Why Free SEO Scorecard was developed

Every day I get the opportunity to work with cool people who run technology start-ups and other tech-savvy businesses thirsty for top-line revenue growth. They seek my help to create a sustainable source of inbound leads.

Like most businesses today, they’re facing severe headwinds. Consider these 5 powerful trends:

1. 93.4% of potential product purchase research is done online—Anonymously.
2. Nearly 2 of 3 buyers begin product research using a search engine (Google being the overwhelming favorite, especially for high-income users).
3. Buyers have little interest in sales calls unless and until they (the Buyers) initiate the interaction.
4. The number of sales calls/day has fallen by 25% while the cost of a sales call continues to escalate (now above $300 per call).
5. Not surprisingly, hiring a sales representative is now THE most difficult position to fill [and train!].

(source: Blame Google)

It really doesn’t matter what corporate buyers are looking for—office telecommunications systems, industrial cleaning supplies, ball bearings, industrial thumbtacks, promotional products, business services, offset printing, internet web hosting, space-age plastics, fluorescent lighting ballasts, tradeshow displays, business intelligence software or flux capacitors—Google has put themselves between you and your customers.

Clearly, it is no longer possible for a company to reach any level of success without a marketing strategy that stimulates customer conversation and builds buyer trust and confidence from the first click. Without such a plan, your company remains invisible to potential buyers—cheating your sales reps out of revenue opportunities that
are rightfully theirs.

First-mover advantage

During the dot-com days, every investor pitch talked about achieving “first-mover advantage.” The theory was that once a visitor came to your site they were less likely to consider an alternative.

Guess what? That hasn’t changed. The only difference now is that we’re talking about engaging prospective customers who enter our sales pipelines even later in the buying cycle. If you don’t get them to click on your link you may never get another opportunity to win the business.

In fact, if you don’t show up on the search results when a prospect searches on your keywords, you won’t even be able to know about the opportunity in the first place…which makes you think about that lost business report a little differently, doesn’t it?

Showing up on the search results page

About five years ago I saw this storm coming. My SMB clients were already experiencing the 5 Headwinds and I knew (for my own survival) I better get out ahead of it.

That’s what led me to SEO and eventually to the development of FreeSEOScorecard.com. Since I was a complete noob at the time, I turned to my good friend, Perry Marshall, author of The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords to find out who he trusted for SEO advice. Without hesitation, Perry introduced me to Stephen Mahaney, CEO & Founder of Planet Ocean and publisher of established SearchEngineNews.com—the longest running subscription-based newsletter site on the Internet—in 1997.

Steph literally set me on the course I’m on now. He’s also the guy who wrote most of the content for the first edition of my Google Optimized book, which is now part of my SEO resource kit, as is my recorded interview with him.

SEO Checklist-Scorecard

Over the years I’ve written my own 30-day SEO eCourse and counseled hundreds of small businesses to improve their basic, fundamental SEO. I call it “SEO for mere mortals,” or in my case, the needs of small and midsize businesses.

In all my customer conversations I learned the one thing they wanted most was an SEO checklist they could use to self-assess if they were doing SEO correctly. To help them I created the 1-page Google Optimized SEO Checklist. As demand grew, my paper-based checklist led to the development of the interactive, web-based scorecard tool you see here on this website.