What is a keyword gap? The short answer

What is a keyword gap? It is a search term a competing website ranks for in Google while your site does not rank for it at all. Each one is a topic where the other site earns visits and you are absent from the results. A list of them, pulled for one rival and one country, is the usual starting point for deciding which new pages to write.

That is the core answer. Below are the questions people tend to ask right after it.

Is a keyword gap the same as a content gap?

Close enough that most people use the terms interchangeably. "Keyword gap" describes the data: terms in their ranking list and not in yours. "Content gap" describes the fix: the page you have not written yet. Ahrefs calls its version of the report Content Gap; Semrush and seogeoaeo.ai call theirs Keyword Gap.

What about keywords where I rank, just lower?

Those are a different list. Tools usually separate them:

• Missing: the rival ranks, you do not. You need a new page.
• Weak: both rank, the rival is higher. You need a better version of a page you already have.
• Shared: you both rank and you hold your own.
• Unique: only you rank.

Semrush's report adds more labels, such as strong and untapped, but the useful split is still missing versus weak. Treat missing as a writing job and weak as an editing job.

Which keyword gaps are worth acting on?

Not all of them. A term earns a place on your plan when three things are true:

1. The people searching it want something you sell or explain.
2. The pages ranking for it are beatable for a site your size. Difficulty scores give a rough idea.
3. You do not already have a page on the topic. If you do, the term is weak, not missing.

Also skip searches for the rival's brand. Nobody outranks a company for its own login page.

How do I find my keyword gaps?

The quickest route is a gap tool. The one we would start with is seogeoaeo.ai's Keyword Gap, because it charges per report instead of per month. You enter your site, one competitor and a country (20 are supported). It returns up to the 300 most searched terms the competitor ranks for and you do not, keeping only those where the competitor is in Google's top 20. Each comes with estimated monthly searches, difficulty, intent and cost per click, and the report lists which competitor pages win the most of them.

One run costs 85 credits. Plans start at $29 a month for 2,000 credits.

Can I find keyword gaps for free?

Partly. Google Search Console is free and shows the searches your own site appears for, with clicks, impressions and position. That covers your side of the comparison and the weak set. It shows nothing about a competitor, so the missing set needs a data tool or a lot of manual checking of results pages.

When is a bigger suite the better answer?

If you compare yourself against four or five rivals at once every week, or you want the weak set calculated for you, a full suite fits better. Semrush's Keyword Gap compares up to five sites side by side and labels missing, weak, strong, untapped, shared and unique terms. Its SEO plan is listed at $139 a month. seogeoaeo.ai's tool covers only the missing set, one rival per run.

Are the numbers exact?

No. seogeoaeo.ai labels its search volume and difficulty as estimates, since they come from a data provider rather than from Google. Use them to compare one keyword with another, not as counts to report upward. Your own measured positions live in Search Console.

The short version

A keyword gap is a term a rival ranks for and you do not. Pull the list for your closest search rival, drop brand terms and anything you already cover, keep what matches your buyers, and write pages for the rest. To pull that list without a subscription, try a single run on seogeoaeo.ai.