Nathan Gotch

Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

00:00

People try to manipulate Google as much as possible, but at the end of the day, like, I'm thinking about how can I create something that's gonna have a moat? I wanna see, like, if I create this, is it gonna be difficult for someone to beat me? And if the answer's, like, oh no, they can just go to ChatGPT and produce a little piece of content and beat me, then I shouldn't expect to be there for very long. But I know me going and investing my money to buy 26 books, and actually invest my time to actually read those books, how many people are willing to do that? Not a ton, right? Not a ton. So I'm looking for ways to really find that differentiator, that moat, to make it difficult to move me out of my position. And there's always someone that will try to outdo you, but that's good. Like, that means we're just raising — we're raising the bar, right? You keep raising the bar, raising the bar. That's a good thing. Content keeps getting better. Keep in mind though, in the SEO space, it's very competitive. Like, content — everyone in the SEO space knows how to create great content. That's just how it is. But you take these same principles and you apply them for a St. Louis HVAC business, you will destroy every competitor.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Hi, and welcome to the Optimize Podcast. My name is Nate Matherson, and I am your host. On this weekly podcast, we sit down with some of the smartest minds in content marketing and SEO. Our goal is to give you perspective and insights on what's moving the needle in organic search. Today, I'm thrilled to sit down with Nathan Gotch. Nathan is the founder and SEO director of the Gotch SEO Agency and also the founder and head SEO coach of Gotch SEO Academy. In our episode today, Nathan and I will talk about his new book, “The SEO Entrepreneur,” and then Nathan and I will go really deep on local SEO. I'm curious to pick his brains about everything from backlinks, should we be buying them, to internal linking, building topical authority as a local niche site, the skills that content and SEO agencies and teams must have here in 2023, and more.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Nathan, thank you so much for coming on the episode today. 

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

Thank you so much. Super excited to be here. 

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

So the question I always ask all of our guests is, how did you get into the world of content marketing and SEO and then to the agency side of things?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

03:07

Yeah, my story is kind of interesting. I know there might be some people who've maybe already heard it, but I actually got into SEO in kind of a weird way. I started by searching — when I was actually going into my senior year of college; it was, like, 2011 going into 2012 — and I was looking for ways to make money online. And so I did that, and I stumbled upon a bunch of sketchy tactics. I did the paid survey thing. You know, I wrote essays for college students. Not saying that was a good idea, but I was doing anything to try to figure it out. Let's just say that didn't really work super well. I was making, like, three cents an hour with the paid surveys, and I don't think I ever got paid out, by the way. So, you know, I quickly learned that wasn't gonna be the right path. So eventually I just kept searching, and I actually stumbled upon this course, and it was 47 bucks; it was called Web Colleagues. And, like, at the time, I was just a broke college student, so I was like, “Oh my gosh, $47? I don't know if I can do this.” But I actually did, I actually — you know, that was basically all the money I had — and bought this course, and in the course, they taught all kinds of different ways of making money online. One of them that really stood out to me was blogging. So I was like, “You can make money with a blog?” Like, it was such a foreign thing to me at the time. I started to think about, like, what would be something I could create a blog on? Like, I didn't have any skills, I was still in college — like, I didn't have a whole lot of things that I could pull upon, except I was on my college baseball team, and I was a baseball pitcher on my team. So I was like, “Well, I do know how to throw a baseball, so why don't I create a blog about baseball pitching?” So that's what I did. I created this website called The Ultimate Pitcher. Of course, I struggled to get any traffic to it. Just writing constantly, like, did — no clue what I was doing, just throwing stuff at the wall, hoping that I could get some sort of affiliate commission or make money with the Google AdSense. So eventually, I went back to Google again, and I was like, “All right, how do I get traffic to this thing? Like, what do I do?” And that's when I stumbled upon SEO. When I found it, it was like finding, like, the greatest discovery of all time. I was like, “Wow, Google can send me traffic for free.” That was such, like, a crazy revelation. So I just started implementing everything I learned on this site, and it started to work. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I'm like getting —” like I was watching my traffic climb. I started to make money with AdSense. I started making my, I made my first affiliate sale, and then I was hooked. I was hooked from that point forward.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

05:15

Yeah, and then you started the Gotch SEO agency in 2014, I believe I saw. What led you to ultimately starting the agency, or how did you get there? 

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

05:24

So what happened is, like, from 2011 to 2013, really, I was basically just creating a bunch of different websites. So I created that baseball pitching site, and it did really well, but it wasn't, like — it wasn't enough to, like, be a full-time gig by any means. I actually found myself becoming more obsessed with just SEO in general. Like, I liked working on my baseball blog. It was a passion, it was fun — but, like, what kept kind of, like, pulling me in was, like, SEO. I was like, “Man, I really love this SEO thing.” And so I started creating multiple — like, I would literally create websites just to rank them. Like, I didn't even care about making money. I would literally — I had many. I had BowFlexReviewsHQ.com, I had TRXReviewsHQ.com, and I had UnderCounterIcemakerReviewsHQ.com. So I really was — and there were many others, by the way. But I was really, I would build these sites up, and I would rank them and just, you know, make money through affiliate commissions and whatever. But it was — what I found out is, like, I just love the process of SEO. So I started to build up, like, a very big portfolio of results. And then eventually — I don't know if you know who Alex Becker is, but at the time he was in the SEO industry, and he kind of brought this idea to me — not personally, just by watching his content — that starting an SEO business, like, servicing small businesses and helping them with their SEO is, like, a really good way to earn income. And so that's where I kind of was like, “Well, I could probably do that. I already got the portfolio, so I should try to do that.” So funny thing is, though, leading up to that, so I was building the sites and my first idea was that I was just gonna get a job, like, in a company. Like, I was gonna get hired in an agency or try to do SEO in-house. And so I applied — this is when I was still living in LA — I applied for a bunch of jobs in LA, got one interview, didn't get the job. Then I got laid off in my job; I was working security in Beverly Hills, got laid off there. So I was like, “Well, I got a decision to make. Do I go all in on this or, you know, what do I do? Do I move to St. Louis to be with my now wife?” So I made the decision to come to St. Louis, and this is 2013, and I had no clients. So what I did, I was like, “Well, I'm gonna try to get hired in an agency here in St. Louis.” I applied to every single agency that exists at the time in St. Louis. I got one interview. I only got one answer and one interview, and I did not get that job either. So I was like, “Well, you know what? I guess I'm just gonna have to get clients on my own because I can't keep living at my mother-in-law's house for as long as I am.” So that's where it kind of started. I went all in on the agency, and fortunately, it worked out for me.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

