A keyword gap analysis compares your site’s rankings with a few competitors’ rankings and pulls out the keywords they rank for that you don’t, or rank for far better than you. The output is a list of search terms with proven demand in your niche that you haven’t claimed yet. You then filter that list by intent, relevance and difficulty, and decide which page on your site should own each keyword.
I run one on almost every keyword research project, because nothing shows faster what a market already rewards with clicks, and nothing is cheaper to act on than a keyword a competitor has already proven people search for. The raw list is always messy, though. Most of the work sits in picking competitors and cutting. That’s where guides stop.
What a Keyword Gap Shows, and What It Doesn’t
A keyword gap works at the level of individual search terms. It tells you that a rival ranks for “emergency boiler repair cost” and you don’t. It doesn’t tell you that they’ve built a whole cluster of heating guides you’ve never touched.
That topic-level view is a different job. If you want to see which whole subjects a competitor covers, I walk through it in my guide to the competitor topical map. This post stays at the keyword level.
A gap also only shows what third-party tools can see, and their databases estimate rankings from their own crawls of a sample of search results, so smaller, newer or very local keywords are often missing from the comparison entirely. Treat the list as a strong hint. Never a census.
Four Things That Change How You Run It
Before I open any tool, I answer four questions. Each one changes the method.
- Do you have a paid SEO tool? If yes, its built-in gap feature does the heavy lifting. If no, you’ll use Search Console and manual checks.
- Is your site new or established? A new site has few rankings, so almost everything looks like a gap. An established site has “weak” keywords worth more attention than missing ones.
- Who are your search competitors? Not always the businesses you compete with for customers. More on this below.
- How many pages can you realistically create or update? A 500-keyword gap is useless if you can publish four pages a month. Your capacity sets how hard you filter.
How Do You Pick the Right Competitors?
This is the step people rush. It ruins everything after it. Your business rival down the road might have a weak website that ranks for nothing, while the sites actually taking your clicks are directories, bigger brands or a blogger in another state who happens to own page one for your main keywords.
Here’s what I do. I search five to ten of my most important keywords, note every domain that appears in the top results more than once, and drop the ones that aren’t comparable. Wikipedia, big marketplaces and news sites rank for everything. Include them and the gap floods.
Pick two to four competitors of a similar type and size. A local roofer should compare against other roofing sites, not against a national home improvement magazine. Right competitors, and the gap reads like a to-do list. Wrong ones? Noise.
The Main Path: Using a Tool’s Keyword Gap Feature
Most major SEO suites have a gap feature, and they all work the same way. You enter your domain, add competitor domains, pick a country and database, and the tool compares which keywords each domain ranks for.
Two I’ve checked on the vendors’ own documentation:
- Semrush Keyword Gap. Its help article sorts results into Shared, Missing, Weak, Strong, Untapped and Unique. “Missing” means keywords where all your competitors rank but you don’t. “Untapped” means at least one competitor ranks and you don’t. “Weak” means you rank, but lower than all of your competitors.
- Ahrefs Content Gap. Found under Competitive Analysis with the Keywords option. Ahrefs’ help center says you can enter up to 10 competitors, then filter by metrics like KD and traffic and by position ranges.
Whatever the tool, the steps I follow are the same.
- Enter your domain first, then your two to four search competitors.
- Set the country you actually sell in.
- Start with keywords that two or more competitors rank for. One competitor ranking could be a fluke. Several ranking means the market rewards that topic.
- Filter out branded terms (competitor names) and anything outside your offer.
- Export to a spreadsheet.
If you rank for the keyword but sit behind everyone, that’s a different kind of gap. If your page already ranks on page two or three, then improve that page rather than writing a new one. If you have no page at all, then it goes on the “new content” list. That split alone saves a lot of wasted writing.
Can You Do a Keyword Gap Analysis for Free?
Yes, with more manual work and less precision. Search Console only shows your own site, never a competitor’s, so a free keyword gap analysis compares your data with what you can observe about theirs.
Step 1: Export Your Own Queries
In Search Console’s performance report, set the longest date range and export the queries table. Google says the interface exports up to 1,000 rows, and very rare queries are anonymized and never listed. For most small sites, 1,000 rows covers everything that matters.
Step 2: Build a Picture of the Competitor’s Keywords
You can’t see their rankings, so you infer them. List their main pages (their sitemap is the quickest source), and read each page’s title and headings for the keyword it targets. Then use Google Keyword Planner, which is free with a Google Ads account. Its “Start with a website” option, according to Google’s help page, lets you “enter any website” and returns keyword ideas related to that site’s content.
Be honest about what that gives you. Keyword Planner shows ideas related to the words on their pages, which is useful for spotting services and questions they cover, but it says nothing about whether the competitor actually ranks for any of those terms or where. A guess with good bones.
