Podcast With Nathan Gotch

How AI is Transforming SEO With Nathan Gotch

Show Notes

Unlock the secrets to dominating the SEO landscape in 2024 with Nathan Gotch! 🌟 In this podcast, we delve deep into "SEO in 2024: What You MUST Know" to ensure you're equipped with the latest strategies to rank your website number 1 on Google and other search engines. 🚀

Join Nathan Gotch, co-founder of Rankability and Gotch SEO Academy, as he shares his decade-long journey from blogging about baseball to becoming a renowned SEO expert. Discover what drew Nathan to SEO, how his passion evolved, and the pivotal moments that shaped his career.

This step-by-step guide covers:

• Cutting-edge SEO strategies for 2024
• Practical tips to drive more organic traffic to your site
• Insights into creating compelling content clusters
• Effective internal linking techniques
• The impact of AI advancements on SEO
• How to leverage data-driven link-building strategies

Whether you're a beginner or an advanced user, this podcast provides invaluable insights to help you achieve a #1 ranking and stay ahead of the competition.

Ready to take your SEO game to the next level? Want personalized help to rank number 1? Subscribe now for more industry insights and join our community of successful digital marketers. Keep pushing the boundaries and thrive in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing! 💪

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

00:35 - Nathan Gotch’s Journey from Blogging About Baseball to Becoming an SEO Expert

09:29 - How Running Gotch SEO Academy Changed Nathan’s Perspective on SEO Education and the Skills an SEO Needs to Succeed

10:46 - Starting the Academy

14:14 - The Traditional Course Model

19:57 - Can People Still Join the Academy

26:44 - Book - The SEO Entrepreneur

30:18 - How Has Your Approach to SEO Evolved Over the Years

33:45 - How AI Has Changed SEO

37:15 - More Use Cases for AI in SEO

41:46 - Biggest Mistakes While Building an SEO Agency

46:30 - Biggest Learning from This Interview

47:54 - Content-Centric SEO

51:29 - Keyword Research

55:35 - Intent

57:15 - How Does the Process of Content Creation Work for a Commercial Keyword

59:13 - Importance of Comprehensive Content Coverage

1:02:28 - Top 3 Link Building Strategies

1:04:00 - Lesser-Known Technical SEO Tips That Can Have a Significant Impact on Website Performance

1:06:06 - How Did Your YouTube Channel Impact Your Career and Business

1:09:50 - How Do You Decide the Topic and Content for Your YouTube Videos

1:15:03 - Advice for Those Looking to Break into the SEO Industry

1:18:03 - Nathan’s Go-To SEO Tools

1:20:42 - Resources and Books Nathan Recommends for SEOs and Entrepreneurs

1:22:57 - Outro

Transcript

Intro

0:00 welcome to the agency Insider the podcast that takes you behind the scene of digital marketing world I'm your host

0:06 nit kosin CEO page traffic each week I'll be joined by renowned guest speakers industry experts successful

0:12 marketers and digital Pioneers who will share their insights strategies and storage let's get started and unlock the

0:19 secret to thriving in this ever evolving industry

0:25 [Applause]

0:31 [Music] today I have a very special guest with

Nathan Gotch’s Journey from Blogging About Baseball to Becoming an SEO Expert

0:36 me Nathan gosh co-founder of rankability and gch SE Academy Nathan is an SEO

0:42 professional with over a decade of experience leading hundreds of successful campaigns and SEO thought

0:48 leader on LinkedIn and YouTube as well welcome to agency Insider thank you so much for having me

0:54 appreciate it yeah uh Nathan you had a fascinating Journey from blogging about

0:59 baseball to becoming a renowned Su expert can you share what initially Drew you to Su and how your passion evolved

1:06 over time yeah I mean it's it really stemmed from necessity right so um so I was I

1:14 was a senior well actually I was a junior going into my senior year of college and um was just looking for

1:19 different ways to make money online and I I tried literally everything doing paid surveys writing articles like you

1:26 name it I tried it um and I did not make very much money let's just say that much

1:32 and it wasn't until I finally I I found this this program called Web colleagues

1:37 and I don't believe it's still around this is a very long time ago but uh at the time it was $47 47 or $50 or

1:44 something like that and um at that time I was pretty broke so making that

1:51 investment in you know this $50 course uh was like a huge deal I was like oh

1:57 man I don't know if I can do this uh but I actually I pulled the trigger uh and I bought this course and so I went into

2:04 the course and there was all kind of just other different ways of making money online like I don't know you know using bot traffic and just all like to

