What it compares
A useful gap analysis looks at the questions a prospective client asks, not only at keywords. For each practice and market, it asks:
- CoverageWhich client questions each site answers, which it only mentions, and which it leaves out.
- Local detailWhether pages name the state's actual process, the court, and the counties served, or could apply anywhere.
- Page structureWhether answers are stated plainly near the top of each section, so they can be quoted alone.
- Technical accessWhether pages are indexed and reachable by the search crawlers that AI answers rely on.
The competitors that matter are the ones that show up for your clients' questions in your market, which are not always the firms you think of as rivals. When an assistant keeps naming another firm, the cited sources often point straight at the gap; see why AI names competing firms instead of yours.
What you do with it
The list becomes the scope. A firm with strong practice pages but no county pages needs different work from a firm with dozens of thin pages that each say little. A gap analysis is what makes a fixed project price possible, because it turns "more content" into a named set of pages. For an example of the local detail a gap analysis often finds missing, see the Raleigh market guide or the personal injury guide.
It is a starting point, not a forecast. No analysis can promise that filling a gap will produce a citation or a ranking, because AI answers vary by person, place, and day. Measure the results the way tracking AI citations describes. Starting prices are on our pricing page.
Go deeper
The guide to AI search for law firms covers what the pages on the other side of the gap need to contain, state by state.
Common questions
How is a gap analysis different from an SEO audit?
An SEO audit mostly checks the site's technical health. A content gap analysis checks which client questions your pages answer compared with competitors. A sound plan usually needs both.