A Nashville law firm had 847 blog posts. They ranked for exactly 12 keywords that brought more than 10 visitors per month. Meanwhile, a competitor with 94 posts ranked for over 200 meaningful keywords.
The difference wasn’t effort. It was aim.
The competitor had systematically identified what their audience searched for and built content to match. The law firm had published whatever seemed interesting that week for seven years straight. One had a content strategy informed by gap analysis. One had a content graveyard.
Gap analysis tells you what content you should have but don’t. It’s the difference between building what you assume people want and building what you can prove they’re searching for.
What Gaps Actually Are
A content gap is a disconnect between what your audience needs and what you provide. That sounds simple. The complexity is in the types of gaps and how to find them.
Keyword gaps are the most concrete. Your competitor ranks for “Nashville commercial lease lawyer” and gets 40 clicks per month from it. You have nothing on the topic. That’s a gap you can measure, target, and close.
Topic gaps are broader. You might rank for a few keywords around business formation, but your competitor has comprehensive coverage: entity selection, operating agreements, registered agents, annual compliance, dissolution procedures. They own the topic. You have fragments.
Format gaps are about how, not what. The SERP for “how to file an LLC in Tennessee” shows video results prominently. Your text guide, however good, can’t capture that video traffic. Same information, different format, different opportunity.
Funnel gaps are strategic. Maybe you have strong bottom-funnel content—service pages that convert well—but nothing at the top. People researching “do I need a business lawyer” never find you. By the time they’re searching “Nashville business attorney,” they’ve already built relationships with competitors who educated them earlier.
Each gap type requires different discovery methods and different solutions. Keyword gaps need competitive keyword tools. Topic gaps need content audits. Format gaps need SERP analysis. Funnel gaps need journey mapping.
Finding Keyword Gaps
This is the most mechanical part of gap analysis, and tools have made it almost trivially easy. Almost.
The process:
Pull your competitor’s ranking keywords using Ahrefs, Semrush, or similar tools. Export everything they rank for in positions 1-20. Do this for 3-5 competitors.
Pull your own ranking keywords. Same parameters.
The gap is what they have that you don’t.
For a Nashville accounting firm, this might reveal that competitors rank for:
- “Nashville bookkeeping services” (you have nothing)
- “Tennessee sales tax filing deadlines” (you have nothing)
- “QuickBooks setup Nashville” (you have nothing)
- “Nonprofit accounting Nashville” (you have a brief mention buried in a service page)
Each of these represents real searches from real potential clients that you’re invisible for.
But here’s where most people stop too early.
The raw gap list is overwhelming. A competitor might rank for 2,000 keywords you don’t. You can’t create 2,000 pieces of content. And you shouldn’t—many of those keywords are irrelevant, too competitive, or too low-value to pursue.
The work isn’t finding gaps. It’s evaluating which gaps matter.
Filtering the list:
Remove branded terms. Your competitor’s brand keywords aren’t your opportunity.
Remove irrelevant terms. If the competitor is a multi-practice law firm and you’re a focused business law practice, their personal injury keywords aren’t gaps you should close.
Remove terms you can’t credibly serve. A gap for “Nashville tax attorney” isn’t useful if you’re a CPA firm that can’t practice law.
What remains is your actual opportunity set. Usually 10-20% of the original gap list.
Clustering for action:
Individual keywords aren’t content pieces. Clusters are.
“Nashville bookkeeping services,” “bookkeeping services Nashville TN,” “small business bookkeeping Nashville,” and “bookkeeper near me Nashville” aren’t four content opportunities. They’re one: a comprehensive bookkeeping services page that addresses all variations.
Group your filtered gaps by topic. Each cluster becomes a potential content investment.
Finding Topic Gaps
Keyword gaps show you specific queries. Topic gaps show you entire subject areas where your coverage is thin.
Competitive content analysis:
Map your competitors’ content architecture. What categories do they have? What pillar content anchors their site? What topics do they cover comprehensively that you’ve barely touched?
