A content gap analysis is the exercise of listing the questions your buyers ask, checking which you have answered, and ranking what is left. Three sources will find nearly every gap worth having: your competitors' ranking pages, your own search data, and your support inbox.
The last of those is the best and the least used.
Source one: what competitors rank for and you do not
Take three competitors, list the terms they get organic traffic for, and subtract everything you already cover. What remains is the conventional gap list.
It is a fine starting point and it has a built-in flaw: it can only find gaps someone else already filled. Every gap it produces is a fight on ground your competitor chose and got to first.
Source two: your own impressions
Search Console shows queries where you were shown and rarely clicked, which is a list of things people expected you to answer.
Look specifically for queries where you appear on some page of the results but have no page dedicated to the subject. Google is telling you it thinks you are nearly relevant, which is the cheapest gap to fill because you start with a signal rather than from zero.
Source three: the inbox nobody mines
Every question a customer has asked your support, your sales calls or your inbox is a content gap with a confirmed audience of at least one real buyer.
This source is uniquely valuable because it is in the customer's own words, it is pre-qualified by the fact that someone bothered to ask, and no competitor tool can see it. A recurring question that has been answered by hand forty times is the single strongest case for a page that exists.
Rank the gaps, because you cannot fill them all
Score each candidate on three things and take the top of the list.
- Proximity to buying: does answering this move someone closer to a decision, or is it merely interesting
- Can you win it: is the current first page beatable, given what you have
- Do you have something to add: a real example, a number, an opinion, or just a rewrite of what exists
The gaps not worth filling
Some gaps are gaps for good reasons, and filling them costs you focus.
Terms where the entire first page is a search engine's own answer, a shop, or an encyclopedia. Terms with volume but no relationship to what you sell. Terms already dominated by a definitive resource with a decade of links, where you would be page-two-forever.
And anything you cannot write with authority. A page you had to research entirely from other pages is by definition a summary of your competitors, and it will read like one.
Turning the list into a plan
Group the surviving gaps by subject rather than scheduling them one at a time. Four related pages published together, linked to each other and to a hub, does far more than four unrelated pages published across four months.
That grouping is what turns a gap list into topical coverage, which is the thing that actually earns the right to rank for the broader term.
Common questions
- How do I find content gaps?
- Three sources: terms competitors rank for that you do not, queries in Search Console where you appear but have no dedicated page, and the questions your support inbox answers by hand repeatedly. The last is the best and least used.
- Which content gaps should I skip?
- Terms where the first page is entirely a search engine's own answer, a shop or an encyclopedia. Terms with volume but no relationship to what you sell. And anything you would have to research entirely from competitors, because it will read like a summary of them.
- Should I write gap pages one at a time?
- No. Group them by subject and publish related pages together, linked to each other and to a hub. That is what turns a gap list into topical coverage, which is what earns the broader term.
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