Competitor keyword gap analysis reveals the biggest opportunities hiding in plain sight — keywords your competitors rank for that you don't even target yet. This workflow systematically uncovers these gaps, prioritizes them by opportunity value, and creates an actionable content roadmap. You'll walk away with a prioritized list of 50-100 keywords your competitors own that you can realistically capture, complete with content briefs ready for production.
Most SEO practitioners spot-check a few competitor keywords manually, but this approach finds the systematic gaps that drive real traffic growth. Instead of guessing what content to create next, you'll have data-driven targets that already prove market demand.
What You'll Need
You'll need active accounts for Semrush or Ahrefs (premium required for bulk keyword data), Surfer SEO for content analysis, and ChatGPT Plus for content brief generation. Prepare a list of 3-5 direct competitors' domains and have your own domain's current keyword rankings available. Set aside 2-3 hours for the full analysis, though you can break this into smaller sessions.
Step 1: Extract Competitor Keyword Rankings
Time: 30 minutes | Tool: Semrush Navigate to Semrush's Organic Research tool and enter your first competitor's domain. Click on "View all" next to their organic keywords to see their complete ranking profile. Use the filter options to narrow down to keywords ranking in positions 1-10 with search volume above 100. Export this data to CSV, ensuring you capture keyword, position, search volume, and keyword difficulty metrics. Repeat this process for each of your 3-5 competitors, creating separate CSV files. For domains with massive keyword portfolios (50,000+ keywords), filter for positions 1-5 only to focus on their strongest rankings. This prevents data overwhelm while capturing their most valuable keyword real estate. Export each competitor's top 1,000-2,000 keywords maximum. More than this becomes unwieldy in the analysis phase, and you want to focus on keywords they're genuinely strong for rather than their entire long tail.
Step 2: Identify Your Current Keyword Coverage
Time: 20 minutes | Tool: Ahrefs Open Ahrefs Site Explorer and input your domain. Navigate to the "Organic Keywords" section and export your current ranking keywords to CSV. Include all keywords where you rank in the top 100 positions — this gives you the complete picture of your current content coverage. Create a master spreadsheet combining all competitor keyword data in one tab and your current rankings in another. Use Excel or Google Sheets' VLOOKUP function to identify keywords where competitors rank but you don't appear at all. This reveals your true keyword gaps, not just ranking position differences. Pro tip: Also note keywords where competitors rank in the top 5 but you rank below position 20. These represent quick win opportunities where you already have content that could be optimized rather than created from scratch.
Step 3: Score and Prioritize Gap Opportunities
Time: 45 minutes | Tool: Surfer SEO Import your gap keyword list into Surfer SEO's Keyword Research tool to get content scores and SERP analysis for each term. Look for keywords where the top-ranking pages have Surfer content scores below 70 — these indicate weaker content that you can outrank with better optimization. Create a priority scoring system using these factors: search volume (30%), keyword difficulty (25%), competitor average position (25%), and content gap score from Surfer (20%). Keywords with 1,000+ monthly searches, difficulty under 40, competitors ranking in positions 6-10, and low content scores get the highest priority ratings. Filter your list down to 50-100 target keywords based on these scores. Group them by search intent and topic clusters — you'll often find natural content themes emerging that suggest pillar pages with supporting cluster content.
Step 4: Analyze Search Intent and Content Types
Time: 40 minutes | Tool: ChatGPT Copy your prioritized keyword list into ChatGPT and use this prompt: "Analyze these keywords for search intent and recommend content types. Group by informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational intent. For each group, suggest the optimal content format (guide, comparison, tool, etc.)." Review ChatGPT's analysis against the actual SERPs for your top 20 keywords. Check if the current top-ranking pages match the suggested content types — if ChatGPT recommends guides but the SERPs show product comparisons, trust the SERP analysis over AI suggestions. Create content buckets organizing your keywords by intent and required content depth. Informational keywords often need comprehensive guides (2,000+ words), while commercial intent keywords might need comparison tables and product features. This grouping streamlines your content production planning.
Step 5: Generate Content Briefs for Priority Targets
Time: 45 minutes | Tool: Surfer SEO + ChatGPT Select your top 10 priority keywords and create detailed content briefs in Surfer SEO's Content Editor. For each keyword, analyze the top-ranking competitor pages to identify required topics, word count ranges, and heading structures that consistently appear across multiple results. Feed Surfer's content recommendations into ChatGPT with this prompt: "Create a detailed content brief for [keyword] based on this competitor analysis. Include target word count, required subtopics, user questions to answer, and unique angles to differentiate from existing content." Document specific content gaps you've identified — topics that competitors mention but don't cover in depth, user questions left unanswered in current results, or outdated information you can refresh. These gaps become your content differentiation strategy, giving you angles to outrank established competitors.
Common Pitfalls
- Focusing only on high search volume keywords without considering your ability to actually rank for them — keyword difficulty and domain authority gaps matter more than raw search numbers
- Ignoring search intent mismatches where your suggested content type doesn't align with what users actually want based on current SERP results
- Trying to target too many keywords at once instead of focusing on 10-20 quick wins that can build momentum and authority
- Overlooking branded competitor terms that you should never try to target — focus on category and product keywords instead
Expected Results
You should have 50-100 prioritized target keywords organized by content type and search intent, with detailed briefs for your top 10 opportunities ready for content creation. Track your progress by monitoring ranking improvements for these target terms over 3-6 months — expect to see movement within 60-90 days for well-optimized content targeting medium-difficulty keywords. Most clients see 20-30% of targeted gap keywords reach page one within six months when following this systematic approach.