Why is it important to identify content gaps?<\/h2>\n
Content gap analysis is important to building trust and authority<\/strong> as a business, showing your target audience and<\/em> Google that you know your stuff when it comes to your product, industry, and niche. It\u2019s an E-E-A-T opportunity, to prove your expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.<\/p>\n By identifying content gaps, you can:<\/p>\n In other words, you can use content gap analysis to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your content, spotting areas of opportunity and threat in an ultra-competitive search landscape, so you can optimize your SEO content plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now you know the various content gap analysis benefits, you might want to get started. Here\u2019s how to analyze the holes in your content:<\/p>\n Step one of the SEO content gap analysis is auditing your own website. The best way to do this is split your content into topic clusters and keywords. And yes, that means going through all your content to determine what needs:<\/p>\n All this needs to keep inline with your ideal customer profile and your research into your buyers\u2019 journey. You want your content \u2013 whether its blog posts, product pages, social media, email marketing, and so on \u2013 to tick the boxes for search intent:<\/p>\n ✅ Informational<\/p>\n ✅ Investigational<\/p>\n ✅ Navigational<\/p>\n ✅ Transactional<\/p>\n By making sure you have content that caters for each user and their search intent, you will build trust, authority, interest and engagement as a business, pushing them down the funnel to a conversion. Kerching.<\/p>\n Now you\u2019ve had a website audit<\/a>, now it\u2019s time to look at how you compare against your competitors and their<\/em> content.<\/p>\n Ask yourself:<\/p>\n Or, dive a little deeper by using competitor analysis tools<\/strong><\/a>. With tools like Similarweb, you can get a true understanding of who your real competitors are, using data that goes beyond public knowledge to see insights like:<\/p>\n Their website traffic<\/strong><\/a> and engagement<\/p>\n How they use their marketing channels\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Whether or not they are targeting the same demographics<\/strong><\/p>\n And you never know – that list of top 5 competitors you had just from stalking the SERPs and social media might change up just a little.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s time to audit your competitors\u2019 content strategy, to benchmark it versus your own.<\/p>\n This means spotting the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (otherwise known as SWOT analysis<\/a>) to determine where you are lacking, where you could do better, and where you\u2019re doing well in terms of range of content and content topics.<\/p>\n Then, you want to take those learnings and apply them to your own content and SEO strategy<\/a> to make it bigger, better and more streamlined than ever.<\/p>\n So, where to start? Here\u2019s where that competitor intelligence tool comes in handy again.<\/p>\n A good place to start when it comes to analyzing your competitors\u2019 content is to have an understanding of:<\/p>\n Which pages Google is loving and ranking high<\/strong><\/p>\n ❤️ Which are the popular pages<\/strong> with your target audience<\/p>\n The marketing channels<\/a> they\u2019re seeing the most engagement<\/strong> on<\/p>\n You can do all that using one competitor analysis platform? Yeah ya can.<\/p>\n Example: <\/em>asos.com\u2019s<\/em> top organic pages in the US, including its <\/em>traffic share<\/em><\/a>, number of keywords that link to that specific page, and its top keyword.<\/em><\/p>\n This is Similarweb\u2019s Organic Pages<\/strong>, showing you the top pages that perform well on organic search, AKA the SEO team\u2019s favorite kind of page. This will give you full visibility of what your competitors are targeting or focusing on in their current campaigns and content strategies – you can even flick the \u2018Newly discovered\u2019 or \u2018Trending pages\u2019 filters to keep your eyes on trends or campaigns your competitors are jumping on too.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Popular Pages which is same same, but different<\/em>. These pages are assessed by user engagement<\/strong>, showing what pages get the most views and clearly grab peoples\u2019 attention; the attention YOU want.<\/p>\n Here we have asos.com\u2019s popular pages that are trending this month – that means there has been a large increase (see percentage change to the right) in page views from the previous month.<\/p>\n As an ecommerce brand, you can spot brand partnerships, fashion trends that ASOS users are loving, and questions they\u2019re asking which could inspire your own strategy.<\/p>\n A particularly useful tool to spot your keyword opportunities, but also the keywords you share and the keywords you could easily <\/em>be gaining traffic from is a Keyword Gap<\/strong> tool<\/a>, like this one:<\/p>\n You start with a nice, colorful visual on how your target keyword list compares, overlaps, or contrasts from your competitors. A great start for your keyword gap analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Scroll down to see the key search terms, along with all the insights you need to plot your keyword strategy, including search volume<\/a>, keyword difficulty, traffic share between you and your competitors, and the top URL out of this competitive set.<\/p>\n Selecting specifically non-branded keywords<\/strong> removes branded search terms which you\u2019re not interested in, and leaves the good stuff. Again, as this is a fashion and retail ecommerce business, we get insight into what people in the US have on their fashion wishlists in this specific timeframe. You can even narrow this down to searches in the last 28 days<\/strong>, so you\u2019ll never be behind the trends.<\/p>\n Take your learnings straight to our keyword generator<\/a>, where you\u2019ll find more specific and long-tail search terms that tend to have a lower keyword difficulty<\/a>, meaning they\u2019re less competed on.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take \u2018graphic tees\u2019 as an example:<\/p>\n A tool like the Keyword Generator can really benefit you by targeting the specifics that your users are searching for. The more specific you are, the more you resonate with the user – in fact, long tail keywords<\/a> like these examples have a higher average conversation of 36%<\/a> for that reason.<\/p>\n Now, you don\u2019t have to be an ecommerce company to benefit from these findings – but if you are, make sure your product descriptions and landing page copy includes these. You might be a fashion blogger, a publisher, or just a graphic tee enthusiast that wants to write a listicle on the 7 best vintage graphic tees on the internet. And that leads us nicely onto our next point\u2026<\/p>\n You\u2019ve got the content topics and you\u2019ve got the keyword data, now it\u2019s time to create a list of content ideas that are going to help your brand smash the SERPs.