Chad and I have been exploring website benchmark tools trying to see what's out there. I have also been poking around the web grader space to see what these tools might offer that would be useful to our seo resellers and direct clients. However, I have not been that happy with most of the web grader tools I've run.
It seems that most web grader tools are focused on onsite SEO
I have nothing against onsite seo. I've been blogging about it for years, of course some of what I've suggested is no longer in vogue (such as onsite sculpting). But nonetheless, it is really important. It's hard to rank a website without solid onsite SEO. (watch our recent webinar on onsite seo).
But what if you've done all the onsite SEO website graders and you are still not ranking?
This is when most people turn to off-site SEO and the conversion very quickly focuses on backlinks as people try to outrank their competition . They again turn to the blogs in search of a web grader that will help them understand why they aren't ranking in the major search engines and what they need to do to change this.
But most webgrader websites don't help you with link building benchmarks
And this is a major deficiency in our eyes. Chad and I have been discussing the need for a quick and easy backlink benchmarking tool that will give guidance and comparisons with other websites. In our eyes, this is really what a webgrader tool should be doing. You can get onsite SEO assistance from many of the current tools out there, but we'd like to try something a little different. SO we're launching a new project here at Semify HQ... Here is our objective with the Semify web grader benchmarking tool.
- Show website backlink counts benchmarked against the competition
- Show website backlink counts with the industry as a benchmark
- Show root domain backlinks rather than total external link counts
- Leave onsite SEO webgrading to the other guys who do it well
We believe this is novel. Perhaps it's not new for consulting engagements where you shell out thousands of dollars. But we think that a free webgrader tool that does this would be seen as unique. And we'd like to add-value to the Internet community with a free webgrader tool. If nothing else, we think this will help our SEO reseller team close more deals as a backlink-focused webgrader research tool serves as an excellent closing tool for offsite SEO packages.
Caveats
I've read the SEO tool blogs and know that people love to blast free tools. It seems to be a sport for some. Sure, tearing down free tools is easy link bait. So we're headed into this project knowing that this project will NOT please everyone. That's fine. Our objectives are simple and if the data produced are not helpful, please don't use the free web grader tool. (To me, that's kinda like coming to my free party and complaining about the free beer :-) But for others, we think this might give them a quick resource to help uncover why some sites rank and others don't. We also think it will give you a quick sales tool to help convince customers that off-site SEO is where they are deficient when they are not happy with their rankings.