content-gap-analysis

Content Gap Analysis

Find topics covered by competitors that the user doesn't cover — ranked by opportunity. Outputs a prioritized list of content angles with evidence.

When to use this skill

• "What topics do competitors cover that we don't?"
• "Plan our blog editorial calendar."
• "Find SEO opportunities we're missing."
• "Where are we losing in search?"
• "What should we write next?"

For technical SEO problems (schema, hreflang, crawl errors), this skill isn't the right tool — Tavily can't run a full technical audit. Steer the user to a SEO-specific tool and stay focused on content.

Workflow

1. Establish baseline: get the user's domain and 2–4 competitor domains. Confirm before proceeding.
2. Inventory each site's content:
   • tavily_map from <domain>/blog (or equivalent) with instructions: "blog posts and resource articles", exclude_paths: ["/tag/", "/author/", "/page/\\d+/"].
   • For each site, extract URL paths and titles.
3. Cluster topics: group URLs into 8–15 topic clusters. Use the page titles plus tavily_extract on a sample if titles are ambiguous.
4. Build the topic-coverage matrix:
   • Rows = topic clusters.
   • Columns = sites (us + each competitor).
   • Cells = page count or "covered / not covered".
5. Rank gaps (topics where competitors are deep and the user is shallow or absent). For each candidate gap:
   • tavily_search for the topic to see who's actually ranking.
   • Check whether the search has commercial intent (transactional queries) or informational (top-of-funnel).
6. Output a prioritized opportunity list with effort vs. opportunity scoring.

Output template

# Content Gap Analysis — {User domain} vs {N} competitors
*{YYYY-MM-DD}*

## Baseline
| Site | Posts indexed | Topics covered |
|------|---------------|----------------|
| {us} | {N} | {N} |
| {comp 1} | {N} | {N} |
| …

## Topic coverage matrix
| Topic | Us | {C1} | {C2} | {C3} | Gap? |
|-------|----|----|----|----|------|
| {Topic A} | 0 | 12 | 8 | 5 | ✅ Major |
| {Topic B} | 1 | 6 | 4 | 2 | ✅ Moderate |
| {Topic C} | 8 | 5 | 3 | 1 | We lead |
| …

## Top opportunities

### 1. {Topic A} — Major gap (high opportunity)
- **Why it matters**: {reason — search volume signal, audience fit}.
- **Who owns it now**: {C1}, {C2}.
- **Suggested angle**: {angle that's not yet taken}.
- **Suggested formats**: {pillar guide / listicle / comparison / case study}.
- **Effort**: {low / medium / high}.
- **Sources**: [1], [2]

### 2. …

## Recommended editorial calendar (next 4–8 weeks)
1. {Title} — targets gap #{N}
2. …

## Sources
[1] {url}
[2] {url}

Effort-vs-opportunity scoring

For each gap, assign:

• Opportunity (1–5): search demand signal + audience fit + commercial intent.
• Effort (1–5): can the user write this from existing knowledge or do they need new research / interviews / data?

Sort by opportunity / effort. Top 3–5 go on the recommended calendar.

Patterns

• Comparison content: if competitors have "X vs Y" pages and the user doesn't, that's almost always a gap worth filling.
• Pricing / ROI calculators: high commercial intent, easy to ship, often missing.
• Original research / data posts: if no one in the space has run a survey or analyzed real data, suggest one — high differentiation.

Failure modes

• User has fewer than 5 posts: don't over-index on competitor depth. Recommend foundational pillar pages first.
• Competitor is a content-marketing machine 10× the user's size: scope down to a handful of clusters where the user can compete rather than a comprehensive map.
• Sites with no /blog/ structure: scope from the homepage with instructions: "long-form articles and guides".