4 Steps to Conducting a Content Gap Analysis

-Evita Godinho

Content gap analysis is more than merely combing through your blog posts to see if you’re missing out on any juicy content suggestions.

There is a straightforward step-by-step method for identifying obvious content gaps and filling the holes in your content strategy.

1. Map Out Your Buyer’s Journey

What moves does the target audience need to take to get from A to B to C?

Take the time simply to sketch or write down the key questions the customer has, the different solutions they may explore, what they’re looking for before they buy, and what calls-to-action are likely to push them to contact you.

You will see that there are a range of ways to build content at each point of this buyer’s journey.

Your aim is to plan this out with your own company, focused on the different services and/or goods you have to sell.

2. Conduct Market Research

One of the easiest ways to come up with content ideas that resonate with what the customer wants is to only ask them what they want.

Conducting a market research survey will help you identify the most burning topics, fears, pressure points, desires, and aspirations of your audience.

This input will notify the website’s content plan.

Using Google Forms to create a quick, anonymous survey to be submitted to your target audience.

The feedback you get to your market research survey will provide you with a variety of content suggestions, all of which are associated with the actual expectations and concerns of your future clients.

3. Analyze the Content on Your Website

Although your brand is likely to post or distribute content across a range of sites, you would want to make sure that the content on your website, at the very least, aligns with the customer’s experience and does not leave any holes to your future buyers.

Crawl the website to all URLs and decide how (or if) they fit with each point.
Then you can decide whether there is missing content that fills the distance between one level and another.

Another way to identify the holes on your platform is to use SEO software to see which keywords the site is now rating.

Then, when looking for these keywords, you might find similar keywords that you may not be targeting for current content.
Take advantage of these opportunities to maximize your traffic and solidify your content funnel.

4. Analyze Your Competitors’ Content

Determining what’s missing on the platform always requires a bit of “elimination process,” so looking at what your rivals are doing — and comparing how your site measures — is a helpful way to identify any additional holes.

If your competitor’s funnel is more or less the same as yours, see what content they’ve created to take people from one point to another.

Do their papers guide readers to the contact page immediately?

Or is there any other material that feeds the customer before they shop (such as reference guides, FAQ pages, case studies, etc.)?

Today, what fits on one site doesn’t necessarily work for another site.

You don’t want to imitate the technique of your competitor. Rather, you want to see if you may have cracks in your own plan so that you can come up with something different than what your rivals are doing.

You can also use SEO software like SEMrush to see what keywords the competitors are rating with and align them with your new content ideas.

Mind the Gap

Many marketers and business owners make the mistake of focusing on “money” pages in order to push the sale, or informative blog articles to draw in readers.

You need both, but you also need content that bridges the gap between each step of the buyer’s journey: from when they are first “problem aware” to when they are at the point of making a purchase decision.

Conducting a content gap analysis is key to finding holes in your existing content strategy so you can be sure to create new content assets that generate traffic and funnel users to the point of purchase.

It also gives you a chance to identify new keyword opportunities based on what your competitors are (or are not) targeting.

A content gap analysis involves auditing what you currently have and then laying out a content strategy that meets users at multiple touchpoints.