My content-gap raid on a single competitor

My content-gap raid on a single competitor

Month 7, stuck for ideas on my hiking site, I ran a gap raid on the one competitor beating me everywhere. Found 40 article ideas in an afternoon, all validated to rank. Here's the process.

— Pick ONE competitor roughly my size (not the DR80 giant — someone I can actually beat)
— Run their domain through a free version of a keyword-gap tool, or scrape their sitemap into a sheet
— Sort their pages by estimated traffic; the top 30 are proven winners in MY niche
— Filter to keywords where they rank 5-15, not #1 — those are the soft targets where a better post can leapfrog them
— For each, open the SERP and ask: can I add something they lack? (their 'best trekking poles' had no weight comparison — mine would)
— Build a hit list of 40, prioritized by traffic-divided-by-difficulty

I wrote 12 of those 40 over two months. Eight cracked the top 10 because I was targeting PROVEN demand, not guessing. Traffic 6k to 13k.

The setback: I also copied 3 of their topics where they ranked #1 with massive content — wasted effort, couldn't compete. Only the 5-15 'soft' positions paid off.

The takeaway: Don't brainstorm topics — raid a same-size competitor for their proven keywords where they rank 5-15, then publish something genuinely better. Demand is already validated.