Suppose you have found 30 websites that you might want to contact. The next question is simple: which ones should you focus on first?
The answer is not always obvious. One website may be closely related to your topic but not be a good fit in other ways. Another may look like a good choice overall but be less relevant to what you are trying to achieve. Some websites will be easy to rule out, but many will fall somewhere in between.
One way to make this decision easier is to score each website using the same set of factors. You can then give more importance to the factors that matter most to your campaign.
This is often called a weighted scoring model. The name sounds more complicated than the idea itself. You are simply comparing websites in a consistent way so you can decide which ones deserve your attention first.
Why a Simple Yes or No Is Not Always Enough
It would be convenient if every website could be placed into one of two groups: contact or ignore.
A website could be closely related to your topic but not meet another important requirement. Another might meet most of your requirements without being one of your best choices.
This is why prospect qualification is not always a simple yes-or-no decision. Sometimes you need to look at several things together before deciding whether a website is worth contacting.
Scoring gives you a way to make those differences easier to compare.
First, Decide What You Need to Check
Before giving any website a score, decide what actually matters for your campaign.
You might look at things such as:
- how closely the website relates to your topic
- the quality of the content on the site
- whether the type of link or mention you are looking for would make sense there
- whether the website fits the purpose of your campaign
- whether there is a good reason to contact the people behind it
These are examples, not rules. A different campaign may need different factors.
Try to keep the list focused. If two factors are really checking the same thing, you may end up counting that issue twice. Each factor should help you answer a different question about the website.
Not Every Factor Needs to Matter Equally
Now suppose relevance is especially important to your campaign.
You may decide that relevance should have a bigger effect on the final score than another factor. For example, relevance could make up 40% of the score, while another factor makes up only 15%.
That percentage is called a weight. It tells your scoring system which factors should matter more when the final score is calculated.
There is no percentage that every campaign should use. The numbers should reflect what you are actually trying to achieve.
This is also where understanding relevance vs authority becomes useful. Before deciding how much importance to give different factors, you need to understand what those factors actually tell you about a website.
Now Give Each Website a Score
Once you know what you are checking and how important each factor is, you can start scoring your websites.
A simple approach is to use a scale from 1 to 5. A score of 1 means the website performs poorly in that area, while 5 means it performs very well.
Here is a basic example:
| Factor | Score | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | 5/5 | 40% |
| Content quality | 4/5 | 25% |
| Placement fit | 3/5 | 20% |
| Another campaign factor | 4/5 | 15% |
Because relevance has the largest weight, its score has the biggest effect on the final result.
The calculation looks like this:
(5/5 × 40) + (4/5 × 25) + (3/5 × 20) + (4/5 × 15) = 84
The website receives a score of 84 out of 100.
You can repeat the same process for the other websites on your list. Now you have a consistent way to compare them instead of making a completely new decision every time you open another website.
A High Score Does Not Automatically Mean Yes
There is one important problem with looking only at the final number.
A website could perform very well in several areas and still have a serious problem in one area that matters to you.
For example, imagine a website receives a high total score but is barely related to your topic. If relevance is essential to your campaign, you probably do not want several strong scores elsewhere to hide that problem.
You can prevent this by setting a minimum requirement, sometimes called a threshold.
For example, you might require a website to reach a certain total score while also receiving at least a certain score for relevance.
The exact numbers are up to you. What matters is deciding in advance which requirements cannot be ignored just because the final score looks good.
Use the Scores to Decide Who Gets Attention First
After scoring the websites and checking your minimum requirements, you can separate them into simple groups such as:
- contact first
- consider later
- do not contact
The labels can change. What matters is that the scores help you decide what to do next. A website in the first group gets your attention before one in the second, while a website that fails an important requirement may be removed even if its total score looks good.
If you want to go further into the calculation side of this process, our prospect scoring framework looks more closely at how scores can be used to organize outreach decisions.
Your Scoring System Can Change
A scoring system that works for one campaign may not be right for the next one.
Perhaps relevance needs to matter more next time. Maybe you discover that one of your factors rarely changes your decisions and can be removed. You may also find that something you originally considered important is not helping you choose between websites.
Change the factors or their importance when the purpose of the campaign changes. What you want to avoid is changing the rules for individual websites simply because you like or dislike a particular prospect.
Do Not Let the Number Make the Decision for You
A website with a score of 84 is not automatically a better choice than one with a score of 82. Those numbers came from factors, scores, and weights that you chose yourself.
The scoring system helps you organize what you see. It does not turn a judgment call into a scientific fact.
If a result does not make sense, look at the website again. You may notice something the score did not capture, or you may discover that one of the factors in your system needs to change.
A useful scoring system should make it easier to decide where to focus your outreach without pretending that a number can make every decision for you.