Most prioritisation scores multiply volume by an invented difficulty number and produce a ranking nobody trusts. The problem is that difficulty scores are site-agnostic - they tell you how hard a term is for an average site, not for yours. What you need is an honest estimate of whether this specific domain can reach page one within the horizon you are planning for.
effort-vs-realistic-win.md
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name: effort-vs-realistic-win
description: Use when your content backlog is longer than your capacity and you need to decide what gets built this month rather than eventually.
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# Prioritise by Effort Against Realistic Win
Most prioritisation scores multiply volume by an invented difficulty number and produce a ranking nobody trusts. The problem is that difficulty scores are site-agnostic - they tell you how hard a term is for an average site, not for yours. What you need is an honest estimate of whether this specific domain can reach page one within the horizon you are planning for.
## What you need first
- current positions for every target query
- a list of the 3 sites that actually occupy positions 1-5 for your core clusters
- an honest count of your weekly production capacity in finished pages
## Method
1. Split the backlog into three bands by your current position: 8-20, 21-40, and unranked or 40+. Positions 8-20 are already judged relevant by Google and usually move with on-page work alone.
2. For anything in the 21-40 band, check whether the pages above you are on domains materially stronger than yours. If four or more of the top 10 are, the term needs links and belongs in a different budget line, not the content plan.
3. Estimate effort in production hours, not word count. A 900-word page needing original data costs more than a 2,500-word explainer you can write from knowledge.
4. Multiply realistic monthly clicks at your achievable position - not position 1 - by the value per click you can defend from analytics. Use position 5 as the ceiling for competitive clusters.
5. Rank by value divided by hours, then override the ranking once: pull forward anything that unblocks a later cluster, even if it scores badly on its own.
6. Commit only to what fits capacity with 25 percent slack, because refreshes and unplanned work always eat the rest.
## What this produces
A committed monthly build list with expected clicks and hours per item, and an explicit deferred pile.
## Where this goes wrong
- modelling revenue at position 1 when your realistic ceiling for that cluster is position 6
- using a generic keyword difficulty score as if it accounted for your own domain strength
- filling 100 percent of capacity so the first refresh emergency wrecks the schedule
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From the QuQi skill library - https://www.quqi.io/skills/effort-vs-realistic-win
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A committed monthly build list with expected clicks and hours per item, and an explicit deferred pile.