The Scenario
You are an SEO director at a SaaS company. The quarterly content strategy review is next Wednesday. Your VP wants to know which keywords two main competitors rank for that your site does not, so the team can identify the highest-value gaps to close in Q3.
Three domains: yours and two competitors. You need organic keywords for each pulled into a single Google Sheet, a gap sheet showing what competitors have that you do not, and enough volume data to prioritize the list.
The bad version of this week:
- You open Ahrefs for competitor 1, export organic keywords to CSV
- You do the same for competitor 2, and then for your own domain
- You open three CSVs in Sheets, put each on its own tab, then try to write a VLOOKUP to find gaps
- The VLOOKUP breaks because the keyword columns have different formatting between exports
- You spend Tuesday afternoon debugging formulas instead of analyzing results
- You walk into Wednesday's review with a partially built spreadsheet and a very long explanation.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your spreadsheet that pulls organic keywords for all three domains from Ahrefs and does the gap analysis without you writing a single formula.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Fetch all organic keywords for the three domains in cells A1, A2, and A3 from Ahrefs. Write each domain's keywords to a separate sheet — one sheet per domain — with keyword in column A, position in column B, and search volume in column C. Then find all keywords in the competitor sheets that are NOT in my sheet (my domain is in A1) and list them in a new sheet called "Gap" with keyword, search volume, and which competitor ranks for it.
SheetXAI pulls keywords for all three domains, builds three data sheets, runs the gap comparison, and writes the results to the Gap sheet. The content strategy review has a foundation.
What You Get
Four sheets:
- Your domain sheet — keywords, positions, volume
- Competitor 1 sheet — same structure
- Competitor 2 sheet — same structure
- Gap sheet — keywords competitors rank for that you do not, with volume and source competitor
The Gap sheet is the deliverable. Sort it by search volume descending and you have a prioritized Q3 content roadmap in the order the VP expects.
Want to filter the gap to keywords above a volume or difficulty threshold? Add that condition and SheetXAI applies it.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Keyword gap analysis always surfaces edge cases. SheetXAI handles them in the same prompt.
When you want to exclude branded keywords from the gap
Competitor brand terms should not be on your content roadmap.
After building the Gap sheet, remove any keyword that contains a competitor brand name from the list. Keep the gap analysis focused on non-branded terms only.
When the VP wants the gap filtered to keywords with volume above 500
Low-volume keywords are not worth the Q3 content investment.
After building the Gap sheet, filter to keywords with monthly search volume above 500. Sort by volume descending.
When you want to see keywords ranked in positions 1-10 by competitors but not you
Position matters. A keyword where a competitor ranks on page 1 but you do not rank at all is a higher-priority gap.
After building the Gap sheet, add a column showing which position each competitor holds for that keyword. Flag any gap keyword where the competitor is in positions 1 through 10 as "High Priority" in a separate column.
When the analysis needs to cover five competitors, not two
The VP wants a comprehensive market view, not just a two-competitor comparison.
Fetch organic keywords for all six domains in cells A1 through A6. Write each to a separate sheet. Then build a Gap sheet showing all keywords that any of the five competitors rank for but my domain (A1) does not. Include search volume and a column showing how many of the five competitors rank for each gap keyword. Sort by that competitor count descending.
The pattern: the gap analysis is one prompt. The filtering, position flagging, and expanded competitor set extend the same prompt without a new session.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any sheet with your domain and competitor domains in cells A1, A2, A3, then ask it to build a keyword gap analysis from Ahrefs. The Ahrefs integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to export a competitor's top organic pages or the Ahrefs in Google Sheets overview.