How to Conduct the Content Gap Analysis in 5 Simple steps

Content gaps can be a significant source of weakness within your company. Even though identifying these content issues can result in improved content performance and increased business growth, it's a long and tedious process when you're not certain which direction to take or what to look for.

In this piece this article, we'll explain all you need to learn about identifying and eliminating gaps in content, starting with what a content gap is. After that, we'll guide you through what a content gap analysis is, look at the various types of gaps in content, and lastly, demonstrate how to conduct a content gap analysis for your business (and the competition). At the end of this, you'll have a clear strategy for filling those gaps and taking care of your customers' unmet needs. Let's dig in!

Go ahead:

•         What is a content gap?      
•             What is the reason to should you conduct a content gap study?
•             Understanding different content gap types
•         How do you conduct a gap analysis of content in five steps      
•             Understand your customer's journey
•             Perform market and Keyword research
•             Analyze your own website's content
•             Analyze the content of competitors
•             Prioritize and identify gaping content

What exactly is a gap?

In order to understand the concept of a gap in content analysis, it's first necessary to be aware of the content gap. The term "Content gap" is any pertinent content your current content strategy isn't covering.

The process of analyzing content gaps then, is the process to identify and resolve the gap. Most often, the gaps are resolved by creating the relevant information you've discovered is not available.

Why conduct a content gap study?

Understanding different content gap types

Before conducting your assessment of content gaps, it is important be aware of where and what you should focus your efforts. Analyzing the various types of content gaps will assist you with this.

7 Content types gaps:

1.    Topic gaps  

Topic gaps look at the bigger overall picture. This is when your contents do not cover the broad themes or topics.

For example, a creator specializing in mastering budget-friendly cooking could have content on meals planning, meal prep, transforming leftovers, and substituting ingredients. The one area that she's left unexplored? Coupons and discounts. In this scenario, coupons make up the "topic gap."

1.    Keyword gaps  

As in the preceding example, the course instructor who has identified couponing as a key issue can search for keywords to add to her SEO plan. Example keywords she could include could be "couponing for newbies," "how to stack coupons from Target," "how to find coupons for local stores in New York," and "what are the best websites for coupons ?"

1.    Media gaps  

Media gaps indicate the absence of variety among content types. Types of content include text, image, video and audio.

Content marketing is an enormous and expensive undertaking, which is why it's not uncommon for businesses to focus all of their resources and efforts on a single type. However, it can result in significant portions of your clients unhappy.

Certain customers are more comfortable with text-based communication for example, email or blog posts. Other customers like audiobooks and podcasts. By focusing on just two or three kinds, you're effectively making it easier for the rest of your audience to keep searching to find the kind of media they want elsewhere.

1.    Format gaps  

The format gaps are based on the manner in which your content is displayed. Text content, for instance, includes email newsletters texts, SMS messages, blog posts, ebooks, instructions for use, as well as templates.

Just like media gaps can restrict your target audience to certain areas formatting gaps may as well. Not everyone wants to read emails, for instance. Others prefer an ebook or a more in-depth blog article.

1.     Depth gaps  

These occur in the event that you leave your viewers in awe. In other words, depth can refer to the depth at which your content goes into the subject matter.

Imagine you're a fitness online trainer. If you're making a YouTube video on the "perfect the squat" and the top-ranked YouTube videos are at least 15 minutes, then a 3-minute video is likely too short. The video's length would force you into surface-level coverage of the subject, and leave your viewers wanting more.

The trick to closing gap in depth is to figure out the right balance between having too much and too little. Strong scriptwriters, copywriters or SEO strategists can help you discover that perfect balance.

1.    Geographic gaps  

The gap in geography occurs where your content is too localized or too general. In the end, it's all about finding the right balance, based on the audience you want to reach.

For example, the topic of "marathon training within Florida heat" may be a hit with your target audience. However, if you've got a large audience based in the North It could be worth experimenting with content that addresses the unique difficulties of running in these conditions, as well.

1.    Audience gaps  

Insisting on 100% of your time and effort on social media and blog posts is an excellent instance of a gap in the audience. Such a strategy could abandon the stage of action as an example of sufficient help.

How do you conduct a gap analysis of content in five steps

Now that you understand the many types of content gaps, we can dive deeper into how to do an analysis of the gap in content, beginning right where we left off with the customer journey.

Learn about the journey of your customers

Each business's story is distinct however, the steps a customer goes through are typically the same. These stages can be described in the following order:

1. Awareness: The client becomes aware of your brand, product, or service. This can happen even if they don't yet realize they're dealing with a problem the product or service you offer can address.
2. Consideration: The customer considers various solutions, including your own offering.
3. Interest: In your solution, the customer is seeking out additional information.
4. Decision: The consumer decides to buy.
5. Loyalty: A customer is engaged in your product and stays engaged, or return to your brand to make purchases later on.
6. Advocacy: The customer advocates for your product or service by sharing the information with their relatives, friends and coworkers.

