Backlinks: They Are Still Important For Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Although their relevance toward a given website's SERP ranking prospects have diminished in the wake of recent modifications to Google's ranking algorithms, backlinks can still be safely assumed to be relatively important to a given site's continued search prominence. Site owners working in today's digital environment rely on methods like social media outreach so that other communities voluntarily create backlinks without external pressure, and some authors spread backlinks more directly by writing guest blog posts.
The official reasoning behind Google's changes, however, is that it promotes devoting one's efforts toward creating and hosting superior audience-serving material on one's own web pages. Improvements to the substance and structure of one's website primarily revolves around researching keywords that can be used to improve the likelihood that the site will appear on particular SERP listings. Depending on the strength of the keyword, the site can potentially appear on listings that are not crowded with competitors but could otherwise still be popularly queried terms.
SEO-auditing software can be used to observe and measure any competitor's off-site backlinks and on-site keywords for the sake of deriving insight into how one's own website can place in higher SERP positions more easily. By definition, any research into a competitor's keywords can be referred to as "gap analysis" of their website because one is naturally doing so with the aim to find gaps in their otherwise thorough and complete keyword focus. This generally boils down to discerning which particular kinds of content their website is missing and providing said content on one's own site.
The term "backlink gap analysis" uses the term "gap" in a very different context; it instead pertains to the difference, or "space," between how many meaningful backlinks one has gathered and how many similarly significant backlinks their established competitors have accrued. This category of research often amounts to working out choice domains that have provided backlinks to multiple competitors within the same industry. Whereas keyword gap analysis amounts to discovering content that one can use to distinguish their own site, backlink gap analysis is meant to attract the same off-site "endorsements" as one's competition. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/n9ujk4/whatseospringcleansdoyouliketodo/.