Content Gap Analysis: How to Perform It in 5 Steps

Are you looking to improve your website’s content but unsure where to start? A content gap analysis can help!

This will help you identify any areas where your website content is lacking and give you ideas for new topics to blog about or pages to add to your site.

But first, what is a content gap analysis?

Content gap analysis is a process that helps marketers become aware of opportunities they may be missing. It involves taking a deep dive into the competitive landscape of your market and identifying the topics in demand that you might not yet have an article about.

This can help you determine what type of content will attract potential customers and potentially enjoy higher rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Why do you need one?

We’ve already touched on some of the incredible benefits of content gap analysis. But let’s now get into the specifics.

How exactly does it benefit you and your marketing needs?

It helps you identify content you might not have considered before

When we’re busy creating content, we’re often so focused on the tasks at hand — Is the content performing well? How do we improve it? How do we get more eyes on it?

While it’s good to stay focused, sometimes having a look at what our competitors are doing, and doing well, can help steer us in another direction we might not have thought of.

It helps you identify additional keywords

As a marketer, you understand the importance of having the right keyword strategy. But keyword research can be time-consuming and sometimes overwhelming.

With a solid content gap analysis, you can easily find out which keywords your competitors are ranking for and start targeting them.

It can help to boost your organic search rankings

Keeping your website up-to-date with fresh, relevant content is key to driving more organic traffic from search. Analyzing content gaps can help you identify opportunities to improve your existing content and keep you ahead of the competition.

By looking at what topics are missing on your website, you can quickly boost SEO rankings by creating content that answers user questions. Additionally, finding out which topics are causing the most interest among competitors can give you an edge when developing new content.

It helps you give your website visitors the right content

Once you’ve identified any content gaps, you can start creating new content, or repurposing existing content in a way that better meets the needs of your visitors.

By taking the time to do this, you can ensure that your website is giving visitors the content they really want and need.

Now that you understand what this analysis is and how it can benefit your online marketing goals, let’s get into the five-step process of performing it.

How to complete a content gap analysis in five steps

1. Competitor analysis
2. Analyze the current content on your website
3. Understand your audience
4. Develop clear goals
5. Fill in the gaps

1. Competitor analysis

Since a key part of a content gap analysis is studying your competitors’ content to find these content gaps, it’s only fitting that this is the first step in the process.

But how exactly do you analyze your competitors’ content?

👉 You need to take a look at the overall content landscape. This means having a look at their website pages and social media content and asking yourself:

• What topics are they talking about?
• What content formats are they using?
• Which topics are resonating well with the market?
• How often are they creating this content?

There are a few competitor analysis tools like Ubersuggest (pictured below) that can help answer these questions and more.

👉 These SEO tools can help you learn important information about your competitors like:

• Which keywords are they ranking for?
• What website pages are performing the best?
• Their organic and paid search history
• And so much more

This first step might take a while to complete. But that’s okay because, without it, your efforts will be in vain.

2. Analyze the current content on your website

After having a look at what your competitors are doing, now it’s time to take inventory of the content you already have on your website.

To do this, you’ll want to take a look at both the quantity and quality of your content.

Quantity refers to things like how many blog posts you have or which keywords have you been targeting compared to your competitors.

On the other hand, quality looks at things like whether your content is well-written and relevant to your audience.

👉 While having a look at your website, keep the following questions in mind:

• How does your content compare to your competitors in terms of depth, style, and tone?
• Are there any areas where you could be doing better?
• Are you making the most of SEO opportunities?
• Are you promoting your content effectively?
• Are you repurposing content across different channels?

3. Understand your audience

When you’re trying to figure out what content you should be creating, it can be tempting to just look at what your competitors are doing and try to copy them. However, not every piece of content your competitor produces will be relevant to your audience.

For example, let’s say you own a fitness club and have been comparing your content to other fitness clubs in your area. You may share a part of the market, but you may want to cater to a more niche market. For instance, your fitness club might be targeting people who are interested in boxing, while another might be more for lifting, and another fitness club might focus on a younger audience, etc.

This means that not all content from your competitors will be relevant.

Understanding your audience allows you to pick the most relevant topics and leave those that don’t serve you or your audience out.

4. Develop clear goals

To get the most out of your content gap analysis, you need to have clear goals in mind.

Are you trying to drive more website traffic? Or do you want more leads for a specific product or service?

Once you know your goals, you can then begin to identify the content that would help you to achieve those goals. Otherwise, you’ll just be gathering data without any clear purpose.

So take some time to think about what you want to achieve before you just start creating content for the sake of creating content.

5. Fill in the gaps

This is the exciting part — the actual content creation.

Now, once you understand the “missing” content pieces (i.e., the relevant keywords and topics you haven’t covered in your blog or website), you can start mapping out how to fill them in.

This process might either require you to create new content or improve your old content.

👉 When you’re improving your existing content, you can:

• Make the blog or article intros more concise
• Add more images to help break up large chunks of content
• Update links
• Make your articles more detailed and helpful for your readers

👉 When you’re creating new content, you’ll need to:

• Decide on the content formats you’ll create (e.g., informative blog posts, infographics, videos, or whatever other types of content will resonate with your target customer base)
• Focus on creating content around search intent
• Choose keywords your competitors are ranking for and create more SEO-optimized articles

There’s always room for improvement 📈

🎯 Use our five-step process to conduct a content gap analysis and start filling in the gaps on your site today.

Do you have questions about performing a content gap analysis? Let us know in the comments!