How to Do Keyword Gap Analysis for SaaS in 2026

If you’ve ever stared at a Semrush export with 2,000 keywords in it and thought “okay… now what?”, this post is for you.

A keyword gap analysis is supposed to tell you which queries your competitors rank for that you don’t. Simple in theory. In practice, most SaaS teams either copy a generic process off some agency blog, end up with a spreadsheet nobody touches again, or skip the analysis entirely and just write whatever feels right that quarter.

I’ve helped 30+ B2B SaaS companies build their content programs over the past 6 years, and I’ve watched the same mistakes play out again and again. The volume trap. The wrong competitors. The missing follow-through.

So let me walk you through how I actually do this for SaaS clients, so you can create a better, more effective keyword roadmap for your brand.

Key Takeaways

Keyword gap analysis is the side-by-side comparison of your keyword profile with your competitors’ to find queries they rank for and you don’t.
For SaaS, the right competitors are your search competitors, not the brands your sales team complains about every Monday.
Match competitors within a similar Domain Rating band so the gaps you find are actually reachable.
Semrush and Ahrefs are the two main tools, but Google Search Console gives you striking-distance wins for free.
The Semrush output has six labeled buckets (Shared, Missing, Weak, Strong, Untapped, Unique), and Missing + Weak are where most SaaS wins live.
Filter aggressively by keyword difficulty, intent, and competitor position before you do anything else.
For SaaS specifically, comparison pages and integration pages often convert far better than typical blog content, so weight those gaps heavily.
Run a gap analysis every quarter, not once a year, because the SaaS SERP shifts faster than most teams expect.

What Keyword Gap Analysis Is (And How It’s Different From Content Gap Analysis)

A keyword gap analysis lines up your domain against a handful of competitor domains and tells you which keywords each of you ranks for, which ones overlap, and where you’re falling behind. Semrush lets you compare up to four competitors at once. Ahrefs lets you compare up to ten.

That’s the keyword gap. The content gap is something different.

A content gap analysis looks at topics and customer-journey moments your competitors cover that you don’t. Keyword gap is query-level. Content gap is topic-level.

For SaaS, you usually need both, but they answer different questions. Keyword gap tells you “this exact term is an opportunity.” Content gap tells you “you have no MOFU content for HR managers comparing tools.”

The post you’re reading is about the keyword side. But keep the content-level question in your back pocket. It’ll come up when you start grouping keywords into clusters later.

Why Keyword Gap Analysis Matters More for SaaS

SaaS is a category where organic search carries a lot of weight. Looking at the data on the 50 largest SaaS companies, organic search brings in about 26.4% of all traffic, making it the single biggest acquisition channel for them.

And it isn’t just about volume. The traffic SaaS gets from organic tends to be qualified buyers, not casual browsers. Which means the type of keywords you target matters more than the total search volume you chase.

Here’s the catch. The default keyword research instinct (chase volume) is exactly the wrong instinct for SaaS.

Let’s say a term like “human resource management” has around 15,000 searches a month. Most of those searchers could be students writing essays, HR pros doing definitional research, or random people typing the phrase into a search bar. Almost none of them are buying HR software next week.

A query like “HR software for small businesses” can pull a fraction of that volume, but every person typing it is in-market.

This is why a generic keyword gap process built for ecommerce or content publisher sites can fail for SaaS. SaaS needs an intent-weighted lens, and you have to apply that lens while you’re reading the gap report, not after.

If your existing content isn’t pulling its weight, it’s worth pairing this with why SaaS content stops ranking before you commit to a brand new content sprint.

How to Pick the Right Competitors (Search Competitors, Not Sales Competitors)

This is the step most SaaS teams get wrong, and it derails the rest of the analysis before they’ve started.

Your sales team has a list of competitors. They’re the brands that come up in lost-deal reviews and on G2 comparison pages. They are commercial competitors. They aren’t necessarily search competitors.