Step 3: Compare and Check the SERPs by Hand
Put both lists side by side and flag every competitor keyword with no matching query in your export. Then search the most promising ones yourself, in a private window, set to your target location. If the competitor appears on page one and you don’t appear at all, you’ve confirmed a real gap.
It’s slow. For a small site it takes an afternoon, which is longer than any tool, but you come out understanding each keyword far better because you looked at every results page yourself instead of trusting a database estimate.
How Do You Filter a Keyword Gap List?
A raw export often runs to hundreds or thousands of rows. I cut it with three filters, in this order.
Intent first. Search the keyword and look at what ranks. If the top results are product pages and you run a blog, or they’re guides and you want to sell, the keyword doesn’t fit the page type you’d create. Drop it or note the page type it needs.
Relevance second. Ask whether someone searching this could become your customer. A competitor might rank for “what is a roof pitch” because they wrote one lucky glossary page. If you’d never help that searcher, skip it, even with high volume.
Difficulty third. Tool difficulty scores are estimates, and each vendor calculates them differently, which I explain in my guide to keyword difficulty. I use the score to sort, then check the actual SERP. If sites similar in size to mine rank on page one, the keyword is realistic.
What’s left is usually short. Good. In my experience, a gap list of 30 well-chosen keywords that you can actually write or improve pages for over the next quarter beats a list of 300 unfiltered ones that sits in a spreadsheet and never turns into a single published page.
Where Do the Results Go Next?
Every keyword that survives needs one owner page on your site. Some slot into pages you already have. Others group together into one new page, and a few need a page of their own.
Don’t create one page per keyword. Ever. Several gap keywords usually share the same intent, and one strong page that answers the whole question can rank for all of them, while five thin pages on near-identical terms just compete with each other. The rules I use for assigning keywords to pages are in my guide to keyword mapping.
A Keyword Gap Analysis Template (Copy and Use)
Paste this into any spreadsheet. One row per keyword that survived your filters.
keyword,competitors_ranking,best_competitor_position,my_position,intent,relevance_1to3,difficulty,action,owner_url,notes
emergency boiler repair,3,2,none,commercial,3,low,new page,/boiler-repair/,all three competitors rank
boiler service cost,2,4,18,informational,3,medium,improve page,/boiler-service/,my page ranks on page two
how often service boiler,2,5,none,informational,2,low,add to existing,/boiler-service/,fold into FAQ
The rows above are illustrative examples, not real data. The “action” column is the one that matters. Every row should end as a new page, an improvement or a merge into an existing page.
Edge Cases That Change the Method
- Brand-new site. Almost every keyword shows as missing. Skip broad terms and look for long, specific keywords competitors rank for with weak pages.
- Local business. Tool databases often miss local terms. Lean on the manual SERP check from your target area.
- One dominant competitor. If one site ranks for everything, compare against the second tier as well. Their gaps are easier to win.
- You rank for a keyword on the wrong page. That’s a mapping problem, not a gap. Fix which page owns it before writing anything new.
Decision Matrix
| If You Have | And Your Site Is | Then Do This |
|---|---|---|
| A paid SEO tool | Established | Run the tool’s gap, focus on weak and missing keywords that 2+ competitors share |
| A paid SEO tool | New | Run the tool’s gap, filter hard for specific low-difficulty keywords |
| No paid tool | Established | Search Console export plus Keyword Planner and manual SERP checks |
| No paid tool | New | Manual SERP checks on your core keywords; revisit once you have Search Console data |
| Any setup | Local business | Add manual checks from your target location; tools miss local terms |
When Is It Worth Getting Help?
A keyword gap is easy to run and easy to misread. If you’re not sure which competitors to compare against, or your list is too long to act on, a second opinion saves weeks of writing the wrong pages.
Our keyword research service includes competitor gap work, and you can try it on 5 keywords free. If you’re also working on local rankings, my guide to local link building covers the other half of catching up with a competitor.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the Difference Between Missing and Weak Keywords?
In Semrush’s terms, missing keywords are ones all your competitors rank for and you don’t rank for at all. Weak keywords are ones you rank for, but below all of your competitors. Missing keywords usually need a new or expanded page. Weak keywords usually need an existing page improved.
How Many Competitors Should I Include in a Keyword Gap Analysis?
I use two to four. Fewer than two gives you one site’s quirks. More than four floods the list, unless you only look at keywords several competitors share.
Is a Keyword Gap the Same as a Content Gap?
The names overlap, and Ahrefs calls its keyword gap feature Content Gap. I use keyword gap for individual search terms and content or topic gap for whole subjects a competitor covers. The method differs, so it helps to keep them apart.
How Often Should I Run a Keyword Gap Analysis?
For most small sites, once or twice a year is enough, plus whenever a new competitor starts showing up on page one. Rankings shift slowly, and you need time to act on the last list before running another.
Last updated: September 2026 by Mizanur Rahman
