Well, we all are familiar with the term "Keyword Research" and everyone knows how to do it because we have plenty of tools readily available out there in the market. With a sense of understanding your audience intend you can easily conduct the keyword research and come up with suggested keywords that give you more traffic for your website or webpages.
But have you ever thought that you might be missing some real potential keywords that are giving a real boost to your competitor? This is where the Keyword Gap Analysis comes into the picture. Let's first understand,
What is a Keyword Gap Analysis?
Keyword gap analysis is the process of finding keywords that drive traffic to your competitors, in other words, it allows you to compare your keyword rankings to another domain’s rankings. This will help you discover keyword opportunities you may be missing. From this information, you can create a list of keywords that your competitor is targeting and determine their strategy and you can come up with your own strategy for your business.
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Its almost like broader forms of keyword research but with a clear advantages, keyword gap analyses identify the specific keywords that work best for your competitors. So, finding keyword gaps help you to improve your reach, visibility, and authority in search results.
By finding gaps in your keyword strategy with respect to your competitor, you discover opportunities to create new content that will help you reach more of your audience.
The benefits of Keyword gap analysis are:
You can find the exact keywords your competitor is ranking for right now and compare them with your keyword rankings
You can look into competitors' landing pages (webpages) to get a better idea on their content and keyword strategy which helps you to strategize your content strategy
You can track changes in competitors' rankings and be ready with your strategy
You can also find new organic competitors, who can be your treats in the near future
Well, the key here is to pick your competitor or top websites in your niche, use any of the below-mentioned keyword gap analysis tools, and find those keywords that are driving traffic to your competitor websites.
and more...
Almost every tool functions similarly, and it is just a matter of your choice. I will now take you through these tools, you can decide yourself which tools would you prefer.
Let's get started with SEMrush
Now, you need to make a list of domains that are competing with your domain in search(SERP). If you don't exactly know your competitors' and their website, you can again find this using any of the tools listed above.
Step 1: Go to www.semrush.com
Step 2: Signup and Login to SEMrush dashboard
Step 3: Go to Domain Research --> Organic research, and type in your domain name. This will give you an in details analysis of your Keywords, Traffic, Backlinks, and many other details. But you need to use this for checking your main organic competitors and we will be using these domains to perform the keyword gap analysis.
In this case, I am taking the example domain as amazon.com
You can go through all the competitors' websites by clicking on view all. And then you can create a list of 3 to 4 domains that are very relevant to your business.
Step 4: Now go to Gap Analysis --> Keyword Gap Analysis, Type in your domain name and your competitors' domain names
Here you go, you got the analysis of keyword gaps.
Step 5: You can change the intersection type to compare your website to your competitors.
The Available types of intersections are:
All keywords - which give all the keyword that the entered domains are ranking for in Google’s top 100.
Keywords Unique to the first domain - which will give you the keywords that the first domain (your domain) ranks for but the second (your competitors) does not.
Common keywords - which give the keywords that all the domains are rankings for in Google’s top 100 results.
Unique keywords - which give the keywords that are unique to each domain and not shared by any of the other sites.
If required you can also, use the filters to farther get the keywords that are performing, even more, better than other keywords. For example, find keywords with search volume greater than 2000
Now, you can build a list of keywords that make sense for your business. You can also export them using the SEMRush export feature and then you can put them into your keyword management tool for further use.
Now, let's look into Rank Tracker (A tool of SEO Power Suit)
Most of the steps are pretty similar for all the tools. But, unlike other tools, Rank Tracker is a platform that you have to download first on your PC. And then the rest is the same.
Step 1: Open Rank Tracker
Step 2: Enter your website URL and click OK
Again, I am taking the example domain as amazon.com
Step 3: Go to Competitor Research --> Domain Competitors, and type in your domain name. This will give you an in details analysis of your competitors and you can use these domains to perform the keyword gap analysis.
You can go through the entire list of competitors' websites and then you can create a list of 3 to 4 domains that are very relevant to your business.
Step 4: Now go to Keyword Research --> Keyword Gap, Type in your domain name and your competitors' domain names, You can add as many competitors as you wish.
Here you go, you got the analysis of keyword gaps.
Step 5: Again here you can change the intersection type to compare your website to your competitors.
The Available types of intersections are
You Keywords which give only you site keywords
Common Keywords which give your site and any competitor or your site and all competitors
Competitor Keywords which give you any competitors keywords but not your's or all competitors keywords but not your's
All keywords which give all the keyword that the entered domains are ranking.
You can also, use the filters to get the keywords that are performing, even more, better than other keywords. For example, find keywords with search volume greater than 2,00,000
Now, you can build a list of keywords that make sense for your business. You can also export them using the Keyword Tracker download button and then you can put them into your keyword management tool for further use.
Let's now look into Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another SEO tool, and they allow a beginner's friendly keyword gap analysis tool which is easy to use by anyone. Here a video on how it works.
Well, To conclude finding quality keywords is really difficult these days, particularly if you’re in an extremely competitive industry. But if you use the tools listed above, you can save a lot of time by cutting hours of SEO work while focusing on the development of your business.
After determining your best keywords that are relevant to you following the competitive gap analysis, it’s not sufficient to develop content around the topic. You need to be unique with your content that you are showing to your target audience and match their needs while focusing on the keywords of your business.
If you would like to add anything more please feel free to comment below.
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