Content gap analysis: the four kinds of gap, and a method that ends in a page list

A content gap analysis compares the questions your buyers ask with the pages you already have, and ends in a prioritised list of pages to write, rewrite, merge or split. Done properly it finds four different gaps, not one: topics you have nothing on, pages that exist but answer the wrong intent, pages that cover the topic too thinly against what the question needs, and buying stages with no material at all. The output is not a spreadsheet of keywords. It is a list of page briefs with an owner and a date against each one.

Last verified: 09 October 2026

The four gaps

Gap	What it looks like	The fix
Topic gap	A question buyers ask that you have no page for	Write a new page
Intent gap	A page exists, but it sells where the reader wanted to learn, or explains where they wanted to buy	Rewrite the page to the intent, or split it in two
Depth gap	The page covers the topic, but misses the subquestions a reader needs answered before deciding	Add the missing sections to the existing page
Stage gap	Plenty of awareness content, nothing for comparison, pricing or implementation	Build the missing stage, usually comparison and cost pages

A fifth gap is worth a note: the format gap, where the question is better answered by a calculator, a template or a table than by prose. Record those separately, because they need a different kind of work.

Where to get the list of questions

The quality of the analysis is set here, and the best sources are ones you already own.

• Sales calls. Every question asked twice is a page. Listen to five recorded calls and you will have a month of work.
• Support tickets and live chat. The wording customers use, which is rarely the wording you use.
• Search Console. Filter for queries with impressions and very few clicks. Those are questions Google already thinks you are nearly relevant for.
• Your own site search. What visitors look for and do not find.
• Keyword tools. Volume and the long tail, used after the sources above rather than instead of them.
• Communities and reviews. Forums, review sites and comment threads in your category, for the objections nobody says to your face.
• Your competitors' navigation. Not their keyword list, their menu. It shows what they decided buyers need.

The method, in eight steps

• One. Define the buyer and the decision. Run the analysis for one audience at a time. A mixed list produces mixed priorities.
• Two. Build the question list. From the sources above, in the buyer's words. Two hundred questions is a healthy starting pile.
• Three. Group them into topics and stages. Collapse phrasings of the same question into one row. This is where half the list disappears, which is a good sign.
• Four. Map your pages onto the groups. One page per row at most. A row with two pages mapped to it is a cannibalisation problem, not a gap.
• Five. Classify the gap. Topic, intent, depth, stage or format, using the table above.
• Six. Check what the question already returns. Search it. Read the top three results and look at what they all cover. Anything every result covers and you do not is a depth gap you can close today.
• Seven. Prioritise. Score each row on demand, how close it is to a purchase, and effort. Then sort.
• Eight. Write the briefs. Each row becomes a brief: the question, the intent, the sections it must contain, the internal links in and out, and the owner.

The columns that make the sheet useful

• The question, in the buyer's words
• Topic group and buying stage
• Existing URL, if there is one
• Gap type
• Demand signal, with the source of the figure noted
• Distance from a purchase, high, medium or low
• Effort, in days
• Action: write, rewrite, extend, merge, split
• Owner and target date
• Status, and the date it went live

Keep "action" and "status" in the same sheet as the analysis. A gap analysis that lives separately from the production plan gets read once.

Prioritising without a formula nobody applies

Three bands beat a scoring model that gets abandoned in week two:

• Band one: close to the money, cheap to do. Depth gaps and intent gaps on pages that already get impressions. The page exists, the demand exists, and the work is a day.
• Band two: stage gaps. Comparison, pricing and implementation pages. Fewer searches, far closer to a decision, and usually the thinnest part of a site.
• Band three: topic gaps. New pages for real demand you have nothing on. Valuable and slower.

Content gap and keyword gap are not the same analysis

A keyword gap report compares the keywords your domain ranks for with those a competitor ranks for. It is fast, it is useful, and it answers a narrower question: where do they have rankings that we do not. A content gap analysis starts from the buyer's questions rather than from a ranking set, which is why it surfaces things a ranking report leaves out, including the pages where your intent is wrong and the whole buying stage you never built. Run the keyword report as one input into step two, then do the mapping work yourself.

When the gap is really two pages competing

If step four maps two or three of your pages onto one question, you do not have a gap. You have pages splitting the same demand between them. Pick the strongest URL, merge the useful content into it, redirect the others, and point the internal links at the survivor. That single action often moves more than three new pages would.

Cadence

Run the full analysis twice a year, and refresh the question list monthly from sales and support, because that is where new questions appear first. After each publishing cycle, mark the rows that went live with the date so the next run starts from facts rather than memory.

This page covers the gap analysis. For the competitor side of the research, see competitor analysis; for building the question list from scratch, see keyword research; and for linking the new pages in properly, see internal linking.

Asked and answered: content gap analysis

What is a content gap analysis?

A comparison between the questions your buyers ask and the pages you have, classified by the kind of gap it is, and turned into a prioritised list of pages to write, rewrite, extend or merge.

How do I do one without an expensive tool?

Use Search Console, five recorded sales calls, your support inbox, your own site search and your competitors' navigation menus. That combination finds more real gaps than a keyword export, and all of it is free.

How long does it take?

For a single audience on a site of a few hundred pages, two to three days of focused work including the briefs. Most of that time goes on grouping the question list, which is the step that makes everything after it quick.

How many pages should come out of it?

Fewer than you expect. A good run often produces more rewrite and merge actions than new pages, because sites usually have more content than coverage.

What is the first gap to fix?

A depth gap on a page that already gets impressions. The page is indexed, the demand is proven, the work is small, and the result shows up quickly.

How do I know the analysis worked?

Track the rows, not the site. For each published row, record impressions and clicks for that URL before and after, and whether the page is answering the question it was briefed for. Rolling site traffic hides the result of individual decisions.

A gap your page list will not show

Every gap on your list comes from a question you already knew to ask. Assistants add another source of questions: the long, specific ones buyers type in full sentences, such as "which option suits a team of ten that already owns a CRM". They never reach your keyword tool as a clean phrase, yet each one gets an answer with names in it.

Collect ten of those from sales calls and put them to an assistant. Where it names a rival and cites a page you do not have, you have found a gap the spreadsheet could not. AI Knows Us was built for this sort of question, and returns the pages each assistant drew on.