Keyword Gap

Why should you use this tool?

It’s important to know where you stand against your competitors so that you know where to focus your efforts. So using this tool before starting a campaign can be key.

You will be able to see the keywords that your competitors are ranking for that you’re not. You can also identify the keywords that are unique to your domain, and discover gaps in your competitors’ strategies.

You can also use this tool for PPC research by identifying the keywords where your competitor is ranking highly but there is little to no advertising competition. These keywords could be a great test to try to take away some of their traffic with an ad campaign.

Comparing Your Domain's Keywords to Competitors

To get started, simply enter the names of the domains that you want to compare. To identify your top competitors, use the Organic Research Competitors report or Advertising Research Competitors to identify domains with similar keyword rankings.

The tool will also automatically list some top competitors in the drop-down below the competitor fields after you enter your domain name.

You can also specify an exact URL, subdomain, or subfolder in one of these fields to compare keywords on a more granular level.

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Keyword Type

After entering the domains to compare, select your “keyword type.” This refers to the type of search engine results you’re analyzing.

Organic keywords are keywords where a domain has an organic ranking within the top 100 results.
Paid keywords are keywords where the domain is ranking through Google Ads on Google’s top 8 positions.
PLA keywords are keywords that triggered the domain’s product listing ads paid for through Google Shopping.

If you click on “select keyword type for each domain” you can choose to compare different types of keywords between sites.

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For example, you can choose to compare your paid keywords to a competitor domain’s organic keywords.

You can also compare different keyword types on the same domain. Just enter the domain twice and set the keyword types accordingly.

Once you’ve set these parameters, choose your regional database, and hit “Compare.”

The report will then populate information into the Top Opportunities widget, Keyword Overlap chart, and keyword table at the bottom.

Top Opportunities

The Top Opportunities widget previews the best keyword opportunities for the site labeled “You” (the domain entered in the first field).

This info, along with the entirety of the report, will adjust based on any filters you enter. For example, see below the top opportunities based on a filter to include keywords containing “basketball.”

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Keyword Overlap

This visualization shows you the overlap of keyword portfolios among the competitors. Again, this chart will adjust when you enter filters.

If you click on a specific intersection, the report will adjust to only show keywords that were inside that intersection (watch below).

Keyword Table

The bulk of this report is the table at the bottom, where you can dig into the details of each site and how their keyword profile intersects with their competitors. There are 5 main intersection types you can view:

Shared: keywords, where every site entered, has a ranking
Missing: keywords where all of your competitors have rankings but your site (the site entered in the first field labeled “You”) has no ranking.
Weak: keywords where you have a ranking but it is lower than all of your competitors’ rankings
Strong: keywords where you are ranking higher than all of your competitors
Untapped: keywords in which you don’t have a ranking but one of your competitors does
Unique: keywords where you have a ranking but none of your competitors do
All keywords: The combined list of all keyword rankings between the competitors

Keyword details

How can you use these intersections?

Obviously, you can use the missing and weak labels to diagnose a website’s weaknesses compared to its competitors. Use these filters and export the list to a spreadsheet. You can then plan an SEO campaign around these terms to try to win back some traffic from your competitors.

Filtering keywords

The strong and unique filters can be used to diagnose a site’s strengths. Finding one of your competitor’s unique keywords could also be a good way to find new opportunities, as it implies that your other competitors are not capitalizing off of this keyword either.

Filters

To dive deeper into the data, use the filters available at the top of the report. You can add filters for words to compare keywords around a specific subject.

By using filters, you can get specific and find gaps where you should take action.

First, there are options to change the database, device type, or date range. This lets you analyze historical data, mobile data, or data in a different country.

Then, there is a Position filter that allows you to filter a custom set of keywords where your site or your competitors are ranking in a specific range.

For example, you can pinpoint all of the keywords where your domain is on the second page or further with the following filter:

Positions - You-domain - Custom range from 11 to 20

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This generates a list of keywords that you should start optimizing in order to compete with your competitors for traffic from the first page.

Advanced filters include the ability to filter by keyword (include or exclude), keyword type (branded vs. non-branded), search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, Competitive density, and the number of results.

Advanced filters can be combined to get even more specific data. See below an example of filters for including keywords containing “basketball” and with a keyword difficulty less than 70.

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Every time you apply a filter it will automatically update the keyword table, top opportunities, and keyword overlap chart.

If you want to see the full URL associated with a certain keyword, you can hover over the keyword to reveal the full URL.

Finding keyword URLs

Exporting Keywords

At any time, you can export your favorite keywords into an excel file, CSV file, CSV Semicolon or PDF. Exports make great research for competitive analysis and can be used for a search marketing campaign. In an export, you’ll be able to see each domain’s rankings for the keywords that they compete for.

You can choose to select individual keywords with the checkbox and export those, export all of the keywords in the list, or export the first 100, 500, or 1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, or 50,000 (depending on the size of the report).

If you are exporting selected keywords, you can also clear them from your list after your export is complete.

Exporting keywords

Before exporting, you can also add keywords to the Keyword Manager. Keyword Manager lets you refresh metrics on keywords to get up-to-date stats on-demand.

To export the report to PDF, use “Export to PDF” button in the top right corner of the report.

In the exported PDF file, you will find Top Opportunities widget and Positions Compare table.

You can also find Top Opportunities and Positions Compare widgets in My Reports constructor under Domain Analytics/Keyword Gap section.

If you are interested in more ways to outperform the competition, check out our "How to Benchmark Opportunities for Growth" workflow.

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