Keyword Gap Analysis: How to Find What Competitors Rank For

A keyword gap report can easily run to thousands of rows.

Most people sort by volume, grab the top twenty and start writing.

That is how new blog posts end up competing with service pages.

Here are the seven steps I use instead, from choosing who to compare against to routing every gap to the page that should win it.

What a Keyword Gap Analysis Shows

A keyword gap analysis compares your rankings with your competitors' rankings and lists the queries where they beat you.

That comparison produces four groups of keywords:

The first two groups are the gaps.

Everything else is context. It tells you where you are already strong, which matters when you decide what to fix first.

Keyword Gap vs Content Gap

The two terms get used as if they were the same thing. They are not.

I run both, in that order.

The keyword gap tells me which existing pages are underperforming. The content gap analysis then finds the topics nobody on the site has touched yet. My automated gap work sits on the topic side, so a keyword gap run is often the step before it.

Before You Start

You need four things:

• Ranking data for several domains. A paid keyword tool with a domain comparison report, or an API. I pull mine from the Ahrefs API so the data lands in a spreadsheet I control.
• Your own Search Console data. Tools estimate your positions. Search Console shows the queries Google actually reports for your site.
• A list of what you sell. Services, products, locations. You will use it to throw out keywords you could never serve.
• A spreadsheet. One tab for the raw export, one for the cleaned list, one for the final routing.

Pick one country before you start. Rankings differ by market, and a UK site compared on US data will chase the wrong gaps.

Step 1: Choose Competitors Per Section, Not Per Domain

Your competitors change depending on which part of your site you look at.

The sites that outrank your service pages are often local or specialist firms. The sites that outrank your guides are often publishers, software vendors or trade bodies.

So split your site into sections first:

1. Service or product pages
2. Location pages, if you have them
3. Blog posts and guides

Then, for each section, search five or six of its most important keywords and note which domains appear again and again.

Pick two to four competitors per section. My guide on finding competitor keywords covers how to confirm who really ranks.

Comparing your whole domain with a national publisher's whole domain produces a list full of topics you would never write about. Comparing your guides with their guides produces a list you can act on.

Pro tip: If your tool lets you compare a subfolder rather than a whole domain, use it. /blog/ against /blog/ is a far cleaner comparison than domain against domain.

Step 2: Pull the Gap Report With Tight Filters

Loose filters are why gap exports run to thousands of rows.

Set these before you export:

• Country: the market you sell in.
• Competitor position: top 10 for service sections, top 20 for guides. Anything lower is not a real win for them either.
• Your position: not ranking, or below position 20, for missing gaps. Positions 11 to 30 for weak gaps, as a separate export.
• Number of competitors ranking: at least two. One competitor ranking for a term can be a fluke. Two or three is a pattern.

Export the result with the ranking URL for each competitor, not just the keyword.

The URL tells you what kind of page is winning, which you need in Step 6.

Step 3: Clean Out the Noise

Even a filtered export carries rows you should never act on.

Remove these:

• Competitor brand terms. Their company name, product names and staff names.
• Things you do not offer. Services, products or locations outside your list from "Before you start".
• Navigational queries. Logins, phone numbers, "near me" searches tied to a competitor's address.
• Near-duplicates. Plurals, reordered words and typos. Keep the clearest version and note the rest beside it.
• Wrong market. Place names, currencies or regulations from a country you do not serve.

Expect this step to remove a large share of the export.

That is normal.

A short, clean list beats a long one you will never finish.

Step 4: Sort Every Keyword Into Missing or Weak

Now cross-check each remaining keyword against your Search Console data.

Tools sometimes miss rankings you have, especially for low-volume queries.

Search Console is the more reliable view of your own site.

Label each row:

• Missing: no impressions for the query, or none worth counting.
• Weak: you get impressions, but your average position sits well below the competitors.

Then add one more column: your ranking URL, if there is one.

That column changes everything.

A weak keyword with a ranking URL is a page improvement job.

A missing keyword with no URL might be a new page. Or it might belong on a page you already have that simply does not mention it.

Step 5: Group Keywords Into Topics

You should never build one page per keyword.

Many gap keywords are different ways of asking the same thing. Group them before you decide anything:

1. Search two keywords that look related.
2. Compare the top results.
3. If most of the same URLs rank for both, they belong on one page.

Do this for every cluster of similar rows, and give each group a name and a main keyword.

The groups are your real list. A hundred clean keywords might collapse into twenty topics.

My comparison of keyword clustering methods covers when results overlap is the right test and when a quicker method is good enough.

Step 6: Route Each Topic to a Page

This is the step most keyword gap guides leave out, and it is where the analysis earns its keep.

For every topic, decide which page should own it:

Look at the competitor URLs you exported in Step 2.

They tell you the page type Google prefers for the query. My explainer on search intent shows how to read them, and my walkthrough on classifying search intent at scale shows how to label hundreds of rows at once.

Before you plan any new page, check it against your existing ones. A new article that targets what a service page already targets will compete with it. My guide to avoiding keyword cannibalisation walks through that check.

Step 7: Prioritise by Fit, Not Volume

Search volume is the column everyone sorts by. It should not be the first one.

Score each topic on four things instead:

Weak gaps on pages that already rank usually go first. They need the least work and often move fastest.

Missing gaps that need new pages come next, starting with the topics several competitors rank for.

Volume figures from any tool are estimates. Treat them as a tiebreaker, not a verdict.

If you want more ideas at the easier end of the list, my guide to finding low competition keywords is the companion to this step.

Common Keyword Gap Mistakes

I see the same errors in most gap exports clients send me:

• Comparing against the wrong sites. A business rival with a weak website shows you nothing about search.
• Treating every gap as a new page. Most weak gaps are fixed on a page you already have.
• Ignoring the page type. If service pages win the query, a blog post will struggle however good it is.
• Skipping your own data. Tool positions for your site are estimates; Search Console is the record.
• Running it once. Competitors publish, rankings move. A second run six months later shows what changed, which is often the most useful output of all.

Turn Your Gaps Into a Plan

A keyword gap analysis finds the searches you are losing. The work is deciding which page should win each one.

Your first action: run the weak-gap export for one site section this week, positions 11 to 30, and match each row to the page that already ranks. You will probably find a handful of quick page improvements before you plan a single new article.

For the topics no page covers, plan the briefs next. My content brief template gives you the fields to fill. If you want the topic side done for you, including the exclusion of everything live, planned or drafted, that is what my content gap analysis automation is built for. The keyword-routing side belongs with keyword research automation, or a hands-on keyword research project if you want the whole plan built.