07:50


So my next question is on the Academy because, like, you started the Academy in 2016. So you'd been in the agency business for a few years, and then what led you to think, like, we needed an Academy to help train other folks on content and SEO?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

08:05


To be honest, it was because when I was building up my agency, like, one of the best strategies that I used was just education. Like, I would just create blog content, I would create case studies, and at the time blogging was a lot more, let's say, in vogue. Like, it was just, like, a lot better; like, people really cared about blogs. And so I would create these, you know, super long case studies, these super long informative posts. And what I found was, like, I really enjoyed that. Like, I really loved the process of just helping people with their SEO. And I always had heard that starting a course was a good idea, right, for actually, you know, monetizing your business, so for me I was like, “Well, I think I could definitely make a course.” And so in 2016 I was deathly afraid to be on video — like, so afraid. And so actually prior to 2016 — this is, like, I think it was, like, 2015 roughly — we signed up for the Yelp, like, partner program. And so when you sign up for the partner program, they send over a videographer and they do a video of you, like, talking about your business. Like, “Hey, I'm Gotch SEO,” and you say your little thing. Man, it was, like, the worst experience of my life. I, like, that camera got put on me, and I was like a deer in the headlights. I could not even, like, nothing was running in my mind. It was gone. So that, like, I was like, “I will never do video ever.” And so that was, like, my stance. A funny thing is, and for a while I just avoided — so in 2016, the reason I'm saying this is because my first version of the Academy was completely text written. Like, there was no video. I literally just wrote out every single lesson and then put it into a backend, and that's what it was. Needless to say, it was not good. That was a very bad version of the Academy and only, I think it was roughly seven people signed up. Wasn't exactly the best launch, but I learned a lot there, and I was like, “You know what, I can't, I can't do this. Like, I need to have video. It needs to be legit.” So to start to get over my fear, I just would record these, like, over-the-shoulder videos of the — recording my computer screen, but I was never on the video. It was just, like, my voice, and I’d run through, you know, showing people how to do stuff. So I did that, and then obviously it's transformed into something very different today, but that was kind of, like, the origin of it.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

10:09

I found, like, most SEOs typically start with blog posts. Like, there actually is like a lot of great blog content out there on the internet —  like, you know, Ahrefs and Semrush and even HubSpot to a degree. They've got, you know, fantastic blogs. I've always been, like, a big fan of, like, the Authority Hacker guys, too. They've got, like, a pretty good blog and course system. But for me, it's always been, like, pieced together. Like, you kind of learn, like, as you face an issue, and then you need to Google it, and then you find that blog post. So doing SEO to help people learn SEO. But I guess with your coursework, like, do you take people more through, like, the end-to-end process of learning a channel versus, like, kind of piecemeal as they go? Is that the idea here?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

10:52

Yeah, and I mean that's a disadvantage of trying to learn for free, you know? Like, you — like, anyone could go to my YouTube channel right now and learn SEO very, very well. Like, you could probably become top 25% if you execute on the advice that I give. But the challenge is you gotta find all the parts and put it all together and make sense of it all because I can't give you the full process in 10 minutes, right, for a video. So the beauty — like, the way my training is set up, I don't even really call my training a course because really what I'm giving is really a system. And the reason why I say that is because I've actually designed the training specifically from the perspective of an agency. So it needs to be cut out all the fat. I'm not gonna spend an hour talking about patents. I'm not gonna spend an hour telling you what is SEO or what are keywords; it's none of that. It's here's how to make a copy of this template, here's how to find existing keywords, here's how to categorize those keywords based on the positions that they're in, how to prioritize those opportunities. Like, it just goes from end to end, each part of the process, breaking it down. And it's — obviously there's supporting elements in there, there's standard operating procedures, templates. And basically, the training, if you wanna call it, is really — they're really just demos. I'm really showing a demo of how to do the SEO process. I've had so many versions of my course if you want to call it, and it's now, the version now is — it's almost more of like it's … this is a system, not so much a course. Because I had courses before, and I'll tell you just as a non-SEO kind of side point — I don't know if you know the statistic, but roughly only 10% of people finish online courses. So when I discovered that in my own training — I actually, one day I was like, “You know, I'm gonna go and look. I'm gonna say, there's no way my training, there's no way that they would not go through my stuff. Right?” So then I go and look, and of course it was about — I think it was like 15 or 20% completion rate. That, like, made me sick to my stomach. I was like — I couldn't even believe that people wouldn't go through the training because I was like, “If you just go through it, like, you would get results.” So that really, like, disturbed me. And I was — my course was doing fine. I could have kept selling it the same way I was selling it. I would do these product launches, you know, I'd open it up for a week and then close it. Open up for a week, close it. I had six-figure weeks in my launches. Like they were, they were pretty good, but I wasn't seeing the student results that were making me sleep well at night. And it wasn't necessarily because the content was wrong or the content wasn't good; it was because I hadn't set them up for success. And so I just decided like, “OK, I'm going to read — I'm redoing this whole thing from scratch.” I started really, like, deeply analyzing a lot of things. But one of the things that I did is I changed it from a course to more of a coaching program and system. And so now when someone enrolls, it's not just “Hey, here's a course; good luck.” Now it's “Here's a system that you can follow step by step, but every Tuesday and Thursday, you can get on a coaching call. I will lead this coaching call, and I will help you with your campaign. I will help you with whatever you're working on, like, on the spot.” That's in a group coaching environment, by the way. But still, just adding that little piece to it: I cannot express how much of a difference it made. It's insane. Like, we went from, let's say, 15, 20% completion rate, now we're at 80% completion rate, and the results that students get is, like, through the roof. So yeah, I get it pretty excited about this because it's just a really — like, this change in my business model has such a huge impact —not just for, like, my business. It's obviously a bigger investment for me to show up every Tuesday and Thursday. But for the students, they're able to get the results that they want, and it's not just — because that's a challenge with a course, right? It's so static. It's not personalized. It's not — every person's situation is different. Every website is different. Every campaign is different. So what I try to do is I give the system the framework, try to make it as adaptive as possible based on unique scenarios, but then we can get into the personalized element of it, which is in the coaching calls.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

