Lydia, Senior SEO Manager at Sanity.io, introduces herself with nearly a decade of SEO experience, a background in psychology, and a master's in digital business, emphasizing her focus on SaaS and SEO strategy that drives business impact.
She explains that SEO is a zero-sum game: ranking depends not only on your actions but on competitors' activity and the search environment, making gap analysis essential to prioritize high-impact work over low-return optimizations.
Lydia details a three-pillar gap analysis framework—technical SEO (enabling discovery and usability), content (satisfying intent), and links (vouching for credibility)—and demonstrates how she applied it at Sanity in June to reveal weaknesses in brand signals despite strong editorial efficiency.
She outlines two competitor identification methods: top-down (consulting internal teams + tools like SEMrush/Ahrefs) for established sites, and bottom-up (SERP keyword analysis + domain clustering) for new sites, recommending topic-based clustering for precision.
Using Sanity’s benchmark data, Lydia shows they had 256 editorial URLs with strong traffic per URL but too few total pieces, lagged in branded traffic and backlinks versus competitors, and were average on Core Web Vitals—leading her to prioritize content execution first for stakeholder buy-in and faster ROI.
Brief overview
SEO success requires gap analysis across technical, content, and link pillars to identify where your site underperforms versus competitors—not in isolation, but within the live search ecosystem.
Gap analysis reveals where to invest—not what’s brokenAt Sanity, editorial URLs were efficient but too few—so content volume, not quality, was the lever.
Competitors must overlap commercially AND in SERPsA cat fountain seller isn’t a competitor for cat toys—you only compete if your product makes theirs obsolete.
Start with the pillar stakeholders will approveAs a new hire at Sanity, Lydia prioritized content over brand SEO because it required less risk and aligned with her expertise and team readiness.
Questions this recording answers
10 questions, each answered where it is said
What are the three pillars of SEO that Lydia uses in her gap analysis?
The three pillars are technical SEO, content, and links. Technical SEO enables search engines to find and understand content and users to enjoy it; links signal trust and endorsement to Google; and content satisfies user intent, making it the central pillar.
How does Lydia define a 'search competitor'?
A search competitor is someone targeting the same audience, ranking for or targeting the same keywords, and whose product would make yours obsolete — meaning if the target audience chooses their product, they no longer need yours.
What are the two approaches Lydia recommends for identifying competitors, and which is best for new sites?
The top-down approach (fast, best for established sites) uses internal team input and competitive tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs. The bottom-up approach (more precise, best for new or low-visibility sites) identifies competitors by analyzing top 10 SERP domains for core keywords and clustering by topic.
What key content metrics did Lydia benchmark for Sanity.io’s gap analysis?
She measured number of keywords ranking in the top 30, count of editorial URLs (256), estimated traffic split between editorial, branded, and product pages, and editorial URL efficiency — finding strong efficiency but too few URLs, prompting a content creation focus.
How did Lydia assess brand-related SEO gaps for Sanity.io?
She compared branded vs. unbranded traffic, backlinks, referring domains, domain authority, branded search volume, and link growth over 3–12 months. She found Sanity below average in branded traffic and backlinks despite decent branded search volume, indicating a lack of matching branded content.
What method does Lydia use to benchmark technical SEO across competitors?
She analyzes Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) using the free Chrome UX Report in Google Data Studio to calculate the percentage of 'good' URLs, averages it per site, and compares desktop and mobile page speed — prioritizing desktop for SaaS.
Based on her gap analysis, which SEO pillar did Lydia prioritize for Sanity.io, and why?
She prioritized content over brand because Sanity was below average in brand but she was new and needed stakeholder buy-in; content was both her strength and required less risk than immediate link-building, enabling faster execution and early wins.
How often does Lydia recommend conducting an SEO gap analysis?
At least every six months, preferably every three months for fast-moving industries like SaaS; slower-moving industries may do it yearly, but six months is a solid rule of thumb for most businesses.
Can SEO gap analysis be used for a website not yet live?
Yes, but it shifts from 'gap analysis' to 'competitor research' — removing your domain from the template lets you reverse-engineer competitor priorities (e.g., Core Web Vitals thresholds, content depth) to inform your launch strategy instead of fixing gaps.
What does Lydia suggest for earning contextual links without paid outreach?
Create 'linkable assets' with linking intent — content like original stats, research, or frameworks that others naturally cite to validate claims. If such content ranks, it attracts passive, contextual links without manual outreach.
Key Quote
“SEO is a zero-sum game, which means that every position that you gain, someone is losing.”
— Lydia
Key Quote
“We are not ranking in a vacuum. It doesn't depend on what you do only. It depends on what your competitors are doing and what your search environment is doing with you.”
— Lydia
Key Quote
“If you're already the best at technical SEO, pushing for more technical SEO changes and improvements might not be the thing that moves the needle for you.”