Content
How to find keywords in Search Console
Open Performance, set the date range to 12 months, enable the Average Position column, and sort by impressions. Queries with high impressions and positions between 8 and 20 are the ones you almost rank for — the cheapest wins available.
Before you start
- Search Console access with at least a few months of data
The steps
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Step 1: Open Performance → Search results
Set the date range to the last 12 months.
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Step 2: Enable all metrics
Clicks, impressions, CTR and average position.
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Step 3: Sort by impressions
These are queries you already appear for, which is a far better starting point than a keyword tool’s estimates.
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Step 4: Filter to positions 8–20
High impressions and a position just off page one is the cheapest improvement available.
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Step 5: Filter by page
Use the Pages tab, then switch to Queries, to see what a specific page already earns impressions for.
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Step 6: Look for mismatches
Queries where a page ranks but does not actually answer the question — that is a content gap with demonstrated demand.
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Step 7: Write or improve one page per term
One primary keyword per URL, allocated before writing.
Why this beats a keyword tool
Third-party tools estimate volume for the whole market. Search Console reports what actually happened on your site, at your authority level, in your market. For finding winnable terms, nothing else comes close.
The pattern worth acting on first
A query with hundreds of impressions, a position around 12, and a landing page that mentions the topic without answering it. Writing a page that properly answers that query is the highest-return content work most sites have available.
The background behind this
The 35 types of SEO, explained without the padding covers the reasoning in about 6 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Pakistan. These procedures are the ones I run on client work, written down rather than invented — including the ones where the honest answer is that the fix is not available on your current hosting.