Content Gap Analysis Tutorial

Content Gap Analysis for

Wetlands Conservatories

About John Gibbings• Senior SEO Consultant• I have 6 years of experience at

multiple levels of the Internet Marketing industry.

• I have worked with hospitals, commercial contractors, e-commerce retailers, and a ton of other verticals.

• I have a beautiful wife named Brooke, and I love to fish the intracoastal waterways at the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

About Angular Marketing• We provide industry leading innovation and search marketing expertise to

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• We offer SEO Consulting, Paid Search, Lead Generation, Goal Tracking, Content Management, Analytics Tracking, and Backlink Clean-up services.

What is a Content Gap Analysis?

• Process that highlights specific content areas that your competitors are utilizing, that you do not currently have content for.

• This research help you to determine product and service offerings that your competitors offer, that you should expand into.

Choosing Competitors• It is important to highlight competitors that you

closely compete with both in product/service offerings and geographic locations.– Pro Tip: Use SEMRush’s Organic Competitors for Initial Research

• Do you compete in a local or global environment? • Competitors can vary greatly based on geographic location. • You must consider how visible you want to be, and how you can

realistically compete in your industry.

Wetland Resource Management

Charity of Choice: http://www.wetlands-initiative.org/

Competitors:• AmericasWetland.com• WetLanded.com• BallonaFriends.org • AmericasWetlandResources.com• LakeandWetlandEcosystems.com

SEMRush Time!• Search for each site in SEMRush.

• View Full Report for top Organic Keywords• Export the list for all six sites as a .csv

Excel Time• Open the excel files and begin to combine into one

Workbook. • Label each accordingly• Copy & Paste as Values to minimize the size of the excel file.

• Pro Tip: Save a Master Copy with the Raw Data, and then begin to work from a duplicated file.

Add a Domains Column• I prefer to insert a column within each of the six worksheets

at Column G (URL) to specifically list the domain, as well as the specific URL.

Start Removing Duplicates• In each excel sheet, remove duplicate key phrases.

– There are multiple ways to do this, but I prefer to use the specific excel function for this step.

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Review Competitors Site Structure

• Look through your competitors site structure to determine where content lives on the site. – Examine the competitors site to determine where content lives on the

site. – Isolate and exclude the irrelevant content to avoid noise caused by

products, brands and ecommerce related terms.

• This is not always necessary, but it can go a long way to clean up data for larger sites.

Remove Branded Terms• For all six sheets, remove the branded terms.

• Filter the Keyword Column Header• Search for Branded terms• Highlight filtered branded rows• Right click & Delete Rows

– Pro Tip: Pressing the Delete button will just empty the cells and will mess up future filtering.

• Save your progress!

Identify Where Your Content & Your Competitors Overlap

• One at a time, compare your list to the competitors.

– Copy & Paste your list to the bottom of your competitor’s lists.

• Sort by A to Z• Use Conditional Formatting to highlight

keywords that both you, and your competitor are using.

• Sort Lists by color to find overlapping content.• Copy lists in red to new sheet. Combine all

competitors.• Label as Current Content Overlap

Examine Current Content Overlap

• Copy all of the duplicated key phrases from each of the competitor’s sheets.

• Paste all of these key terms into the same sheet.• Remove Formatting (Copy & Paste as Value)• Alphabetize the Key Phrases in column A• Pro Tip: You only need the column headers from the first sheet.

• This final list shows where your content overlaps with your customers.

Remove Duplicate Keywords from Individual Sheets

• Right click and delete the rows with duplicate values– This allows you to examine the content that your competitors have, that you currently

do not.

Remove your Key Phrases from Competitor Sheets

• In the Domains column that you created (Column G) you can now sort for all key phrases from your main site

• Right Click and Delete these rows. • Re-select the competitor site to show the remaining key phrases

Now to Find Key Phrase Opportunities!

• Combine all of the competitors sheets into a new sheet. I called mine “Competitor Keyword Opportunities”

• Pro Tip: SAVE

Time to Pivot your Tables• Highlight all cells in the “Competitor Keyword Opportunities”

• Click the Pivot Table tab under the Insert tab

• I chose to list the pivot table within a new sheet. To keep the list clean.

• Once the table is constructed, you can see the keywords associated by competitors URL. As well as the search volume.

What Key Phrases Do Your Competitors Share, That You Do Not?• Highlight column A within the pivot table, and use conditional formatting

to highlight Duplicate Values.

Highlight Results• Filter the pivot table to isolate duplicate key

phrases to examine by search volume. – Top Phrases to target:

• Wetland Definition • Define Wetland• Types of Wetlands• Freshwater Marshes• Plants in the Wetlands• Marsh Ecosystem• Wetland Types• Wetland Trees• Freshwater Marsh Animals• Freshwater Marsh Plants

• Wetland Animals and Plants• Brackish Marsh• Fresh Water Marsh• Swamp Grasses• What Kind of Animals Live in Wetlands• Freshwater Marsh Food Web• Plants that Live in the Wetlands• Tidal Freshwater Marsh• Wetlands Birds List• Insects in Wetlands

Takeaways• Identify how closely you compete with other businesses.

• Highlight the overlapping services and product offerings within your industry.

• Identify the service and product offering currently available within your industry that you do not offer.

• Extract a list of opportunities and sort the list by URL, Key Phrase and past Search Volume.

• Feel Confident in your research and begin to create new content!

Thanks for Joining!You can find me on Twitter:

@JohnGibbings

Or on Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/johngibbings

You can also reach me via email: Jgibbings@angular.marketing