Search
Search terms close to the first page have been identified
seo.gsc-striking-distance
Why this matters
Almost nobody goes to the second page of results, so a search term ranking eleventh earns close to nothing while a term ranking ninth earns steadily. Terms sitting just off the first page are the cheapest improvement available to most sites, because the work needed to move a page from eleventh to eighth is a fraction of what it took to get to eleventh in the first place.
Who fixes it
You can, usually
Roughly how long
an hour per term
Care needed
Low risk to change
How to fix it
Find the page that already ranks for each term — it is usually one you did not write for that term at all. Make the term's own words appear in the page's title and its first paragraph, in the phrasing people actually search. Then add internal links to that page from the pages on your site that Google already values, using the term as the link text. That combination moves a second-page result more reliably than anything else available to a site owner, and none of it requires new content.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 6 points off your search score. This one is a measurement rather than a fact about your markup, so two scans of an unchanged site can legitimately differ a little.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 106. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Descriptions are a sensible lengthLong descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Every page has a main headingThe h1 is the headline of the page. Without one, both visitors skimming and search engines parsing the page have nothing telling them what it is about.