SEMrush Keyword Gap: A Simple Guide to Finding Untapped SEO Opportunities

Updated: December 21, 2024

If you want to improve your website’s SEO, understanding the Keyword Gap can be one of the most powerful strategies to gain an edge over your competitors.

SEMrush Keyword Gap tool helps you identify the keywords your competitors are ranking for, but you are not.

This can reveal opportunities you might be missing out on, enabling you to target new keywords and improve your overall SEO strategy.

In this post, we’ll show you how to use SEMrush Keyword Gap in a practical and easy-to-understand way, so you can start finding untapped SEO opportunities today.

Table of Contents

What is SEMrush Keyword Gap?

The Keyword Gap tool in SEMrush is designed to help you identify the keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you are not.

Essentially, it highlights gaps in your SEO strategy and reveals valuable opportunities that you might not be targeting yet.

Using this tool, you can:

See what keywords your competitors are ranking for that you’re not.
Find new keywords to target in your content.
Optimize your current SEO strategy by targeting keywords you might have missed.

How to Use SEMrush Keyword Gap: A Simple, Step-by-Step Guide

Now that you understand what the Keyword Gap tool does, let’s break down how you can use it in a practical way to boost your SEO efforts.

1. Enter Your Domain and Competitor Domains

The first step to using the Keyword Gap tool is to identify your competitors.

Once you have them in mind, follow these steps:

Step 1: Log into your SEMrush account and go to the Keyword Gap tool under the Competitive Research section.
Step 2: In the search bar, enter your website’s domain.
Step 3: Then, enter the domains of your competitors. You can add up to five competitor websites to compare their keywords with yours.

Why this is useful: By comparing your domain with your competitors, you can see where you’re missing out.

It helps you find keywords that are driving traffic to your competitors’ sites but not to yours.

2. Analyze the Keyword Gap Report

Once you’ve entered the domains, SEMrush will generate a Keyword Gap report. This report shows you the list of keywords your competitors are ranking for, but you’re not.

Here’s how to make the most out of it:

Step 1: Look at the Venn Diagram or the comparison table, which shows the shared and unique keywords between your site and your competitors.
Step 2: Focus on the Unique Keywords that your competitors are ranking for but you’re not. These are the keywords that could help you close the gap.

Why this is useful: This gives you a clear view of untapped keyword opportunities. These are the terms that your competitors are already ranking for and bringing in traffic.

By targeting these keywords, you can improve your own rankings and increase organic traffic.

3. Filter and Sort Keywords Based on Priority

The Keyword Gap report is quite detailed, so it helps to filter and sort the keywords to make it easier to find the best opportunities. You can filter by:

Search Volume: Focus on keywords with higher search volume, which can drive more traffic to your site.
Keyword Difficulty: Target keywords with a reasonable difficulty level. It’s better to start with keywords that have medium difficulty, as these might be easier to rank for.
Position: Look at keywords where your competitors are ranking in the top positions. These are valuable keywords that might be worth your time to target.

Why this is useful: Filtering and sorting keywords helps you prioritize the most valuable ones, saving you time and effort in your SEO strategy.

You can target keywords that are most likely to generate traffic and improve your rankings.

4. Add the Keywords to Your SEO Strategy

After identifying the gaps, the next step is to integrate those keywords into your SEO strategy. Here’s how to use them effectively:

Create or Optimize Content: If the keyword gap is due to a lack of content, create a new blog post, landing page, or other forms of content that target these keywords.
On-Page Optimization: If the keyword gap is due to poorly optimized content, go back and optimize existing content with the missing keywords.
Build Backlinks: For more competitive keywords, consider building backlinks to improve your chances of ranking.

Why this is useful: Once you’ve identified the keyword opportunities, it’s time to take action.

Whether it’s creating new content or improving existing pages, targeting these gaps will help you compete more effectively and improve your search engine rankings.

5. Track Progress Over Time

As you implement the new keywords into your SEO strategy, it’s crucial to monitor how your rankings improve over time.

Step 1: Set up a Position Tracking project in SEMrush to monitor how your rankings for the new keywords are progressing.
Step 2: Track the traffic and keyword positions over weeks or months to see if the strategy is working.

Why this is useful: Tracking progress allows you to see the impact of your efforts.

If the keywords you targeted start ranking higher, you’ll know your SEO strategy is working. If not, you can adjust your approach.

Why SEMrush Keyword Gap Matters for Your SEO Strategy

Understanding the Keyword Gap is crucial for several reasons:

Competitive Advantage: By identifying keywords your competitors are ranking for, you can catch up and even outrank them.
SEO Growth: Finding new keyword opportunities can help you grow your organic traffic and improve rankings across the board.
Targeting Untapped Markets: You might be missing out on valuable search traffic simply because you’re not targeting the right keywords. SEMrush Keyword Gap helps you find these missed opportunities.