Utilize real world data with a Content Gap Analysis to pin point product and service offerings that your competitors currently utilize, that you do not. You can confidently use your competitors research and content to identify opportunities for successful expansion.
You can utilize the breadth of data from SEMRush, use Excel to do the heavy lifting, and then identify the opportunities (Content Gaps) in which your business can succeed in Organic Search.
This Content Gap Analysis tutorial identifies the content areas that overlap, as well as the gaps between The Wetlands Initiative charity and their competitors. This slideshow walks you through the process to identify content opportunities based on Search Volume and current Organic Rankings by landing page.
2. About John Gibbings
• Senior SEO Consultant
• I have 6 years of experience at
multiple levels of the Internet
Marketing industry.
• I have worked with hospitals,
commercial contractors, e-
commerce retailers, and a ton of
other verticals.
• I have a beautiful wife named
Brooke, and I love to fish the
intracoastal waterways at the
Outer Banks in North Carolina.
3. About Angular Marketing
• We provide industry leading innovation and search marketing expertise to
companies dedicated to creating a better world.
• Moz Recommended SEO and Consulting Agency
• We offer SEO Consulting, Paid Search, Lead Generation, Goal Tracking,
Content Management, Analytics Tracking, and Backlink Clean-up services.
4. What is a Content Gap Analysis?
• Process that highlights specific content areas
that your competitors are utilizing, that you
do not currently have content for.
• This research help you to determine product
and service offerings that your competitors
offer, that you should expand into.
5. Choosing Competitors
• It is important to highlight competitors that you
closely compete with both in product/service
offerings and geographic locations.
– Pro Tip: Use SEMRush’s Organic Competitors for Initial Research
• Do you compete in a local or global environment?
• Competitors can vary greatly based on geographic location.
• You must consider how visible you want to be, and how you can
realistically compete in your industry.
8. SEMRush Time!
• Search for each site in SEMRush.
• View Full Report for top Organic Keywords
• Export the list for all six sites as a .csv
9. Excel Time
• Open the excel files and begin to combine into one
Workbook.
• Label each accordingly
• Copy & Paste as Values to minimize the size of the excel file.
• Pro Tip: Save a Master Copy with the Raw Data, and then begin to work from a
duplicated file.
10. Add a Domains Column
• I prefer to insert a column within each of the six worksheets
at Column G (URL) to specifically list the domain, as well as
the specific URL.
11. Start Removing Duplicates
• In each excel sheet, remove duplicate key phrases.
– There are multiple ways to do this, but I prefer to use the specific excel
function for this step.
(1) (2)
12. Review Competitors Site Structure
• Look through your competitors site structure to
determine where content lives on the site.
– Examine the competitors site to determine where content lives on the
site.
– Isolate and exclude the irrelevant content to avoid noise caused by
products, brands and ecommerce related terms.
• This is not always necessary, but it can go a long way to clean up data for
larger sites.
13. Remove Branded Terms
• For all six sheets, remove the branded terms.
• Filter the Keyword Column Header
• Search for Branded terms
• Highlight filtered branded rows
• Right click & Delete Rows
– Pro Tip: Pressing the Delete button will just empty the cells and will mess up
future filtering.
•Save your progress!
14. Identify Where Your Content & Your
Competitors Overlap
• One at a time, compare your list to the competitors.
– Copy & Paste your list to the bottom of your competitor’s lists.
• Sort by A to Z
• Use Conditional Formatting to highlight
keywords that both you, and your competitor
are using.
• Sort Lists by color to find overlapping content.
• Copy lists in red to new sheet. Combine all
competitors.
• Label as Current Content Overlap
15. Examine Current Content Overlap
• Copy all of the duplicated key phrases from
each of the competitor’s sheets.
• Paste all of these key terms into the same sheet.
• Remove Formatting (Copy & Paste as Value)
• Alphabetize the Key Phrases in column A
• Pro Tip: You only need the column headers from the first sheet.
• This final list shows where your content
overlaps with your customers.
16. Remove Duplicate Keywords from Individual
Sheets
• Right click and delete the rows with duplicate values
– This allows you to examine the content that your competitors have, that you currently
do not.
17. Remove your Key Phrases from Competitor
Sheets
• In the Domains column that you created (Column G) you can now sort for
all key phrases from your main site
• Right Click and Delete these rows.
• Re-select the competitor site to show the remaining key phrases
18. Now to Find Key Phrase Opportunities!
• Combine all of the competitors sheets into a
new sheet. I called mine “Competitor Keyword
Opportunities”
• Pro Tip: SAVE
19. Time to Pivot your Tables
• Highlight all cells in the “Competitor Keyword Opportunities”
• Click the Pivot Table tab under the Insert tab
• I chose to list the pivot table within a new sheet. To keep
the list clean.
• Once the table is constructed, you can see the keywords
associated by competitors URL. As well as the search
volume.
20. What Key Phrases Do Your Competitors Share,
That You Do Not?
• Highlight column A within the pivot table, and use conditional formatting
to highlight Duplicate Values.
21. Highlight Results
• Filter the pivot table to isolate duplicate key
phrases to examine by search volume.
– Top Phrases to target:
• Wetland Definition
• Define Wetland
• Types of Wetlands
• Freshwater Marshes
• Plants in the Wetlands
• Marsh Ecosystem
• Wetland Types
• Wetland Trees
• Freshwater Marsh Animals
• Freshwater Marsh Plants
• Wetland Animals and Plants
• Brackish Marsh
• Fresh Water Marsh
• Swamp Grasses
• What Kind of Animals Live in
Wetlands
• Freshwater Marsh Food Web
• Plants that Live in the
Wetlands
• Tidal Freshwater Marsh
• Wetlands Birds List
• Insects in Wetlands
22. Takeaways
• Identify how closely you compete with other businesses.
• Highlight the overlapping services and product offerings within your
industry.
• Identify the service and product offering currently available within your
industry that you do not offer.
• Extract a list of opportunities and sort the list by URL, Key Phrase and past
Search Volume.
• Feel Confident in your research and begin to create new content!
23. Thanks for Joining!
You can find me on Twitter:
@JohnGibbings
Or on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngibbings
You can also reach me via email:
Jgibbings@angular.marketing
