Many marketers wonder what keyword gap analysis is and how its role in an SEO strategy.
Proper keyword gap analysis helps you identify underperforming keywords, hidden search terms, and high-value keyphrases to build your SEO content strategy.
It can also lead to more organic traffic, conversions, and sales.
By performing competitor SERP ranking analysis, you can earn higher organic rank positionings and have a strong digital presence.
Let’s understand the keyword gap meaning and why it is so beneficial in maintaining an edge over your online rivals.
What is a Keyword Gap Analysis?
Keyword gap analysis is the process of comparing your domain’s keyword rankings with your competitor’s keywords to identify the top search terms you are missing in your SEO plan.
These keywords are extremely valuable because they are the ones that you do not rank for but should target to improve your SEO keyword strategy.
Competitive keyword research and content gap analysis lets you build a high-quality list of target keywords that includes both short-tail and long-tail terms that match different funnel stage goals.
A well-organized keyword gap analysis improves your SEO performance and fine-tunes your content strategy to enhance your website’s organic search visibility and traffic.
You can perform keyword gap analysis by conducting a simple Google search to find your direct competitors and analyze their top-ranking content.
For example, if you are a car accident attorney in Connecticut, you can run a Google search with the query ‘accident attorney in Connecticut’ to find your top competitors ranking on the Google first page for that query.
Now, you can enter the researched domain(s) in a keyword tool to conduct a detailed page-level analysis to reveal content gaps on your site.
It will highlight opportunities to target high quality location and service based keywords that match search intent.
Why is Keyword Gap Analysis Important?
Keyword gap analysis is essential for uncovering untapped potential in your SEO plan.
It highlights missed search terms, reveals key content areas where your competitors are outperforming you, and shows where your site can gain an edge.
By analyzing ideal keyword gaps, you can prepare more audience-centric, relevant content that matches your customer persona.
You can also sharpen your keyword clusters and stay ahead by capturing on-demand product or service opportunities in your niche.
Here are the top advantages of keyword gap analysis:
Helps You Find Gaps in Your Content
SEO keyword gap analysis lets you find fresh keyword opportunities to optimize your content.
You can identify low-hanging fruit keywords that you are not targeting in your organic marketing strategy to build smarter content plans.
When you automate the keyword gap identification process by entering a bunch of competitors in your favorite keyword analysis tool, you get an extensive list of search terms, pages, and topics that you should be targeting.
By minimizing these gaps in your content, you can better prioritize your resources and maintain industry dominance.
Reveals Competitors’ Keyword Strategies
You definitely want to know the winning keywords of your competitors. These are the search terms that your organic rivals are targeting in their SEO strategy.
By perfoming a keyword gap analysis, you can determine the traffic share of each keyword your competitors are targeting and use those new search terms to drive new growth opportunities.
This can give you data-backed insights into what’s working for them and why.
Maybe they focus heavily on long-tail keywords, or maybe they have cornered a specific topic cluster. Knowing their keyword strategy helps you shape your own SEO keyword plan.
Uncovers Untapped Opportunities
One of the biggest wins with keyword gap analysis is discovering the most effective keywords and missed opportunities.
By targeting multiple search terms in your competitors’ keyword data, you can spot new keyword trends and searches that you should be paying attention to.
Since your competitors already rank for them, you know there is demand and potential conversion opportunities there.
By targeting these untapped goldmine of keywords, you can connect with your target customers to generate more sales.
Identifies the Highest-Value Keywords You are Missing Out On
With keyword gap analysis, you can uncover unique keyword opportunities for which your competitors are already ranking. It helps you identify top-ranking pages, domains, subdomains, URLs, and specific web pages that drive traffic through valuable organic keywords.
When you analyze keyword profiles based on search intent, traffic volume, and CPC trends, you can prioritize targeting keywords that represent strong conversion potential.
With a refined keyword strategy, you can outsmart the competition and close gaps that boost your visibility and performance.
Drives Better Rankings by Filling Content and Keyword Gaps Strategically
When you start closing those keyword gaps, search engines will begin to recognize your site as more authoritative and complete.
You’re essentially signaling that your content answers more of the questions users are searching for.