Search competitors are the domains that rank for the queries you care about, regardless of whether they sell what you sell. For most SaaS categories, your real search competitors are a mix of:

A couple of direct product competitors.
Two or three category publishers or industry blogs (think Forbes, HubSpot, G2’s own blog).
One or two indirect SaaS tools that overlap on your educational queries.
Maybe a niche newsletter or community site.

To find them properly, run your domain through Semrush’s Organic Research report or Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and pull the “Competing Domains” or “Organic Competitors” list. Sort by the number of shared keywords. The names you see may surprise you.

The other rule for choosing competitors is to match on domain authority. If your site is at DR 30 and you compare yourself to a DR 85 competitor, every gap you find is going to be unreachable for the next two years.

Pick three to five competitors whose Domain Rating falls within roughly 15 to 20 points of yours. Then add one aspirational competitor for long-horizon planning. That’s it.

A note on indirect competitors: an industry blog that ranks for your educational queries is often more useful to study than a direct product competitor. They tell you which topics your buyers are researching before they shortlist tools. If you also want to think about keyword research for SaaS more broadly, that’s worth a separate read.

How to Run the Analysis in Semrush

Inside Semrush, open Keyword Gap. Drop your domain in the top field. Add up to four competitor domains underneath.

Choose your target country database (US, UK, wherever your buyers are), leave the comparison type set to organic keywords, and click Compare.

The output gives you three things:

A Venn diagram showing the overlap between you and your competitors.
A Top Opportunities widget at the top of the screen.
The six labeled buckets (Shared, Missing, Weak, Strong, Untapped, Unique).

You can also restrict the comparison to a specific subfolder (like /blog/) or a specific URL if you only want to compare one section of your site. That’s a Guru/Business tier feature, worth knowing if you’re on a higher Semrush plan.

The Top Opportunities widget is a decent starting point but don’t stop there. The real value lives in the bucketed view.

How to Run the Analysis in Ahrefs

In Ahrefs, the equivalent feature lives under Competitive Analysis. Select Keywords mode. Put your domain in the top section, your competitors in the bottom section (up to 10), and click Show Keyword Opportunities.

Ahrefs will surface every query where your competitors rank but you don’t. You can filter by keyword difficulty, traffic potential, location, and competitor position.

There’s a nice intersection view where you click on any region of the Venn-style diagram and Ahrefs isolates the gap between those specific URLs.

The two tools are about equally capable for SaaS gap work. Semrush has the more documented bucket system. Ahrefs has slightly cleaner filtering and the up-to-10-URL comparison. Pick whichever your team already pays for.

How to Read the 6 Keyword Buckets

If you’re using Semrush, the six labels matter, so let me break them down:

Shared — every domain in the comparison ranks for this term, including yours. These are baseline category keywords. Defend your position, but they’re rarely where new wins come from.
Missing — every competitor ranks, but you don’t. This is the highest-priority bucket for new content. If three of your competitors all rank for “how to onboard SaaS users” and you have nothing, that’s a glaring hole.
Weak — you rank for it, but you fall below every competitor. The highest-priority bucket for optimization (not new content). These are pages you already have that need a refresh, expansion, or better internal linking.
Strong — you outrank every competitor. Protect these. Make sure your pages stay updated, the title tags don’t get stale, and the internal links from new content keep flowing in.
Untapped — at least one competitor ranks for it, but you don’t. Looser than “Missing” because it only takes one rival to qualify. Lots of noise here, but also some hidden gems competitors haven’t fully claimed.
Unique — only your domain ranks. These can signal a moat your competitors haven’t noticed, or a quirky long-tail. Worth a sanity check either way.

For most SaaS teams, Missing and Weak are where 80% of the action happens. Missing = create new content. Weak = improve what you have. Start there.

How to Filter and Prioritize (Without Drowning in Data)

The raw export from either tool can return thousands of keywords. Without filters, the spreadsheet is useless.

Apply these in order:

Keyword Difficulty ceiling. If your site is below DR 50, cap KD at 30 to 40. You’ll surface realistic wins instead of unreachable targets. For DR 60+ sites, raise the ceiling.

Competitor position filter. Restrict to keywords where at least one competitor ranks in positions 1 to 10. If they can’t crack the top ten, either the keyword is wrong or the SERP is unbeatable.