14:43

And just a quick question, just so I've got it. So, like, your customers for the course are primarily, like, teams or new hires at agencies who are looking to, like, learn the fundamentals and then even more advanced concepts of SEO? So it's mainly, like, agency folks and not necessarily, like, in-house teams?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

15:01


No, it's quite the mix, but I would say our number one are definitely in the bucket of SEO service providers. That would be, you know, that could be a large agency — you know, five, 10 million a year. That could also be an agency that has three employees. It could also be someone who's just a freelancer who's just trying to, you know, figure it out. I'll tell you the biggest, because we've done, you know, hundreds and hundreds of calls now with agency people and our ideal customers, and the biggest hurdle is, like, from around 10,000 dollars a month for most client works. Like, 10,000 to 20,000 dollars a month is where most people get stuck. And the reason they get stuck is because they were able to acquire some good clients, they were able to, you know, get things going well, but that's, like, the danger zone. Because you could —  it feels nice in that zone, you're like, “10, 20, not bad, not bad, this is good. I'm making more money than I could have ever made.” Little bit of complacency in there, but the real reason why people get complacent is they’re — because they don't know how to get out of there. So they just say, “You know what, I'm OK. I'm all right here.” But in reality, most people aren't all right. And so what I found is that the reason they don't get out of there is because they lack infrastructure to be able to do the campaigns in a repeatable way. If you're stuck in that range, more than likely — based on what I've talked to so many of these individuals — their campaigns kind of look like, you know, just throwing stuff at the wall, right? Like, we start a campaign and it's different every single time. You know, it's always different. And so what I do is I help them standardize that process and to produce a predictable outcome. Because without systems, it's very difficult to produce a predictable outcome. It's like McDonald's, right? Go to McDonald's, if it was this kind of freewheeling whatever — I mean, not saying McDonald's is good either, by the way, but at least, you know, there's some sort of procedure in place to try to produce a predictable product at the end.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

16:49

Yeah, I have a couple of kind of quick thoughts and then questions. Like, I think that at times, like, SEO agencies themselves get a bad rap and, like, rightfully so sometimes, but then oftentimes maybe, like, the client had, like, the wrong expectations about the channel, which can, like, often be the case. It does take quite a bit of time to build an organic search channel, but coming back to, like, the work that the agencies are actually doing, it always shocks me, like, the just rookie mistakes I will see agencies make in their client work — like, for example, not having, like, a sitemap, which is, like, one of the most obvious things that you could put in place. I also think that, like, the bar for hiring, like, a good or fantastic agency is often, like, quite high. I’ve found that, like, for the best agencies or, like, people that I know that actually are doing a fantastic job, they tend to start at, like, $10,000 a month for, like, a single client. Am I, like, wrong in that? Like, are there SEO agencies that charge below that and still do, like, a fantastic job?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

17:48

Yeah, I mean, there's — that would be more on a national level type of pricing. There are local campaigns that go to that level, but usually, it's going to be very vertical-dependent. So a personal injury lawyer absolutely can get up to that level: like, no problem. But when you start to get into these more really localized industries — like, you take a local florist. There's no local florists that are going to be paying 10 grand a month. That just ain't happening. So unless they're a franchise model, then there's opportunity there. Like if they have multiple locations, they need to hit multiple cities, then certainly that retainer size can grow. But if it's a singular location, a single auto shop, a single barber, a single — there, you know, you're gonna be looking sub-5,000 a month, likely more sub-2,500 a month in that range. I do recommend a lot of the people I work with, like, you should raise your price. Most people are undercharging — just the nature of business. Most people undercharge for the value that they bring. It's very difficult to get over that hurdle, but there is a situation when it comes to SEO services where you can price yourself out of the market. So you gotta kind of find the range there.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

18:52

And I've always done, like — I've never described it as national SEO, but, like, national SEO, I guess that's where, like, kind of my network and where I've spent my time in my career is. And I guess I totally don't understand or haven't spent as much time in, like, the small business type SEO work or agency work. And this is just, like, a curiosity question. Like, is it, like, awful working with, like, a florist shop? Like, it sounds to me, like, awful, like, to have them as a client. Like, are they, like, incredibly frustrating to deal with?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