<\/p>\n This is where you bring in search intent, which we mentioned earlier. You want to create topical keyword clusters<\/a>, and dedicate content to each part of the user journey. Something like:<\/p>\n In the world of SEO and content, this translates as top of funnel (users that have little to no knowledge about your business<\/em>), middle of funnel (users that are aware of your business<\/em>) and bottom of funnel (users that are<\/em> ready to make a decision, and hopefully\u2026 conversion<\/em>).<\/p>\n To dedicate content to each stage of the funnel, you can make the most of your competitor research and their best-performing pages, as well as trending and long-tail keywords from the Keyword Generator.<\/p>\n For informational content specifically, you want insight into the questions people are asking around certain topics. To do this you can make the most of Google\u2019s \u2018People also ask<\/a>\u2019 SERP feature, as well as tools like AnswerThePublic.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a \u2018Question Query\u2019 filter on Similarweb\u2019s Keyword Generator where you can question queries from all time, or the past 28 days (if you want to act fast to create content around a trending keyword or topic, for example).<\/p>\n But what does all this mean for your SEO? Here\u2019s how to take your content gaps analysis, and use it to enhance your SEO strategy and performance:<\/p>\n For your keyword research<\/a>, you want to focus on organic keywords and organic keywords only, which means comparing yourself against organic competitors.<\/p>\n You can see who comes up when you type your core keywords into Google, however you might want to get a more well-rounded view of your organic competitors, or be specific to different geographies which go beyond your local search engine capacities.<\/p>\n For example, we can see organic competitors for asos.com in the US (top) are slightly different to organic competitors in the UK using Similarweb\u2019s Organic Competitors <\/strong>tool:<\/p>\n An all-in-one platform like Similarweb will speed up your keyword research, making sure you\u2019re comparing yourself against most relevant competitors, and getting full insight into their keyword strategies in a matter of clicks using our other (and previously mentioned) tools, including:<\/p>\n With the right keyword research and the very best competitive SEO analysis, you can make sure no stone is left unturned.<\/p>\n Your content plan needs to match up with what\u2019s happening in the SERP, because the SERP shows us what users are most interested in.<\/p>\n Ask yourself questions like:<\/p>\n Take this information and apply it to your own strategy, except<\/em> make it 10x better. Obviously.<\/p>\n Consider combining different types of content into one; this means that you cater to all preferences of how people want to take in information, but also Google commends it. So, include listicles and videos in your \u2018ultimate guides\u2019, never leave out the images on your product pages, and make sure your schema markup<\/a> is always up to scratch.<\/p>\n This one\u2019s for the content team! ✏️<\/strong><\/p>\n Make the most of this structured content and SEO plan – you might want to tick off a topic cluster all in one go or mix it up a little. Whichever you choose, you want to create engaging and original content that appeals to your target audience, and includes all the keywords that gets your content clicked on via search engines.<\/p>\n The content writing process should look something like this:<\/p>\n The fun never ends. The search landscape is an ever-changing one, new trends come and go (and sometimes come back again), your competitors are always chop-and-changing their strategies, and you \u2013 my friend \u2013 don\u2019t want to be left behind.<\/p>\n Monitor the performance of your content using data from Google Search Console and other website analytics platforms, and keep your content fresh and relevant with regular optimizations. Similarweb\u2019s Rank Tracker tool<\/a> makes it easy to see how content is performing in the SERPs in particular, and helps you spot any threats to your high-ranking pages.<\/p>\n You can also save yourself a lot of time and effort by using competitor trackers. Similarweb\u2019s Competitive Tracker allows you to track multiple competitors on one single dashboard, and sends monthly highlights about your competitors digital performance and engagement straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n While we\u2019ve explained how to do a manual content gap analysis, having an all-in-one competitor analysis tool has proved itself to be a lot more efficient for teams like yours.<\/p>\n With Similarweb, you can uncover your content gaps to discover opportunities, pinpoint where you\u2019re losing, spot competitive threats, and ultimately create an unbeatable content strategy.<\/p>\n Try Similarweb for free today or speak to one of our experts to find out exactly what this tool can do for your business (hint<\/em>: loads).<\/p>\n \n
How to do a content gap analysis<\/h2>\n
1) Audit your website<\/h3>\n
\n
2) Choose your top 5 competitors<\/h3>\n
\n
![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-website-analysis.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-marketing-channels.png\")
<\/p>\n3) Spot your opportunities<\/h3>\n
Content opportunities<\/h4>\n
![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-asos-organic-page.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-asos-popular-pages.png\")
<\/p>\nKeyword opportunities<\/h4>\n
![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-asos-keyword-gap.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-asos-keyword-gap-list.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-graphic-tees-keyword-generator.png\")
<\/p>\n4) Analyze the topics and create a list of content ideas<\/h3>\n
\n
![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-graphic-tee-SERP-feature.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-graphic-tees-question-queries.png\")
<\/p>\nHow to use content gap analysis for SEO<\/h2>\n
Step 1: Perform keyword research<\/h3>\n
![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-asos-organic-competitors-US-2.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"content](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/content-gap-analysis-asos-organic-competitors-UK-2.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
Step 2: Create a content plan<\/h3>\n
\n
Step 3: Write blog posts to support your target topics<\/h3>\n
\n
Step 4: Optimize and track performance<\/h3>\n
![\"Competitive](\"https:\/\/www.similarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Competitive-Tracker-trending-topics.png\"){kind=tracking}
<\/p>\nFill your content gaps with Similarweb<\/h2>\n