Content Gap Analysis

Identifies content opportunities by comparing your site against competitors -- surfacing missing keywords, untapped topics, format gaps, and GEO-ready content worth creating.

What This Skill Does

Finds keyword, topic, and format gaps between your site and competitors, scores them by impact and effort, and produces a prioritized content calendar to close the highest-value gaps.

Quick Start

Start with one of these prompts. Finish with a short handoff summary using the repository format in Skill Contract.

Basic Gap Analysis

Find content gaps between my site [URL] and [competitor URLs]

What content am I missing compared to my top 3 competitors?

Topic-Specific Analysis

Find content gaps in [topic area] compared to industry leaders

What [content type] do competitors have that I don't?

Audience-Focused

What content gaps exist for [audience segment] in my niche?

Skill Contract

Expected output: a prioritized research brief, evidence-backed findings, and a short handoff summary ready for memory/research/.

• Reads: user goals, target market inputs, available tool data, and prior strategy from CLAUDE.md and the shared State Model when available.
• Writes: a user-facing research deliverable plus a reusable summary that can be stored under memory/research/.
• Promotes: durable keyword priorities, competitor facts, entity candidates, and strategic decisions to memory/hot-cache.md, memory/decisions.md, and memory/research/; hand canonical entity work to entity-optimizer.
• Next handoff: use the Next Best Skill below when the findings are ready to drive action.

Handoff Summary

Emit the standard shape from skill-contract.md §Handoff Summary Format.

Data Sources

Optional integrations: ~~SEO tool, ~~search console, ~~analytics, ~~AI monitor. Without tools, users provide site URL, content inventory, competitor URLs, and business goals manually. See CONNECTORS.md.

Instructions

When a user requests content gap analysis:

1. Define Analysis Scope

   Clarify parameters:

   ### Analysis Parameters
   
   **Your Site**: [URL]
   **Competitors to Analyze**: [URLs or "identify for me"]
   **Topic Focus**: [specific area or "all"]
   **Content Types**: [blogs, guides, tools, videos, or "all"]
   **Audience**: [target audience]
   **Business Goals**: [traffic, leads, authority, etc.]
   

2. Audit Your Existing Content

   Document total indexed pages, content by type and topic cluster, top performing content, and content strengths/weaknesses.

3. Analyze Competitor Content

   For each competitor: document content volume, monthly traffic, content distribution by type, topic coverage vs. yours, and unique content they have.

4. Identify Keyword Gaps

   Find keywords competitors rank for that you do not. Categorize into High Priority (high volume, achievable difficulty), Quick Wins (lower volume, low difficulty), and Long-term (high volume, high difficulty). Include keyword overlap analysis.

5. Map Topic Gaps

   Create a topic coverage comparison matrix across all competitors. For each missing topic cluster, document business relevance, competitor coverage, opportunity size, sub-topics, and recommended pillar/cluster approach.

6. Identify Content Format Gaps

   Compare format distribution (guides, tutorials, comparisons, case studies, tools, templates, video, infographics, research) against competitors and industry averages. For each gap, assess effort and expected impact.

7. Analyze GEO/AI Gaps

   Identify topics where competitors get AI citations but you do not. Document missing Q&A content, definition/explanation content, and comparison content. Score each by traditional SEO value and GEO value.

8. Map to Audience Journey

   Compare funnel stage coverage (Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention) against competitor averages. Detail specific gaps at each stage.

9. Prioritize and Create Action Plan

   Produce a final report with: Executive Summary, Prioritized Gap List (Tier 1 Quick Wins, Tier 2 Strategic Builds, Tier 3 Long-term), Content Calendar, and Success Metrics.

   Reference: See references/analysis-templates.md for detailed templates for each step.

Example

Reference: See references/example-report.md for a complete example analyzing SaaS marketing blog gaps vs. HubSpot and Drift.

Advanced Analysis

Competitive Cluster Comparison

Compare our topic cluster coverage for [topic] vs top 5 competitors

Temporal Gap Analysis

What content have competitors published in the last 6 months that we haven't covered?

Intent-Based Gaps

Find gaps in our [commercial/informational] intent content

Tips for Success

1. Focus on actionable gaps - Not all gaps are worth filling
2. Consider your resources - Prioritize based on ability to execute
3. Quality over quantity - Better to fill 5 gaps well than 20 poorly
4. Track what works - Measure gap-filling success
5. Update regularly - Gaps change as competitors publish
6. Include GEO opportunities - Don't just optimize for traditional search

Save Results

After delivering, offer to save a dated summary to memory/research/content-gap-analysis/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md. Promote key conclusions to memory/hot-cache.md if they influence ongoing strategy.

Reference Materials

• Analysis Templates — Detailed templates for each analysis step (inventory, competitor content, keyword gaps, topic gaps, format gaps, GEO gaps, journey, prioritized report)
• Gap Analysis Frameworks — Content audit matrices, funnel mapping, and gap prioritization scoring methodologies
• Example Report — Complete example analyzing SaaS marketing blog gaps vs. HubSpot and Drift

Next Best Skill

Primary: seo-content-writer.