Find the keywords gap between you and any competitor
Four questions, one competitor at a time, answered from the SERP checks you have already run.
What a keywords gap actually tells you
The difference between what you rank for and what they rank for, keyword by keyword.
A keywords gap is not a score, it is a list. For every keyword you track, either you both rank and one of you is higher, or one of you is absent entirely. Sorting those four states is the whole job, because each one is a different piece of work. A single number would hide all of that, and a number is not something you can act on in the morning. The list is, because each row names a keyword, a competitor and a position, and you can decide in a second whether it is worth your time this month or not.
Four views on every keywords gap
Each answers a different question, and each becomes a different task.
- Losing to them. You both rank, they rank higher. This is the work list, and the closest gaps sit at the top of it, because a keyword you trail by two places is a different job from one you trail by fifteen.
- Beating them. You both rank, you rank higher. This is the defence list. It is the one people never look at, and it is where you notice slippage before it costs you anything.
- They rank and you do not. The clearest content gap there is, and usually the longest to close, because it means writing something rather than improving something.
- You rank and they do not. What you have that they have not noticed yet. Worth protecting, and worth building on while it is still uncontested.
The four lists are drawn per competitor, so you pick a domain in the SEO competitor rank tracker and read the keywords gap against that one rival rather than against a blurred average of all of them.
Where the keywords gap data actually comes from
You have already paid for it.
Every position check stores the whole top twenty organic results, so the competitor's position was captured at the same moment as yours. Opening the report crawls nothing and costs nothing, it reads back history you already hold. That is why you can run it as often as you like, and why a competitor you add today already has months of comparison behind them if you have been checking those keywords. Our SEO tool pricing stays just as simple while the pilot runs.
A keyword gap tool that costs you nothing extra
The data is already sitting in the checks you paid for.
Every position check stores the whole top twenty, which means it also stored whoever outranked you. A keyword gap tool that has to go and crawl a competitor's whole site costs money every time you open it. This one reads back history you already have, so running it again tomorrow costs nothing, and the keywords gap is recalculated from stored results rather than fetched again.
Where SEO gap analysis stops
One real limitation, and it is worth understanding before you rely on it.
SEO gap analysis in Pebble compares the keywords you track. It cannot show you a keyword a competitor ranks for that you have never tracked and never checked, because nothing ever looked. If you want the keywords gap to widen its view, widen the tracked list first and then run a check. Your Google Search Console historical data tells you what a keyword was worth before you started. Treat the report as an honest reading of your own list rather than a map of the whole market, and it will not mislead you. The list is yours to grow, and every keyword you add starts collecting comparison from its first check onwards.
A keywords gap is only as wide as your tracked list
Widen the list first, then run the check.
The comparison only covers keywords you track and have checked. If a competitor ranks for something you have never tracked, nothing ever looked at it, so nothing can report it. Finding those candidates is a separate job, and it is what the keyword monitoring tool is for.
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