How to Do a Content Gap Analysis for SEO

Businesses are competitive and business owners and marketers strategize consistently on ways to market, win clients and overcome competition. One of the ways they achieve this is through SEO marketing, where they prepare content full of strategic keywords with a final goal to rank high in search engines, with Google being the most popular one.

The results may not be pleasing and the business competitors could be doing better. One of the best ways to know if your keywords are working for you is to do a content gap analysis to know which keywords are lacking in your marketing. There are several ways you can do this. 

Analyze your past content

Marketing content is age-driven and as time goes by, older content gest pushed out by newer content. For example, before the age of smartphones, there were lots of content used by marketers to sell mobile phones in the market then. 

Today, smartphones have been overtaken the 1980s and 1990s phones. If the marketer continues using the old content to market smartphones, it will not work. Marketers need to be smart in mastering the search engines to gain the most out of their marketing content. They need to revise the content and update it to fit today’s demand. 

It might be better to archive some content than having it on your blog, yet it’s not adding any value to customers. It doesn’t matter if the content is in video form, written, audio, email, and so on. as long as it’s passed by time and technology, it will always create a huge gap. 

Analyze your goals

You need a direction of where you are and where you want to go. Every business has set goals and a mission on how to achieve them. The reason why you want to do a content analysis gap on SEO is that you want to achieve certain goals. 

Understand the goals well because they will help you know which places to check for gaps and the problem that has triggered the need for analysis. It could be your marketing strategies are not working and you want to change or improve on them. 

It could also be because your pages are ranking poorly on search engines and you want to rank higher. Having the main objective will help you make good use of the analysis results.

Analyze your keywords

Keywords contribute significantly to search engine rankings. When doing a keyword gap analysis, you will be looking for keywords you are not using yet that are useful for higher ranking. What you need to do is to study the keywords you have been using in your content. Check the percentage of people typing those keywords in their online search. 

There are several apps you can use online to make your keyword gap analysis easier. If you find only about five percent of people are searching for products using the keywords in your content, know that your keyword can never help your site rank high. 

Some keywords will rank high today and drastically drop within a few weeks. That’s why you need to constantly analyze your keywords so that you can keep updating your keywords constantly. If you keep your content fresh with new keywords, you will likely rank high consistently. 

Analyze your competitor’s keywords

You could be selling the same or similar products, but your competitors get ranked high on google than you. You may plan to improve your customer service or lower the cost of your products, but the method fails to work. 

The secret might not be in customer service or cost, but it might be in keywords. Your competitor could be smarter in keywords than you and you need to know which keywords they are suing. Using the keyword analysis tools, copy your competitor’s URL and paste it into the tool. If you are not sure which URL your competitor is using, check the sites that are similar to your site’s products. 

Set the tool to show only the keywords your competitor’s sites rank for and compare them with your blog keywords. Now study the keywords your competitor is using and if they are relevant to your products, change your content and use the keywords. 

You also need to search for keywords that neither you nor your competitor is using, yet they can be useful for higher search engine ranking. 

Do a buying stage analysis?

Marketing content can be divided into three levels or stages and each plays a crucial role in helping a customer decide to buy. The first level of content helps to give customers information. The customer may not have decided to buy yet, but they are seeking information or answers to certain products. The content in this stage can be the how-to, lists, why should, what is, and so on. Once the customer gets the primary information, they move to the middle or secondary information stage. 

In the middle stage, the customer is looking for deeper information concerning a specific product they are interested in. If it’s a phone they want to buy, they first seek general information on all phones in the market, and then they seek information on a specific brand. The customer is now ready to proceed to stage three of buying and ready to make a purchase. 

In the final stage, the customer is ready to buy and they are seeking information on how the product works, the specs, speed, after-sale service, and so on. The information they could be looking for is FAQs, demos, and videos. 

Analyze the three stages to know where you are. If your blog is only providing information useful for stage one, it might never bring a customer to close a deal with you. They will be receiving the information and probably go to the site that has availed stage two and three information. Once you have identified the gap, act and fill the gap with relevant information and keywords. 

Analyze gap by channels

After producing content, you cannot store it in your drive but you need to distribute the information. There are many channels you can use for distribution like social media, emails, blogs, websites, magazines, and so on. 

After distributing your information, you need to analyze it to know if your information is being read, viewed, or listened to. You also need to know which channel has more responses and which one is not performing. 

When analyzing the gaps, do not do a general analysis. Instead, do a specific analysis on each channel. If it’s social media, list all the social media accounts you have and analyze each separately. 

Do a separation between paid and organic search, emails, community forums like Reddit and Quora, YouTube, referrals, blogs, LinkedIn, and so on. After the analysis, identify all the gaps and note the channels with greater potential. 

You might want to allocate more resources to the more profitable channels. You might also want to do away with the channels that are not responding or change your strategy for the non-responsive channels. 

Analyze your content type

When a business person talks about marketing goals, they could be talking about an entirely different thing from another with the same marketing goals. The understanding of marketing to one business person could mean setting up a shop, whether electronic or physical, and wait for people to accidentally find the shop and buy. 

To another, marketing means writing or setting a blog and filling it with posts. Another marketer may think about social media as the only tool. The perfect marketer must incorporate every available channel and tool to achieve tremendous results. 

There are more than seventy content types and the marketer can use each and achieve results. The most common types of content are blog posts, videos, articles, audios, e-books, emails, and case studies. Others are print advertising like business cards, banners, newspapers, posters, and many more. 

The business person needs to analyze gaps in all the main content types if they use them for marketing. They need to analyze videos against articles, blogs against emails, audios, e-books, and so on. 

In terms of keywords, the business person will identify the keywords they have been using in each and create strategies on how to fill the gaps. They need to identify which content is performing better and note the reasons. 

You will know where to put more effort and which content you need to do an overhaul of keywords. If you are not using any of the main content types, analyze what others are posting and the keywords they are using and start producing your keyword-rich content. 

Conduct a survey

All the above points we have discussed revolve around a DIY approach where the business person is analyzing every possible channel to identify gaps in keywords. The king of the business is the customer because they are the ones who will finally buy the products. 

It is the customer who keys in the keywords as they search for products and services and therefore, the customer can help identify which keywords they use when searching for products. 

The best way to obtain this knowledge from the customer is through market research. Many market research firms can help tailor make a questionnaire. Alternatively, you can download customized survey templates online and set your questions. 

You want to set targeted questions because you want to get information from the customer about what comes to their mind when they want to search for a product online. Once you set the questions, you can send them to your client list or through research agents. 

The result you get will help you get ideas on where you are in terms of keyword strategy and what you should do. Your clients will be sincere because they want to enjoy better services and products from you. 

Take action 

After you conduct a thorough content gap analysis for SEO, do not wait any longer. Take action and perfect your keywords and content. Your content needs to be fresh and relevant all the time. Invest money where necessary, the time where needed and content, then wait for positive results. 

Conclusion 

Daily, millions of marketers and business people publish content online and hope it will convert. Every individual publishing content online also hopes they will rank top 100 on search engines. The probability that your content will rank high will depend on the relevance of your content, how rich it is in keywords, and how up-to-date your site is. Every marketer must ensure they narrow their keyword gap for SEO purposes or, if possible, completely seal them. 

Author Bio: Rosa Hemming is an experienced content writer and blogger from the United States currently working for the best essay writing service and best dissertation writing services. She is greatly fond of movies and tv shows and her blog consists of lists of the best films divided by genre and different moods. Contact her on Twitter.  

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March 29, 2021