2:11 generate you know artificial clicks and just a bunch of like really sketchy things but then there was one thing in

2:17 there that actually wasn't sketchy which was uh you could start a blog and uh and

2:22 that kind of stood out to me because of the time I was already like riding a ton at trying to get my political science

2:27 degree so like I was riding these like super long paper so I was like all right I feel like I could like write some

2:32 stuff and try to make money doing this so um but the problem was I really had no skills so just being a college

2:40 student so I'm like what am I gonna blog about you know it's kind of weird um so

2:45 the one thing I did know how to do though is I actually had been playing baseball my entire life and I was on my

2:50 college baseball team and I was a baseball pitcher so I was like well I think maybe I could write about you know

2:57 pitching you know I was might as well do that that's what I actually know how to do and I can do it decently so that's

3:02 what I did I started uh I created this blog called the ultimate pitcher and funny enough uh at the time I didn't

3:09 realize but I actually spelled ultimate wrong so it was olate pit.com so so I I was running with this

3:18 domain for like six months before I realized I'm like I'm like oh I spelled it wrong wow that's awesome so but I

3:24 just stuck with it I kept that same domain um and so I I basically spent the next many months probably two three

3:31 months just writing tons of content about pitching and baseball pitching in general uh and my traffic was basically

3:38 nothing um and I'm like okay this is not I can't keep doing this this isn't going to work so I went back to Google and

3:45 started searching how to get traffic to my blog and that's when I discovered SEO and I was like whoa this is this is

3:52 super cool so I I went I I took what I learned and I deployed it on on this

3:57 blog uh and I it it started work um and back then to be honest it was much

4:03 easier right so like you know SEO was much easier you could just do you you didn't have to be very skilled let's

4:08 just say that much like you could get results a lot easier um and so I was able to get results I started to see

4:14 organic traffic coming in from Google and at that time once again with Google analytics you could actually see

4:19 everything that was coming in you could see where the sources were coming from and everything till they start hiding

4:25 all the data right um and so uh so I I was able to see like wow I'm actually getting getting traffic to my site from

4:31 Google and then soon thereafter I started getting clicks from my AdSense you know ads and then I made my first

4:38 affiliate sale um and I I still remember like where I was when I made that first affiliate sale it was like we were about

4:44 to go to bowling it was like winter of 20 uh 2012 and I looked at my phone and I'm

4:50 like I made commission someone bought something from my website like that was like the most revolutionary thing that

4:56 had ever happened to me cuz I I officially like was I proved that I was able to make money on my own okay um and

5:03 so that was like the initial stages so I I basically after that point I just got obsessed with SEO so I I just focused on

5:10 this one blog for a long time but then I was like I just love this this SEO game

5:15 so I just started creating like blog after blog after blog so I had one it

5:20 was undercounter ice makers I did cardio training I did TRX reviews I did Boflex

5:26 reviews I mean the list goes on and I did all these different sites and and I didn't even really do it because I was

5:31 like trying to make a lot of money I was basically just doing it because I wanted to just continually refine my skills and kind of test myself more and more um and

5:39 I just learned so much doing that and then uh in 20 after I had graduated in

5:44 2012 2013 I I worked basically uh really horrible jobs from after I graduate up

5:51 until 2013 so I was working these like security jobs and I was just working nonstop um trying and I would try to do

5:58 my SEO stuff on the side okay and then um I always say fortunately which is not

6:03 necessarily fortunate for a lot of people but for me looking in hindsight it was actually a great thing that happened was uh in 203 end of towards

6:10 the end of 2013 I got laid off from the security job that I had been working okay um and so I I had a decision to

6:16 make and I was still living in California and I'm like all right I can try to stay here and get an SEO job or I

6:21 can just pack my stuff up and go to St Louis and try to pursue this this SEO

6:26 thing right um and I I made that decision and I I packed my stuff up didn't have a lot of stuff but enough to

6:32 fill up one car packed it up drove to St Louis to be with my uh now my wife um

6:39 and I applied for every single SEO job that was available in St Louis every

6:45 agency every company that was hiring all of them um and I got one interview one

6:50 interview and I did not get the job so I was like all right well I guess I'm going to have to just try to do this

6:55 myself right so then I I I started just looking uh for ways to get clients and I I stumbled upon a few different

7:02 techniques I started posting every single day I'd wake up I'd go on Craigslist and just respond to every single gig uh that was there uh and then

