Striking-Distance Queries: A Search Console Workflow That Tells You What Not to Rewrite

What are striking distance queries?

Striking distance queries are searches where a page on your site already ranks close to page one, so a small, targeted change might lift it into the results most people click. The page has already shown it is relevant, which is why every guide on the topic calls these the cheap wins.

The cheap part is not guaranteed. Some of these queries should not be touched at all, and most guides stop short of saying which. The short version of this page:

• Sources set the band differently (4 to 20, 8 to 20 and 11 to 20). This workflow uses 8 to 20 and says why.
• Position in Search Console is an average, so open each query before you act on it.
• Check the live results first. If they want a different kind of page, rewriting yours will not help.
• Run eight do-not-touch rules, then choose one of three outcomes: improve, leave or write a new page.
• No source read for this page publishes before-and-after results, and this page has none of its own.

export the band → open each query → check the live results → run the eight rules → improve, leave or new page → log

Which position range counts as striking distance?

No range is standard: Moz uses positions 4 to 20, RankDraft 8 to 20, SEO Scout 11 to 20 and Semrush 4 to 15. The table puts the four published definitions side by side, using the wording each source gives for its band.

This page uses 8 to 20. That follows RankDraft, and it is Kanso's choice, not a tested threshold: positions 8 to 10 are on page one but only just, and starting at 8 leaves the top seven results to a different job, which is protecting what already works.

The exact edges matter less than consistency. Pick one band, write it at the top of your sheet and run it the same way each time, so that this month's list can be compared with last month's. Kanso's weekly growth checklist uses 11 to 20 as a quick page-two check, which is a narrower slice of the same idea.

Why do striking distance queries matter?

They matter because the page already ranks, and Moz and RankDraft both argue that moving a ranking page is cheaper than building one from scratch. Neither publishes data that measures the saving, so treat it as practitioner opinion.

The click gap is the part with numbers. SISTRIX's analysis of more than 80 million keywords on mobile found that 28.5% of users click the first organic result, and significantly less than 1% click through at each position on the second page. Click-through varies with the layout of the results, so read those figures as a guide, not a forecast.

Moz adds a warning about the top of the page. In its Whiteboard Friday, Jo Cameron says that the top three positions take the lion's share of traffic, and that features such as AI Overviews, shopping results, images and the Knowledge Graph affect how visible the ordinary blue links are. Google's AI features have their own Search Console report, covered in what the Generative AI performance report shows and leaves out.

RankDraft makes the case in one comparison: lifting a page from position 15 to position 5 can change traffic dramatically, while the same effort on a page at position 80 is unlikely to show. That is a claim, not a measurement, and it is the only reason this workflow starts at 8 and stops at 20 instead of going deeper.

What do the top guides tell you to change?

The three guides read for this page name six levers: content, titles and headings, internal links, backlinks, technical work and a new page, and none of them says when to stop. The table shows which guide names which, as read on 17 October 2026.

Label them for what they are: practitioner opinion from three tool vendors, each of which promotes its own tracking or reporting product. None shows a before-and-after result, so none proves that any lever moves a ranking.

What the table does show is the gap this page fills. Every guide lists things you can do to a page in the band, and none lists conditions under which you should do nothing. The only brake in the three texts is SEO Scout's advice to change one thing at a time and to avoid over-optimizing.

How do you find striking distance queries in Search Console?

Open the Performance report, bring in the position and impressions columns, keep the queries in your band and sort by impressions. Google describes Search Console as a tool that helps site owners and SEO professionals understand how their site is performing on Google Search, and the Performance report is where that data lives.

1. Fix one date range and use the same length every time you run this, so runs can be compared.
2. Show position and impressions beside clicks, then sort or filter the queries table to your band. If the interface makes that awkward, export the table and filter in a spreadsheet.
3. Sort the band by impressions, highest first. A query almost nobody sees is not worth an edit even if it sits at position 9.
4. Click a query and open its Pages view. Record every URL that appears, with its own position.
5. Write one row per query: the query, the ranking URL or URLs, the position, the impressions and the date.

Step 4 is the one people skip, and it matters because of how Google defines the number. Search Console Help says average position is the average of the topmost result from your site, and that in the chart it covers the whole site while in the table it covers the row you are looking at. The metrics are laid out in Kanso's guide to the Search Console reports a founder needs.

Moz describes a tool-based route as well: filter its Ranking Keywords list to positions 4 to 20, add the result to a tracking campaign and label it. Whichever route you use, what you leave with is the same: a list of queries, not a list of rewrites.

Why check the live results before you change anything?

The position number says how far down you are, not why, and only the live results show what the ranking pages do that yours does not. Open each query in your sheet in a search and read the top results before you open the page's editor.

• Intent. Do the top results answer the same question your page answers, or a neighbouring one?
• Format. Are they guides, product pages, templates, tools, videos or forum threads?
• Layout. Moz names shopping results, images, the Knowledge Graph and AI Overviews as features that change how visible the ordinary results are. Note which ones appear.
• Your other pages. Does a second URL from your site show up for the same query?
• The gap. After reading the results above you, can you name one specific thing yours lacks? If you cannot, you are not ready to edit.

