How to Do a Content Gap Analysis
Published on 07.01.2026 by Chizoba T
In an ever-evolving field of digital marketing, you need to ensure your content resonates with your target audience. One of the top lead-generation content marketing strategies to enable you to do that and remain ahead of the competition is content gap analysis.
When done well, it can help you identify areas where your other content may be lacking, as well as where your competitors are lacking. You can then figure out a way to fill those gaps with relevant, valuable content that will be attractive to users and search engines. In this article, we help you understand what content gap analysis is and how you can use it to ensure optimal results.
Definition of Content Gap Analysis
Content gap analysis involves identifying and assessing missing content ideas across different stages of the buyer's journey. When performing a content gap analysis, you can identify areas of your site where content is underdeveloped and opportunities you can capitalize on.
It starts by auditing your current content or your competitor's, then planning a content strategy that meets users at different stages of the buying journey. For instance, you might begin by looking for content gaps consisting of content that is hard to understand, outdated, and doesn't answer the search queries.
It may also include topics your competitors have covered, but you haven't, keywords you aren't ranking for, and more. Once you have identified the missed opportunities and the content that addresses these gaps, you can improve your site’s SEO performance, authority, and relevance.
Benefits of Conducting a Content Gap Analysis
When you perform a content gap analysis, you can enjoy various benefits such as:
Better Keyword Ranking
A content gap analysis can help you uncover keywords you aren't ranking for. When you target such keywords with updated, new content, you can improve your SEO ranking and drive more organic traffic to your site.
Better User Experience
Content gap analysis can also help you get value for users. When you identify the kind of content your audience is searching for but isn't available on your site, you can focus on creating content that meets their needs, ensuring higher engagement and a better user experience.
Gain a Competitive Edge
When you understand the kind of content your competitors are creating, you can gain essential insights to inform your content strategy. You will be better positioned to analyze the best-performing content for your audience and the missed opportunities on your site. You can then focus on creating content that performs better and even outperforms them.
Better Content Optimization
Content gap analysis can help you identify the underperforming content on your site. Once you expand and update this content to address the gaps you identify, you can improve its performance and relevance, which will increase your traffic and ranking.
Strategic Content Planning
After you have gained some insights through content gap analysis, you will be better positioned to create content that aligns with your audience's needs and SEO best practices. You can, therefore, be assured that your content gaps focus on the areas with the most significant impact.
Steps in Performing a Content Gap Analysis
To effectively perform content gap analysis, use the following steps:
Determine Your Competitors
You need to visit the search engine results page to identify your competitors. These may not be direct competitors to your business, but the sites rank for the keyword you are targeting. Since most people create content with the hope of ranking on the first page of Google, the best way to identify content gaps is to look at the sites already ranking there.
Therefore, visit Google SERPs to see the top sites that are ranking for the keyword you are targeting. You can then look at their content to see any gaps, such as:
- Content freshness. Consider the content's publishing date or the last time it was updated.
- Usability. Can you easily read through the content and understand it?
- Thoroughness. Does the content thoroughly answer the search query?
- Wow factor. How good is the content in making people want to share it?
Alternatively, tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush have a feature that shows you content gaps. Once you identify these gaps, you will seek to fill them in your own content. However, you may also choose one or two gaps to fill to outrank your competitors.
Audit Your Own Content
Another key part of finding a content gap is by looking at your content. Through a content audit, you can identify content that is underperforming on your site. Once you identify gaps in your content, you can see potential areas for improvement.
When performing your website content audit, you should pay attention to content quality, SEO or SMM elements, and engagement and traffic. You should also consider the technical aspects, such as mobile responsiveness, image SEO, and site speed. Ensure that the content is up to date, accurate, and aligns with your brand goal. After analyzing these factors, you will determine which content to keep and which to remove.
Identify Opportunities
Consider the opportunities your content can fill, as outlined in the previous steps. Depending on the analysis you conducted earlier, the content gap opportunities can be in:
- Keyword opportunities. You need to ensure you create content that targets the keywords you aren't ranking for. However, when doing that, remember to check the competition level of the keyword.
- Topic opportunities. Make sure you create content on the relevant topics and subtopics you haven't covered earlier.
- Formatting opportunities. Experiment with different content formats to build a diversified content strategy.
- Audience opportunities. Make sure your audience is tailored to meet the needs of the different content segments you aren't currently targeting.
After you have identified these opportunities, you can decide whether to update your current content, create new content, or repurpose it in different formats to ensure it meets your target audience's needs.
Create Content to Fill the Gaps
The next step should not be to create content to fill these content gaps. This content should be:
- Conduct research. Perform thorough research to provide you with valuable, accurate data about your content.
- Keep it engaging. Make sure the content is written in a clear, conversational, and engaging tone that keeps your audience interested.
- Visual appeal. Keep the content visually appealing and engaging by adding various elements such as videos, images, and infographics.
- SEO optimization. Add the relevant keywords, internal links, and meta tags to optimize the content.
If you want to reach a diverse audience, experiment with different types of content. These can include blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, white papers, and e-books.
Optimize Your Content
During your content gap analysis, you might realize you already have content that was performing well but could be improved by simply filling a few gaps or optimizing it. You can optimize such content by adding the missed details, removing the outdated information, adding extra keywords you had discovered in the analysis, and more.
Track Performance
You also need to track the performance of the newly optimized content. This will help you determine if your new content is performing well. You can leverage tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics to monitor your social media ranking, traffic, and engagement metrics, and assess the success of your analysis.
Consistently Create Quality Content
A good content strategy should include a plan to consistently create high-quality content. You can do that by having:
- Content guidelines. These should guide you on the style, tone, and formatting.
- Editorial process. Ensure you have an outstanding editorial process that enables you to review and refine content before it is published.
- Regular updates. Make sure your content is regularly updated to keep it accurate and relevant.
- Quality assurance. Leverage tools such as Hemingway and Grammarly to ensure the highest quality of writing.
In Conclusion
In the ever-changing digital marketing and SEO world, it is essential to keep finding new opportunities and hidden potential to remain ahead of the competition. One of the most potent methods of doing that is through content gap analysis.
This technique will help you discover hidden opportunities and fill gaps in your strategy to better serve your audience. By following our guide, you can find the details you need on content gap analysis, from its benefits to a step-by-step guide on implementing it. These steps will be key to your content marketing and SEO strategies. We recommend you read our guide on creating a content analysis report.