In the world of SEO, outranking local competitors can be the difference between being seen or being overlooked. Whether you're a dental office, a law firm, or a boutique gym, visibility in search results directly impacts business growth. This is where a tool like SEMrush’s Keyword Gap can give you a competitive edge by revealing missed opportunities and guiding smarter optimization decisions. In this post, we’ll walk through how to use the Keyword Gap Tool and why it belongs in every local SEO strategy.
What Is the Keyword Gap Tool?
SEMrush's Keyword Gap Tool is a competitive analysis feature that lets you compare the keyword portfolios of up to five domains side by side. It highlights the terms your competitors rank for but you don’t, as well as the keywords you both share and the ones where your rankings fall short. You can access it by heading to the "Competitive Research" section in SEMrush and selecting "Keyword Gap."
Why It’s Useful for Local SEO
For local businesses, being visible for high-intent, location-based keywords is key. The Keyword Gap Tool helps uncover:
- Missed opportunities: Discover keywords your competitors rank for that you haven’t targeted yet.
- Weak areas: Identify keywords where your site ranks lower than the competition.
- Content direction: Use data to guide content creation and on-page optimization.
By understanding what your competitors are doing well, you can reverse-engineer a plan to improve your local visibility.
Step-by-Step: How to Use the Keyword Gap Tool
- Enter your domain and your competitors' domains: Start with local competitors you know are performing well in search.
- Choose the keyword type: Select from organic, paid, or PLA (product listing ads), depending on your strategy.
- Analyze key sections:
- Shared keywords: Terms both you and your competitors rank for.
- Missing keywords: All competitors rank for these, but you don’t.
- Weak keywords: You rank lower than competitors.
- Untapped keywords: At least one competitor ranks for these, but you don’t.
- Unique keywords: Only your site ranks for these terms.
Once you’ve pulled the data, it’s time to make sense of it.
How to Interpret Keyword Gap Data
Focus on the "missing" and "weak" keyword segments, these offer the clearest roadmap for growth. Prioritize keywords that have a healthy search volume and are relevant to your business. For example, if you're working with a dental client in Sarasota and notice competitors ranking for "emergency dentist Sarasota," that's a clear opportunity to create targeted content or optimize an existing service page.
To make the most of these keyword insights, ask yourself a few key questions as you evaluate each opportunity:
- Is the keyword relevant to my business and offerings?
- How well is my competitor ranking for it? Are they dominating the results, or is there room to rise above them?
- If they’re ranking high, is this a space where we also need to be visible? If they’re ranking low, could this be a chance to gain traction in an underdeveloped area of the market?
Also consider the search volume and keyword difficulty such as does the term have enough traffic potential, and is it realistic to compete for? These questions can help prioritize efforts and guide a more strategic approach to content creation and optimization.
Turning Insights Into Action
Once you’ve identified valuable keyword opportunities:
- Create new content targeting those high-value missed keywords.
- Update existing pages by adding relevant keywords into your H1 tags, meta descriptions, and other critical on-page elements to compete more effectively on weak keywords.
- Refine your campaigns if you're running paid search, making sure you're bidding on terms that matter.
Pro Tips
- Compare more than one competitor to get a broader picture of the landscape.
- Rerun reports regularly to keep up with shifting search trends.
- Pair it with Position Tracking in SEMrush to monitor how your changes impact your rankings over time.
In competitive local markets, knowing what your competitors rank for isn’t just helpful, it's essential. The SEMrush Keyword Gap Tool gives you that visibility and helps you translate insights into action. Start using it today to close keyword gaps, improve your rankings, and drive more qualified traffic to your site.
Ready to uncover untapped SEO opportunities for your business? Our team is ready to help you with the right tools and strategies to make it happen.