The research behind this page ran that check on the head term itself. For “striking distance keywords”, nine of the ten organic results analysed on 17 October 2026 were guides and one was a product page, so a guide is the format that term asks for. A query with that profile would pass the format check for a how-to post.

Treat what you see as one sample. Your own view is a single appearance, while Search Console reports an average over many, so use the live results to understand the page, not to chase the exact position you happen to see.

How do you choose between improve, leave and a new page?

Choose improve when the right page ranks, the live results want the same kind of page and you can name one gap; choose a new page when the wrong URL ranks or the results want something else; choose leave whenever a do-not-touch rule applies. The table sets out the three outcomes. It is Kanso's synthesis of the sources and the rules below, not a published method.

Leave is a full outcome, not a failure to decide. Writing “leave, rule 6” in the sheet is what stops the same query from being reopened every run.

What are the eight do-not-touch rules?

The eight rules say when a query in the band should be left alone, and they are Kanso's analysis built on the sources, not published standards. The last column says which rules rest on a documented definition and which on source opinion or on our reasoning.

Run them in order for every query in the band. If none applies, the query is a candidate for improve or for a new page, and the live results decide which.

Rule 3 is the one that most often catches a founder with an existing blog. Two older posts on the same subject can split the signal, and editing one of them leaves the other competing. Kanso has not published its own guide to telling real overlap from normal overlap yet, so the weekly checklist's cannibalization section is the nearest page.

What does the rule set do to a list of queries?

Applied to five queries, the rules send three to leave, one to a new page and only one to a rewrite. The example is invented: Kanso did not supply data from its own Search Console property for this page, so the blog, the queries and every number below are made up to show the method.

The arithmetic is short. The five queries add up to 1,800 + 1,200 + 900 + 400 + 150 = 4,450 impressions, and the one query sent to a rewrite carries 1,800 of them, which is 1,800 ÷ 4,450 = 40.4%.

Two things stand out. The highest-impression candidates were not all rewrites: the template query went to a new page because every result was a template, and the late-payment query was parked because two of the blog's own pages competed. A position-only list would have queued all five for edits.

How do you make an improve change you can measure?

Change one lever, write down the date and what you expect, and compare the same query over two windows of equal length that you fixed before editing. SEO Scout's advice to make changes one at a time is the only published support for this in the sources, and the remaining steps are Kanso's suggestion.

1. Choose a lever from the table above that matches the gap you named in the live results.
2. Write the hypothesis in one line, for example “the page lacks a filled-in sample the top three have”.
3. Record the baseline: position, impressions and the window length.
4. Make the one change and log the date. Touch nothing else on that page until you have compared.
5. Run the same query over a window of the same length after the change, and note the result next to the baseline, whatever it shows.

No source here says how long to wait, so this page does not either. Moz's advice is to label the keywords in a tracking campaign so you can see the impact of the work, and a dated log gives you the same thing without a tool. Kanso's organic traffic drop diagnostic includes a change-log template you can reuse for this.

Where does Kanso fit in this workflow?

Kanso's agents cover steps around the decision, and the decision stays with you. Here is what each relevant agent does, as its page describes it.

• The SEO Agent audits your site and Search Console data and turns what it finds into recommendations and tracked tasks for your approval.
• The Writer Agent turns Search Console opportunities into long-form article drafts in your brand voice, for you to review and publish yourself. That fits the new-page outcome.
• The Coding Agent prepares title, meta description and canonical fixes as GitHub pull requests you review. It never merges or deploys.

The rules on this page are a manual method, so run them on the list before you hand a query to a drafting tool. Kanso does not promise rankings, and the Writer Agent produces drafts, not published pages. The workflow behind the Writer Agent is described on the turn Search Console data into content page, and plans are on the pricing page.

What is documented, what is analysis and what is missing?

The definitions and the levers are documented by the sources, the band, the rules and the decision table are Kanso's analysis, and any evidence that the workflow works is missing. The lists keep them apart.

• Documented: Moz, RankDraft and SEO Scout each define the band differently, and each names its own levers (read 17 October 2026).
• Documented: Google defines average position as the average of the topmost result from your site, as set out in Search Console Help.
• Documented: SISTRIX reports 28.5% click-through for the first organic result on mobile and significantly less than 1% at each second-page position.
• Documented but secondary: the Semrush 4 to 15 range is carried from Kanso's earlier Search Console guide, not read again for this page.

• Analysis: the choice of 8 to 20 as the band.
• Analysis: the eight do-not-touch rules, the improve, leave and new page table, and every verdict in the worked example.
• Analysis: that a ranking page needs a named gap before it is edited.

• Missing: any before-and-after result, from the sources or from Kanso. No Kanso page is measured here.
• Missing: a minimum impressions threshold and a waiting period. No source gives either.
• Missing: independent evidence for the claim that these queries are cheaper to win. The three guides come from tool vendors.

Striking distance keywords: frequently asked questions

Sources

• Finding Striking Distance Keywords (Whiteboard Friday), Moz
• Striking Distance Keywords (glossary), RankDraft
• 'Page 2 Potential': How to Find Striking Distance Keywords to Rank Higher, SEO Scout
• What are impressions, position, and clicks?, Search Console Help
• Google Search Central, Google for Developers
• Why almost everything you knew about Google CTR is no longer valid, SISTRIX
• Google Search Console: the ultimate guide for 2026, Semrush