various options you may be considering. Be certain of what your leads are looking for before they buy, and what calls to action you may need to enforce to make sure they contact you. Draw or write down the question. For example, Small business owners may have a hard time getting a decent SEO company to help them map their content gap analysis.

It searches for a way to “How to Manage Content Gap Analysis?” This question may lead to several articles like “10 Best Ways to Manage Content Gap Analysis”. You click on the article that provides 10 helpful tips and refers to SEO companies.

The business owner returns to Google and searches for “best SEO company” and finds the top 5 SEO company searches. He will look at the top two and compare their strengths and weaknesses.

Business owners who love one of the chosen SEO companies will decide to take up the paid subscription.

In the example above, there are multiple ways in which content helped the buyer in his journey.

Your objective is to map this to your own business, based on the different services and products you offer.

2. Conduct market research

Conducting market research helps identify the viewer’s most enthusiastic questions, needs, vulnerabilities, concerns, and goals. This feedback serves as the basis for your website’s SEO content strategy.

You can use Google Forms to create a simple anonymous survey and send it to your target audience. Here are some of the questions you can ask through the survey:

• What are your questions about the product?
• According to you, what is the most difficult thing about purchasing the product?
• What solutions are you looking for or you may have tried in the past?
• Why didn’t these solutions work?
• What are the three most important things to look for in Services / Products?
• Where to look for solutions like Services / Products?
• What are the factors that determine whether to choose Solution A or Solution B?

Responses to market research provide a plethora of content ideas. All of these are tailored to the actual needs and concerns of potential customers.

3. Analyze the content of the website

Brands may publish or share content on a variety of platforms, but website content must at least be in line with the buyer’s journey and keep up with potential customer gaps. You can then determine if there is missing content that fills the gap between phases.

Another way to find gaps in your website is to use SEO tools through a professional SEO company to see which keywords your website is already ranked for. Then, searching for these keywords will help you find relevant keywords that may not be targeted in your existing content. This will help you to maximize traffic and consolidate your content funnel.

4. Analyze content from competitors

If you look at what your competitors are doing and compare how your website works, you can find some additional loopholes. If your competitor’s goal-achieving process is similar to your goal-achieving process, check out the content your competitors have created to guide you from one stage to another.

You don’t want to copy your competitor’s strategy but by comparison, you can come up with something innovative and better than what your competitors are doing.

Best Practices 

1. Begin the hunt by addressing your goals clearly. What’s your end purpose of the content gap analysis? Is it to improve your ranking for specific keywords, increase overall site authority, or attract a new audience and grow organic traffic?
2. Analyze the first page of Google – Everyone posts content to become number one on Google. The best way to find content with gaps is to look at what’s already ranked on Google’s first page.
3. Then you identify the gap in your content using the right SEO tools such as SEMrush, Moz, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, etc. By assembling data from these platforms you can compare your website with your competitors for a detailed analysis. 
4. Perform extensive keyword research to gather information related to the top-performing keywords. Then you can dive into the content and create something for your website that doesn’t sound keyword-stuffed but is also 10 times better for keyword relevancy.
5. Audit and Check your content – The best place to check for content gaps may be yours. In other words, content reviews can reveal poorly performing content on your website. And if you look for loopholes in your content, you can improve it … and get rewarded. 
6. It’s never solely about the quantity of your content. Quality also has a significant bearing. Ensure to render content that is well-researched, engaging, and of value for the audience.
7. Develop a content strategy that clearly outlines the keywords to target, topics, content format, and publishing schedule.
8. After the successful implementation of the content gap strategy, closely analyze the performance of the revamped content in terms of ranking, traffic, and engagement rate.
9. Keep updated with the changes in search engine algorithms and top-rated SEO practices. Adapt your strategy likewise to maintain or improve the ranking.

Mind the Gap 

You need solid content to bridge the gap between the individual steps of the buyer’s journey, from the initial “problem awareness” to the point of purchase decision. Performing content gap analysis is the key to finding gaps that give you the confidence to create new content assets that generate traffic and drive users to purchase. You’ll also be allowed to identify new keywords based on what your competitors are targeting (or not targeting). 

Conclusion  

Good SEO content gap analysis is a great advantage you need to keep up with the latest developments against your competitors. The ranking is getting harder and the quality of the content people are producing is getting better. Organizations are investing heavily in SEO content marketing strategies. If your website is attracting a lot of traffic from Google, you must protect it from the competitively created new content.