Steven Schneider scaled a 40-site affiliate portfolio to $1.4M ARR, then pivoted to helping B2B and SaaS CMOs apply the same strategies. His current focus: SEO calculators and digital assets as lead generation tools. Here’s what he shared on the Unscripted SEO Podcast.
Calculators as SEO Assets: The Playbook
Steven’s firm has been building a cost segregation calculator for three months — not a 20-minute AI build, but a carefully validated tool. The process: start keyword-first, build the asset to match a real search need, then use content to drive awareness to it. An M&A valuation calculator now ranks top 3-5 for its target term. A settlement tax calculator in the legal space converts consistently. The rule: if there aren’t 1,000+ monthly searches tied to a calculator concept, it probably isn’t worth building.
The Lead Capture Layer
Give the answer. Don’t gatekeep. But capture email with an added value proposition — a PDF report, a reminder, a follow-up sequence. Exchange email for the enhanced output, then build a 3–5 day nurture drip connected to your sales team. That’s how a middle-funnel tool becomes a bottom-funnel conversion machine.
AI Visibility: What Steven Is Actually Seeing
“Nobody knows how to rank in ChatGPT — not even the ‘AI SEO experts’ on LinkedIn.” What Steven does: search primary high-intent keywords in ChatGPT with conversational tones and track where clients appear over time. The finding: clients following quality content best practices are appearing in LLMs without doing anything special. Standard SEO still drives LLM citation pickup.
The First Win Question
Steven’s most important onboarding question: “How are you currently tracking success on your website?” The surprising number of clients who can’t answer forces a reset — define what actually moves the needle (demos, trials, webinars?) before running a single report. Without agreed-upon success criteria upfront, you’re arguing at month five about whether anything worked.