The Hidden Keyword Gaps Google Is Begging You to Fill

0:00What 95% of SEOs and 99.999% of digital marketers don't realize is that there are a million billion keyword gaps that Google needs filling. On this episode of the podcast, I'm going to define this is one of the most important things in SEO and digital marketing to understand. I'm going to define what a keyword gap is within a SER within a search engine results page. When you Google something, what a keyword gap is there. Not a website, but but within that within that page. I'm going to define what a keyword gap is. I'm going to explain why keyword gaps in the search engine results pages are a must

0:45for any SEO and digital marketer to understand, why they're so important, and then how to fill these gaps. That is what I got for you on this groundbreaking, amazing episode. I'm being so silly. That's what I got for you on this episode of the show. It's going to be a good one. And it shouldn't be very confusing. Just in basic terms, a keyword gap in the search engine results page is a keyword that doesn't have direct pages or posts targeting it or a close close variation. That's what a keyword gap is. It's a keyword where uh a a searcher for the keyword would not be very satisfied because of the

1:25lack of what is showing on Google for the keyword. And I think we've all had this experience. You you you make a search on a search engine, Google, Bing, whatever. You make a search and you can't find anything on your search. You just you can't find anything on it. And and the stuff that you do find, it doesn't satisfy you. So, you are not very satisfied. And that's what a keyword gap is in a SER in a search engine results page. But we can define this that's that's like basic terms. So but we can define this in more specific SEO terms. So in SEO terms, it's your

2:00keyword or a close variation of the keyword because you know you could still be satisfied if a page is targeting a close variation of of your keyword. So a keyword gap is it's a combination of these things. the keyword or or a close variation isn't targeted in these five places from pages or posts in the SER. The five places are the page title, the URL slug, the meta description, which is optional, the the H1, and the beginning of the first sentence. So, think about

2:30it from what a searcher would see first. The searcher, they may they do their search first, they're going to see the page title. If the keyword isn't in there, they're they might not feel like that page or that post, that URL is for them. They might not feel like that's for them. It might be in the H1, but what they see first is the title. And

2:50then, okay, they click into the page. What do they see first? It's not going to be an H2. It's not going to be a subheading. It's going to be the heading. So, they want to see the keyword in that heading to really assure them that this page is for them. They want to see it in the beginning of the first sentence to assure to assure them that this is for them. Because when you also when you write it like that, when your keyword is at the beginning of the first sentence, you're also more likely to give them their answer fast and that's what people want. But having the

3:14keyword in these five places, that is basically how well optimized a URL is for a keyword. So remember, you're to find a keyword gap, you are identifying a combination of these things that the that the results that are showing, they don't have the keyword in those five places. something else, a keyword or the

3:32close a close variation of the keyword. Maybe it's targeted in most of those places that I just described, but it could be seemingly by accident or the content when you actually click into a result, it's thin and it doesn't address the search intent. So, you can make something that's better very easily. An example of this is I wanted to rank for growth hacking newsletter and I saw that the number one ranking result was from growthhackers.com/newsletter and that seems that's that's a high domain authority site I believe it seems like that would be difficult to rank for and I'm pulling up the page right now and it was optimized pretty well for the

4:11keyword or it had like a variation had growth hackers newsletter in in the page title so it seems like that's really going to s satisfy intent but the thing is the page is really thin. It says growth hackers newsletter. Unlock the latest marketing trends, growth strategies, and AI insights in your inbox. Please select the cadence in

4:29which you want to receive your news. It's it's pretty good, but I had the thought, you know, maybe if I make something that's more detailed, I still have everything right there above the fold, but I give examples of growth hacks that you're going to get. I share then who I am after that, things that I've done, why you even want to learn from me, and then I say the benefits of actually getting this newsletter. I think that might satisfy search intent even more. Pretty easy to do. So I did that and I'm ranking number one for the keyword. I also I also because this was this is an authoritative site. So this

4:58is a 65 out of 100 domain authority site. So then I submitted that page to a few free directories just free newsletter directories and then I rank I ranked number one for growth hacking newsletter. But a big part of that is because the content was thin. Similarly, the pages that are ranking, it might just be like a ton of fluff and you have a weak answer that is buried in the fluff and that's not going to satisfy search intent either. So, a keyword gap is where I'm going to I'm going to do a a summary. I'm going to do a summary in a little bit. Now, what a keyword gap is

