How to Do a Content Gap Analysis [With Template]

Take a look at the number of keywords in the content gap report. 

In general, there are two common types of content gaps you’ll need to fill: domain-level and page-level. 

• Domain-level gaps occur when competitors have content about topics you don’t. 
• Page-level gaps occur when you and a competitor both have a page about the same topic, but they are ranking for more keywords than you are. In most cases, this happens because they have more in-depth content than you do. 

Here’s our process that will help you identify both types of gaps, starting with domain-level gaps and working your way down to specific page-level gaps. 

For example, our gap analysis report shows that Moz has a page listing the top 500 most popular websites. 

It ranks for 120 keywords that our site doesn’t and gets 2,187 estimated monthly search visits from them. This seems like a great opportunity so far! 

However, if we press the + icon on the left of this row, we can see these 120 keywords listed out. At a quick glance, it looks like they aren’t very relevant to our business. 

In this case, we move to the next page in the pivot table and repeat the process. 

Let’s assume that you see keywords relevant to your business for this one. The next step is to check to see if you already have an existing page about the topic using the “site:” operator in Google. 

• If yes → you need to consider adding new sections to target common themes from the missing keywords. 
• If not → you need to create a new page. 

As you do the content gap analysis, you will likely need to create a list of action items for new pages to create or existing pages to optimize. 

To get the most out of this process, it helps to create specific tasks in your project management tool (like Clickup or Asana) along with a content brief that includes the insights you’ve gathered as you do the page-by-page analysis. 

The brief can be simple and can look something like this: 

I recommend adding a list of the suggested sections and keywords you think are worth including in either new pages or existing pages so that whoever creates the content is able to close the content gap you identified effectively. 

Completing a content gap analysis is a critical strategic SEO task to help you or your clients catch up to competitors. The process is fairly methodical and easy to implement, even if you’re a beginner. 

It’s important that you go beyond simply exporting a list of missing keywords. By using our gap analysis template, you can better assess opportunities and assign the correct action item to close the gap.