An SEO talk seems incomplete without the content strategy discussion. Right? Even it is considered a hard nut to crack. After all, a great content strategy is a reason for the substantial growth of your online website. Therefore, SEO or content marketers hunt for the best ways and follow strategic approaches to produce great content that covers facts and figures, making the content powerful and interesting.
But at the same time, in the boast of cracking the nutshell and standing out in a fierce competition, they produce content that doesn’t deliver a result that being an SEO expert they always strive for. How would you conduct the rest strategies when the king of SEO, i.e., content, is not perfect? Therefore, it’s always recommended to go for content gap analysis as it is a smart way to determine the missing gaps in your content and come up with strategic content ideas that can fill those gaps and help you gain more traffic.
The thought of conducting content gap analysis probably makes you fall into the deep dilemma of what to do or how to start. Many SEO experts or marketers are aware of this analysis. Sometimes, they find themselves stuck in the middle and completely clueless about what they should do next. If you’re one of them, below we have rounded up everything you need to know about content gap analysis along with few tips to follow for more impressive outcomes.
What is the Content Gap Analysis?
Content Gap Analysis is a process of evaluating existing content and finding out the gaps, becoming a hindrance in the website’s SEO performance. With this analysis, you can easily trace the areas of improvement in your existing content. A content gap analysis will help a digital marketing expert or marketer know what your clients want to consume and what the market should offer. This way, you can focus on the improvement of the most valuable assets of your website.
The content analysis process involves the auditing of
- Webpages.
- Landing pages.
- Blog articles.
- Ebooks and downloadables.
- Social media content.
- And other content assets.
Benefits of Content Gap Analysis
Probably, the most common questions usually arise while discussing content gap analysis, “what are the benefits a marketer can enjoy with this analysis?” Do you also want to know? Let’s discuss-
When you analyze your content gaps thoroughly, you will know about the weak points that need your attention. This way, you can fill those gaps and save your business time and money for further development practices. Confused? With this analysis practice, you can easily determine the audience who are not interested in your products and services. Moreover, you will be able to direct your attention to educating interested customers.
Above all, the content gap analysis gives you a clear picture of your website’s performance compared to your competitors in terms of keyword strategies. Strong keyword research and analysis will bring you closer to your website goals, resulting in more customer traffic and strengthening customer relationships. You can even plan your next move and use the SEO techniques accordingly in a more strategic way and eliminate the errors or fill the gaps of the content.
Content Gap Analysis & SEO Work Together
While conducting an SEO campaign, it is important to run an SEO content gap analysis. This process also helps in outlining the content strategy, generating the topic and keyword ideas. In simple words, it assists a marketer in kicking off a content marketing strategy that further generates positive SEO results.
The process involves a combination of steps that helps in determining the keywords your competitors are ranking for on the first page. The data retrieved from this analysis allows a marketer to put their efforts in the right direction for content creation and improvements.
Tips for Accomplishing Effective Content Gap Analysis for SEO
Below, we have mentioned a few essential tips for successful content gap analysis and surefire ways to do wonders in your SEO strategies. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s start our list-
Outline Your Buyer’s Journey Intricately
When it comes to the smooth running of content gap analysis, one of the important things you should consider is mapping out your buyer’s journey. This practice gives you a clear idea about buyers’ choices or preferences and what they are looking for. Moreover, you can easily determine what call to action can encourage your audience to contact you. Invest a few minutes in outlining the buyer’s journey.
For example, an individual is struggling to find the best phone. He searches online for “how to find the best phone” and receives the “tips to find the best phone.” The user clicks on this result, which helps him know the tips and also recommend the top smartphone brands name to heighten your interest. Here, he goes back to Google again to grab information about that particular phone brand mentioned in the article or blog. He compares two or more brands keeping in mind their pros and cons. And finally, he ended up with the best smartphone brand and visited their official website to buy the device.
In this example, you can easily conclude that there are several opportunities for creating content at different stages of the buyer’s journey. While content gap analysis, make sure you have mapped out this to benefit your business in several ways.
Proper Market Research- It’s Important!
Another tip on our list is conducting proper market research as this practice is considered the ideal way to hit your mind with new content ideas that can attract your audience. You can determine your audience’s goals, needs, preferences, and more with just a simple market research survey. This way, you can easily strategize your website content.
For an effective market survey, you can use Google Forms to create a simple survey to send your audience. With this market survey, you can fill several content gaps with a treasure trove of content ideas that will satisfy your targeted audience in the most ways.
Identifying the Content Gaps- Do Wisely!
Last on our list is identifying the content gaps, which a crucial to do while conducting content gap analysis. After all, finding and fixing errors in your content strengthens your website’s visibility and stand it out in the digital crowd.
Once you are done with the market research and get a clear image of the audience’s interest, you must direct your efforts to analyze your results and determine the content gaps. It can be done manually with Excel’s assistance in which you can compel the keywords your competitors are ranking for and deduct those keywords your website is all set to rank for. Keywords, which are left in Excel are the content gaps on which you have to work.
If you have fewer competitors, this process won’t take a long time. But in case your website has innumerable competitors in line, it will be good to go with Ahrefs and SemRush tools as they both are equipped with gap analysis features. This feature assists you analyze competitors and bring a list of keywords that require your attention.
The best thing about SemRush is that it also offers two tools, i.e., Keyword Gap and Backlink Gap tools. These tools allow you to compare your domain against many competitors and find out the gaps that are dropping down the website’s value and are becoming a hindrance to its online growth.
Final Words
Content gap analysis has now become a part of the marketer’s checklists, where they invest their precious time in analyzing the core of your website, i.e., content. While conducting this analysis, it is important to keep in mind a few content gap analysis tips to increase success chances. Above, we have covered every important point you should know about content gap analysis.