Content Gap Analysis

Content Gap Analysis is a foundational practice in content strategy that identifies missed opportunities where competitors are capturing traffic, citations, and visibility that your organization is not. In the era of AI-powered search, gap analysis extends beyond traditional keyword gaps to encompass the questions and topics that AI answer engines cite competitors for.

What Is Content Gap Analysis?

Content Gap Analysis is the systematic process of comparing your website’s content coverage against competitors and user demand to identify topics, keywords, questions, and content types that are missing from your site. These gaps represent opportunities where creating new content could capture search traffic, earn AI citations, or serve unmet audience needs.

The analysis operates on a simple principle: if users are searching for information related to your domain and your competitors are providing it but you are not, that is a gap worth filling.

Types of Content Gaps

Gap Type	Description	How to Identify
Keyword gaps	Keywords competitors rank for that you do not	SEO tools comparing keyword portfolios
Topic gaps	Broad subjects competitors cover that you have not addressed	Manual review of competitor content libraries
Intent gaps	Search intents you serve poorly or not at all	Analyzing your content against the four intent types
Format gaps	Content formats competitors use that you do not	Auditing competitor content types (video, tools, guides)
Depth gaps	Topics you cover superficially while competitors go deep	Comparing word count, subtopics, and comprehensiveness
Freshness gaps	Topics where your content is outdated relative to competitors	Comparing publication and update dates
AI citation gaps	Queries where competitors are cited by AI engines but you are not	Querying AI systems and tracking citation sources

How to Conduct a Content Gap Analysis

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors

Define two sets of competitors:

• Direct business competitors - Companies offering similar products or services
• Content competitors - Websites that rank for the same topics, even if they are not direct business rivals (media sites, educational platforms, industry blogs)

Content competitors often matter more for gap analysis because they are the sites capturing the visibility you want, regardless of whether they compete for customers.

Step 2: Gather Keyword Data

Use SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to extract the keywords each competitor ranks for. Export these keyword lists and compare them against your own ranking keywords. The keywords that appear in competitor data but not in yours are your keyword gaps.

Prioritize gaps by:

• Search volume (higher volume indicates larger opportunity)
• Keyword difficulty (lower difficulty indicates easier wins)
• Business relevance (closer alignment with your offerings is more valuable)
• Intent match (informational and commercial queries often have the highest content potential)

Step 3: Analyze Topic Coverage

Beyond individual keywords, assess whether competitors cover entire topic areas that your site does not. This is often more strategically valuable than individual keyword gaps because it reveals where you lack topical authority.

Review competitor blog categories, resource centers, glossaries, and knowledge bases to map their topic coverage. Identify the subjects where they have substantial content and you have little or none.

Step 4: Evaluate Search Intent Alignment

For each gap, determine the search intent behind the queries:

• Informational - Users seeking knowledge or answers
• Navigational - Users looking for a specific page or brand
• Commercial - Users comparing options before a decision
• Transactional - Users ready to take action (purchase, sign up)

Ensure your gap analysis prioritizes intents that align with your business goals and content capabilities.

Step 5: Assess AI Citation Gaps

This is an increasingly important step that traditional gap analysis overlooks. Query major AI answer engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews, with questions relevant to your domain. Document which sources are cited in the responses. If competitors appear regularly and your site does not, you have an AI citation gap that needs to be addressed.

Step 6: Prioritize and Plan

Not every gap is worth filling. Prioritize based on:

• Business impact - Will this content attract your target audience?
• Competitive feasibility - Can you produce content that matches or exceeds what exists?
• Resource requirements - Do you have the expertise and capacity to create quality content on this topic?
• Strategic fit - Does this gap align with your broader content and business strategy?

Content Gap Analysis Tools

SEO Platforms

Most major SEO platforms offer dedicated content gap analysis features:

• Ahrefs Content Gap - Compares keyword portfolios across multiple competitors simultaneously
• SEMrush Keyword Gap - Identifies shared and unique keywords between domains
• Moz Keyword Explorer - Helps discover keyword opportunities through competitive analysis

Manual Research Methods

• Reviewing competitor sitemaps and blog archives
• Analyzing “People Also Ask” boxes for uncovered questions
• Monitoring competitor content calendars and new publications
• Reviewing industry forums and community discussions for unanswered questions

Common Content Gap Analysis Mistakes

Chasing Every Gap

Not every gap is strategic. Some gaps exist because the topic is irrelevant to your audience or outside your expertise. Filling gaps with low-quality content just to have coverage is counterproductive.

Ignoring Content Quality

Identifying a gap is only the first step. Closing the gap requires creating content that is at least as good as what competitors have published, and ideally better. Simply producing a thin page on a topic does not meaningfully close the gap.

One-Time Analysis

Content landscapes shift constantly. New competitors emerge, existing competitors publish new content, and user search behavior evolves. Gap analysis should be a recurring practice, not a one-time project.

Overlooking AI Visibility Gaps

Traditional gap analysis focuses on keyword rankings in search engines. In the current landscape, failing to analyze AI citation patterns leaves a significant blind spot. The competitors being cited by AI answer engines may not be the same ones dominating traditional search results.

Why It Matters for AEO

Content Gap Analysis takes on new dimensions in the context of Answer Engine Optimization. AI answer engines draw from a different set of signals than traditional search engines, which means the gaps that matter for AEO may differ from those identified through traditional SEO analysis.

When AI systems synthesize answers, they seek out the most authoritative and comprehensive sources for each topic. If a competitor covers a subject thoroughly and your site does not address it at all, the AI system has no choice but to cite the competitor. Identifying these gaps and creating content that fills them with genuine expertise and unique value is the most direct path to expanding your AI citation footprint.

Additionally, AI answer engines evaluate topical coverage holistically. A site with comprehensive coverage across a subject area is more likely to be cited for any individual subtopic within that area. Content gap analysis helps organizations identify where their topical coverage is incomplete, enabling them to build the kind of comprehensive expertise that AI systems recognize and reward. In the AEO era, gap analysis is not just about finding missing keywords; it is about identifying the missing pieces of authority that prevent AI engines from treating your site as a trusted source.