Content Gap 101: What is it, Types, Causes, Benefits & Tools

As a SaaS company, creating valuable content is essential for attracting organic traffic and engaging potential customers.

However, even with a robust content strategy, you may still be missing out on opportunities to rank for important keywords and topics. That’s where content gap analysis comes in.

At VH-info, we specialize in helping SaaS businesses identify and close content gaps to improve their SEO performance.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive into what content gap analysis is, why it’s important for your SEO strategy, and how to conduct an effective analysis to boost your rankings and drive more qualified traffic to your site.

What is a Content Gap?

A content gap refers to the difference between the content you currently have and the content you need to effectively target your audience and rank for relevant keywords. These gaps can take many forms, from missing topics and formats to outdated or low-quality content.

Types of Content Gaps

To effectively identify and address content gaps, it’s important to understand the different types:

1. Keyword Gaps: Keyword gaps occur when you’re not targeting relevant keywords that your competitors are ranking for. By identifying these gaps, you can create new content to capture search traffic you may be missing out on.
2. Topic Gaps: Topic gaps happen when you’re not covering key topics related to your niche or audience’s interests. Filling these gaps with comprehensive, valuable content can help establish your authority and attract more qualified traffic.
3. Format Gaps: Format gaps arise when you’re not leveraging the content formats your audience prefers, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, or case studies. Diversifying your content formats can help engage a wider audience and improve your SEO performance.
4. Quality Gaps: Quality gaps occur when your existing content is outdated, thin, or fails to provide value to your target audience. Updating and improving this content can boost its relevance and search rankings.
5. Funnel Gaps: Funnel gaps happen when you’re not creating content to support each stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness to consideration to decision. Mapping your content to the sales funnel ensures you’re nurturing leads effectively.

What is a Content Gap Analysis?

A content gap analysis is the strategic process of identifying and evaluating the differences between your existing content and the needed content pieces in your content marketing strategy to achieve your SEO and business goals. Conducting a thorough analysis can help uncover opportunities to create new content, optimize existing assets, and outperform your competitors in search results.

How Content Gaps Impact SEO Performance?

Content gaps can significantly impact your SEO performance in several ways:

1. Missed keyword opportunities: If you’re not targeting relevant keywords, you’re missing out on valuable search traffic and potential customers.
2. Weak topical authority: Failing to cover key topics in-depth can limit your ability to establish authority and rank for competitive keywords.
3. Poor user engagement: Low-quality or irrelevant content can lead to high bounce rates and low engagement, hurting your search rankings.

Content Gap Analysis Vs Content Audit—What’s The Difference?

While a content gap analysis and a content audit both involve evaluating your existing content, they serve different purposes:

• A content gap analysis focuses on identifying opportunities to create new content to fill gaps and improve your SEO performance.
• A content audit assesses the quality and performance of your existing content to identify areas for optimization and improvement.

Common Content Gap Causes

Several factors can contribute to content gaps on your website:

Missing Content

The most obvious cause of content gaps is simply not having content that targets relevant keywords, topics, or formats. This can happen when you’re not conducting thorough keyword research or analyzing your competitors’ content strategies.

Query Pipeline Issues

If your content isn’t properly optimized for search queries, it may not be surfacing in search results as intended.

This can be due to issues like:

• Overly Restrictive Query Filters: If your query filters are too narrow, you may be excluding relevant content from your search results.
• Invalid Query Syntax: Using incorrect query syntax can prevent your content from matching relevant searches.
• Lengthy Queries: Overly complex or lengthy queries can limit the pool of matching content.
• Misspelled Query Words: Misspellings in your queries can cause relevant content to be overlooked.

Benefits of Content Gap Analysis

Conducting a content gap analysis offers several key benefits for your SaaS SEO strategy:

• Identify untapped keyword opportunities: Uncover valuable keywords you may be missing out on to drive more organic traffic.
• Gain a competitive edge: Analyze your competitors’ content strategies to identify gaps you can fill to outrank them in search results.
• Inform content planning: Use insights from your analysis to prioritize content creation and optimization efforts for maximum impact.
• Boost topical authority: Identify opportunities to create comprehensive, in-depth content on key topics to establish your authority.

Why Does Every SEO Strategy Need Content Gap Analysis?

Content gap analysis is an essential component of any effective SEO strategy for several reasons:

1. Find Untapped Keyword Opportunities: Analyzing your competitors’ content and conducting thorough keyword research can help you identify valuable keyword opportunities you may be missing out on. Targeting these keywords with new, high-quality content can help drive more organic traffic to your site.
2. Identify Weaknesses in Competitors’ Content: Analyzing your competitors’ content can reveal gaps and weaknesses in their strategies that you can capitalize on. By creating content that fills these gaps and provides more value to your shared audience, you can improve your search rankings and steal market share.
3. Inform Content Planning and Prioritization: Insights from your content gap analysis can help guide your content planning and prioritization efforts. By focusing on the most impactful opportunities first, you can maximize your resources and see faster results from your SEO strategy.
4. Improve Topical Authority in Your Niche: Creating comprehensive, in-depth content on key topics related to your niche can help establish your brand as an authority. Content gap analysis can uncover opportunities to create this type of content and improve your overall search visibility.

How to Conduct a Content Gap Analysis?