This improves topical relevance, internal linking, and your site’s overall structure.
Over time, that translates into stronger rankings across a broader set of keywords. And as your rankings improve, so do your traffic, brand visibility, and potential conversions.
The real goal isn't just to see what keywords competitors rank for that you don’t—it's about identifying which of those keywords are actually worth going after, based on intent, competitiveness, and your site's ability to rank.
- Rodrigo Cesar, CEO and Founder at SSInvent
How to do Keyword Gap Analysis
A well-structured keyword gap analysis lets you compare your keyword profile with your competitors. Here are the steps to perform keyword gap analysis:
1. Identify Your Closest Competitors
Before you perform keyword gap analysis, it is necessary to find out who your closest organic competitors are.
For this, manually research on Google with your target search terms and see the domains that are ranking in the first page in your target location.
Remember to log out of your Gmail account and delete browsing history to get accurate results or you can conduct a search in incognito mode.
Repeat your research with different keywords and note down the domains that repeatedly appear on the first page of search results.
When certain domains keep showing up, it’s a clear signal that they are dominating your keyword space and should be at the top of your SEO watchlist.
Taking the Connecticut attorney example explained at the beginning of this article; I researched different keywords related to my service to shortlist the domains that are repeating.
For example, I searched using 3 different keywords:
- accident attorney connecticut
- personal injury lawyers connecticut
- slip and fall attorney connecticut
Thereafter, I picked the domains that were repeating in all three searches.
In this example, CTPost ranked on all of three keywords, while Golf Law Group ranked in two out of the three keywords.
These are the websites that are targeting the same audiences like my business. Hence, these are my direct competitors.
Similarly, you should conduct your own research and find at least 3-4 competitors to begin your analysis.
Next, you should identify the keywords they are targeting in their SEO strategy.
2. Find the Keyword Gaps
To determine the keywords that your competitors are targeting but that you are not using in your content marketing strategy, you need to use an SEO keyword research tool.
Our keyword tool helps you find out all the keywords that a domain ranks for in organic search results.
Enter your competitor’s domain one by one in the tool and check the search terms they rank for.
Make sure to select your location for accurate results. This will help you prepare a list of all the keywords that your competitors are targeting in that location that you are currently not prioritizing in your SEO plan.
So for our example of the Connecticut attorneys, I will plug in the domains of CTPost, Goff Law Group, and Carter Mario Injury Lawyers into the 'Search By URL' tab in our keyword research tool.
Here we can see that there is a mix of long-tail and short-tail keywords, higher difficulty and lower difficulty keywords being used by this competitor.
3. Filter Relevant Keywords
Not every keyword your competitors rank for will be valuable to your business. Hence, you should filter all the relevant search terms that you think could bring highly-targeted leads.
You need to sort through the list and choose niche-specific and intent-driven search terms that match closely with your broader SEO goals. The selected keywords should match your products, services, or audience needs.
We are VERY sensitive to keyword intent: informational vs. transactional — meaning that we don’t just chase after whatever traffic but we chase after the keywords that convert. Additionally, it’s important to filter by keyword difficulty and search volume.
In our experience, we've found hidden potential in keywords with 500–3,000 monthly searches and less than 40 keyword difficulty, especially when paired with well-optimized content.
- Aaron Whittaker, VP of Demand Generation & Marketing at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency
For example, if you run a travel agency in Norway, a keyword like "midnight sun cruises from Tromsø" would be far more relevant than a broad term like "holiday destinations."
To filter relevant keywords, you can use the SEOptimer keyword tool. It lets you see the search volume, keyword difficulty, and potential traffic of each keyword your competitors are using in their SEO content strategy.
Shortlist the search terms that have decent search volume and a strong buying intent. These are your highest-value searches that are most likely to drive conversions.
By filtering and selecting qualified search terms that match the user's intention and the content of your website, you can gain better search rankings and attract targeted traffic.
4. Create Content to Fill Keyword Gaps
Once you have the final keyword list ready, it’s time to publish high-quality and user-first content. Or you could consider updating one of your existing posts if it is part of the same topic cluster.
Holly Jayne Clement from Gumpo, a UK-based digital agency, suggests that you don't necessarily have to create a brand new post or page when you've spotted a keyword gap.