19:21

There is a correlation between paying less money and being more difficult. There is a correlation there sometimes, not all the time. I personally have found that when I grew my prices, the quality of clientele got better, just the nature of it. So just to put it in perspective, the first client I ever got, this was in 2013, was a Santa Monica photographer, OK? And you're not gonna believe how much I charged. This disturbs a lot of people when I tell them: $100 per month I charged for SEO. So you wanna talk about undervaluing yourself. At that point for me, I was charging $100 per month, and I was working, like, some ungodly amount of time — because it was the only campaign I had, so I was, like, really going all in. To put it nicely, this guy was a nightmare. So I learned, I was like, “OK, I can't charge $100 a month.” I learned that very quickly. So eventually I got the courage to start increasing prices. So eventually it was, like, 500 bucks a month, and I was working with a lot of local businesses. And eventually a thousand, then 5,000, then 10,000, as you mentioned, which is the range that I tend to be in. But yeah, we're working with humans. Some humans are difficult to work with. Some are not. I would say the thing that really determines whether they're going to be a difficult client is usually even before they become a client. I've gotten better at this, and I've helped other people get better at this to identify those warning signs. And so in the discovery call, I'm asking very specific questions to see: “How many SEO companies have you worked with?” It's a very simple question. But when you tell me you've worked with 10 SEO companies and they've all been terrible, what are you telling me? You're telling me that I'm also gonna be terrible before we've even started, right? They've already made that decision. They've already decided that every company — you keep jumping from one agency to the next, eventually you gotta look yourself in the mirror and say, “Well, maybe I'm the problem in this scenario and not so much the 10 agencies.” Now, of course, eight out of those 10 agencies could have been terrible, but is it likely that 10 out of 10 were bad? That's a pretty low probability in my opinion. For me, it's about attacking those warning signs before they become a client, and there's obvious stuff. Like, if they're on their last dollar and they're trying to make SEO their hope to save their business, you don't wanna be in a scenario like that. Like, what I look for is I wanna work with local — like, I'll just give you a realistic example. Like, we have a business that's in the fire protection space. OK, they do fire protection for other businesses — kitchens, you know, whatever. They've been around for 50 years, OK? Fifty years in business. Think about how many cycles they've been through, economic cycles; they've been through it all, and they're still here. That's the type of business I like to work with. Because I know for sure that they're gonna continue to pay their bills, they've been around, they've worked with a lot of vendors. And you also have to like the person. That's the other part.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

22:02

I talk to a lot of agencies that are on, like, the startup side of things or, like, the tech side of things — like, those are their customers. And they say something similar, which is that they often want to work with, like, tech companies that are going to succeed regardless of SEO. Like, SEO is just, like, a channel that can help accelerate things, but if it wasn't, like, the business would still be doing well and succeeding versus a company that sees it as, like, a critical unlock to them actually surviving. So that's really interesting you say that on, like, the local SEO side of things, too. But I do really want to talk about your book. So “The SEO Entrepreneur”: tell me about it. Like, what inspired you, and then what's in it and how do people read it?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

22:40

I realized that there was a void in the market. Like, if you go and look on Amazon, you won't find a lot of books about building an SEO business. Funny thing is I did a blog post that I purchased every single SEO book on Amazon. So I think I got 26 books. And so you can see my big stupid picture of me holding the books. But I had all 26 books, and I read all of them. So I, like, blocked out a time, and I literally read every single book. And this is a part of, you know, visual documentation — and actually really using a product when you go to review it is really, really good for your content. So if you go and look up, you know, “best SEO books,” I'm probably at the top there somewhere. When I went through all of those, there was really only about— I wanna say, like, one book that talked a little bit about the business side of SEO, but not, like, specifically client SEO. And, like, I have a massive amount of experience in that. So I was like, “You know what, here's my opportunity because no one else has done it, so I'm gonna do it.” And it's also more of, like, from a marketing perspective. I know the benefits of the book, right? So when you write a book, your perceived value tends to climb, even though anyone can be a self-publisher and write their own book and publish it on Amazon. I didn't want to do it just like, “Hey, here's a Kindle and good luck.” I want it to be like a legit thing. We go through the process, it's pretty intense, but actually having a physical book, right? That's really important. But for me, as people who watch this will likely experience, I'm actually giving the book away for free. So when I launch on October 2nd, they just have to pay for shipping. They get the book for free. And then what will happen, as once again, they will experience when they get the book is they'll get hit with an offer to join my training. So I've basically done it as a front end offer to demonstrate value. And then if I do a good job there, they'll want to join my training. That's my big hidden secret here. But the book itself, like, what's inside, is really from the perspective of someone who — if I was myself starting again, what advice would I give myself? That's basically it. I mean, someone who's more of a beginner-level entrepreneur, someone maybe who — maybe does already have some SEO clients, but they just don't, there's not a whole lot of infrastructure going on. So the purpose is, like, I'm trying to show someone from end to end how to get this business —  like, build a real SEO business, not a, you know, I'm a freelancer who takes on clients here and there — like, a real operation. And so I'm walking through that entire process, how to pick the niche, you know, everything that goes into that from end to end, all the way up until the actual fulfillment of the service as well. I don't — funny thing is in the book, the end of the book, I get into a little bit of SEO, some basic fulfillment, but that's not really the purpose of the book. The book is about the business side of starting a client SEO business.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

Yeah, we had a guest on a couple of weeks ago that built, like, a fairly large furniture review site, and they were actually, like, mailing couches to their writers to fully review them. I do want to get, like, tactical here into what you're seeing and working in SEO right now, maybe what's not working. But first, like, I know that you've got, like, some pretty thoughtful processes around creating content. And people always ask me, like, what is a fantastic piece of content? And so I guess my first question to you there is, like, what is a fantastic piece of content? And, like, what does, like, the correct content creation process look like?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

