The performance report answers three practical questions if you filter it properly.
1. Which pages are close to breaking through?
Filter for average position between 5 and 15. These pages already rank; improving them is far cheaper than creating new ones.
2. Which pages get impressions but no clicks?
High impressions with low click-through usually means the title or description does not match the intent behind the query. That is a copy fix, not a ranking problem.
3. Which queries are you ranking for that you did not target?
These reveal demand you had not planned for, and often justify a dedicated page.
Comparison discipline
Always compare against the same period a year earlier, not the previous month. Seasonality otherwise reads as a trend.
Alien Road recommends: start every content plan with the position 5-15 list rather than a keyword tool. It uses evidence from your own site instead of a third-party estimate, and the work is incremental improvement rather than speculative creation, which is why it pays back faster on almost every engagement we run.