Content Gap – what it means and how to perform an analysis

Nowadays, in order to achieve commercial success online, it is not enough to simply create a company website and wait for visitors to find it themselves. In order to successfully attract the attention of your audience and acquire new customers, you must first of all offer them valuable and comprehensive content.

In this article you will learn:

• What is a Content Gap?
• Why is there a Content Gap?
• How do I carry out a Content Gap analysis?
• How do I fill the Content Gap?

Unfortunately, even the most ambitious marketers sometimes overlook certain aspects in content and leave gaps in their material. This is the Content Gap – in other words: what’s missing from your website. What are the ways to identify and fill it effectively?

Content Gap definition

Content Gap is otherwise known as a gap, or a certain ‘lack’ in your content, which primarily affects your website’s positioning in organic search results and, to some extent, the quality of your website visitors’ experience and your brand image and awareness.

Content gap is a term used in online marketing that refers to the lack or scarcity of specific content on a website compared to users’ expectations or needs. It means that there is a gap between what users are looking for and what the website actually offers.

Definition of Content Gap

In practice, Content Gap refers to a lack of key information related to your business, products or services that users search for online but do not find on your website. This is why it is so important to identify and fill content gaps – to provide your potential customers with content that meets their needs and is ‘at their fingertips’.

Identifying and filling the content gap is key to making sure your website is appealing to users, as well as increasing the volume of traffic from search engines.

By analysing the content gap, you can also identify areas where your competitors are not offering valuable information and then fill these gaps and thus: strengthen your position in the market.

Causes of the content gap

The emergence of a Content Gap can result from various factors, but the most common will be:

Lack of a coherent content marketing strategy – a company that has identified a Content Gap problem at its site may simply not have a content marketing strategy that simultaneously addresses the needs of its target audience and effectively achieves its image and sales goals.

The lack of a strategy may also mean that adequate market research and analysis has not yet been carried out to create a meaningful content plan in the long term. This is usually a straight path to critical ‘gaps’ on the website.

Insufficient content on the website – Even if a company has a complete and meaningful content marketing strategy, it still simply may not be creating enough content (or doing it too slowly) to meet all the needs of the target audience, which also leads to gaps on the website.

Too low a frequency of new content – content velocity, or the rate at which you create and share new content on your website, blog, social media platforms or other communication channels, is too low.

Lack of content updates – Companies often do not give due importance to updating and keeping content in an ‘evergreen’ state, i.e. evergreen content , which can lead to outdated and inadequate information on the website.

Particularly in industries that are subject to frequent and rapid change, keeping content ‘fresh’ will be of paramount importance to avoid falling short of the competition.

Lack of understanding of the target audience – A company may also not understand (or misunderstand) the needs of its target audience and therefore be unable to create content that meets those needs.

Content Gap analysis

Content Gap analysis is the process of identifying gaps in your content. It mainly involves examining:

• the needs of your target audience in terms of content;
• the content related to your business that currently ranks high in search results;
• the content that your competitors have;

and then comparing them with the content available on your website.

Content Gap analysis allows you to identify entire subject areas, as well as specific topics and keywords you should focus on. It is a key element in creating an effective marketing and SEO strategy.

By correctly identifying content gaps, you can clearly see what topics are important to your target audience and what information (and in what form!) is worth providing to attract new users and keep existing users engaged and loyal.

In order to close the gap in your content, you must first thoroughly research and identify all possible content gaps on your website – this is Content Gap analysis. There are different ways to conduct it, and the choice of specific tools depends on your needs and goals. However, the most commonly used are:

Keyword research and content audit – Research the keywords searched by your target audience – you can use keyword analysis tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, Senuto, Google Trends or Google Keyword Planner. Compare the resulting keyword list with existing content on your website to identify gaps.

Analyse search results – Perform a Google search for (previously found) keywords related to your industry and carefully review the results. Check what content appears in the top positions and compare it to what your website offers. Verify the user’s search intent (search intent). You can also use professional tools for analysing search results and checking positions, such as SERPstat or SEMrush, to learn more about trends in your industry.

Competitor analysis – Analyse your competitors’ content in detail, especially content that ranks highly on Google, to see what topics are popular in your industry and what potential customers are looking for, and in what form they are currently finding it (surely it can’t be done even better?). It’s important to choose both direct competitors for your SEO competitor analysis, as well as companies that can only be a source of inspiration or that rank high in search results in the area you’re interested in – such as content industry websites. You can use tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush or Buzzsumo for this purpose

Filling the Content Gap

If you have successfully identified areas where your content is standing out from the competition, it’s high time to do something about it! What are some effective methods to ‘bridge’ the content gap?

Create new content

Based on the results of your Content Gap analysis, you can create a content plan full of new content to strategically fill the gaps on your website.

Plan and start implementing articles, tutorials, instructions, infographics and videos that will provide your target audience with valuable information and convince them to take advantage of your offer.

Update existing content

To combat the Content Gap, you can also update the content you already have on your website so that it better meets the needs of your target audience. Add value to your content by including:

• tables
• lists
• supporting graphics
• infographics
• videos
• tweets
• quotes

Add new information, update data, add new images or graphics – to make the content as valuable and attractive to users as possible. Analyse existing content in terms of:

Accuracy: How thoroughly does the page cover the topic? If the pages rub up against the topic, you have a chance to outperform your competitors by discussing the topic in more depth.

Focus on topic: does the content stay focused on the topic? If the content seems scattered or disorganised, you have the opportunity to create better planned content.

Freshness: how recent was the content created? If there are pages in the results that are at least three years old, you have an excellent opportunity to create fresh content. You can share updated information with searchers.

Readability: do you understand the content? If it contains too much jargon or is confusing, you have the opportunity to explain the topic clearly and concisely to searchers.

Style: is the content interesting and engaging? If other businesses are not creating shareable content, you have the opportunity to create a more engaging piece that attracts potential customers and earns shares.

Optimise content with SEO in mind

Content Gap analysis can help you identify keywords that are important to your target audience, but for some reason are missing from your website (e.g. you use a less popular term for a certain product or service).

Adding these keyword phrases to the content on your website can effectively help your website rank better in organic search results.