# How to Find Striking Distance Keywords on a SaaS Site > A step-by-step way to find striking distance keywords in Search Console, decide which deserve work, improve those pages and check the change held. Source: https://comppound.com/blog/striking-distance-keywords-for-saas-how-to-find-and-move-them (published 2026-10-30) Striking distance keywords are queries where one of your pages already ranks close to the top results, usually somewhere from position 8 to 20, and you find them by exporting queries and pages from Search Console and filtering by average position. That range is an SEO convention and not a Google term, so adjust it to suit your site. The appeal is simple: Google has already connected the page to the query, so you are improving something that exists instead of starting from nothing. Say you run a 25-person SaaS selling shift scheduling software to hospital groups. Your post on "nurse scheduling rules" sits around position 11, with plenty of impressions and few clicks. A new page would take months to reach that point. This one needs a reason to move a few places, and the job is to work out what that reason is. ## Pull the right data from Search Console Open the Performance report, choose a recent three-month window and turn on clicks, impressions, CTR and average position. You want query and page together, because a query on its own does not tell you which URL to improve. The interface only gives one dimension in the table at a time, and its [export is limited to 1,000 rows](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/10/performance-data-deep-dive). For a small site that is often enough: filter by a page, look at its queries, and repeat for your top pages. A larger site should use the Search Analytics API or the Looker Studio connector, both of which go well past that limit and can return query and page in a single row. Then filter to rows with an average position between about 8 and 20 and sort by impressions. Be careful reading position, because it is an average of your topmost result across every search where you appeared, and it can hide a lot of movement. [What average position really means](/blog/what-average-position-in-search-console-really-means) explains how that number can mislead, particularly when one query is spread across countries and devices. If the number looks strange, segment by country before acting on it. ## Throw out the ones that would not matter A long list of near misses is not a plan. Most rows should go, and the reasons are fairly predictable. Remove queries with the wrong intent. If the scheduling company ranks 12th for "nursing shift length laws" and those readers are nurses checking their rights, a move to position 5 brings more nurses and no hospital buyers. Read the actual results for each query, and use the guide to [matching search intent on SaaS keywords](/blog/search-intent-for-saas-keywords-how-to-read-it-and-match-it) if the call is close. Remove queries where the results page gives little reason to click. A query answered in full at the top of the page may stay low on clicks even if you move up. You can only judge this by looking at the page yourself, because tools report it inconsistently. Remove queries where a second page of yours also appears. Two URLs trading places is a different problem, and pushing one of them harder can make it worse. Fix that first with [the keyword cannibalization process](/blog/how-to-detect-and-resolve-keyword-cannibalization-on-your-site). What remains should be a short list where a buyer plausibly searches the query, the page is a fair match, and clicks are worth having. Five or ten is plenty to start with. Rank them by commercial value first and impressions second, because a smaller query from buyers beats a larger one from students. ## Work out why the page is stuck Open the query in a clean browser window and read the top five results next to your page. You are looking for the specific gap, since the fix depends on it. Sometimes the page is off-target. It mentions the topic in passing, while the winners are built around it. The nurse scheduling post may spend most of its length on general staffing theory when searchers want the rules themselves. Here the fix is restructuring: put the answer near the top and cut what wanders. Sometimes the page is simply thinner or older. Competitors include worked examples, a current regulation reference or a template, and yours does not. Add what is really missing rather than adding length. Google says it has [no preferred word count](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content), so a longer page with nothing new is unlikely to change anything. Sometimes the page is fine and just poorly connected. Important pages buried without internal links are easy to miss, and a few descriptive links from related pages are the cheapest test you can run. Our [internal linking strategy for SaaS blogs](/blog/an-internal-linking-strategy-for-a-saas-blog) covers how to choose those links. Sometimes the winners have authority you lack. If every top result is a large publisher or a category leader with far more links, a page edit may not close the gap, and you should say so and move on to a query you can win. ## Make the change, one kind at a time Change the fewest things that address the gap you found, and write down the date. A short change log is what lets you learn from this later. Edit the heading and opening so the query's subject is obvious to a reader in the first few seconds. Rework the title if it is vague, keeping it [unique, clear and an accurate description of the page](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/title-link), and remember Google generates title links automatically and may not show your exact wording. Add the missing section, and use the natural vocabulary of the topic rather than repeating the query. Add three to five internal links from relevant pages, with anchor text that describes the target. Do not change the URL as part of this work. A redirect adds an extra variable, and you would no longer know which change did what. The wider process for older posts sits in [a content refresh strategy for SaaS blogs](/blog/a-content-refresh-strategy-for-saas-blogs), and striking distance work is best treated as one input to that queue. ## Check whether it worked Give the page time. Search Console needs Google to recrawl the page and for rankings to settle, and a few days of movement is mostly noise. Check after about four weeks and again after about eight, using a comparison of two equal-length periods. Filter the Performance report to the exact page and query, and compare clicks, impressions and position. Clicks are the outcome you care about, so a position gain with no click gain means something else on the results page is taking attention, which [the impressions but no clicks fix list](/blog/impressions-but-no-clicks-in-search-console-what-to-fix) can help diagnose. Next look at the page as a whole, since real improvements usually lift a group of related queries together rather than the one you targeted. Lastly, compare against a few similar pages you did not touch. If everything rose together, a site-wide or seasonal shift may deserve the credit. Finish in your analytics or CRM. Did readers of the page go on to the product, and did any conversations start there? Rankings are a means, and your [rank tracking setup](/blog/rank-tracking-for-saas-what-to-track-and-what-it-misses) will not answer that question by itself. ## What striking distance means for AI answers Google's AI features draw on the same index. Its [documentation on AI features](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features) says a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear as a supporting link, and that no special optimization is needed. Google also says links there can come from a wider set of pages than classic results, so ranking 11th does not necessarily rule a page out. The practical change is one of emphasis. When you rework a stuck page, give each section a self-contained answer that makes sense when read alone. That helps a human scanning the page, and it may help a system lifting one passage. Search Console reports this traffic inside the Web search type, so you cannot isolate its effect from there. If you want this queue worked through every month by people who check the results, [talk to us about a managed program](/contact). ## Frequently asked questions ### What position counts as striking distance? Most SEOs mean roughly positions 8 to 20, but it is a convention and Google does not define it. Choose a range that fits your site, and treat position as a rough average rather than an exact place. ### Is striking distance work better than publishing new content? It is usually a quicker test, because the page is already associated with the query. It does not replace new content, since it only improves what you already rank for and cannot open a topic you have not covered. ### How long should I wait before judging the change? Check after about four weeks and again after about eight, comparing equal-length periods. Google needs to recrawl the page and rankings need to settle, so a few days of change says little. ### Should I rewrite the whole page? Rarely. Find the specific gap against the top results and fix that. Large rewrites can remove what earned the current position, and they make it hard to tell which change had an effect. ## About Comppound Comppound runs SEO and AI search for B2B SaaS companies: a person sets the plan and reviews samples and every high-risk page, and AI speeds up production. - [Check a page free](https://comppound.com/tools/seo-checker): Check one of your pages before you change anything else - [See pricing](https://comppound.com/pricing): Want the content written, reviewed and published for you?