Mind the Gap: How to Answer the Audience Questions Your Competitors Aren’t

As a business leader, a big part of growing your company involves outperforming your competitors. Your content is one important area you should focus on when trying to one-up your rivals. Your goal should be to get current and potential customers to seek out your content first when they have questions. 

One way you can make this happen is by answering the audience questions other businesses are ignoring. Here’s how to identify your competitors’ content gaps and create content that fills them.

How to Identify Your Competitors’ Content Gaps

If you’ve ever had a question but couldn’t readily find the answer in an online search, you’ve discovered a content gap. The term “content gap” refers to important industry topics or keywords a company’s content does not address. If you have content gaps, your customers may look elsewhere for the answers they want and need. Fortunately, the same is true for your competitors. If they’re failing to answer their audience members’ questions, you have an opportunity to fill their content gaps and attract more business.   

There are different ways you can go about pinpointing your competitors’ content gaps. One of the most effective is to perform a competitive content analysis. This is the process of carefully analyzing the quality, diversity, and keywords used in the content other businesses publish. Your analysis will reveal any key industry topics or keywords that the competition doesn’t address. Armed with this information, you can launch an aggressive campaign to close those gaps with your own exceptional content.

Analyzing competitor content takes time because you’ll need to go through their websites, blog posts, and other published content with a fine-toothed comb. Fortunately, there are third-party services that can handle this cumbersome process for you. Such services will examine other companies’ content, reveal gaps, and show you how to structure your content to fill competitive blind spots.

Why You Should Fill Your Competitors’ Content Gaps

Now that you know what a content gap is and how to identify your competitors’, you may be wondering why you should care. Is it worth your time and effort to figure out what gaps exist and how to fill them? The short answer is, “Absolutely!” Here are a few reasons why.

First, a content gap is an opportunity for you to help your business shine. You can become your audience’s go-to source of information on a given topic by being the one to write about it. If you’re the first to saturate search engine results with information on a certain topic or keyword, you’ll earn valuable traffic.

Second, filling a content gap can improve your website performance so you can rank higher in search engine results. Plus, adding relevant keywords improves your search engine optimization. The better your SEO, the better your online visibility tends to become over time.

Finally, filling a content gap enables you to build authority in your industry. Becoming an industry expert can be challenging, especially if many of your competitors got there before you. But if your customers discover they can rely on you to address questions other businesses ignore, you’ll come out ahead. People will learn to come to your business first when they need answers to industry-related questions going forward.

How to Close Online Content Gaps

Once you know your competitors’ content gaps, it’s time to take action and fill them before the competition wises up. Your primary goal should be to create content that answers the questions other businesses are neglecting. From refreshing old pieces to creating new content, there are several ways to do this. Here’s a brief overview of some of the approaches you can take to help your content gain an edge over your rivals’.

Give Old Content an Update

Refreshing old content to include relevant keywords and topics is one of the quickest methods for filling competitive blind spots. It’s also a great tactic for boosting traffic and ensuring your content is always relevant. 

When updating old articles, analyze them to determine what keywords you should add. You may also wish to lengthen an article by adding an entirely new section on a topic or keyword that your competitors haven’t addressed. For example, if you have an old article on creating B2B content, you could update it to discuss cutting-edge AI tools. Or you could add videos or infographics to improve audience engagement.

Consolidate Content

Another way to close content gaps is to consolidate your content and update anything that’s redundant. You want to create content that answers all anticipated reader questions but doesn’t rehash the same material over and over again. 

For example, imagine you have 10 articles on your site that address the different types of security systems you offer. This sort of redundancy can confuse and frustrate site visitors. To fill content gaps, eliminate overlap and answer more customer questions — instead of answering the same ones more often. You could change some of your articles to address other questions such as how to select the right security system or how to deal with system malfunctions.

Create New Content

Finally, you’ll want to create brand-new content to fill competitive blind spots. Take another look at the keywords and topics other businesses aren’t addressing. Then use that information to craft your own articles that are optimized to meet your customer needs. Develop a content schedule to help you stick to your commitment to creating diverse and helpful content.

To increase the chances of your answers becoming Google “snippets” — SEO gold — strive to answer questions as completely yet concisely as possible. Beating around the bush will not get this job done.

If you’ve struggled to gain an edge over your competition, identifying content gaps can help. Use the tips above to figure out the questions your competitors aren’t answering, then answer those questions yourself.