How to prioritise content ideas using business value scoring

Executive overview

High search volume does not equal business opportunity. A topic that drives millions of visits but attracts the wrong audience generates no customers.

Score every content idea for business value (0–3) before publishing. Combine this score with traffic potential and ranking difficulty to decide what to tackle first.

Search intent, not search volume, determines whether content grows your business.

The business value scoring system

1. 3 — product is an irreplaceable solution for the search query
2. 2 — product helps with the search query but is not essential
3. 1 — product can only be mentioned in passing; topic is loosely related
4. 0 — no plausible mention of the business in the article

Why traffic volume misleads

• HubSpot's top article ("How to make an animated GIF in Photoshop") drives ~80k US visits/month — 8% of their entire blog traffic
• That article scores 0 for business value for a marketing CRM
• Ahrefs deliberately ignored high-traffic topics in favour of high-business-value ones
• Goal: make the blog a customer acquisition channel, not a traffic counter

Applying scores to buying intent

• Queries with explicit buying intent ("hire a business coach", "rent an apartment in London") score 3 — searcher is one step from purchase
• Generic versions of the same queries still score 2 — higher volume, harder to convert, but persuadable with strong copy
• Don't ignore generic queries entirely; a well-written article can move someone from interest to purchase