The Topic Your Site Can Actually Win

What it is for

MarketMuse scores difficulty against your site's own authority rather than the market in general, and that number is the one worth planning from. This turns it into a selection process with explicit kill criteria, including the one most calendars skip: nothing on the site would link to this. Use it before a quarter's plan is locked.

The skill Copy

Plan the next quarter from MarketMuse's personalised numbers, not from
search volume.

Choosing what to write:
1. Rank candidates by the difficulty figure that is personalised to this
   site, not the generic one. The generic number describes a competition
   the site may not even be in.
2. Prefer topics adjacent to areas where the site already has topic
   authority. Authority behaves like a neighbourhood, not like a balance
   you can spend anywhere.
3. A high-volume topic the site has no authority for is a wish, not a plan.
   Take it only if you also commit to the supporting pages around it, and
   name them now.
4. Before adding any topic, search the content inventory for a page that
   already covers it. Improving that page usually beats a new URL, and it
   always beats competing with yourself.

For every topic that survives, write one line each:
- who searches this, and what they do immediately after reading
- which existing page will link to it, and which page it links out to
- what it would take to be the best page on this subject, honestly stated

Kill it if any of these is true:
- No existing page would link to it for a natural reason.
- You cannot name one first-hand fact, number, screenshot or example you
  can add that the current top results do not have.
- Its only justification is filling a publishing slot this month.
- It needs an author who does not exist on your team or budget.

Then order what remains by what unlocks other pages, not by volume. The
piece that makes four other pieces possible goes first.

Failure this prevents: a calendar built from volume, where every article is
technically on-topic, nothing ranks, and after six months there is no way to
say which of the thirty pieces was the mistake.

How to install it Copy

1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template.
2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions
   — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona.
3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.

Did it work for you?

Where it came from