Content gap analysis for a small business website: how to do one without paid tools

Your competitor has a page on something your customers search for. You don't. That's a content gap, and finding it doesn't need a subscription.

So here's the plain version. A content gap is a topic your customers look up where your site has no page at all, or only a thin one, while a competitor has a decent page sitting there. That's it. No jargon required.

You might also see it called keyword gap analysis or SEO content gap analysis. The names vary slightly, and the tools vary a lot. The idea doesn't. You're asking what people want to know, and whether your site answers it.

If you run a small UK business site with somewhere between 20 and 200 pages and two or three competitors you can name off the top of your head, you can do this by hand in an afternoon. It is a bit tedious. It is also useful, because you end up knowing your own site better than you did before.

Google's starter guide says that creating content people find compelling and useful will likely influence your presence in search results more than the other suggestions it makes. So the advice isn't "tweak your title tags until they hurt." It's "make pages worth reading." Google describes that content as easy to read and well organised, unique (you shouldn't rehash what others have already published), up to date, and helpful, reliable and written for people first.

A gap analysis tells you where to point that effort. Without one, you're guessing. With one, you're guessing less.

Grab a spreadsheet. Or a sheet of paper. It really doesn't matter.

1. List three competitors. Pick businesses that sell what you sell to the same sort of customer. Local rivals count. So do bigger firms you keep losing quotes to. Don't pick a household name just because it's famous; if you'd never compete for the same job, it's not a competitor.

1. List their main pages and blog topics. Go through their navigation, their service pages, their blog or guides section. Write down the topics, not the page titles. "How much a boiler service costs" is a topic. "Our Boiler Services" is a label. You're after what each page is actually about.

1. List yours. Do the same for your own site. Be honest. If a page exists but says four lines and a phone number, note it as weak.

1. Mark what they cover and you don't. Put the three lists side by side. Any topic that appears on a competitor's site and not yours is a gap. Any topic where yours is a stub and theirs is a proper page is a weak spot. Highlight both.

1. Check each gap yourself in Google. Type the topic in as a customer would. Look at what comes up. Ask two things: do people clearly want this, and can you say something useful about it? If the results are all vague and repetitive, that's a good sign. If they're excellent and you've nothing to add, that's a different sign.

That last step is where the work is. Skip it and you've just made a wish list.

Searching it yourself sounds crude. It's actually the most honest test available.

Read the top few results like a customer would. Are they answering the question or dodging it? Do they tell you the price, the timescale, the catch? Or do they circle round it for six paragraphs and then ask you to call?

Notice what's missing. That's often where your page goes. If every result explains what something is but none explain what it costs or how long it takes, you've found your angle.

Also look at who's showing up. Which brings us to deciding what to write first.

You'll end up with more gaps than you have time for. Everyone does. So rank them, and use three questions to do it.

Does it fit what you sell? A topic that attracts readers who'll never buy from you is a nice traffic number and nothing else. Favour gaps that sit close to your services, your products, or the questions customers ask before they get in touch.

Can you say something original? Google's helpful content guidance asks whether content provides original information, reporting, research or analysis, and whether it gives substantial value compared with other pages in the results. For a small business, "original" usually means experience. What you see on jobs. What customers get wrong. What you'd tell a friend. That counts, and a bigger site often can't match it.

Is the page one giant site after another? If the first page of results is entirely national brands and big publishers, you're climbing a steep hill. Doable, so pick it later. A gap where the results are thin, dated or generic is easier ground.

Score each gap out of three, one point per question. Write the highest scorers first. It is a rough method. It still beats a hunch.

Not every gap needs a new page. Sometimes you already have something and it's just poor.

Fix the existing page when it covers the right topic but thinly, when it's out of date, or when it's hard to follow. Expand it, tidy it, add the detail customers actually ask for. Keep the address the same.

Write a new page when the topic is genuinely different from anything you have. If you'd have to stuff a second subject into an existing page to cover it, that's a sign it needs its own.

A quick test: could you explain the page's purpose in one sentence? If adding the new topic makes that sentence awkward, start fresh.

You don't need one to start. But tools do earn their place once you've got a lot of pages, a lot of competitors, or simply less patience than I've got.

They're good at speed. They can compare thousands of terms in seconds, which no spreadsheet will match.

One caveat: the keyword volumes and difficulty scores they show are estimates. They're the tool's best guess, not facts about Google. Treat them as a rough signal, never as a verdict. A topic showing "low volume" might still be exactly what your best customers ask before they buy.

So use a tool to widen the list. Use your own judgement, and your own searches, to decide.

Two mistakes come up again and again.

Don't copy competitors. If you see a gap, the answer isn't to paraphrase their page and publish it. Google's guidance asks for content that's unique, and says not to rehash what others have already published. Copying a competitor with the words shuffled gives readers no reason to choose you. Give them one.

Don't mass-produce pages. It's tempting. A gap list of fifty topics, an AI tool, an afternoon. Resist. Google's spam policies define scaled content abuse as generating many pages for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings rather than helping users, however it's done. Using generative AI tools to produce lots of pages without adding value is one of its examples. Ten good pages will do you more good than fifty hollow ones. It also keeps you clear of the spam policy.

Be patient. Google says changes can take anywhere from hours to several months to show, and suggests waiting a few weeks before judging the effect.

So don't rewrite a page after four days because nothing's moved. Publish, leave it, look again in a few weeks. And keep the spreadsheet. It's useful the next time a competitor adds something new.

A short checklist to finish:

1. Name three real competitors.
2. List topics, not page titles, for them and for you.
3. Mark the gaps and the weak pages.
4. Search each one yourself.
5. Rank by fit, originality and who's already winning.
6. Fix or write, then wait a few weeks.

If you'd like a head start, the free Seracu snapshot gives you a quick look at which topics your site is missing compared with your competitors. Use it to check your own list, or to find what you overlooked.