Knowing what the journey to your customers will allow you to understand what they are looking for they are coming from, as well as how to engage with them.

Conduct market and keyword research

The steps are two-fold:

1.    Market research       is a reference to research on customers, competitor analysis, and market trends. Your goal is to understand the demographics and behaviors of your market segment, your competitors' strategies, and the latest updates and developments in your targeted market.        
            
            Instruments that could aid in your market research include:
2.             Google Trends
3.             Statista
4.             Pew Research Center
5.             Semrush
6.    Keyword study       It is the method of finding specific terms that the target market uses throughout their customer journey, especially in the awareness, consideration, and curiosity stages.        
            
            Tools that can help with keyword research include:
7.             Semrush
8. Answer the Public  Respond to the Public
9. Ahrefs
10.             Searcher SEO
11. Moz

When you begin your keyword research, it's important to keep in mind that the keywords you choose don't just apply to search engines like Google as well as Bing. Keywords can also be used in search engines like YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Review your own text

The next step is to audit your own contents and assess its efficacy. In order to do that it is necessary to categorize the entirety of your content, and analyze its performance.

The best tools for conducting a content audit are:

1.         Google Analytics
2. Semrush Website Check (for web content)
3. Ahrefs Site Audit (for web content)
4. Surfer SEO Audit (for web content)
5. Yoast (for web content and readability)
6. Twitter Social (for social content)
7. Hemingway Editor (for readability)
8. Grammarly (for readability)

Review the content of competitors

Now, with a clear grasp of your content it is possible to analyze the content of your competition. The goal here is to identify what they're doing well, where they may be not, and the reasons.

That's where tools are useful. For the most part these tools that you use to self-audit can be utilized to check your competitors.

No matter if you're looking at an entire site or only a web site, Semrush Site Audit, Ahrefs Site Audit, and Surfer SEO Audit can provide insight into competing websites. Sprout Social can help you compare your content on social media against other profiles. For analyzing the quality of content, simply copy and paste it into Grammarly or the Hemingway Editor or Grammarly.

Identify and prioritize content gaps

Utilizing your customer journey's detailed including market and keyword research, content analysis, and analysis of competitors You can determine and prioritize areas of content that need to be addressed.

It is possible that you were noting down your notes during step one through four therefore now is the best moment to put all your ideas and research into one cohesive and actionable program.

If you don't have any gaps written down yet, that's okay too. Revisit your own content analysis first, and keep the seven types of gaps in content as you reevaluate. To refresh your memory the following are:

1. Topic gaps
2. Keyword gaps
3. Media gaps
4. Format gap
5. Depth gaps
6. Geographical gaps
7. Audience gaps

When you've reviewed your personal collection of content, it's now time to move through your competitors' material using the same mindset. Be aware of any gaps you observe regardless of how large or small.

Once you've reviewed both your own as well as your competitions Content, you're now able to determine which areas you'll need to fill first.

Prioritizing content gaps

It is recommended to use an Effort-Impact matrix to help you prioritize your order of how you address the content gaps you've identified. This is a matrix made up of four quadrants.

1. High impact, low effort The following tasks are the best payoff using your content strategy, but using the least effort.
    
     High impact, low effort tasks can include refreshing old blog posts and adding relevant keywords to web pages already on the internet, and repurposing content for different channels.
2. High-effort, high impact High effort, high impact consume a lot of time and effort however they will greatly improve your strategy in the long run.
    
     Examples of these tasks often involve new content-related initiatives, such as launching the webinar series, or creating an ebook or a comprehensive guide, or creating high-quality videos.
3. A low effort and minimal impact Low effort, low impact wins you can accomplish within the time between sessions.
    
     Fixing errors in spelling, adding alt texts to images, sharing content via social media platforms, replying to posts, and adding images to blog content all fall into this category.
4. Low effort, high impact Low impact: This is a category that includes aspects you must consider when planning the long-term effects of your projects.
    
     Investigating niche subjects, creating the presence of a new platform, and creating case studies could seem low-risk at the moment but it could pay off in the coming years.

Final thought

Let's recap. Conduct a content gap analysis using the following steps:

1. Understand your customer's journey: This covers the various stages they'll move through, illustrating all chances to connect with them through the web.
2. Analyze your own contents: Understanding the value your library of content has to offer will help you identify your strategy's strengths and flaws.
3. Analyze competitor content: Identifying competitor weaknesses will help you understand the best way to deploy strategies to create content that have the greatest impact.
4. Determine and prioritize the content gaps Armed with the necessary knowledge to deal with those content gaps to move forward by addressing the high-impact low-effort gaps first. This will help you make use of all your resources.

If the steps listed above don't seem like a lot of work, think about the use of platforms like these to help. There are many ways to fill the content gap through online courses online, webinars that are either synchronous or non-synchronous as well as digital downloads, online community learning or artificial intelligence-powered digital items.