As a leading Martech company, we know that keywords are the building blocks of your SEO strategy. To build a robust framework, you need to make sure you’re not missing any vital elements – in other words, find if there are gaps in your keyword lists. One way to do this is through keyword gap analysis, which helps you discover the keywords others use in their SEO architecture and find what you are missing.

In this post, I’ll explain what keyword gap means and how to solidify your keyword targeting strategy. Let’s get started!

What is Keyword Gap Analysis?

To describe keyword gap analysis, we first need to clarify what a keyword gap is. ‘Keyword gap’ is a metric that measures keyword discrepancies between you and your competition. Most keyword research tools compare the keywords your site ranks for with the keywords your competitors rank for. However, the Similarweb keyword gap feature goes a step further and compares the traffic generated by these keywords.

It can seem a bit complicated at first. But, don’t worry, we’re here to explain how keyword gap works on other tools and with Similarweb. At this point, it’s important to understand that a keyword gap analysis aims to find keywords you’re missing out on and evaluate their potential for your business.

What are the Benefits of Keyword Gap Analysis?

This method of analysis finds the gaps in your SEO strategy so you can close them. It lets you:

• Uncover keyword opportunities that you are missing out on.
• Optimize your content with additional keywords to target.
• Generate new content ideas.
• Understand your audience and how they search.

A keyword gap analysis is a significant part of keyword research, which is also SEO competitive research in many ways. You compete on Google for attention, traffic, and visitors. Through keyword research, you learn about audience preferences and behavior to make intelligent keyword choices. You also learn about your competitors’ choices and how good they are. If search terms are valuable to your competitors, they could be just as useful to you. This is what you need to figure out.

The keyword gap tool shows how keywords overlap and what percentage you aren’t getting traffic.

How to do an Effective Keyword Gap Analysis?

Of course, not all competitors target the same audience or offer the same product range. Scores of keywords could be beneficial for them but not for you. So the first step is to narrow down your keyword list by removing branded keywords and unrelated search terms.

Once you’ve got a focused keyword list, it’s time to start digging into the data. You want to find the keywords your competitors target successfully – now draw a fat line under successfully. Why the emphasis on that word? Most keyword gap tools go by ranking. They find the keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t. That’s critical for the ranking competition, but it doesn’t tell you if the keyword generates traffic to the competitor’s site.

Let’s put that in clearer terms: If a site ranks high for a keyword that doesn’t drive traffic, the site doesn’t benefit. What’s the point in ranking first if it doesn’t result in visits? To determine whether the keyword is beneficial to the site, you need to know if it drives traffic. The next step is to weigh all the opportunities the keywords reveal. Integrate valuable terms into your content plan and optimize your content.

Significant Metrics for Keyword Gap Analysis:

• Search volume – how many people are searching the term, and is the volume high enough to make it worth your while creating content or investing resources?
• Keyword difficulty – how hard will it be to rank for this keyword, and what should be your targeting strategy?
• Search intent – what’s the intent behind the searches, and does it match your site purpose?
• Traffic generated – how much traffic did the competitor get through the keyword, and what is the potential for your site

Keyword list generated through the Similarweb keyword gap tool.

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