How to find the searches you almost rank for (and move them to page 1)

Most small businesses already have searches they nearly win. Google shows their page for the search, just not high enough for anyone to click. Page 2 of Google gets almost no clicks, so these searches look like nothing in your reports. They are often the cheapest traffic you can get, because Google already thinks your page is relevant.

Here is how to find them in about 20 minutes, using Google Search Console, which is free.

What "almost rank" means

Search Console gives every search an average position. Positions 1 to 10 are roughly page 1. Positions 11 to 20 are page 2. A search where you sit at 11 to 20 and Google shows you to a fair number of people is a search you almost rank for.

Here is a real one from our own site, crescade.com, for 5 October to 1 November 2026:

Google showed those two pages 266 times for those searches. Nobody clicked, because nobody scrolls to page 2. For context, the whole of crescade.com got 10 clicks from Google between 5 and 31 October. We are a young site, and this is exactly where we are starting.

Find yours in five steps

1. Open Search Console, go toPerformance, thenSearch results.
2. Set the date range to thelast 3 months. A month is fine if your site is busy.
3. Above the chart, turn onAverage position next to clicks and impressions.
4. Below the chart, stay on theQueries tab. Click the filter icon, choosePosition, thenGreater than, and type 10. Sort byImpressions, highest first.
5. Go down the list and stop when the position passes 20. For each search worth having, click it and open thePages tab to see which of your pages Google is showing.

Write down three to five searches. Pick the ones a customer would actually type, not the odd ones that happen to mention your brand or a word you used once.

Four fixes that usually move a page up

Do these in order. The first two take minutes.

1. Put the search in the page title. If someone searches "retention marketing agency" and your title says "Keep Customers Longer", Google has to guess. Use the words people type, near the start, and keep the title under about 60 characters so it isn't cut off. Our freemeta and schema checker shows how your title looks in results.

2. Answer the search in the first paragraph. Read your page as if you had just typed that search. If the answer is in paragraph six, move it up. One plain sentence that answers the question is enough.

3. Link to the page from your other pages. Find two or three of your own pages that mention the topic and link to it, using the search itself as the link text. This tells Google which of your pages is the one for that search. It is also the fix most sites skip.

4. Check that it's the right page. Sometimes Google shows a blog post for a search that should land on your service or pricing page. If the wrong page is ranking, either link from it to the right page, or change the right page so it clearly answers the search.

Change one page at a time and write down the date. You want to be able to tell which fix did what.

How long to wait

Give it two to four weeks. Then go back to the same search in Search Console and compare the same number of days before and after your change: position, times shown, clicks. If the position went from 13 to 8, you are on page 1, and clicks usually follow.

If nothing moved after a month, the page probably doesn't answer the search as well as the pages above it. Look at what the top three results cover that yours doesn't, and add that.

What we're doing with ours

This week we are doing fixes 1 and 3 on our two pages: a title that leads with the search, and links from three related pages on our site. We'll check them again in four weeks and post what happened in our Monday log, including if nothing moved.

Want this done every week?

Crescade checks your Search Console every week, finds the searches you almost rank for, writes the new titles and links, and tells you on Monday what moved. You approve every change before it goes live.Start with your site. 14 days free when you connect Search Console, no card.