Key takeaways
- Striking distance keywords are searches you already rank for in positions 11 to 20, just off page one.
- They are often the quickest wins in SEO because Google already sees the page as relevant. It needs a push, not a rewrite.
- Moving from page two to the top of page one is the difference between almost no clicks and more than a quarter of them.
- You can find them for free in Google Search Console in about ten minutes.
Striking distance keywords are searches your site already ranks for just outside the top results, usually positions 11 to 20 on page two of Google. They are often the fastest SEO wins a site has, because the page already exists and Google already considers it relevant. A focused update is often enough to move it onto page one.
This guide shows you how to find them in Google Search Console, how to pick the ones worth your time, and exactly what to change on the page.
Why are striking distance keywords worth your time?
Because almost every click happens on page one, and these pages are one step away from it.
In Backlinko’s study of four million Google results, the first organic result earned an average click-through rate of 27.6%. Only 0.63% of searchers clicked anything on page two. A page ranking 12th for a search with 2,000 impressions a month might get a dozen clicks. At Backlinko’s average click rate for 4th place, the same page could get well over a hundred.
The work is also smaller than it looks. You are not writing a new article, building links or waiting months for a new page to be trusted. You are improving a page Google already likes for a query it already shows it for.
How do you find striking distance keywords?
Google Search Console has everything you need, and it is free.
- Open Performance and choose Search results.
- Turn on the Impressions and Average position metrics.
- In the Queries table, add a filter for average position greater than 10 and less than 21.
- Sort by Impressions, highest first.
- Click a query, then open the Pages tab to see which page ranks for it.
Export the list if it is long. You now have every search where you are sitting on page two, ranked by how much demand there is.
Which ones should you work on first?
Pick the queries where a better ranking would bring the most clicks and where your page is genuinely the right answer.
| Signal | Good sign | Skip it if |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | Hundreds or more a month | Only a handful |
| Position | 11 to 15 | Bouncing around 18 to 20 |
| Page match | The page is about this exact topic | The page only mentions it in passing |
| Intent | Searchers want what the page offers | They want a product page and you have a blog post |
Two or three strong candidates are worth more than twenty weak ones. Start there.
What should you change on the page?
Improve the page for that exact query, not for SEO in general. These are the changes worth making:
- Answer the query in the first paragraph. Use the words people search with, and give the direct answer before any background.
- Cover what the top results cover. Open the pages ranking 1 to 5 and list the subtopics they include that yours misses. Add those sections.
- Put the query in the title tag and first heading. A close variation is fine. Keep the title under about 60 characters so it is not cut off.
- Add internal links to the page. Link to it from two or three related pages on your site, using descriptive anchor text that includes the topic.
- Refresh anything out of date. Replace old statistics, dates, screenshots and prices.
- Add structured data where it fits. An FAQ section with FAQ schema, or HowTo markup for step-by-step guides, can also help the page get quoted by AI assistants.
When you are done, use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to request indexing, so Google recrawls the page sooner.
What does an improvement look like?
Here is an example of how a single page’s numbers could change, over the 28 days before and after one focused update. The numbers are made up to show the shape of a win, not taken from a real site.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Query | best crm for startups | best crm for startups |
| Average position | 11.4 | 4.2 |
| Impressions | 2,400 | 2,650 |
| Clicks | 9 | 210 |
Illustrative numbers. Impressions barely changed, because demand for the search stayed the same. Clicks went up more than twenty times, because the page moved from page two into the top five, where the click rate is far higher.
How do you keep the wins coming?
Make it a habit rather than a project. New striking distance keywords appear every week as rankings shift, pages age and new searches emerge.
Check the report once a week, update one page at a time, and note what you changed so you can see what works for your site. Pages that slip back to page two after a few months are often showing content decay, and the same process can bring them back.
CitedSEO runs this loop on the articles it writes for you: every day it checks your Search Console for those ranking 8th to 20th, prepares the update, and ships at most one fix a day to your site.
Frequently asked questions
What position counts as striking distance?
Most people use positions 11 to 20, which is page two of Google. Some teams include positions 4 to 10 as well, because moving from the bottom of page one into the top three brings a similar jump in clicks.
How long does it take to see results?
It depends on how soon Google recrawls the page and reassesses it, which can take days or weeks. Requesting indexing with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console after an update can speed up the recrawl.
Should I create a new page instead of updating the old one?
Almost never. The existing page already has Google's trust for the query. A new page starts from zero and can end up competing with the old one, which is keyword cannibalisation.
How many striking distance keywords should I work on at once?
Start with the five to ten that have the most impressions. Update one page at a time so you can see what moved it.