Conducting a content gap analysis involves four key steps:

• Step 1: Identify Your Top SEO Competitors- Start by identifying the websites and brands that consistently outrank you for your target keywords. These are your top SEO competitors, and analyzing their content strategies can reveal valuable insights.
• Step 2: Analyze Competitors’ Top-Performing Content- Use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to analyze your competitors’ top-performing content. Look for patterns in the keywords they’re targeting, the topics they’re covering, and the formats they’re using.
• Step 3: Evaluate Your Existing Content For Gaps- Compare your existing content to your competitors to identify gaps in your strategy. Look for missing keywords, topics, formats, and quality issues that may be holding you back.
• Step 4: Prioritize Gaps and Plan Content to Fill Them- Based on your analysis, prioritize the most impactful content gaps to fill first. Create a content plan that outlines the new pieces you need to create, as well as any existing content that needs to be updated or optimized.

Identifying Common Content Gaps in Existing Content

In addition to identifying gaps in your overall content strategy, it’s important to evaluate your existing content for common issues that may be impacting its performance:

1. Content Freshness: Outdated content can hurt your search rankings and provide a poor user experience. Look for opportunities to update and refresh your existing content with new information and insights.
2. Comprehensiveness: Thin or shallow content may not provide enough value to rank well in search results. Identify content that can be expanded or combined to create more comprehensive, in-depth resources.
3. Readability: Poor readability can impact user engagement and search rankings. Evaluate your content for issues like long paragraphs, complex language, and lack of formatting, and optimize for readability.
4. Engagement and Shareability: Content that doesn’t resonate with your audience may suffer from low engagement and limited social shares. Look for opportunities to create more engaging, shareable content that aligns with your audience’s interests and needs.

Content Gap Workflow: How to Close Content Gaps?

Once you’ve identified content gaps, follow these strategies to efficiently close them and improve your SEO performance:

• Strategy #1: Start With Keywords Relevant to Your Existing Assets- Begin by targeting keywords that are closely related to your existing content. This allows you to quickly optimize and expand upon content you already have, rather than starting from scratch.
• Strategy #2: Target Commercial Keywords First- Prioritize filling gaps for commercial keywords that are more likely to drive conversions and revenue. These keywords typically have higher search volume and intent, making them more valuable to your business.
• Strategy #3: Target Quick Gains- Look for content gaps that can be filled quickly and easily, such as creating a missing blog post or optimizing an existing page. These quick wins can give your SEO a boost while you work on more complex content projects.
• Strategy #4: Conduct a Content Audit- In addition to your content gap analysis, conduct a thorough audit of your existing content to identify opportunities for optimization and improvement. This can help you get more value from the content you already have while you work on filling gaps.

Tools For Content Gap Analysis

Several tools can help streamline your content gap analysis process:

Semrush

Semrush helps with SEO. It has features like keyword research and competitor analysis. These tools aid decision-making using data. They improve search visibility for businesses.

Use Semrush to find keywords matching your niche. Look for high-volume, less competitive keywords. These are great for content strategy. Discover competitors’ keywords and top content for insights.

The Content Gap tool finds new content opportunities. Compare your keyword rankings with competitors. Find keywords they rank for but you don’t. This sparks content ideas and growth areas.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a popular SEO tool that focuses on backlinks. It shows your website’s backlink profile, including referring domains and anchor text distribution. Use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer for competitor analysis to learn about their search performance and backlinks.

This can help you improve your content strategy and stay ahead. Ahrefs’ Content Explorer checks web pages to find top-performing content in your niche. You can discover content ideas, and popular formats, and identify gaps to use.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a helpful tool that provides data on your website’s performance in search results.

It reveals information like clicks, impressions, and average ranking positions for different searches. This insight allows you to understand your site’s visibility and identify areas for enhancement.

To discover the keywords driving traffic to your site, explore the “Performance” report in GSC. Focus on queries with high impressions but low click-through rates as they indicate opportunities to optimize titles and meta descriptions for better visibility.

Utilize the “Search Queries” report in GSC to uncover long-tail keywords and variations used by your target audience. This can inspire valuable content ideas and highlight where you can expand your content to address specific user needs.

How Do I Measure the Success Of My Content Gap Analysis?

To measure the success of your content gap analysis, track key metrics like:

1. Keyword Rankings: Monitor your rankings for target keywords to see if your new content is driving improvements.
2. Organic Traffic: Track the organic traffic to your site to see if your content gap efforts are driving more qualified visitors.
3. Engagement Metrics: Monitor metrics like bounce rate, time on page, and pages per session to gauge how well your new content resonates with your audience.
4. Conversions: Track conversions and revenue generated from your new content to measure its impact on your bottom line.

FAQ’s:

How Often Should I Conduct a Content Gap Analysis?

It’s a good idea to conduct a content gap analysis at least quarterly to ensure you’re staying on top of new opportunities and changes in your competitive landscape.

What Are Some Common Content Gaps to Look For?

Common content gaps include missing keywords, topics, formats, and quality issues like outdated or thin content.

How Do I Prioritize Which Content Gaps to Fill First?

Prioritize content gaps based on factors like search volume, keyword difficulty, relevance to your business, and potential impact on your SEO and revenue goals.

How Can Content Gap Analysis Improve SEO?

Content gap analysis can improve your SEO by helping you identify untapped keyword opportunities, outperform competitors, establish topical authority, and create more comprehensive, valuable content for your audience.

Conclusion

Content gap analysis is a powerful tool for any SaaS company looking to improve their SEO performance and drive more organic traffic.

Identifying and filling gaps in your content strategy can help you capture more search traffic, outrank competitors, and establish your brand as an authority in your niche.

At VH-info, we specialize in helping SaaS businesses conduct effective content gap analysis and create high-quality content that drives results. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you take your content strategy to the next level.