One mistake I see often is that teams jump to creating brand-new content. Sometimes the best opportunity is updating an underperforming page to target a missing keyword cluster, it is faster and often more effective.
- Holly Jayne Clement, SEO and Digital PR Specialist at Gumpo
Your content should be readable, well-thought-out, and personalized. Avoid generic or filler content by focusing on substance and depth. Make sure to write for humans and not just search engines since Google prioritizes content written for humans.
Group related topics into content clusters, with pillar pages and supporting articles. It helps with internal linking and improves topical authority.
Ensure on-page optimization is done properly by using keywords in the URL, page title, and main body, along with semantic variations of your seed keyword.
Mike Hakob from Andava, a digital agency with offices in California and Armenia, says that when they do keyword gap analysis for their clients, they use variations of their competitor's keywords to rank for even more keywords.
I export competitor blog titles and run them through GPT to generate semantic keyword variations they haven’t used, but should. It helps us rank for LSI keywords that Google associates with topical authority.
- Mike Hakob, Founder and SEO strategist at Andava
For SEO and clarity, each article should be fully optimized while still maintaining a natural tone.
To build trust and meet EEAT-friendly standards (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), get your content written or reviewed by experts.
Always check for accuracy, include the latest statistics, and use proper references to credible sources. Demonstrating authority is key to ranking and gaining user trust.
You also need to consider and adapt your contnet based on the format of the current ranking pages.
If Google is surfacing videos, product pages or FAQs and you’re pushing out blog posts, you’re not matching what users or the algorithm actually want.
- Lonnie Jones, Founder of Local SEO Help
Use attractive visuals such as infographics or diagrams to enhance understanding, and add videos to keep users engaged longer.
Don’t forget to include strong calls to actions to help visitors take the next step.
To raise your chances of ranking for your identified search terms, prepare content that is 10 times better than that of your competitors.
Your content should be a better version (not just a rewrite containing similar points) than what is currently ranking.
5. Track Your Keyword Performance
After you have published all the content for your target keywords researched after a keyword gap analysis, begin tracking your keyword performance.
You should monitor each of target search terms to understand how they are performing against your organic competitors. Accurate keyword performance tracking helps to uncover the searches that drive high-converting traffic and impact leads, revenue, and profitability.
Measure results across product and service pages using detailed analytics and keyword data.
Do not rely on wrong metrics that offer no clarity on actual ROI. Use local Google Maps rankings and SERP tracking to measure your local search performance.
Leverage easy-to-understand reports and data points to customize your landing pages and strengthen your pipeline strategy.
To track your keyword progress, use a tool like the SEOptimer Keyword Tracking Tool, which provides accurate data on your keyword positions across different search engines.
The tool allows you to track the organic ranking positions for your targeted search terms and see the ranking changes week to week.
You can identify which of your site’s specific pages are bringing organic traffic and which ones are losing their rankings over time.
SEOptimer tells you the monthly search volumes, the SERP rankings, and estimated traffic of each of your chosen keywords.
It also provides weekly performance updates, tracks ranking changes over time, and allows keyword tracking in over 70 countries, making it highly relevant for local and global SEO.
You can also export reports in multiple formats (CSV, Excel, PDF) to share the keyword performance report with your clients or team members.
To track local rankings, you can use the Local Rank Checker tool. It is a free-to-use software that allows you to check your local rankings and see how they compare against your local competitors.
You can search for your keyword at any target location, and the tool will perform the keyword search in the Map pack results. If your business services multiple locations, you can use the Local Rank Checker to find the keywords that are improving or declining in rankings in local search results.
Conclusion
Keyword gap analysis is your gateway to uncovering growth-driving keywords that are currently missing from your strategy. You should identify underutilized keywords and unique search terms your competitors rank for, but you don’t.
Now that you know what are keyword gaps, the best way to supercharge your content strategy is by comparing your domain against competitors’ ranking keywords across high-value product or service categories.
This helps you close the content gaps that make you lag behind the competition.
Follow the tips shared to capture valuable Google traffic, improve rankings, and build a detailed keyword plan that delivers consistent SEO success.
