Keyword Gap Analysis: What It Is And How to Do it

Keywords, in simple terms, are words or phrases that are used by your target audience to search for something they are looking for. These queries can range from questions and inquiries about a product to learning more about something of interest. Search engines also use keywords to decide if a page is offering the kind of information being looked up.

This makes it incredibly important to ensure you are using keywords to your advantage. But how does one leverage keywords to rank higher and attract more traffic, considering other pages in the league also exist? By conducting a keyword gap analysis to find missed opportunities and accordingly optimizing current strategies to rank higher on search engines. Here is everything you need to know about keyword gap analysis.

What is Keyword Gap Analysis? A Clear Definition

Keyword gap analysis is the key to ensuring you have an impactful and result-oriented keyword strategy.

It is the process of identifying keywords your competitors use that rank higher on search engines. These are ideally the keywords that are not currently part of your strategy. In order to create an SEO strategy that helps your website rank higher on search engines, it is essential to identify these keyword gaps and make efforts to close them.

The Importance of Keyword Gap Analysis in SEO

Keyword gap analysis offers valuable insights and helps in discovering new keyword opportunities that will help your brand get closer and become more relevant to your target audience. These keywords can be product-based, long-tail, or information-oriented.

Developing an understanding of these keywords will help a brand curate content that matches these search intents. Additionally, with gap analysis, brands can understand the changing needs of their target audience and navigate their SEO strategies to meet these needs on time.

How Does Keyword Gap Analysis Work? Understanding the Process

The analysis primarily focuses on finding keywords your competitors are outperforming you. Once you have gained insights about these gaps, you will be able to update your SEO strategy and focus on creating content that helps your website rank higher on search engines for these gap keywords.

This can eventually lead to higher organic footfalls on your website. The analysis works because you are able to identify and strategically fill keyword gaps that your competitors are already ranking for. It results in a diversified online presence for your website and a wider scope to attract organic traffic.

Step-by-Step Guide on How to Do Keyword Gap Analysis

Here is how you can conduct a thorough keyword gap analysis and leverage it for your organic growth:

1. Identifying Your Competitors for Analysis

In order to perform keyword gap analysis, it is necessary to identify who you are competing with. It is always best to look for businesses that are ranking high on search engines for related keywords for which you are ranking high. Avoid choosing too many competitors, as analyzing data and integrating the learnings into your SEO strategy can become overwhelming.

2. Using Tools to Find Keyword Gaps

Once you have made a list of competitors you want to analyze, consider using tools like RankWatch to analyze the keywords they are using, the ones they are ranking for, and the ones you do not have in your current strategy. These tools usually present a comparison, helping you visualize the gaps.

3. Evaluating the Results and Identifying Opportunities

With the newly discovered keywords, you should focus on creating keyword clusters that can be used to either update existing content pieces or will be required to generate fresh content pieces. Notably, it is essential to update your SEO strategy as well to be able to leverage the benefits of the analysis for a longer period of time.

Implementing Keyword Gap Analysis Findings in Your SEO Strategy

Here are some ways to capitalize on the findings from keyword gap analysis to capture SEO opportunities:

• Identifying the intent of the keywords found (informative, navigational, and transactional) and using them accordingly to close the conversion gap.
• Creating information-rich blogs, FAQs, guides, and checklists that cover missing topics.
• Optimizing existing product or service pages and building new pages to target relevant audience segments.
• Improving the quality and distribution of internal linking structure while also making the website easy to navigate to capture user interest.
• Targeting keywords that have lower difficulty and then moving your way up.
• Focus on improving on-page elements by optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, and other elements.
• Creating a strategic and highly impactful internal linking strategy that naturally makes use of high-value keywords from the gap analysis learnings.
• Optimizing mobile experience as well as desktop experience by adding more user-friendly elements.
• Track the newly added keywords and consistently add more content on the website (over time) to target the missing keywords.
• Conducting regular keyword gap analysis to identify any new potential SEO opportunities and act on them.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Keyword Gap Analysis

Here are some common mistakes to avoid while conducting and implementing keyword gap analysis:

• Not paying attention to the intent of the keywords and not understanding the type of content that is favored for a particular search query.
• Following keyword difficulty as the only metric in hindsight to gain SEO advantage over your competitors.
• Not checking if the keyword is a branded name or if the keyword is singular or plural in nature.
• Narrowing down content targeting to meet only one particular type of intent while including keywords that require different content formats and are of different intent.
• Using keyword research as a means to find keyword clusters and aggressively using them in existing content strategy.
• Not researching or understanding how your ideal customer is looking for a product or service.
• Being too rigid about filling the gaps and not focusing on creating fresh, trending content pieces.
• Not using long-tail keywords and semantically relevant keywords and only focusing on using one type of keyword throughout the content pieces.
• Missing out on using seed keywords for products or services-based pages on the website.
• Engaging in keyword cannibalization, where the same keywords are used with different pages. For such pages, Google always struggles to find the one offering the most value.
• Focusing entirely on using high-volume keywords. There is already a lot of competition in such segments, and it can become difficult even if you produce bulk content pieces regularly.

Measuring the Impact of Keyword Gap Analysis on SEO: Key Metrics

Here are the key metrics you must watch once you have implemented your keyword gap strategy.

1. Organic traffic

The obvious sign that your keyword gap analysis strategy is working is when you have started gaining organic traffic from search engine results pages (SERPs) without any ad placements. While you could be getting traffic from various sources, narrowing it down to focus on organic traffic will make it evident if you are ranking for the newly added keywords to your strategy.

2. Exit rate

The rate at which your customers exit your website is known as the exit rate. Tracking this metric is important as it helps identify low-performing pages and presents the opportunity to revamp them with better SEO and content.

3. Click-through rate

A higher click-through rate indicates that people are stumbling upon your website and clicking on it. The rise also indicates that your web page has an SEO-friendly title, meta description, and URL structure that helps search engines and your target audience identify your page as useful.

4. Pages per session

The metric indicates the number of pages a visitor went through on your website before exiting. Tracking this metric gives an idea about how well-structured your website is and how easily your customers are able to navigate through the pages as they discover more about your website. A low number of pages per session indicates the need to make the pages more user-friendly and enhance content quality.

5. Top keywords ranked

Once you have optimized your SEO and content strategy to incorporate missing keywords, your website should start ranking higher on search engines. As this happens, tracking the new keywords that are attracting the most organic traffic and leveraging them to create trending content can further help your website rank higher on search engines.

The Power of Keyword Gap Analysis in SEO Strategy

Keyword gap analysis is an incredibly effective way to understand what your target audience is looking for that you are not offering yet, but your competitors are. By analyzing the keywords your competitors are ranking for, you can create better SEO and content opportunities for your website.

Additionally, based on keyword gap analysis, you can focus on creating content that aligns with your target audience’s needs and gain a competitive edge. Notably, while adding more keywords to your SEO strategy can maximize your potential to rank higher in search results, tracking key metrics will ensure that you continue to scale up the success ladder.

In case you are unsure how to conduct a keyword gap analysis and improve your content and SEO strategy, consider getting in touch with us and let our expertise to supercharge your online success.

Keyword gap analysis effectively identifies the keywords your business is not targeting yet and uses it to scale your online growth. Read more here!