Sort the Leads table by health score ascending and start at the top. Anything under 60 with at least 2 critical findings is a Hot lead — that is where the close rate is 3–4x your baseline.

What "best" means here

A best-lead has 3 traits. First: room to improve (low score). Second: real money on the line (active business site, not a hobby blog). Third: reachable (email captured or public WHOIS contact). All 3 matter. A 12-score on a parked domain is worthless.

Think of it like fishing. The signal is not the biggest splash, it is the right kind of splash in the right water.

How LemAudit flags Hot leads

The Hot tag is computed every time the scoring engine returns a score under 60 and the audit found ≥ 2 critical-severity items in the issue list. The flag is stored on leads.is_hot and surfaces as a red badge in the pipeline. Sorting by Health score ascending in the pipeline view puts your highest-effort, highest-payoff leads at row 1.

The outreach generator leans on the same signals: it quotes the top 3 critical findings as the opening hook.

Worked example

A B2B agency ran a 50-domain bulk scan on local insurance brokers. 31 came back with scores under 60. Of those, 9 were Hot (≥ 2 critical, real broker site, reachable). They emailed only those 9, replied within 48 hours to all 4 responses, and booked 2 calls. Their close rate on Hot-only outreach: 22%, vs 4% on the full 50-list a month earlier.

When this isn't right

Score-based sorting biases toward broken sites. Some markets (legal, finance) score high because the sites were built well. They still need help with content or local SEO. Work those leads from a keyword-research tool, not from this score alone. Avoid pitching leads under score 25 unless you also see real revenue signals; very low scores often mean the business is already gone.