Content
What should you write about next?
Content calendars are usually guesses with dates on them. The seven factors in a published formula, and why being able to re-weight them matters more than the score.
How MarketWar handles it
The Opportunity Score is a PUBLISHED formula, not a black box: demand × commercial intent × relevance × timing × authority probability × conversion probability, divided by competition. All 7 factors are shown and every one can be re-weighted, so the ranking is auditable and you can disagree with it specifically. Signals are only scored, never fabricated — a demand signal you did not supply does not appear.
Most content calendars are a list of topics somebody thought of, spread across twelve months. The spreading creates an impression of strategy that the list does not have.
The useful question is narrower: of everything you could write, which one is worth doing first?
The formula, published on purpose
Opportunity Score = demand × commercial intent × relevance × timing × authority probability × conversion probability, divided by competition.
Two things about that are deliberate.
It is multiplied, not averaged. A zero on any factor sinks the idea, which is right: a topic with high demand and no commercial intent is a traffic hobby, and a topic you have no chance of ranking for is a draft nobody reads. Averaging would let one strong factor rescue a dead idea.
Every factor is visible and re-weightable. That matters more than the score. A single opaque number can only be accepted or ignored; a formula you can see can be argued with — and the arguing is where the thinking happens.
The factor that decides it for most small businesses
Commercial intent. Not demand.
The highest-demand topics in any trade are the ones everybody writes about, with no buying intent behind them — "how to unblock a sink" brings people who are about to not call a plumber. The lower-demand, higher-intent query ("emergency plumber Saturday [town]") brings three people, two of whom are buying.
A plan ranked on demand alone produces a year of traffic and no enquiries, and it is the single commonest way a small business concludes content marketing does not work.
The factor people get wrong about themselves
Authority probability — whether you could realistically rank for this at all.
Estimate it generously and the whole ranking flatters you: every topic looks winnable, so you pick the biggest, and compete with national sites for a term you will never hold.
The honest version is usually small and local, which is also where the intent is.
It scores signals, it does not invent them
The inputs are the ones you supply — conversations, search queries, support issues, reviews, sales objections, seasonal events, product availability. A demand signal you did not supply does not appear in the ranking.
That keeps it narrower than the competing tools, whose signals often come from modelled volume figures with no real relationship to your market.
The best input is free and most businesses have it: the questions customers actually ask. Clustering your own feedback produces a better list than any keyword tool, because it is your market rather than a model of a market.
What to do with the top item
Write it properly, once, and make it specific enough that it could only have come from you — which is also the only kind of page that survives the current policies and gets cited by an assistant.
One real page beats twelve thin ones, and the twelve are actively harmful.
The question to ask
Before writing anything: which of these brings somebody who is about to buy?
If the answer is none of them, the list is a traffic plan rather than a sales one, and it is worth knowing that before the year starts.
What this does not do
The score is only as good as the signals behind it, and the factor most businesses cannot estimate is authority probability — whether you could realistically rank for something at all. Guess that one generously and the whole ranking flatters you.
Common questions
What are the seven factors?
Demand, commercial intent, relevance, timing, authority probability and conversion probability, divided by competition. Multiplied rather than averaged, so a zero on any one of them sinks the idea — which is correct.
Why publish the formula?
So you can disagree with it specifically. A single opaque score can only be accepted or ignored; a formula with visible factors can be argued with and re-weighted for your business.
Which factor matters most for a small business?
Commercial intent, usually. High-demand topics with no buying intent produce traffic that never converts, and that is the commonest way a content plan wastes a year.
Where do the signals come from?
The ones you supply — conversations, queries, support issues, reviews, sales objections, seasonal events. It scores signals; it does not invent them.
Related
Where do keyword volume numbers actually come from?
Every SEO tool shows a monthly search volume and a difficulty score. What is behind those, why they disagree with each other, and what ours says about itself.
How do you publish AI content without inventing statistics?
AI writes a convincing statistic and a plausible citation with equal confidence. What an evidence classifier blocks, and what it lets through.
What are your customers actually telling you?
Reviews, surveys, support messages and sales calls say the same three things, and nobody reads them. How clustering differs from inventing.