Striking Distance
Striking Distance is the highest-ROI list in Metricstab. It surfaces every query where you rank in positions 11 to 20 — the very top of page two — with enough impressions to matter. The cost-benefit of pushing one of these onto page one is dramatic: the SERP click curve is so steep that moving from rank 11 to rank 9 typically multiplies clicks by 5–10x. These are queries Google already considers you a credible answer for; they just need a final shove.
What it measures
Each row is a single query whose impression-weighted average position lands between 11 and 20 in the selected window, with at least 50 impressions.
- Query / Impressions / Clicks / CTR / Avg. position — same definitions as Top Queries.
How we compute it
- For every search query that produced impressions in the selected window, we sum clicks and impressions and compute the impression-weighted average position.
- We keep only queries with impressions ≥ 50 and an average position between 11 and 20 — the very top of page two.
- Results are sorted descending by impressions so the biggest unrealised demand surfaces first.
Why this band specifically?
Search Console research and most published CTR studies agree on roughly this curve: position 1 ≈ 25–30% CTR, position 5 ≈ 5%, position 10 ≈ 2–3%, position 11 ≈ 1%, position 15 ≈ 0.4%, position 20 ≈ 0.2%. The cliff between rank 10 and 11 is the largest single drop in the curve, because it's the page boundary. Closing the gap from 11 → 9 captures the page-one effect at modest editorial cost.
Scenarios you'll see
Query is a near-match for an H2 buried mid-article. Promote it to an H1 or H2 near the top, expand the section, add internal anchor links. Expect movement in 2–4 weeks.
Strong content but few internal links pointing to it. Add 5–10 contextual links from your high-authority hubs.
The query appears in Cannibalization too — three weak pages instead of one strong one. Consolidate (merge + 301) into a single canonical page.
Often a featured-snippet opportunity. Add a 40–55 word direct answer immediately under an H2 phrased as the question.
Position bounces 5–25 throughout the window and the average lands at 14. The ranking page may be relevance-thin or topical-authority-thin. Reinforce topical depth around the query.
You rank a category or product page for an informational query. Build a dedicated explainer/blog page targeting that exact intent and link it from the category.
What to do with it
- Identify the URL Google ranks for the query (URL Inspection in Search Console).
- Audit the on-page mentions of the query and its close variants — make sure the query phrase
appears in
<title>, H1, and at least one H2. - Strengthen the section: depth, examples, schema, internal links from related pages.
- Re-request indexing and re-check the query in this report after 3–4 weeks.
- Group related queries (Saved Views) so a single editorial pass lifts many at once.
Caveats & limits
- Average position 14 doesn't mean you actually rank 14 — you might oscillate 8–22. Pull the query into Search Console Performance for a daily series before committing work.
- Some queries are SERP-feature heavy (people-also-ask, shopping carousel) and even rank 8 won't recover the click. Validate visually in an incognito SERP.
- Branded-related queries occasionally land here when Google demotes you in favour of a competitor's name match — those are different fixes.
Related reports
- Top Queries — broader query inventory.
- CTR Opportunities — already-on-page-one queries with weak CTR.
- CTR Curve — your site-specific click curve by position.
- Cannibalization — to consolidate split rankings.