25:51

It changes depending on what channel. So in the case of SEO, what I would consider fantastic content is different than what I would consider fantastic content on Twitter or X, if you want to call it that, or on LinkedIn even, right, or even on YouTube. So definitely channel-dependent. And so, but in the case of SEO, for me, the number one thing that content must do above all else is satisfy the intent of the keyword. That is the thing that must occur. If that does not occur, you're not going to be there for very long. What I mean by that is, so when you identify a keyword — we could take any example here. Let's say “best SEO books.” OK? You identify that keyword, “best SEO books.” What you have to do is you — first way that I do is I go into Google and I see what's already ranking. OK, I want to see what do we have here, and what is the general trend, general commonalities of the pages that are ranking. Typically, just because I've lost count of how many times I've done this, when you have “best” in the actual query, you're typically going to see list posts — just the nature of it, OK? You look up any query, you just add “best” to it, you're likely gonna see a large amount of list posts in there. So for me, when I was doing my research for that one keyword, I said, “OK, we’ve — I see many list posts here, so what do I do now, now that I know how to satisfy the intent, what can I create that's gonna be different and better than what's currently ranking?” So in this example, I looked at all the results, and it was what I would expect. They were just, like, “these are the best SEO books.” And really the lists were just based on which had the most Amazon reviews. I know I see a weakness in the SERP. I say, “OK, perfect. No one's actually done a real review.” So I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna do a real review for these books. So, like, if you were to look at the top five, what would be one thing you'd be like, “Whoa, I wanna click on that, that's different,” right? So you're trying to balance between satisfying the intent but also being different at the same time so that you can stand out in the SERP, which then allows you to generate CTR. So for me, that's why I did — I think the exact title is, like, “I Read 26 of the Best Books on, SEO Books on Amazon, Here's the Top Five.” I'm fortunate because I've done a lot on YouTube, so I've pulled a lot of my YouTube experience into Google SEO, and with YouTube — not to get sidetracked here — but with YouTube it does, it is applicable here, because on YouTube the most important thing is that you get CTR. CTR is critical. If no one clicks on your videos, doesn't matter how good your videos are, right? So when — YouTube's algorithm, its number one thing that it's looking at is that initial click. How many people are clicking on your video? And then when they get to the video, how — what's the length of time that people are actually watching this video? What are the user signals on this video? Are they liking it, are they leaving comments, are they sharing it? Those metrics are really important, and if the metrics are good, then YouTube will show it to more people, and obviously your views will climb. Google's a little bit different in that regard, but I still take a lot of those principles. So CTR to me is really, really important. But the other part of it is once you actually get, you know, someone to your page, the content needs to be good. Like, people try to manipulate Google as much as possible, but at the end of the day, like, I'm thinking about “How can I create something that's going to have a moat?” I want to see, like, “If I create this, is it going to be difficult for someone to beat me?” And if the answer is like, “Ohh no, they can just go to ChatGPT and produce a little piece of content and beat me,” then I shouldn't expect to be there for very long. But I know me going and investing my money to buy 26 books and actually invest my time to actually read those books, how many people are willing to do that? Not a ton, right? Not a ton. So I'm looking for ways to really find that differentiator, that moat, to make it difficult to move me out of my position. And there's always someone that will try to outdo you, but that's good. Like, that means we're just raising, we're raising the bar, right? You keep raising the bar, raising the bar. That's a good thing. Content keeps getting better. Keep in mind, though, in the SEO space, it's very competitive. Like, content — everyone in the SEO space knows how to create great content. That's just how it is. But you take these same principles and you apply them for a St. Louis HVAC business, you will destroy every competitor. Like, it is so easy. That's the way that my mind goes when I think about it.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking) 

29:58

Well, you actually brought me to a question I was going to ask on competition. Like, so two-parter here, you know, you and I have both been doing SEO for maybe, let's call it a little over 10 years. Has SEO, in your opinion, gotten more competitive as a channel since you first started? And then the second, follow-up question is, is local SEO just incredibly easy?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

