How to do a content gap analysis for a small site, and what to write first

A content gap analysis lists the keywords a competitor ranks for that your site doesn’t. The list is the easy part: a free gap check returns one in about 20 seconds. The hard part is reading it. A gap list from a bigger rival runs to hundreds of keywords, most of which you should never write for, and the order you write the rest in decides whether the work pays this quarter or next year. This post is about the reading.

What a gap list contains

A gap check compares two domains against an index of Google’s results and keeps the keywords where the competitor has a page in the top 20 and yours has none. For each keyword you get, at minimum:

• Monthly searches. How many times a month people in the country search the phrase.
• The competitor’s position and page. Where they rank and with what.
• Keyword difficulty (KD). A 0 to 100 estimate of how strong the pages already ranking are, based mostly on their links.
• Search intent. What most searchers want from the phrase: information, a comparison, a purchase, or a specific site.

The last two are the ones that make the list readable. Without them, a gap list is sorted by searches, and the top of it is the keywords the biggest sites own.

Step 1: Drop what isn’t yours

A competitor rarely covers exactly your topics. A backpacking food blog checking a general camping site gets that site’s tent reviews, campsite guides, and gear deals in its gap list. Those are real gaps, in the sense that you don’t rank for them, and they are also not your site.

Go down the list and strike anything a reader of your site would not expect to find there. The test is not “could I write this?” but “would someone who found this post believe the rest of my site?” A gap list against a close rival needs little striking. Against a large general site, expect to strike more than half.

GapDigest does this step for you: it keeps a profile of your site, built from your own ranking pages, and scores each new gap keyword for fit before it reaches the weekly report.

Step 2: Sort by difficulty before searches

A keyword with 5,000 searches at KD 70 and one with 500 searches at KD 15 are not five thousand and five hundred visits. The first is a page the large sites own, and a new post from a small site will sit on page three for a year. The second is a page you can win in a quarter and that will send its 500 searches’ worth of clicks by then.

Sort the remaining list by KD, ascending, and draw a line at what your site has won before. If your best-ranking posts sit at KD 20 to 30, that is your range. A keyword above 50 is a long-term target, not next week’s post.

Step 3: Read intent, then choose the page type

Intent decides what kind of page ranks, and writing the wrong kind is the most common way to do the work and get nothing:

Intent	What ranks	What to write
Informational	Guides, how-tos, answers	A post that answers the question first
Commercial	Comparisons, reviews, “best X” lists	A comparison with a clear pick
Transactional	Product and category pages	A product page, or skip it
Navigational	One specific site	Skip it

A blog with no products should strike transactional keywords, and treat commercial ones as review posts. A shop should do the reverse.

Step 4: Open the competitor’s page

For each keyword still on the list, open the page that ranks for it and answer two questions: what does it cover, and where is it thin? A page that ranks third with a plain list and no structure is beatable by a page with a plan and the same list. A page that ranks first with 4,000 words, original photos, and a hundred comments is not, at any KD.

Write the angle down in one sentence before you write anything else. “Their page is a list of 30 meals; mine is a seven-day plan with weights, and the list is the appendix” is an angle. “A better version” is not.

Step 5: New post or update?

Before writing, search your own site for the keyword’s topic. If a page already covers part of it, extend that page. It has some standing with Google already, and a second page on the same topic splits the two and often ranks neither. Only write a new post when nothing on the site touches the topic.

The writing order

After the five steps, what is left is a short list, each with an intent, a difficulty, an angle, and a decision between new and update. Order it by KD ascending, then by searches descending. Write from the top. Re-run the gap check monthly, because a competitor’s new posts are the gaps that matter most: they tell you what a site like yours decided was worth writing this month.

Doing this weekly instead of once

Done by hand, a content gap analysis takes a full day. Done weekly, it is the most useful thing a small site can know about its market. GapDigest runs the check every week against each competitor you name, filters the list against your site’s profile, orders it by searches against difficulty, and writes a post plan for the top ones with the angle, the outline, and the new-or-update call already made. The free plan does this for one competitor.