Reading Notes: How a County Gets Its Content Score
Every figure on the county pages comes from public Census Bureau data and is worked out the same way for each county. These notes say what goes into the Local Content Opportunity Index, how the supporting figures are made and what none of it can tell you.
The question
What the Score Is Trying to Answer
Content marketing works on two things: material to write about and readers who will read it. The index puts a number on both for a county. A high score means a local business there has a lot to cover (many towns, many new competitors, many households with money to spend) and sells to buyers who tend to research first. A low score means a smaller job, not a worse market.
It is a planning aid for choosing where to start, and it counts businesses and households. It says nothing about how many people read a particular page.
The recipe
Five Inputs and Their Weights
| Input | Weight | What it measures | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research-heavy density | 30% | Locations per 10,000 residents in seven categories, averaged as percentiles | Buyers of these services tend to read first |
| Household income | 30% | Median household income, as a percentile | Higher-income buyers tend to deliberate longer |
| Number of towns | 15% | Places with 2,500 or more residents, as a percentile | Each town is local material to cover |
| New-home permits | 15% | Housing units permitted in 2025 per 10,000 residents | New households need local providers |
| Business growth | 10% | Change in employer locations from 2017 to 2022, as a percentile | New businesses start with little published |
A percentile is the share of the 1,800+ U.S. counties with 20,000 or more residents that score lower. A county lacking an input (for example city-type units have no list of towns, and Connecticut has no comparable income or permit data) drops it, and the other weights are scaled up to fill the 100%.
Categories
The Seven Research-Heavy Categories
The categories are law offices, dentists, physicians offices, insurance agencies, accounting and CPA firms, real estate agents and brokers, and residential remodelers. We chose them because a buyer in each usually wants an explanation before making contact: what a retainer covers, what a procedure involves, what a policy pays, what a project costs. Restaurants, salons, janitorial and landscaping businesses are in our data but not in this score.
For each category we take every employer location in County Business Patterns, of any size, divide by the county population and convert the result to a percentile among counties of 20,000 or more residents. The seven percentiles are averaged.
Supporting figures
How the Other Numbers on a County Page Are Made
- Against a typical county: a category's locations per 10,000 residents divided by the median of that figure across counties of 20,000 or more residents.
- Change since 2017: the percent change in locations between the 2017 and 2022 County Business Patterns, with Connecticut on 2017 and 2021.
- Small teams: locations with fewer than five employees, which County Business Patterns reports as a size class.
- The town grid: three services multiplied by the number of places of 2,500 or more residents (one area where a county has fewer than two), divided by each plan's monthly landing-page volume and rounded up to whole months. It is an arithmetic example, not a quote.
- Look-alikes: the six counties among our markets nearest on six traits (size, income, score, towns, business growth, research-heavy density) after putting each on a common scale.
- Permits: units authorized by building permit, from the Census Building Permits Survey, with a January-to-August comparison for 2026.
Sources
Where the Data Comes From
- U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates, Vintage 2023
- U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, 2022 and 2017
- U.S. Census Bureau, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, 2023
- U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey, 2021 to August 2026
- U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 Gazetteer files (coordinates for distances)
Connecticut's historic counties are used on the same footing, with 2021 data, because newer Census files report planning regions. County Business Patterns is a count of employer locations; sole proprietors with no employees are not in it.
Limits
What These Numbers Cannot Tell You
- They are not web data. We have no traffic, search volume, ranking or lead figures for any county, and we publish none.
- They do not say who writes. A crowded category means many businesses, not many blogs.
- A high score is no promise. It measures how much there is to do, not what a plan will achieve.
- Counties are large. A county average can hide a town that behaves very differently.
If a figure looks wrong, write to hello@getphound.com and we will check it against the Census table.
Talk to us
Want the Numbers Turned Into a Plan?
Describe your business and where your customers live, and we will show you what a month of content would cover. Phone 610-825-4363 or write to hello@getphound.com to book time with our CEO.