5:30not is you only have low domain authorities. That's part of the equation or like low back links, not a lot of backlinks. That's part of the equation. But the keyword gap is really the things that I just described. Now, there can be degrees of how much of a keyword gap there is. The keyword could just be in the page title of of the pages that are ranking, and that's most important. So, that would be pretty good. But if it's in the H1 and not in the page title, well, the H1 is less important. So, oh, maybe I make a page and I have it in the

6:01page title and it's going to satisfy intent to the same degree as the other page, but I have it in the page title, the other page doesn't. good chance I can rank above it because page title super important first thing that people see. There might in the SER in the search engine results page there might be some really authoritative sites like Reddit level that are mostly satisfying intent not a little bit but mostly those will be tougher the the keyword gap there would be smaller even if even if the keywords aren't exact being exactly targeted you can look into the pages that are ranking and you can tell that

6:34those pages are mostly satisfying intent and they are coming from authoritative sources so that's going to be a bit harder remember their there are degree degrees of how big a keyword gap is. Or you might have a super optimized URL at the top of the SER and the rest of the results are not optimized. So getting in position two would be easy. Position one, it's already optimized for the keyword. Well, it depends then on how how well the URL in position one is satisfying search intent and also the domain authority and the page authority of the URL in position one. Like I said, degrees of how big a keyword gap is. But

7:11this is this is why knowing how to spot keyword gaps in the search engine results pages are so important. Look, if you are doing marketing, you want to align your effort and resources properly. And keywords that have gaps in them are easier to rank for. They require less content because Google is is desperate. So you don't need to to make these several thousandword pages to rank for them. They also require less backlinks. the less backlinks to a website as a whole and in many cases just for the URL. A keyword with a big gap might have no results targeting that keyword and Google is desperate for a

7:49piece of content that fills intent and and then it's going to use that to fit the gap and you don't even need any backlinks for that. So finding keyword gaps helps you put your resources towards lowhanging fruit keywords that you can rank for very easily with not a lot of work or money. And again the summary to find keyword gaps you need to manually look at the SERs yourself. Do it with your eyes. Look at the at the search engine results page and look for SERs that don't have many optimized results. So the keywords are not in the page titles. For example, search engine results pages with content that won't

8:25easily and I mean easily satisfy search intent for the keyword. This part especially is is partly why a lot of keyword difficulty scores from SEO tools get it wrong because you have to look into the ranking pages yourself to to ask is this going to satisfy the intent of a searcher for my keyword. And then you also want to look for SERs that have at least one low domain if you are a low domain authority site yourself at least one low domain authority result. And when you see this, if there's a if there's a very low domain authority result, you know that Google is desperate for content addressing the

9:02keyword and it will take low authority sites if you are a low authority site. All right. So, how do you fill a keyword gap? That's that's how to find keyword gaps, why they're important, and then how do you fill them? So, as we went over, you just you have to optimize for the keyword in the five places that we discussed. Optimally, put it in your page title, your URL slug, your meta description, which is optional, but especially the H1, and the beginning of the first sentence. And then once you do that, satisfy search intent as fast as possible. And then go deep to give extra info that the that the searcher will

9:37want. And that is it. That's what keyword gaps. This is one of the most important things to understand in digital marketing. And I try to make a lot of content on keyword gaps on this podcast, but if you want my exact method for finding keywords where there are gaps, especially keywords that have purchase or use intent behind them, and then making pages to satisfy the intent, structuring your site for these pages,

10:03doing a site audit, and building links. Well, this is exactly what my 13 and 1/2 hour SEO course, Compact Keywords, is about. Compactwords.com. It's getting insane testimonials. But learn, please, please learn how to spot keyword gaps. You will be so happy when you actually realize, oh my gosh, this keyword that I thought was really difficult. There's a big there's a big gap here and I I can rank for it really easily. I just have to satisfy intent. Oh my gosh, you will be really you will be so happy. Anyway, that is all that I got for you on this episode of the podcast. This is my daily

10:37digital marketing show. This is episode 839 of the podcast. I do this podcast every single day of my life. 839 literally days in a row. No days missed doing this show. If you watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening and I

10:59will talk to you again tomorrow. Bino.