Search intent filter. Both tools tag intent as Informational, Navigational, Commercial, or Transactional. For SaaS, weight commercial and transactional heaviest. Informational has its place (TOFU content), but commercial intent is where pipeline lives.

Word count. Three-plus-word queries usually surface long-tails with cleaner intent and less competition.

Once you’ve filtered, score and prioritize. I keep this simple. For each keyword left on the list, score it 1 to 3 on each of:

Search volume (1 = under 100, 2 = 100 to 1,000, 3 = over 1,000).
Inverse keyword difficulty (3 = low KD, 1 = high KD).
Intent (3 = commercial or transactional, 1 = informational).
SERP beatability (3 = thin or weak top results, 1 = deeply authoritative dominant results).

Add it up. Keywords scoring 8+ out of 12 go to the priority list. Everything else can wait or get dropped.

“Bad goal: ‘get 1,000 leads.’ Good goal: ‘The content marketing team increases revenue from organic traffic by +10% in Q2 with content refreshes.’ Clear goals can be broken down into a plan. Bad goals create anxiety because there is no clear path.”

— Kevin Indig, growth advisor, led SEO at Shopify, on LinkedIn

Tie your scoring work to a real business goal before you start. Otherwise the shortlist becomes another spreadsheet your team scrolls past.

Before you commit to producing anything, open the SERP for each top keyword and look at what’s already ranking. Are the top results product pages, listicles, long-form guides, or comparison articles? If the dominant format doesn’t match what your site can credibly produce, drop the keyword. A gap in the report isn’t automatically a green light.

From there, map each remaining keyword to one of three buckets:

Create new — Missing keywords with no existing page on your site.
Refresh existing — Weak keywords where you already rank in positions 11 to 30.
Cluster into a hub — Groups of related keywords that should share a pillar page plus supporting cluster articles.

If you’re new to writing for this audience, how to write SaaS content covers the actual production side once you’ve picked your priorities.

SaaS Specific Best Practices That Make a Real Difference

These are the parts I see most generic guides miss. They’re also the parts that tend to move the needle for SaaS specifically.

Weight Funnel Stage, Not Just Volume

SaaS buyers move through awareness (“what is X”), consideration (“X vs Y,” “best X tools”), and conversion (“X pricing,” “X free trial”).

Conversion-stage gaps are usually fewer in number but worth orders of magnitude more per click. A gap that surfaces 10 comparison-page opportunities can be worth more than one that surfaces 50 informational gaps. Weight the buckets accordingly when you’re scoring.

Look for Comparison Page Gaps Specifically

Comparison pages like “YourTool vs Competitor” and “Best [Competitor] alternatives” tend to convert far better than typical blog content in SaaS. The visitor already knows they have a problem, they’ve narrowed it to a category, and they’re shopping.

If your competitors have built out comparison pages and you haven’t, that’s a fast-conversion opportunity worth chasing.

When you scan your gap report, look for any term containing “vs,” “alternative,” “alternatives,” “competitors,” or specific competitor brand names. Pull those out and treat them as their own priority list.

If you want a deeper look at the patterns, BOFU content examples walks through them in detail.

Integration Pages Are an Underrated Gold Mine

SaaS companies that publish dedicated integration pages (one per “YourTool + [Popular Tool]” query) often see a meaningful share of their total organic traffic come from integration searches alone.

When you run your gap analysis, look specifically for “X integration,” “X with [tool],” and “X plus [tool]” queries that your competitors are ranking for. If they’ve built integration directories and you haven’t, that’s a structural gap, not just a content one.

Layer in Customer Language

Tool-based gap analysis only surfaces keywords that have measurable search volume. The most valuable SaaS keywords often fall below the volume threshold Ahrefs and Semrush register.

To find them, do four things:

Read sales call transcripts and note the unprompted language prospects use.
Search your support ticket database for repeated question patterns.
Browse niche subreddits and Slack communities where your buyers gather.
Skim G2 and Capterra reviews for recurring phrases.

