Keyword research can feel like going to a train station with no ticket. It's easy to find a bunch of trains, but which ones stop at your destination or are even going in the right direction at a ticket price you're willing to pay? There's a ton of effort and anxiety in finding the right keywords at the right price, and doing it before the train (and your competition) leaves you behind. Keyword gap analysis is a powerful tactic to make sure you're on the right track.  

Keyword gap analysis is a technique for finding high-value keywords where your competitors rank well, and you don’t. The keyword gap can help you identify underperforming keywords, missed opportunities, and gaps in your content strategy. A robust SEO strategy includes analyzing keywords to protect, striking distance keywords, and, as covered in this article, keyword gap analysis.

Why just mind the gap, when you can mine the gap? (See what we did there?) We’ve listened and learned from you and have built a more powerful, more flexible tool to save you time finding high-value keywords for your business, all while delivering insights based on two decades of keyword research experience. Keyword Gap 2.0 in Moz Pro includes:

• Customizable Venn diagram to quickly target gaps
• 20X more keywords per domain!
• Focus on Traffic Lift to maximize your ROI
• SERP analysis to laser-focus on high-value keywords
• The ability to find gaps by domain, subdomain, subfolder, and pages
• Four built-in data views for fast, in-depth analysis
• Custom filters by keyword, ranking, volume, and more

Why just tell you about the features and benefits when we can show you? How can you put keyword gap analysis to work on a real site with Keyword Gap in Moz Pro.

Even if you know your industry fairly well, you (or your boss) might have an outdated view of the competition or not know who you’re directly competing with for the highest-value keywords in Google SERPs. Those SERPs themselves are a good first step. Try searches like [brand], [brand alternatives], or high-value product categories. If doing this by hand doesn’t sound like fun, let our True Competitor tool do the heavy-lifting for you — it analyzes your top-ranking keywords to find out who you’re really up against for valuable Google traffic.

What if you don’t have competitors (yet)?

If you’re just starting out and aren’t currently ranking for many keywords, consider an aspirational analysis. Pick a realistic target company that represents where you’d like to be in two years and analyze their competition. Where do you aspire to be?

Now that you’ve found your competitors, you can start your trip right away. Just enter your domain and up to three competitors …

Keyword gap analysis can be overwhelming, the train times show up on the departure board, and passengers head towards platform 11, but is that the right destination for your business? Now you can answer that with confidence, just because a competitor ranks for a keyword doesn’t mean that it’s relevant or profitable for your site. Keyword Gap 2.0 focuses, by default, on keywords where you already rank but have room to improve. Consider these results from our Samsonite example:

Obviously, you’d like to rank #1 for “luggage,” but raw volume isn’t everything. That’s why we focus on “Traffic Lift,” the traffic benefit you stand to gain by moving from your current ranking position to the top competitor’s position. In other words, what will happen if you close the keyword gap? By focusing on keywords to improve, we know there’s already content in place, and small efforts might yield big gains.

We also show you where you stand against each competitor, literally crowning a winner for each keyword. Here’s another view of the data:

Immediately, you can see something interesting: a focus on carry-on luggage terms, including informational terms like “carry-on luggage size.” This is an actionable topic that’s an important part of the searcher’s journey, and Samsonite could materially benefit from closing this gap and taking Travel Pro’s position.

The keyword gap isn’t just one destination — in our three-competitor case, there are many routes to choose from. Keyword Gap 2.0’s all-new, interactive Venn diagram lets you quickly and easily navigate your own paths:

In this example, we have eight distinct keyword intersections, each representing a rich source of competitive keyword data. Hover over any area for more information, or click on an area to drill down to a specific keyword gap:

Here, we’re targeting a specific, three-way gap (two competitors). Click on shared keywords to explore just this gap. You can also use the eye icon next to any site to hide that site and simplify the keyword gap visualization:

By visualizing your gaps, you can quickly and efficiently arrive at the best keyword destinations, without fear of missing any important stops along the way.

Before diving into keywords, you need a strategy. Just like plotting a journey, successful SEO requires knowing where you stand and where you want to go. 
Not sure how to choose the best route? Try one of our four custom views:

Based on our depth of experience in keyword research, we’ve developed four perspectives to give you a bird’s eye view of the competitive landscape …

(i) Keywords to improve

This is the default view, which shows you keywords for which you already rank (in the top 20 results) but your competitors outrank you. You can act on these keywords immediately to increase your traffic.

(ii) New keyword opportunities

Once you’re on the right track, you can branch out and explore all of your competitors’ ranking keywords. This view shows keywords where your competitors rank but you currently don’t, revealing potential opportunities.

(iii) Winning keywords

Part of the journey is enjoying the view, and sometimes it’s important to see where you’re beating the competition and winning keywords. Understanding where you’re winning is also vital to knowing where you have a good chance of future success.

(iv) All ranking keywords

Finally, you can see everything you or your competitors are ranking for in one view. This is perfect for filtering and exporting for deeper analysis.
By using all of these views, you can ease your fear of missing out and get a quick glimpse at multiple possible destinations. Once you understand the entire keyword gap, it’s time to put your plan in motion.
Step 5: Choose a route & get moving
Here’s the hard truth – traditional keyword gap research is often like grabbing a bunch of train schedules and stuffing them in the drawer. You put in the effort to gather a ton of keywords, but you never end up going anywhere. Keyword Gap 2.0 is designed to get you moving and produce results.

(i) Quickly analyze SERPs

Once you’ve selected a keyword of interest, click on “Analyze SERP,” and you’ll get an in-depth report about that keyword, including this snapshot (I’ve chosen “carry on luggage size” for this example):

Now you can see who you’re competing against, which SERP features are in play, and how much work you’ll need to do to be competitive, using our proprietary Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Brand Authority metrics.

(ii) Mine deep into competitor pages

The SERPs can also tell you which specific pieces of content you’re competing against, and this content is the map to your destination. Let’s go back to step one, but this time consider specific content around ranking for carry-on luggage keywords:

I’ve chosen a ranking Samsonite page, a Travel Pro page outperforming it, and a top-ranking page by American Airlines. Let’s check out the Venn diagram:

Immediately, I can see that the target site’s keyword overlap is small, so I’m going to expand my view and focus on the larger intersection of Travel Pro and American Airlines. Here are some of the keywords these competitors are ranking on:

Not surprisingly, American Airlines ranks for some branded searches. No worries; we can easily open up a filter and remove any keywords with “american” in them:

Experiment with multiple filters to narrow down large keyword lists and focus on specific areas of interest. Here’s the filtered keyword gap for our example:

This isn’t just a keyword list — it’s a topically-focused roadmap. Mining down to the individual page level makes our route clear and puts our destination in sight.

So, what do we have at this point? We know our key competitors, which keywords have the most opportunity, and which specific pages we’d like to target. Even better, our keywords are highly focused around a particular topic. These are all of the moving parts to build a content brief. Our random pile of train schedules now has a specific destination, a path to that destination, and a departure time.

Once you have your keyword gap mapped out, you can easily add those keywords to a Moz Pro Campaign or a keyword list, or export the data to run deeper analysis and share with your client or team. Both campaigns and lists are directly accessible from Keyword Gap and you can get your keyword gap analysis plan rolling in just a couple of clicks.

Get your own journey started and try Keyword Gap 2.0 today. Even if you’ve used our keyword gap tools in the past, you’ll find a wealth of new options, data, and insights, and a smoother, faster ride to your destination. Keyword gap analysis can help you discover quick wins against your competitors, untapped keyword opportunities, and supercharge your content creation, moving you full-speed in the right direction.