A Nashville HVAC company might discover their competitors have extensive content on:
- Indoor air quality (they have nothing)
- Smart thermostat integration (one brief blog post from 2021)
- Commercial HVAC (a service page with 200 words)
- Seasonal maintenance guides (nothing systematic)
These aren’t keyword gaps—they’re entire topic areas where competitors demonstrate expertise and you don’t.
The expertise test:
For each topic gap, ask: if a potential customer wanted to learn everything about this topic from our site, could they?
If the answer is “they’d need to go elsewhere for most of it,” you have a topic gap.
Customer-side discovery:
Your customers and prospects reveal topic gaps through their questions. What do they ask in sales calls that your content doesn’t answer? What support tickets repeat questions your site should address? What objections come up that content could preempt?
A Nashville property management company tracked sales call questions for a month. The most common: “What happens if my tenant stops paying rent?” They had zero content on eviction processes, tenant screening, or lease enforcement. Massive topic gap their competitors had filled.
Forum and community research:
Where does your audience discuss problems you solve? Reddit, industry forums, local Facebook groups, Nextdoor.
A Nashville home services company monitoring r/nashville found recurring questions about:
- Which permits are needed for different renovations
- How to find reliable contractors (ironic, given they are one)
- Seasonal home maintenance in Tennessee’s climate
Each represents a topic gap where providing genuinely helpful content builds visibility with people who eventually need services.
Finding Format Gaps
Sometimes you cover the topic but in the wrong format.
SERP format analysis:
Search your target keywords. What content types rank?
If the top results are all videos and you have only text, you have a format gap. If featured snippets show lists and your content is prose paragraphs, you have a format gap. If image packs appear and your content has no optimized images, you have a format gap.
For Nashville businesses, local format gaps are common:
“Best restaurants in Germantown” shows map pack results prominently. A restaurant with great traditional SEO but poor Google Business Profile optimization has a format gap.
“Nashville wedding venues” shows image-heavy results. A venue with text descriptions but poor photography loses to competitors with visual content.
“How to file LLC Tennessee” shows video carousels. Text guides compete for diminished organic real estate.
Interactive and tool gaps:
Some queries are best served by tools, not content. “Tennessee sales tax calculator” wants a calculator, not an article about sales tax. “Nashville cost of living” might be better served by an interactive comparison tool than a static blog post.
If competitors offer tools and you offer articles, that’s a format gap—and often a significant competitive disadvantage.
Finding Funnel Gaps
This is the strategic view: where in the buyer journey do you disappear?
Map your content to funnel stages:
Top of funnel (awareness): Educational content for people who don’t know they have a problem or are just starting to understand it.
Middle of funnel (consideration): Comparison content, evaluation guides, and detailed information for people actively researching solutions.
Bottom of funnel (decision): Service pages, pricing information, case studies, and content for people ready to choose a provider.
Where are you thin?
The Nashville pattern I see repeatedly:
Local service businesses over-invest in bottom-funnel content. They have detailed service pages for every offering. They have “Contact Us” pages optimized for conversions. They have location pages for every neighborhood.
But they have nothing for people earlier in the journey. The homeowner researching “signs my roof needs replacement” never finds them. The business owner googling “do I need a CPA or can I do my own taxes” never finds them. By decision time, these prospects have already built relationships with competitors who educated them.
Funnel gap indicators:
High branded search volume but low non-branded organic traffic suggests middle and top funnel gaps. People who already know you find you, but you’re not capturing people still researching.
Strong rankings for service keywords but weak overall organic traffic suggests narrow coverage. You win when people search exactly what you sell, but you’re invisible for related informational queries.
Competitor content getting shared and linked while yours doesn’t suggests they’re creating awareness-stage content you lack.
Evaluating Which Gaps to Close
Discovery produces more gaps than you can address. Prioritization determines impact.
The four-question filter:
For each gap opportunity, ask:
Does this gap attract our actual customers?
A gap for “Nashville corporate tax planning” is valuable for an accounting firm serving businesses. A gap for “how to do your own taxes” might bring traffic from people who specifically don’t want to hire an accountant.
Not all traffic is good traffic. Gaps should attract people you can actually serve.
Can we credibly fill this gap?
Creating content on topics where you lack genuine expertise produces thin content that doesn’t rank and doesn’t convert. A gap exists; that doesn’t mean you’re the right one to fill it.