These hidden queries often surface as “Untapped” or zero-volume opportunities and can convert at multiples of tool-validated keywords. Zero search volume keywords in SaaS goes deep on this if it’s a new angle for your team.

Cluster Gaps, Don’t Chase Isolated Keywords

A single ranking page is a 2018 strategy. Google now rewards comprehensive topical coverage.

A pillar page surrounded by 8 to 22 cluster articles signals genuine authority on a topic. When you read your gap report, group missing keywords by underlying topic and decide which clusters are worth committing to fully.

Sites that publish thematic clusters in batches (multiple related articles in the same week or two) tend to get faster topical-authority recognition than sites that spread the same articles across six months.

Information Gain Is the New Bar

Google’s algorithms now score content against an information-gain metric. How much new information does your page add to what’s already in the top 10?

If your gap-analysis-driven article just synthesizes what already ranks, the information gain score hovers near zero, and the page struggles to climb regardless of how strong your domain is.

“If it’s a fairly dry topic, then the idea is that you… want to beat the website in terms of your ability to add to the knowledge graph, or in SEO speak, people are calling this information gain… If it is all like ‘what is X,’ you need to add something the others don’t have.”

— Bernard Huang, co-founder of Clearscope, in a Clearscope webinar

So bring proprietary data, first-hand experience, customer quotes, contrarian opinions, or original frameworks. That’s how a gap-analysis-driven page actually earns its position.

Don’t Skip Google Search Console

GSC is free. Most teams underuse it.

It exposes a different kind of gap: queries where your site already shows up in positions 5 to 20 but isn’t earning the clicks of a top-three result. These are called striking-distance keywords, and they’re often the fastest wins in any SaaS SEO program.

To find them:

Open the Performance report in GSC.
Set the date range to the last three months.
Enable the Average Position column.
Sort the Queries table by Impressions descending.
Scan for any keyword between positions 5 and 20 with meaningful impressions.

Those are pages Google already trusts. They just haven’t been promoted to the top. Often a title tag tweak, a content refresh, or a few internal links from related posts is enough to move them.

GSC and the paid gap tools complement each other. GSC catches the queries you can win cheaply with existing pages. The gap tool catches the queries that require net-new content. Use both.

If you want to go deeper on the optimization side, on-page SEO for SaaS blog posts covers what to actually change once you’ve identified striking-distance pages.

Common Mistakes That Hurt a SaaS Keyword Gap Analysis

After watching this play out across 30+ SaaS clients, here are the five mistakes I see most often:

Comparing yourself to commercial competitors instead of search competitors. The brands your sales team complains about may not rank for the queries that matter to you. Fix this by using the Organic Competitors report.

Comparing across mismatched Domain Ratings. A DR 30 site analyzing a DR 80 site surfaces thousands of unreachable gaps. Pick competitors within your range.

Ignoring search intent. A high-volume informational keyword that doesn’t match your page’s intent will rank, but it won’t convert. For SaaS, intent beats volume every time.

Doing the analysis and shelving it. This is the most common failure mode by far. The spreadsheet exists. The roadmap never gets built. The work never ships.

If you’ve already noticed your content isn’t getting the results it should, the common SaaS content marketing mistakes post covers other patterns worth ruling out.

How AI Search Is Changing This Workflow

Here’s the part nobody was talking about three years ago.

A modern gap analysis isn’t complete unless it also looks at where your competitors turn up in AI search results that you don’t. Conductor’s 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report, based on analysis of 21.9 million Google searches across 13,770 domains, found AI Overviews trigger on 25.11% of searches. And the exposure runs much higher for the SaaS queries that matter most. Seer Interactive’s April 2026 study of 5.47 million queries across 53 brands found comparison queries trigger an AIO 95.4% of the time, and question-format queries 85.9% of the time. Two formats SaaS teams write all the time.

Seer also found that being cited inside an AIO delivers around 120% more organic clicks per impression than appearing on the same SERP without a citation. So the question stops being whether you ranked and starts being whether you got cited in the answer.

