Content Gap Analysis: What Is It And How to Do One In 5 Steps
Any discrepancy between the content your audience desires and what is actually available on your website is known as a content gap. The practice of assessing a content topic to see if there are any chances to cover it more thoroughly is known as a content gap study. Identifying and fixing these gaps might help you generate greater results with your content strategy. Additionally, provide your audience more value. Content gap analysis is the process of identifying topics, keywords, and questions that your target audience is searching for, but your website doesn’t sufficiently cover. It involves analyzing your own content as well as your competitors’ to find opportunities to create new content or optimize existing pages to better meet searcher intent and outrank your rivals. Why conduct a content gap analysis? Identify unexplored keyword opportunitiesYou can find keywords that your rivals are ranking for but you aren’t by using content gap analysis. You may increase your organic reach and attract more qualified visitors to your website by seeing these chances and producing content that is specifically tailored to rank for them. Determine the content of competitors’ weaknesses.Every piece of content is not flawless. In addition to highlighting your competitors’ strengths, content gap analysis highlights areas in which their material is lacking. These results can be used to produce more thorough, worthwhile content that surpasses that of your rivals and better meets the needs of your intended audience. Help with prioritizing and content planningChoosing what to create next can be overwhelming due to the limitless choices for content. A data-driven methodology for ranking content production according to the subjects and keywords with the highest potential for organic traffic and conversions is offered by content gap analysis. Boost your niche’s topical authorityWebsites that exhibit knowledge and authority on a certain subject are given preference by Google. You may increase your site’s topical authority and raise your chances of ranking for related keywords by systematically addressing content gaps and producing in-depth materials on important subjects in your niche. Content gap types Typical content gaps consist of: Topic Gaps Topic gaps take a broad view. This occurs when your material falls short in covering general topics or themes. For instance, content on meal planning, meal prep, repurposing leftovers, and item substitution could be produced by a creative who specializes in learning how to cook on a budget. One thing she hasn’t covered? discounts and coupons. Coupons are the “topic gap” in this case. keywords Gaps Topic gaps inevitably give way to keyword gaps, which happen when your material doesn’t address the terms that prospective buyers use when searching online. Reduced web traffic and, eventually, fewer individuals in your sales and marketing funnels are the results of this disparity. The course teacher, who has now recognized couponing as a significant topic gap, can start looking for keywords to incorporate into her SEO plan by using the previous example. “How to find local coupons in New York,” “how to stack coupons at Target,” “couponing for beginners,” and “what are the best websites for coupons?” are some examples of keywords she may use. Media GapA lack of diversity in the forms of content is referred to as media gap. Text, images, videos, and audio are examples of content types. Since content marketing is a massive and expensive endeavor, organizations frequently concentrate all of their meager resources on just one kind. Regretfully, this may result in a sizable percentage of your clients becoming dissatisfied. While some customers prefer podcasts and audiobooks, others prefer written communication, including blog posts and emails. You’re essentially telling the rest of your audience to keep looking elsewhere for the media type they require if you only concentrate on one or two types. Format GapThe way your content is presented is referred to as format gaps. Email newsletters, SMS text messages, blog entries, e-books, how-to manuals, and templates are a few examples of text content. Format gaps have the same potential to exclude some segments of your audience as media gaps do. For instance, not everyone is interested in reading an email newsletter. An ebook or in-depth blog post is preferred by some. Six Steps to Conducting Content Gap Analysis Finding methods to figure out what kind of contents your audience wants but you aren’t creating right now is essential to performing a content gap analysis correctly. Without a sense of direction, this can be a daunting task. For this reason, we divided the procedure into these six easily absorbed steps. Step 1: Understanding the Buyer’s Journey The buyer’s journey has four stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Success. Mapping the journey ensures targeted content, effective keywords, and fills content gaps, boosting engagement and sales. Step 2: Conduct Market and keyword research. You can start researching your target market and the terms your audience uses in pertinent searches once you have a firm grasp of your customer journey. There are two steps in this process: Customer research, competitive analysis, and industry trends are all considered forms of market research. Understanding your target market’s demographics and behaviors, the tactics used by your rivals, and the most recent developments and trends in your target market are all part of your objective. You can use the following tools to aid in your market research: Google Trends, Statista, Pew Research Center, or Semrush. Keyword research is the process of identifying specific search terms your target audience uses during their customer journey, especially during the awareness, consideration, and interest stages. Tools that can help with keyword research include: Semrush, Answer the Public , Ahrefs, Surfer SEO or Moz Keep in mind that keywords aren’t limited to search engines like Google and Bing as you continue your keyword research. Additionally, search engines like YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram employ keywords. Step 3: Audit your existing content A content gap analysis isn’t just about generating ideas for new content; it’s also about auditing your existing library of content to see if anything’s missing. Also, it’s normal for content to become outdated and irrelevant after a
