A keyword gap is the set of search terms that competitors rank for but your own website does not. A keyword gap analysis compares the rankings of several domains to find them.
How does a keyword gap analysis work?
Google does not define the term, and this description follows vendor pages (assessment). SEO tools provide the analysis as a feature. Mangools, for example, takes your domain plus several competitor domains and a location, then lists terms that the competitors rank for and you do not, together with volume, keyword difficulty, search intent and SERP features.
The list is a starting point. Whether a term fits depends on the search intent and on whether your offer matches it. The ranking data of tools is estimated (assessment), so look at the real search results before planning content. A common next step is to assign useful gap terms to existing or new pages, as in keyword mapping.
Keyword gap and content gap
A keyword gap works on single search terms. A content gap looks at broader topics your site does not cover compared with competitors. In practice the two terms are often used interchangeably.
Example
Invented excerpt:
| Keyword | Competitor A | Competitor B | Your site |
|---|---|---|---|
| coffee machine with grinder | position 4 | position 7 | not in top 100 |
| descale coffee machine | position 2 | not ranking | position 38 |
The first term is a gap. For the second, a page exists and can be improved.
Sources
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