Guides 18 Sep 2026 5 min read by Kalum

Striking distance keywords: the traffic you already own

Positions 4 to 20 are where most small sites are quietly sitting on their next 40% of traffic. Here is how to find those keywords in a free Search Console export, work out which ones are worth the afternoon, and move them.

Every small site has the same hidden asset: a few dozen keywords where Google already thinks you are a reasonable answer, but not the best one. You are on page one at position seven, or at the bottom of page two, getting impressions and almost no clicks.

These are worth more than any new article, for one reason: the hard part is done. Google has indexed you, understood the topic and decided you belong in the conversation. Moving from 7 to 3 is a much smaller job than getting a brand-new page from nowhere to 7 — and it pays immediately.

What "striking distance" actually means

The usual definition is positions 4 to 20. The reason that band matters is what happens to clicks across it.

Click-through rate by position is not a straight line — it collapses. The exact numbers vary by query type, but the shape is consistent across every public study: position one takes somewhere around a quarter to a third of the clicks, position three is already down to roughly a tenth, and by position eight or nine you are into low single digits. Below position ten you are on page two, where almost nobody goes.

Position	Roughly what it earns	What moving up is worth
1–3	The large majority of all clicks	Defend, do not chase
4–10	A few percent each, falling fast	Best return on effort
11–20	Almost nothing, but real impressions	Worth it when volume is high
21+	Nothing	Usually needs a new page, not an edit

So a keyword with 3,000 monthly impressions at position 8 is earning you maybe 60 clicks. At position 3 the same impressions are worth something like 300. That is a 240-click difference from editing a page you already have.

Finding them in a free export

You do not need a paid tool for this. Search Console gives you the whole list.

1. Search Console → Performance → Search results.
2. Date range → Last 3 months.
3. Turn on all four metrics: clicks, impressions, CTR, average position.
4. Top right → Export → Download CSV. You get a ZIP; the file you want inside it is Queries.csv.

Open it in a spreadsheet and do three things:

1. Filter Position to greater than 3.5 and less than or equal to 20.
2. Filter Impressions to a sensible floor. On a small site, 100 over three months. On a bigger one, 500.
3. Sort by Impressions, descending.

The top of that list is your work queue. Before you touch anything, though, sort it properly.

Working out which ones are worth it

Impressions alone is a bad ranking. A keyword with 5,000 impressions at position 19 is a much longer fight than one with 1,200 impressions at position 5. Score them by the clicks you would gain, not the clicks you could theoretically have.

In a spare column:

gain = (impressions ÷ 3) × (ctr_at_position_3 − ctr_now)

Divide by three because a three-month export is three months of impressions and you want a monthly number. For ctr_at_position_3, about 0.10 is a reasonable working figure for a normal informational query. ctr_now is the CTR column in your export.

Sort by that. Now the list is ordered by actual traffic you would add this month, and the top five items are your afternoon.

Two more filters before you commit to one:

• Does one of your pages clearly own it? Use the Pages tab, or filter the export by query and look at which URL gets the impressions. If two of your pages both rank for it, you have cannibalisation and that is the actual job — merge them or differentiate them before optimising either.
• Can you realistically win it? Search it. If page one is all Wikipedia, Amazon, Reddit and three sites with hundreds of times your authority, park it. If page one has at least two sites roughly your size, it is winnable.

How to actually move one

Here is the order that works, cheapest first. Do not skip to rewriting.

1. Fix the snippet (10 minutes)

Before anything else, compare your CTR against what that position normally earns. If you are at position 5 with a 1.1% CTR when 5% is typical, you have a snippet problem, not a ranking problem — and fixing it is free traffic without moving a single rank.

Put the exact query in the title, near the front. Add the thing that makes someone choose your result: a number, the year, "free", "without X", whatever is true. Write a meta description that answers the search in one sentence instead of describing the article.

2. Put the answer in the first 100 words

Open the page and find where it actually answers the query. If that is paragraph four, move it to paragraph one. This is the single highest-leverage edit on most pages, and it is also what wins featured snippets.

3. Close the coverage gap

Open the three pages currently ranking above you. List their subheadings. Anything they all cover and you do not is a gap, and gaps are why you are at 7 instead of 3. Add those sections properly — not a sentence each.

Do the same with the People Also Ask box on that query. Those are literally Google telling you what related questions belong on the page.

4. Add three to five internal links

From your other pages, using the target keyword as the anchor text, from inside the body text — not the sidebar and not the menu. Find them by searching your own site for the keyword. This is the most underrated step, it takes fifteen minutes, and on a small site it moves things.

5. Update the date and ask for a recrawl

Change the content first, then the date. Then Search Console → URL inspection → paste the URL → Request indexing. That turns "Google will notice eventually" into hours.

The four mistakes that waste the afternoon

• Adding words instead of answers. Length is not the ranking factor; covering what the query needs is. A 900-word page that answers everything beats a 2,500-word one that circles.
• Optimising a page that two of your own pages compete with. You will move neither. Sort out the cannibalisation first.
• Changing everything at once. Title, content, URL and internal links in one go means you learn nothing from the result. Change the snippet, measure. Then the content, measure.
• Checking after three days. Give it two to four weeks and then compare against the numbers you wrote down. Anything sooner is noise.

One more thing worth saying plainly: not every keyword moves. Some pages are at 7 because the four above them are genuinely better resources by people with more experience in that subject. That is fine — that is what the "can you realistically win it" filter is for. The point of working the striking-distance list top-down is that you spend your afternoons on the ones where you can.

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