How to Perform Competitor Keyword Gap Analysis for Quick SEO Wins

Matta Kumar
July 21, 2025
SEO

TL;DR

Keyword gap analysis helps you to identify keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t. It reveals untapped opportunities, helps close content gaps, and strengthens your visibility in SERPs. In this guide, you’ll learn what keyword gap analysis is, why it matters for SEO, how to do it, and which tools to use.

Are you missing out on essential keywords that your competitors are ranking for?

This content gap can easily eat away valuable traffic from your website and drop rankings on SERPs. The only way for your brand to survive the AI-powered search landscape is to identify and fill the gaps in your keyword research.

In SEO, keyword gap analysis aligns your content with metrics and strategies that AI-powered engines now prioritise. And these are:

This guide will help you perform gap analysis and start outperforming your competition.

What is Keyword Gap Analysis - A Complete Overview

Keyword gap analysis identifies valuable search terms for which your competitors are ranking. Think of it as reverse-engineering your rivals’ search success. A detailed gap analysis of your competitors’ ranking positions will uncover a goldmine of opportunities you missed earlier. Know the topics not yet covered on your website, and start spinning content around user intent you overlooked.

The seismic shift from traditional search engines to AI Overviews and other LLMs has brought the focus on user intent, topical authority, and context.

Therefore, a gap analysis of keywords can help you gain the following:

It is a foundational step that helps you future-proof your strategy and reclaim lost visibility.

Difference Between Keyword Research and Keyword Gap Analysis

Keyword research and gap analysis are not identical strategies. Both are unique and strikingly different from each other.

The table below highlights the main differences:

Competitor Gap Analysis - How is it Different from Keyword Gap Analysis

Competitor and keyword gap analyses are closely related but serve different purposes within your SEO strategy.

While the latter focuses specifically on identifying the keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t, competitor gap analysis takes a broader approach. It assesses overall digital performance gaps, including backlinks, content quality, on-page SEO, technical health, and even social/brand visibility.

Simply put:

Today, both analyses are equally critical. But knowing the difference helps you apply the right tools, workflows, and content strategies for GEO optimisation as well.

Here are the differences mentioned in the table below:

Why Keyword Gap Analysis Matters for SEO in 2025

In 2025, competitor keyword gap analysis isn’t optional. It’s your edge in generative engine optimisation (GEO). Your online win resides in promptly identifying and closing keyword gaps, so your website can remain prominent in zero-click searches.

Here’s why you need a keyword gap analysis more than ever:

Identify Missing Keywords

Keyword gap analysis reveals high-value terms your competitors rank for, but you are missing out. That means you’re invisible when users need you most.

Benchmark Against Competitors

It’s not enough to rank on SERPs. The winning secret is to rank better in your niche. When you compare keyword sets, you will uncover where exactly your rivals are outranking.

Improve Existing Content

Repurpose your existing assets through content pruning based on missed keywords. This will boost your website’s visibility on AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and others.

Why Keyword Gaps Matter in GEO & AI Search Visibility

Today, websites are no longer just ranked; they are retrieved for answer summaries from AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other LLM tools. This shift emphasises keyword gap analysis as a foundational step in Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

AI search engines go beyond traditional engines’ mere crawl and index approach; they infer. They favour sources that comprehensively address the intent behind a query, often citing pages that fill in the gaps where others fall short. This makes identifying and closing keyword gaps a crucial strategy for improving your visibility in generative summaries, answers, and citations.

Targeting the keywords your competitors rank for (but you don’t) positions your website as a reliable source for LLM-generated responses.

This is precisely what modern SEO keyword gap analysis looks like.

How does Keyword Gap Analysis Impact Website Positioning

Large language models and Google’s AI Overviews value topic breadth. A complete SEO keyword gap analysis can uncover overlooked queries that competitors target, especially naturally phrased, semantically rich, long-tail keywords. These phrases are primarily cited in AI-generated overviews.

Additionally, you can strengthen your topical authority. Filling these content gaps allows your site to match better the expansive context models AI uses to decide which pages to cite.

Here are the other benefits of gap analysis for your brand:

1. Improve Relevance for LLM Contextual Ranking

AI retrieval hinges on relevance within a broader context. A competitor gap analysis allows you to address complementary queries and boost your site’s presence in generated responses.

2. Build Content Around AI Query Interpretation

Google, Bing, and others are leaning on AI to understand intent across multiple queries. By mastering how to do keyword gap analysis, you can build content that anticipates the interpretation layer of LLMs.

3. Future-Proof Your SEO Strategy

Generative search is only going to grow. Therefore, a gap analysis can only ensure your site’s long-term visibility. In hindsight, if you fail to adapt, your website will lose AI citations to those prioritising comprehensive coverage.

How to Do Keyword Gap Analysis (Step-by-Step)

If you’re wondering what keyword gap analysis is or how to turn insights into action, this step-by-step guide walks you through the exact process. Whether you’re targeting traditional rankings or optimising for AI search and LLM citations, mastering the gap between your site and competitors is crucial.

Step 1 – Identify Your Top Competitors

For the gap analysis, you must start by identifying who you’re competing with, not just your business rivals. Your focus must be on commercial competition, meaning companies that are directly in line with your business from a similar products/services standpoint and (or) running in a similar geographic location. Another way to identify them is by selecting brands that are competing organically.

Tools like SEMrush/Ahrefs Keyword Gaps Tool can simplify your process.

Here’s a breakdown of the steps for identifying your core competitors from smart tools:

Key Takeaway: Look beyond who you think your competitors are. Identify those that consistently outrank you for relevant keywords, especially in AI search snippets and zero-click results.