30:15

Yeah, so the first part of the question, as far as competition, I think in some ways, yes, in some ways, no. In some ways, the biggest challenge is just established authorities that have so much compounded authority that you're just playing catch up with them. So to narrow those gaps between you and them is very difficult, and it requires a massive bankroll. And so, like, you could technically beat anyone in SEO, right? You could technically beat Amazon, you could beat any of these monsters, but the only way to do it is you would need enough money, and you would need enough time. OK? And so if you had maybe 2,000 years to try to beat Amazon, and you had millions of dollars, maybe you could do i; it would just take a very long time. So that's just not a good path to go, obviously. So I think that's the biggest challenge, is on a national level in particular. There's just a lot of very, very strong websites. There's ways to beat those very strong websites, by the way, and there's a couple of tactics you can use. Number one is you get more relevant than them. The way to be a monster is to get real granular. That's the way that I can attack them. So let's say it's — you work in SaaS. So, like, with SaaS: very competitive and across many different verticals in SaaS. But the thing is, a lot of SaaS companies tend to be a little more broad. So the way that I would do it is I would pick one really narrowly focused thing and just dominate that one little sector, and make it so difficult for a large website to beat me. Because the thing with a large website: they're large, and they have a lot of resources that are being spread across that site, right? So if they have, you know, thousands and thousands of pages, those thousands and thousands of pages need to be serviced all the time. And so that makes it difficult for them to go very, very deep, right? They’ve got to go a little bit wider. So to beat them, is I go, I go super deep — like, super, super deep. So that's just kind of a side note on the national level. That's the way that I attack that part of it. But as I mentioned, the biggest part is the links, the link-building side, because unfortunately that's still one of the biggest variables in Google is just the quality and quantity of links that are hitting the site. It's just a fact. Now on the local side, there's competition. Yeah, it depends on what industry you're going in. So, like, I'll tell you the most competitive ones” personal injury’s probably top of the list, and it is very competitive. Just to put it in perspective, I know some personal injury lawyers that spend $80,000 a month on SEO, OK? So that's a lot of investment in SEO. And so if you're spending a thousand bucks and they're spending $80,000, it's gonna be hard to beat them. Even if they're doing a terrible job — like, even if they're not doing good SEO, and they're just buying a ton of links and creating a ton of content, like, that velocity is so hard to beat. So personal injury is very high. Anything in the medical space: dentists, healthcare — that stuff's all very competitive. And then as you go down the list, it starts to get pretty competitive with roofers and HVAC. Any home services are pretty competitive. After that, though, it gets pretty easy for the most part. As long as you have a good strategy in place, as long as the business can actually generate reviews and they're a good business, then it's a pretty easy job. It gets challenging — the local game isn't so much about the strategy, it's more about the business that you're working with. And if the business that you're working with isn't a good business and they don't treat their clients well and they can't generate reviews — ranking in the local pack is very difficult if you can't generate reviews. It is — not to get too deep into like local pack ranking variables.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

33:41

Let's do it. Local pack variables. Break it down for me.

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

33:45

Yeah. So like in the local pack, there are basically three things that really matter. Number one, above all else, it's like by a long shot, is your location. I know it seems really, like, ridiculous, but you wouldn't believe how many people — like, I'll just give you in the case of St. Louis, all right? Let's say you're a St. Louis personal injury lawyer, you want to rank for “St. Louis personal injury lawyer” in the local pack, but you have an address in Baldwin. You are not gonna rank there. It is just not gonna happen. So back in the day, this is probably like five-ish years ago, Google wasn't as good at this, so you could capture a lot of different cities. So you could capture the main city, you'd capture some surrounding cities, and you could keep going out pretty far. If you have enough authority, you could do it. It's gotten so granular now though, that if you don't have a specific address in the city you're going after, it's hard to rank there. Even if it's a small city — like, if I wanted to rank for “Baldwin personal injury lawyers,” a tiny little city, I would need to have an address in Baldwin to really dominate there. So that's the first thing. Second thing is in a local pack, like, unfortunately, manipulative strategies still work really well. And one of them is just having a keyword-rich business name. It's stupid how well it works. I mean, it's, like, I actually — I tested this — funny thing is, this is actually from my client that's in the fire protection space. And I just wanted to, like, prove how ridiculous this is. So I created a domain that's an exact match of his keyword. So you have FireProtectionServicesHisCity.com, OK? And I actually went and registered a business in his city as a fire protection business. I put up my local, you know, my local Google business listing, and I was ranking in two weeks — like, number two. Zero reviews, no reviews, not even a real business, and I was there. Just because on the local level, relevance is just so critical. It's so, so critical. The location relevance, the domain-level relevance is big. But then outside of that, let's say domain relevance isn't a factor even though it is — the next most important thing are reviews, coming back to what we were talking about. Reviews are critical, so, so critical. So when you're working with a business that, A, doesn't have reviews, and, B, struggles to generate them, it's gonna be hard, right? It's just gonna be difficult. So those things, that's where I focus on the local pack. Then the, I would say third or fourth most important is just the traditional SEO signals. Like, what you would do on the national level, those are important as well. But in the local pack, those first two are really king when it comes to it.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

36:07

I'm learning a lot on this episode. I mean it when I say I've spent, like, almost no time in the local SEO space. And so this has been super interesting for me. So I appreciate you breaking that down for us. And you mentioned backlinks. For, on the local side in particular, I would think it would be very hard to build a large number of backlinks for, like, a personal injury lawyer in Charleston. First question is, you said backlinks are pretty important still in 2023 or maybe even more important. How do you, like, as a local SEO build backlinks? Is it just buying links? Is that like the only way to do it?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