The shift goes beyond Google, too. G2’s Answer Economy report, based on a March 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers, found 51% now kick off their research inside an AI chatbot more often than on Google, and 61% use both side by side. So if your competitors keep turning up inside ChatGPT or Perplexity answers for your category and your brand doesn’t, that’s a real visibility hole, regardless of where each of you lands in classic search.

“When I got started in SEO it was long-tail SEO where you have a page for every single keyword which doesn’t work anymore. But now the long tail is back in chat, and if you know all those really specific questions that people are asking, you can also win that.”

— Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite (the agency behind SEO at MasterClass, Webflow, and Adobe), on Lenny’s Podcast

To close the AI-visibility gap, content needs three things:

Structural clarity (clean question-and-answer formatting, scannable subheadings, summary sentences).
Factual precision with citations.
A recognizable entity profile (consistent brand mentions across the web).

AI engines prefer content they can extract a clean answer from. If your gap analysis surfaces queries dominated by AI Overviews, prioritize building pages that can earn a citation, not just a position.

For a closer look at how AEO vs SEO differ in practice, and what the latest AI SEO statistics say about the shift, those two posts are worth a read.

Also: run your gap analysis quarterly, not annually. AI search is moving faster than the old SERP did. A keyword that converted six months ago might now be eaten by an AI Overview. Fresh data beats stale assumptions.

Need Help Putting This Into Action?

If you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking “this is helpful, but I don’t have time to run this every quarter and write all the content that comes out of it,” that’s where I come in.

I’m Prit. I’m a freelance B2B SaaS content writer with 6+ years of experience and 300+ blog posts written for 30+ clients including Supademo (G2’s #5 Fastest Growing Software) and SEOWritingAI. I run keyword gap analyses for SaaS clients as part of my content strategy work, and I write the blog posts, comparison pages, and product-led content that closes the gaps.

If you’d like to talk through your current keyword situation and what a SaaS-specific content roadmap could look like, book a 30-minute discovery call. I’ll review your site, share a few opportunities I see, and we can decide together whether it makes sense to work together.

Final Thoughts

A keyword gap analysis isn’t a magic trick. It’s a process.

The reason most SaaS teams don’t get value out of it isn’t the tool. It’s that they pick the wrong competitors, chase volume over intent, skip the SaaS-specific moves (comparison pages, integration pages, customer language, AI visibility), and never ship the content the analysis points to.

If you do this right, twice a year minimum, your content roadmap stops being a guessing game. You’ll know exactly which 10 to 20 keywords to focus on this quarter, which existing pages to refresh, and which topics to cluster into hubs. The compounding effect over 18 months is the difference between a content program that drives qualified signups and one that just produces posts.

And if you’re looking for an expert product-led content marketer to turn the keywords into high-converting blogs, I’d be happy to help. Book a free 30-minute discovery call and see if there’s a good fit.

FAQs

1. What is keyword gap analysis for SaaS?

It’s the side-by-side comparison of your SaaS site’s keyword profile with your competitors’ to find queries they rank for and you don’t. The goal is to build a prioritized content roadmap that targets qualified buyers, not just high-volume traffic.

2. What is the difference between keyword gap analysis and content gap analysis?

Keyword gap analysis works at the query level, finding individual ranking terms competitors hold that you lack. Content gap analysis works at the topic level, mapping themes and journey stages competitors cover that you have not yet addressed.

3. What are the best tools for SaaS keyword gap analysis?

Semrush and Ahrefs are the two main paid tools, both equally capable for SaaS work. Google Search Console is the best free option for finding striking-distance keywords your existing pages can win quickly.

4. How often should a SaaS company run a keyword gap analysis?

Run a full gap analysis every quarter. The SaaS SERP shifts fast, new competitors enter, AI Overviews disrupt rankings, and stale analyses lose value within months. Fast-moving categories like AI tools may warrant monthly checks.

5. Should SaaS companies prioritize high volume or high intent keywords?

Prioritize high-intent keywords over high-volume ones. Comparison pages and pricing queries tend to convert far better than general informational searches, while large-volume informational terms often pull researchers rather than buyers.