Step 2 – Collect Keyword Data

The following steps get easier after you’ve listed 3 to 5 top SEO competitors. Now, focus on their ranking keywords and export both organic keywords and those appearing in featured snippets or AI-powered summaries.

Here’s a brief snapshot of how you can export such keywords using the SEMrush tool:

Keep a checklist handy in case you forget the elements you are exporting:

Now, you have a solid foundation to begin keyword gap analysis.

Step 3 – Compare Keyword Sets

Compare your keyword sets with those of your competitors and identify search terms that your site is missing. The core of keyword gap analysis is to reveal where you lack visibility. Therefore, your goal must be to isolate exclusive keywords your site doesn’t rank for.

Here’s a screenshot demonstrating the stage for you:

Key Takeaway: Note keywords appearing in AI-generated content summaries and which ones are repeated across competitors. These are your strategic openings.

Step 4 – Prioritise High-Impact Gaps

Always remember that not all gaps are worth filling. Instead, you must focus on:

You can add filters for cost-per-click (CPC), SERP features, and AI summary inclusion if your tool supports it.

Pro-Tip: Use a scoring matrix to evaluate keyword value by:

Step 5 – Build and (Or) Optimise Content

Now, it’s time to put your insights into action. For each high-priority keyword gap, decide whether to:

Key Takeaway: Avoid mindless keyword stuffing. Instead, build content that genuinely answers the search query better than anyone else.

These steps and the right tools can position your site for rankings and retrieval in AI summaries, generative engines, and answer-focused interfaces.

Grab the step-by-step sample template here: Keyword Gap Analysis Template

Actionable Tips to Perform Keyword Gap Analysis for LLMs

Keyword gap analysis isn’t just about outranking pages anymore. It’s about being retrieved, cited, and summarised by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews.

Download the checklist of actionable tips to align your gap analysis with AI content interpretation.

Keyword Gap Analysis Tools (Free & Paid)

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Keyword Gap Analysis

Even with the best tools at your disposal, simple oversights can limit your impact. Some common pitfalls can easily reduce the value of your overall analysis, especially when trying to optimise for AI-driven search and GEO.

Only Looking at Volume, Not Intent

Don’t make the mistake of prioritising keywords with the highest search volume. Your keyword gap analysis needs a more nuanced approach. LLMs and generative engines care deeply about context and intent. A lower-volume keyword with informational or transactional relevance may be far more valuable for AI citations than a high-volume, broad term.

Ignoring Long-Tail Opportunities

Long-tail keywords are often where true content gaps lie, especially for conversational queries used in LLMS or Google AI Overviews. If you ignore these, you miss out on low-competition, high-relevance terms that are more likely to surface in AI-generated summaries.

Not Updating the Analysis Regularly

Again, a gap analysis isn’t a one-time audit. New keywords, SERP features, and AI answer formats emerge constantly. If you’re not refreshing your strategy around competitor keyword gaps at least monthly, you risk falling behind on terms your rivals are newly ranking for—or those that LLMs are now retrieving.

Best Practices to Maximise Keyword Gap Insights

Keyword gap analysis is just the beginning. What happens next is the most essential part of your on-page SEO strategy. You have to extract real strategic value from the captured data and generate content around it.

When done right, the following practices can help you turn raw keyword data into action plans so your website can climb up the ranking and search visibility ladder.

1. Map Gaps to Topic Clusters or Pillars

Don’t plug keyword gaps in isolation. Instead, group them into topic clusters supporting your broader content pillars.

This increases your organic rankings and chances of your website being cited by LLMs. It is also rewarding from the standpoint of comprehensive topical coverage.

2. Align Keywords with Funnel Stages

Map each gap keyword to the specific stage in the buyer journey, aka TOFU (awareness), MOFU (consideration), and BOFU (decision).

This way, you can target customers at every stage while making your content more contextually relevant for AI engines parsing intent-rich prompts.

3. Combine with Content & Technical Audits

Keyword gaps often reveal more than missing topics; they expose content decay, poor structure, or slow page speed. Integrate your findings from the keyword gap analysis with broader content and technical audits to uncover underperformance across the board. Then, fix both ranking and retrieval issues.

Conclusion

Today, keyword gap analysis is the only way to maintain visibility and relevance in AI-powered search engines. It can also improve your chances of being cited, retrieved, and ranked in both search engines and large language models (LLMs). The analysis is relatively easy for SEO professionals. Refer to this guide to better assess missed opportunities and assign the correct action item from the actionable checklist to close the existing gap. This approach is key to achieving success in modern SEO.

FAQs

1. What is keyword gap analysis in SEO?
Keyword gap analysis in SEO refers to the process of identifying keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but your website isn’t. It highlights content opportunities that can help you close visibility gaps, improve rankings, and appear more frequently in AI-generated search summaries.

2. How do I do a keyword gap analysis?
To perform keyword gap analysis, you can start by identifying your top-ranking competitors, discovering the keywords you aren’t ranking for, prioritising and optimising (or creating) content around missed topics/keywords.

3. What is the benefit of SEO keyword gap analysis?
The primary benefit of SEO keyword gap analysis is uncovering untapped opportunities for visibility and traffic. It helps you to stay competitive, relevant, and visible on AI-powered search engines.

4. Are keyword gap analysis tools free?
Some keyword gap analysis tools offer limited free features (e.g., Google Search Console, The HOTH), but most comprehensive solutions like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SE Ranking require a paid subscription.

MattaKumar

Hi, my name is Matta Satish Kumar. I have been passionate about digital marketing for the last 18 years, gaining extensive knowledge in both B2B and B2C markets across a variety of disciplines.