If you want to be one of the top-ranking websites for vital target keywords, you need to have a lot of informative content on your site.
How do you know what to write about on your blog, though?
Digging into keyword research is one of the most important things you can do to decide the topics to write about. But how will you know if you have missed out on some great topic opportunities?
One way is to perform an SEO content gap analysis to discover some of the ‘holes’ in your site content.
This process helps you come up with more content ideas that will attract more traffic, convert browsers into customers, and offer more value to your site audience.
Below is more information about how to do a content gap analysis.
Table of Contents
Content Gap Analysis Overview
The idea behind an SEO content gap analysis is simple: Find gaps in your site content (vis-a-vis your competition) and fill them in with fantastic content.
The process involves finding missing pieces of content that align with what your audience wants to see.
When they see that content and find it informative, they are more likely to purchase from your site.
Reviewing and analyzing the content on your site lets you see what could be missing that could increase the chances that site visitors become customers.
Some of the things you will check during the content gap analysis are:
- Site pages
- Blog articles
- Landing pages
- Ebooks and white papers
- Social media content
Understanding Your Content Compared To The Buyer Experience
All kinds of people come to your website, and only some of them are ready to make a purchase decision. Many visitors simply are there for information; they are in the information-collection part of their journey. Or, they may be shopping prices.
The idea is to devise creat content for every part of the visitor’s journey to become a buyer.
Serious companies big and small create the most informative content with blog posts to bring in a bigger audience. Then, they create effective site pages on their site to convert users to buyers.
However, there still may be gaps in the content where people who are thinking about buying won’t because they don’t see the create content they want.
As you do an SEO content gap analysis, you should pinpoint if there is content for these parts of the sales funnel:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Success
Awareness
Awareness focuses on keywords that relate to an issue or problem the visitor is facing. The content answers key questions that address this issue and offers critical information but doesn’t make the viewer a customer right away.
Consideration
During the consideration phase, people compare solutions to the problem they have.
They could check reviews, ‘best of’ blog posts, and comparison site pages that compare one product to another.
One way to address the consideration phase is making content that compares what you offer to what competitors offer.
Or, show that your product or solution is one of several option in a blog post round-up.
Decision
This is when you will see many landing ‘money’ web pages.
These pages sell and are the last stop before the person buys from you.
This page has more branding than the awareness and consideration pages.
Success
This is the content that assures your customer that their purchase will address their problem and give them the outcome they want. You might make this as simple as a Thank You page.
Or, consider an email follow-up that provides support, how-to information, or asks for a product review.
How To Do An SEO Content Gap Analysis
Doing an analysis is more than going through pages and posts to find if you are missing any hot topics. This is a simple process that will find gaps in content and fill them with new, informative content.
Map The Visitor’s Journey
What are the steps the visitor needs to experience to get to the point of purchase? Take time writing down questions your visitors have, the options they may look at, what they check before they purchase, and the calls to action that will make them customers.
For instance:
- An automotive repair shop may struggle to get enough customers in the door and compete with big-name repair shops
- So, the business owner looks for how to provide better services at a lower price to automotive customers
- They find articles talking about the best ways to improve customer service in a car repair business
- Some of the tips involve purchasing business productivity and client resource management software
- The business owner does a search for best CRM software and one of them is yours
- The business owner buys your product to make their service department more efficient
As you can see in this analysis of the buyer journey, there are several places whee you can write new content or shoot videos that provide better content.
Market Research & Ahrefs Content Gap Analysis
You can come up with original content ideas by asking people want they want in a market research survey.
Some questions you can ask in a market survey are:
- What are the biggest questions you have about the topic?
- What are the biggest struggles and pain points you have with the topic?
- What are some products and services you have tried before?
- Why didn’t they work out for you?
- What are the biggest benefits you look for in a product in this area?
- Where do you go for solutions?
Another form of content gap market research includes looking at Ahrefs content gap tool:
Analyze Site Content
Your company probably has content on several platforms, so you should be sure the content on the site is aligned with your visitor’s journey to becoming a buyer.
So, crawl every page on the site and find if they are aligned with every stage of the journey. Then, you can decide if you lack content that covers the gaps between the stages.
For example, if you are a personal injury attorney and have an article about How To File A Lawsuit and the call to action is Hire A Personal Injury Attorney Now, you may turn off people who aren’t ready to sue yet.
So, you might link to a list article about 7 Things To Look For In Your Personal Injury Attorney.
If you follow all of this information, you can find gaps in your content and fill them with new information that will turn your visitors into customers.
Get Your Content Gap Analysis!
Looking to find new, relevant and tangential pieces of content that will fit with your audience?
Get in touch with our team and we’ll help perform a comprehensive SEO audit.
Our comprehensive website audits will show you the areas of deficiency on your website compared to your competitors.
Why Is Content Gap Analysis Important?
If you’re not already familiar with content gap analysis, it’s a process of assessing your existing content against the needs of your target audience. This helps you to identify any gaps in your content strategy and determine how best to fill them.
Why is this important? Because in order to be successful with content marketing, you need to make sure that you’re creating content that your audience actually wants and needs. If there are gaps in your strategy, you could be missing out on potential customers or website visitors.
Content gap analysis can help you to:
- Understand what content is currently available
- Identify any gaps in your content strategy
- Determine what content your
Competitor-Based Content Gap Analysis – competitor analysis
As a content marketer, one of your primary goals is to ensure that your audience can find the information they need at every stage of their customer journey. Part of achieving this goal is identifying and filling any content gaps that may exist.
A content gap is simply any topic or piece of information that your audience is interested in but that you don’t currently cover. By identifying these gaps and filling them with well-crafted, relevant content, you can help keep your audience engaged and improve your chances of driving conversions.
There are a few different ways to identify potential content gaps. One is to analyze the own content of your competitors. This competitor-based content gap analysis can give you some insight into what topics your audience may be interested in but that you’re not currently covering.
To do a competitor-based content gap analysis, start by identifying your top three competitor websites. Once you’ve done that, take a look at the content they’re producing. Make a list of the topics they cover that you don’t. These are potential content gaps for you to fill.
Of course, it’s not enough just to identify these content gaps. You also need to make sure that the content you produce to fill them is high quality and relevant to your audience. But if you can identify and fill the right content gaps, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your content marketing goals.
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