36:38

I'm happy you asked this. It's one of my favorite questions. I get this question probably more than any other question in my training because a lot of people who work in local, it's a serious problem, right? How do you get a solo plumber to generate links? Right, in a natural way, in a legitimate way, not just you go and you buy them. So most people just go and buy them. I'll be honest, that is the strategy for most people: they just go and buy them. But that's a real problem. And it's not the buying of the links that's the problem; it's the strategy that is neglected behind buying the links. And so what people will do is they will build out the site, they'll build out their service pages — we'll continue with the personal injury example, a St. Louis personal injury lawyer, and that's their dedicated landing page, OK, for that. And then they slam that page with links, OK? Well, the problem with that, and this is applicable not just at local, but also national, which we can talk about: you play a dangerous game when you link to pages that don't deserve links. It's a very, very dangerous game to play. Not saying it doesn't work, it certainly does work, but you're just elevating your risk substantially. So in the case of local, when you drive links to a lead generation page that does not have any linkable qualities, you're kind of raising your hand and saying, we are building links artificially. It's basically the ultimate signal: “Hey, Google, here we go. This is what we're doing.” And so on the national level, like, with an e-commerce website, the example there is driving links to your category page. Just slamming a category page with links — because why is a category page getting links? Like, who would link to a category page? Like, no one really does that. Like, in the real world, naturally, no one does that. So that's another example. The beauty of — and SaaS would be the other example here that we were talking about. The beauty of SaaS, which is one thing I really love when I work on SaaS projects, is, like, SaaS companies are inherently linkable, right? So you look at, like, Semrush, you look at Ahrefs — they just get linked so easily because people just love linking to tools and things like that. So the reason I'm saying that is because what I think about on the local level, is I start to think about what are some assets that we can create that are linkable for a local business, right? And that's not — it's not an easy task, but believe it or not, when you really, like, if you sit down for a second, you start to think about what would be something that someone would want to link to, it actually gets pretty easy in a lot of scenarios. So, like, in the case of personal injury, let's say it's my St. Louis personal injury lawyer, I can start thinking about, OK, what are some statistics in St. Louis that are specific to his industry? OK, so how many car accidents are there in downtown St. Louis every March? I start to think about that, OK? And I can start to think about what are these different ideas that — they're not necessarily going to push my ideal client deeper into the funnel. They're not gonna be generating leads. But I'm building them because, A, they build the proper topic authority on the local level, and, B, they can be used as the catalyst to drive links to those pages. And then when Google sees links are going to those pages, even if you buy them or you do outreach, doesn't make a difference, because what's happening is you're driving links to pages that actually deserve links, right? And so I've tested this so thoroughly, it's not even funny, that you don't even need to hit your service pages to rank service pages. All you need to do is hit the linkable assets to raise site authority, and when you raise site authority, and you obviously have the proper internal linking, those service pages will raise, they will rise. And so, you know, the famous quote “A rising tide will lift all ships.” That's the way I view it, right? And I’ve done — I've tested so many times. On national level too. Like, a funny thing is my wife has a blog, and I let her do her own thing and she's like, “You know what, I need some help.” So I'll help you out. OK, so she had all this blog content about fall outfits. And they were little thin posts. You know, it was like, OK, here's one fall outfit, here's, you know, the one outfit. And then she would create another blog post. It was about another fall outfit. I was like, “OK, too thin. We got to get, we got to build like a monstrosity kind of asset that specifically goes after fall outfits. So I took all of her fall outfits posts and I put them basically into one monstrosity that would be an ultimate fall out — like, here's, I don't know how many it was, 40 fall outfits, basically. I mean, I created a super long guide, and then what I did is once that guide was created, I had created something that was very linkable. So then I started just driving links, just hitting that page with links. And what happened, which I expected to happen, was all of the other pages that we had built, even though they didn't have links, rankings started to climb. Rankings started to climb across all those other pages, even though I wasn't even building links to those pages. I was just building links to that one page. That was, like, 95% of our link building efforts to that one page. And so people really over — like, they underestimate how much you can do just with two, three linkable assets. You don't even need a ton. You just need a couple that are really good, that really, you can just — you can ride that asset for a long time.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

41:28

Yeah, I agree with you. Internal linking is so important when it comes to, like, shifting that page authority or even just showing Google which pages you care about on your site. I've seen some, like, crazy internal tools over my career built by, like, some of, like, the large travel brands that will essentially, like, predict and highlight, like, how page authority is shifting through your site with your internal link strategies. And then will give you predicted changes in terms of how adding an internal link from one page to the next will actually change the rankings for that page. So I've seen, like, companies go incredibly deep on, like, shifting page authority. I think it's so important to do in my opinion. And it sounds like you agree. 

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Lighting Question Round:

Nate Matherson (Speaking)

42:09

But this has been such an awesome episode. If it's OK with you, I've got, like, five or six, like, rapid fire questions I wanna hit you with before we wrap it up.

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

42:17

Keep it going.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

42:18

All right, so my first question is on SGE. I get asked about it all the time. I'm sure you do, too. Like, what do you think?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

42:24

I'm in the camp of, like, I take SEO one day at a time. That's it. I don't get in the weeds of what's gonna happen or I start freaking out about algorithm updates. And I just don't play that game anymore. I just continue to execute, I see what's working in the field, and I make adjustments.
That's it. Like, I have no interest in what John Mueller said or what Google said or trying to theorize about various things. I just execute, I see what happens, and I make adjustments. So for me, I'm not afraid of it personally, because I've already been — like you, Nate, you've already been through cycles, right? You've been through so many cycles already. You know what to expect. So Google has already been stealing clicks for a long time. This is no new phenomenon that's going on. I mean, when featured snippets came into play, they stole a massive amount of traffic from people. That really wrecked a lot of people. And there’s also instant answers. Instant answers have been here for a long time. I mean, you search, “what time is it in St. Louis?” Like, there's no clicking going on there. Like, nothing is happening. So this is nothing new. And so for me, it's just, adapt and try to modify my strategy based on whatever's happening. So if that's the case, and Google's going to use AI to deliver answers, my solution is I'll avoid keywords where it's easy for AI to dominate them. So I'm not gonna go after keywords where AI's just gonna easily be able to answer a question, right? So it's just a waste of time. The point of doing SEO is to get clicks to your website.
That's it.
That's all we're trying to do. So if you're gonna go after a keyword “what time is it in St. Louis,” you're wasting your time. It's just, like, why even do it? Like, even if you could rank, what would be the reason? But at the same time, I think it's hilarious when I see, like, some, I’ve seen some SEO guys, they're like, “Oh, this is how you rank in SGE.” And I'm like, “You think you know how to rank in SGE and Google doesn't even know how the AI works to select those results. So you think you know?” It's just ridiculous.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

44:18

Yeah, I actually saw, like, an MVP of a product to help you rank in SGE. It was actually an internal tool that like this portfolio of websites is built. And I thought it was interesting, but it's way too early to know if that's going to work or not.

