A keyword gap analysis compares the search terms your website ranks for with the terms your competitors rank for, then isolates the ones you are missing or losing. Peak Marketing runs this process for law firms to find the searches that send cases to competitors instead of them. The steps below walk through how to do it yourself.
The short version: choose your real search competitors, run their domains through a gap tool, strip out the noise, sort what remains by intent, and decide whether each term needs a new page or a stronger existing one. Most of the value comes from the last two steps, which is exactly where many audits stop short.
What does a keyword gap analysis actually show?
The idea is simple subtraction. Take every keyword a competitor ranks for, remove the keywords you already rank for, and what is left is a list of opportunities. Ahrefs describes the principle behind its Content Gap tool in exactly those terms.
Semrush splits the results into labeled groups. Missing keywords are ones every competitor in your comparison ranks for while you have no ranking at all. Weak keywords are ones where you rank, but below every competitor. Untapped keywords are ones where at least one competitor ranks and you do not. Each group points to a different kind of fix, which is why the labels matter more than the total keyword count.
Step 1: Identify your actual search competitors
Your search competitors are the sites that rank for the terms you want, not necessarily the firms you run into at the courthouse. For a personal injury practice in Idaho Falls, the first page for “car accident lawyer Idaho Falls” might include two local firms, a statewide firm, and several legal directories.
Leave the directories out of the comparison. Sites like Avvo and FindLaw rank for thousands of terms across every practice area and city, so including them floods your report with keywords no single firm can realistically win. Pick three or four firms that are close to your size and handle the same case types. Both Semrush and Ahrefs suggest competitors based on keyword overlap, and those suggestions make a decent starting point once the directories are removed.
Step 2: Run the comparison
In Semrush, open Keyword Gap, enter your domain and up to four competitors, set the database to the United States, and keep the keyword type on organic. In Ahrefs, the same function lives in the Competitive Analysis tool. Its default view shows keywords where at least one competitor ranks in the top 10 and your site does not appear in the top 100.
If your site is organized by practice area, compare at the subfolder level. Running your /personal-injury/ section against a competitor’s personal injury section gives a cleaner picture than comparing two entire domains that happen to cover different case types.
Step 3: Clean the list before you trust it
A raw export from either tool often runs to several thousand rows, and much of it is irrelevant. Remove these before doing anything else:
- Branded searches for competitor firm names or individual attorney names
- Cities and counties you do not serve
- Practice areas your firm does not handle
- Terms with obvious job-seeker or student intent, such as “paralegal salary”
Then narrow the list to keywords where at least two competitors rank in the top 10. When several firms rank for a term, the topic has proven demand, and Google has already shown it will reward law firm pages for it.
Step 4: Sort by intent instead of volume
Search volume is a weak guide for legal keywords. A phrase like “lawyer for accident with uninsured driver” may show 30 searches a month and still produce more signed clients than a 2,000-search informational query about average settlement amounts.
Group the cleaned list by what the searcher wants. Hiring searches usually include a service and a location. Research searches ask how a process works or how long it takes. Before committing to any term, search it yourself. If the first page is all directories and government sites, a firm page will struggle. If other firms’ blog posts and practice pages rank, you can compete.
This table shows how each gap type usually translates into work:
| Gap type | What it tells you | Usual action |
| Missing | Every competitor ranks; you have no page that ranks | Build a new page or post |
| Weak | You rank, but below every competitor | Refresh and expand the existing page |
| Untapped | One competitor found a niche you have not covered | Test with a focused post |
| High impressions, low clicks (Search Console) | You appear, but searchers skip you | Rewrite the title and meta description |
Step 5: Map each keyword to one URL
Every keyword you keep should point to a single page on your site. A spreadsheet with columns for keyword, monthly volume, difficulty, intent, target URL, action, and due date is enough. This mapping step keeps two of your own pages from competing for the same term, a problem that often shows up when firms publish new blog posts without checking what already exists.
Weak keywords rarely need new pages. They usually need a better version of the page you have: a clearer title, a section that answers the specific question, updated statute references, and internal links from related practice pages.
Step 6: Cross-check with Google Search Console
Third-party tools estimate rankings. Search Console reports what actually happened. Open the Performance report, go to the Queries tab, and sort by impressions. Google’s own documentation recommends looking for queries with high impressions and a low click-through rate, since those point to titles and snippets that need work.
Queries where you average positions 11 through 20 deserve special attention. These are gaps you have almost closed. Keep in mind that Search Console calculates average position across all impressions, so a single figure can hide wide swings from one search to the next.
How Peak Marketing turns gap findings into published content
A gap report only helps if it changes what gets published. At Peak Marketing, the cleaned and mapped keyword list becomes the content calendar. Missing terms become new pages. Weak terms go into the refresh queue, which is why our campaigns pair new content with refreshed content every month instead of only adding posts.
We also write with AI search in mind. Many gap keywords are phrased as questions, so we turn them into question headings and answer them directly in the first sentence or two beneath. That structure makes a page easier for both search engines and AI answer tools to read and quote.
How often should you repeat the analysis?
Once a quarter works for most law firms. Run it sooner if a competitor redesigns its site, a new firm enters your market, or you add a practice area. Rankings move constantly, and an old gap list goes stale faster than most firms expect.
Where to start
Keyword gap analysis comes down to a few disciplined habits: compare against real competitors, clean the data, judge intent, and assign every keyword to a page. Done well, it replaces guesswork with a clear list of what to write and what to fix. If you would rather have the analysis done for you and turned into a working content plan, talk with Peak Marketing about a campaign built around the searches your future clients are already making.
Sources
- Ahrefs, Content Gap: https://ahrefs.com/content-gap
- Ahrefs Blog, What’s New at Ahrefs (Content Gap 2.0): https://ahrefs.com/blog/whats-new-at-ahrefs-july-2023
- Semrush, Keyword Gap Tool: https://www.semrush.com/features/domain-vs-domain
- Semrush Blog, Keyword Gap Analysis: https://semrush.com/blog/keyword-gap-analysis
- Google Search Console Help, Performance report (Search results): https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553
- Google Search Console Help, What are impressions, position, and clicks?: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7042828