What’s the competitive reality?
Some gaps are gaps because they’re incredibly hard to rank for. National publications and massive authority sites might dominate a topic. Being absent doesn’t mean opportunity exists for you specifically.
Check who ranks. If the top results are sites with domain authority three times yours and content comprehensiveness you can’t match, that gap might stay a gap regardless of your efforts.
Does the effort justify the return?
A gap with 30 monthly searches requiring a 4,000-word guide with original research might not be worth it. A gap with 30 monthly searches you can address by adding a section to existing content is a quick win.
Calculate effort honestly. Not just content creation, but research, production, promotion, and ongoing maintenance.
Scoring for prioritization:
After filtering, score remaining gaps:
| Factor | Weight | Considerations |
|---|---|---|
| Business relevance | High | Does this attract actual customers? |
| Search volume | Medium | Combined volume across keyword cluster |
| Competition | Medium | Can we realistically rank? |
| Effort required | Medium | New content vs. expansion of existing |
| Strategic value | High | Does this build authority in important areas? |
Composite scores determine sequence. But don’t over-engineer this. After basic filtering, the top opportunities are usually obvious. Start there.
From Gap to Content
Identifying a gap is step one. Closing it requires execution.
For keyword gaps:
Map the keyword cluster to content scope. What would a comprehensive page targeting this cluster need to cover? Check what ranks—not to copy it, but to understand the baseline expectation.
Determine if this is net-new content or expansion of existing content. Sometimes a gap can be closed by adding a section to a page that already has some relevance and authority.
For topic gaps:
Plan a content cluster, not a single page. Topic authority comes from comprehensive coverage. A pillar page plus supporting content addressing specific subtopics demonstrates expertise that single pages can’t.
Sequence the build. You don’t need everything at once. Start with the pillar and highest-priority clusters, then expand.
For format gaps:
Assess capability honestly. Video content requires video production capability. Interactive tools require development resources. Some format gaps are worth closing through new capability investment. Others aren’t.
Consider partnerships or outsourcing for formats outside your core capability.
For funnel gaps:
Build intentional journey paths. Top-funnel content should link to middle-funnel content should link to bottom-funnel content. Closing a funnel gap isn’t just creating missing content—it’s connecting that content to your existing conversion paths.
Maintenance: Gaps Reappear
Gap analysis isn’t a one-time project. Markets shift, competitors publish, and new gaps emerge.
Quarterly competitive checks:
Rerun keyword gap analysis against top competitors. What new terms have they started ranking for? What new topic areas have they entered?
Monthly Search Console review:
Your existing impressions reveal emerging gaps. Queries where you appear but rank poorly indicate topics where Google sees some relevance but you haven’t earned strong positions. These are gaps hiding in your own data.
Continuous customer listening:
Every sales call question, support ticket, and customer email is potential gap intelligence. Build systematic collection of these signals. What are people asking that your content doesn’t answer?
The Real Work
Let me be direct: most gap analysis stops at the fun part. Finding gaps feels productive. Spreadsheets of opportunities feel like progress.
But gaps don’t close themselves.
The Nashville law firm with 847 posts and 12 meaningful rankings did gap analysis three times. Each time, they identified opportunities. Each time, they created a plan. Each time, the plan gathered dust while they continued publishing whatever seemed interesting that week.
Gap analysis has value only when it changes what you create. The discipline isn’t in the research. It’s in letting the research guide production, even when a partner wants to write about something else, even when a trending topic seems more exciting, even when the gap content feels tedious to produce.
One gap closed per month compounds into transformed visibility over a year. Fifty gaps identified and documented but never addressed compounds into nothing.
Resources
- Ahrefs Content Gap: https://ahrefs.com/content-gap
- Semrush Keyword Gap: https://www.semrush.com/analytics/keywordgap
- Google Search Console for impression-based gap discovery: https://search.google.com/search-console/
- AnswerThePublic for question-based gaps: https://answerthepublic.com/
Gap analysis methodology reflects SEO practices as of early 2025. Tool interfaces evolve; competitive landscapes shift. The principle—build what your audience searches for rather than what you assume they want—remains constant.