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

44:33

Yes, to say the least.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

44:35

So on this podcast, we don't actually recommend buying backlinks, but I know a lot of people do. And so what does a backlink cost? Like, how much should I be spending on a backlink?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

44:45

Oh man. So that really does depend if you're doing it internally or you're buying them from a vendor. I'll tell you — I'll start with the low end of this, OK, which is doing it internally. So we have people in the — we actually just had this conversation in my academy. One of the members, he is getting links for about $67. And so, but he's built his own internal systems. He's got his own outreach systems. He's a little diabolical because one thing that he does is he goes and goes to the vendors and gets links from them, and then he sees their opportunities and then he just reaches out to them directly. So, I mean, you know, that's business, right? So the thing is with the vendors — like, I won't name any vendors here, but you're looking at, like, 300 bucks per link for a good link, OK, from a vendor. The reason you pay a premium on that is because you're paying for their systems. You're paying for the relationships, you're paying for the work that they already did. So the way that I like to think about it is, like, when you buy a franchise, you're paying an upfront investment, you're paying because they've already built the systems for you, and you don't have to build those systems for you. That's with the link vendors as well. You're paying for the systems and their connections.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

45:59

One more on buying backlinks, and again, to our listeners, we don't recommend buying them, but a lot of people do. Would you want to buy, like, permanent backlinks or, like, a rented backlink?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

46:10

Always permanent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the only time you'd want to do rented is if you're doing some more gray hat or black hat stuff. But yeah, if you're going for a more white hat process, then definitely permanent. Most vendors are going to be permanent. I mean, even natural links drop, right? So, you know, paid links will drop from time to time, but yeah, definitely permanent for sure.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

46:33

So I have two final questions, we'll make them really quick, because a lot of our listeners are thinking about hiring an SEO agency at some point in their life cycle, even if they've got an in-house team. What's, like, the number one question to ask an SEO agency before you hire them?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

46:46

Number one question, I guess, would be to talk about what their process looks like. I think it's the process that matters the most. I think one of the worst questions, one of the worst qualifiers that I see companies try to disqualify an agency for is, like, how big are you? That's the dumbest, it's just the dumbest question because there's a lot of SEO guys. One very good SEO guy is the equivalent of one big dumb agency. Because with a lot of, I'm not calling out any agencies, but —

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

47:15

You can call them out, go for it.

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

47:17

Yeah, I'll just explain, I'll just explain kind of what their process looks like, OK? I'm talking the, some of the big boys. They sign on a client, and when they're closing that deal, you're talking to the big dog, you're talking to the main SEO guy, you're talking to the guy who knows his stuff. As soon as they become a client, though, what happens is you get assigned to a entry-level person who is getting paid $40,000 a year. And it's their first year, maybe first month ever doing SEO. That's how most agencies work. Not saying all of them, just some that do it that way. I think that's not the best. I would rather hire someone who's exceptionally gifted at their skill instead of just hiring a big agency because you feel like that's gonna be better. It's not. Like, SEO is not based on how much work you're doing. It's about being effective. It's about doing the right work. It's about doing the things that actually produce outcomes. I know so many SEO consultants, individuals, that would crush a team of 30 by themselves easily. Lik, t's not even close. So for me, as far as a qualifier, that's one I think is irrelevant. I think you need to look at, you need to ask some questions about their process. What does their process look like from end to end, right? And if they're, like, sketchy about their strategies, if they say, “Oh, well, it's proprietary,” and “Yeah, we only share—” — nonsense. Nothing's proprietary. Everyone knows what, how to do — like, anyone who does SEO is not afraid to share what their process looks. Everyone has a kind of unique way of doing things. Like, I have my proprietary way of doing certain things that no one else does it the way that I do it. But, like, at a broad level, it's all the same stuff. So for me, I'd be looking more at the process more than anything. And then some other kind of qualifying questions is on the link side, because that's where the biggest dangers lie is on the link building side. So as far as risk, links are the biggest risk variable within an SEO campaign, right? Because if you do it wrong, you can get wrecked. Speaking from personal experience, by the way.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

49:11

For all our listeners, if you buy links or Google deems you have, like, an unnatural link pattern or you've built links in ways, even if you're not buying them, which appear to be unnatural you can run into issues where your site will get penalized and lose visibility as a result. Last question I have because I loved doing this episode, you've been a fantastic guest I want to know, like, how can we learn more about the Academy and the book? Like, how can people find you?

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

49:35

Yeah,
obviously theseoentrepreneur.com is the best place to get the book because I'm actually going to have a really good offer there. So you will be able to, it will be available on Amazon, but through the website, there's actually going to be the book plus five bonuses as well. So a couple of cool things: Like, one of the bonuses is I basically have a whole database of every niche that you could enter as an agency. So I took, this is pretty insane. I got every single category within the local business profiles and put them into the database, and then we also graded them based on competition level. So, like, personal injury’s, like, avoid, but maybe a barber is one you could explore, right? Like, you could become the SEO expert for barbers. Not saying that's a good idea, but there's they're all there, right? So that's just like one free bonus that I've given; there's four other ones that are really really valuable for someone starting an SEO business. Once again, they're free. And then Gotch SEO Academy, you can just go to gotchseo.com. You can easily find it there. And I have a YouTube channel, too. I think I'm getting close to like 75,000 subs. So I publish videos there usually every week.

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Nate Matherson (Speaking)

50:36

Well, we will make sure to link to all of those different websites in the show notes. So you will get a few different backlinks from us for free because you've been so gracious with your time here today. And then we'll also link to your YouTube channel as well. But Nathan, thank you so much for coming on the Optimize podcast.

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Nathan Gotch (Speaking)

50:52

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
It was a lot of fun.

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50:54

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