Page Poaching: striking-distance keywords in positions 4 to 20

Page Poaching lists the searches where your site already appears just below the top results, at an average position between 4 and 20, and estimates the extra clicks each would earn at a position you choose. These are the cheapest wins in search: Google already considers the page relevant, so improving it is usually faster than ranking a new one. A second table catches top results that are clicked less than they should be.

How the report picks keywords

When you start the analysis with the play button under the settings, AutoPSEO fetches query-by-page rows for the date range and filters at the top of the page, then works per query:

• Position is the impression-weighted average across every page that showed for the query.
• Page is the URL that earned the most clicks for it (impressions break ties). It is the page you would improve.
• A query is kept when it has at least Min impressions (10 by default) and its position falls inside the preset you pick: All (4-20), Top 10 (4 to 10), Position 10-15 or Position 10-20.

How potential clicks are estimated

For every row:

potential clicks = impressions × (expected CTR at the target position − current CTR)

The result is never negative. The expected CTR comes from your own site, not an industry table: for each position from 1 to 20, AutoPSEO takes the impression-weighted CTR of your queries with at least 10 impressions. Where a position has fewer than 200 impressions behind it, a published market benchmark curve fills the gap, and positions between whole numbers are interpolated.

The Target position defaults to 3. Change it for the whole table (1 to 10), or per row in the Target column when a search is realistic for position 1 but not for another. The estimate updates immediately.

A worked example: a query with 3,000 impressions at position 7.2 and a 2% CTR. If your curve expects 12% at position 3, the row shows 3,000 × (0.12 − 0.02) = 300 potential clicks for the period.

Difficulty is a distance-to-target label, not a third-party keyword difficulty score: Easy up to position 7, Medium from 8 to 12, Hard from 13 onwards.

The CTR meta-data table

Below the main list, CTR meta-data optimisation opportunities shows queries that already rank above position 4 but earn less than 70% of the CTR your curve expects there. Moving these up is not the problem; the snippet is. Rewrite the title and meta description so the result answers the search more plainly, and check whether a rich result or a competitor's feature is taking the clicks. Google explains how it builds title links and snippets.

Reading the charts

• Biggest opportunities: the 20 rows with the most potential clicks, coloured by difficulty.
• CTR curve: actual vs expected: your CTR per position against the curve used for the estimates, with the target position marked.

What to do with the list

1. Sort by potential clicks and start with Easy rows.
2. Open the query and confirm the page shown is the one you want ranking. If two of your URLs alternate, deal with that first in Keyword Cannibalization.
3. Strengthen the page for that search: answer it near the top, cover the questions people ask next, and link to it from related pages that already earn traffic.
4. Compare the same period length a few weeks later. Rank Changes shows which searches moved.

Treat the numbers as an upper bound for planning, not a promise: clicks at a position depend on what else Google shows on that results page.

How AutoPSEO helps

For articles the content engine manages, the same signal is acted on automatically: an article shown at positions 8 to 20 with at least 30 impressions, clicked less than 60% as often as that position usually is, gets an optimisation task for its title, meta description and opening answer. See Keeping articles fresh. Your AI assistant can also run this report through the page_poaching tool of the MCP server.

Related: CTR Benchmark, Opportunities & quick wins.