7:10 I respond to every SEO question on Kora I was doing all kinds of stuff and at the same time I was also building up my

7:16 SEO on got seo.com um so I had already been ranking for you know St Louis SEO

7:21 or um Santa Monica SEO Beverly Hills SEO Glendale SEO and then I started ranking

7:26 for St Louis SEO um and within within about six months I went from basically Z

7:32 to $188,000 a month uh just from all of that combined together um and so I

7:40 learned a lot during that period so uh but that's kind of like the initial stages of you know where I got started and then obviously I've done a lot since

7:46 then but that's kind of Where it All Began so oh that's interesting story so

7:52 you so you so are those blocks still around or no oh no no just no yeah I

8:00 mean the one the uh the ultimate pitcher um I actually sold to a former MLB player uh and he bought it because he

8:07 had his own kind of like pitching brand so he bought it from me so I sold that one off the other ones a few of those

8:14 goty hit with penalties so that was you know back then when I was like going really hard with grayhead SEO and we can

8:19 talk about how that's evolved over time right um but yeah so like I said a lot of those a lot of those blogs like there

8:25 was for example I had uh Boflex reviews HQ and actually this was Boflex reviews

8:32 hq.com that was the name of the domain and this one was killing it I was making a good amount of affiliate commission

8:37 from this because I would just sell all this Blick equipment and then make an affiliate commission uh and I was I was

8:43 really living living large there for a little bit and then all of a sudden I got an email from Boflex and they're like uh by the way you can't use our

8:50 name in your domain and I was like oh didn't know that so so I had to shut

8:56 that one down right and I was like I'm not GNA do it again so uh and so I just had a variety of and then eventually

9:02 what happened is like I started making way more money from client work so I'm like I can't keep pursuing these little

9:07 like affiliate blogs so that's kind of how I transitioned I went from like doing affiliate marketing to doing

9:13 client SEO and I basically just did client SEO from uh 2013 up until

9:19 2016 that was all I did like full-time client work and then 2016 is when I started the academy and obviously we can

9:25 talk about the different things that I've done since that's so uh how has running the G Su Academy changed your

How Running Gotch SEO Academy Changed Nathan’s Perspective on SEO Education and the Skills an SEO Needs to Succeed

9:33 perspective on the Su education and the skill and the skill and the skills new Su needs to succeed I mean over a period

9:40 after agency yeah um you know it's it's kind of funny like I I really I created the

9:47 academy for a few reasons number one obviously is another Revenue Source right let's be honest here I made it because I I had a skill that I could

9:54 monetize and that was the main reason but the other kind of secondary reason was that I knew if I could get all this

10:00 stuff in my head and put it out there that I could actually train my team on

10:05 how to do it right because the way that it was before was like you know and and

10:11 I was just a horrible manager leader during that time I didn't know I like I just didn't know what to do it' be like

10:16 my team members would come and be like uh what are we gonna do today and just be like this kind of like throw stuff at the wall and hope it works so that was

10:23 all my fault um but I learned over time and I'm like okay I need to actually document all this stuff I can't just

10:29 expect someone to know how to do this like I have to document every single little detail uh and that's the only way

10:36 to really scale any of these operations right you have to take everything that you've learned up here and document it

10:41 and create it into a process that people can actually understand um and so that was kind of like my initial objective

Starting the Academy

10:48 with the academy was like obviously another Revenue source so I could diversify outside of agency because at

10:54 that time agency was really hard I mean it was just like I don't this is a you know

11:00 this is a good problem to have but I had a lot of clients and um but that was

11:05 very stressful because the way I had set up the business was not going to be good

11:11 long term right because I just took everyone it didn't matter who they were every business one day I'm working with

11:17 HVAC the next day I'm working with SAS the next day I'm trying to sell blue shoes like it it was just every day was

11:24 like a different type of thing and I know some people like variety but when it comes to scaling a business you don't want that type of variety it gets way

11:31 too difficult to um to scale so I was thinking I was like I need to diversify

11:37 a little bit I like the training side because I already been blogging and doing all this stuff so I was like I'm G

11:42 to try out you know selling my own training so I did that in 2016 I launched it for the first time and um it

11:49 was all text based because I was too afraid to get on video so uh so I did I

11:55 wrote out every single lesson um and let's just say it didn't go super well all right like it was not a good launch

12:02 uh I I didn't make very much money and the people who did sign up totally

12:08 understand why they did this but they're like just refund just give me a refund and I'm like you know what that's fair

12:13 because this is like what is this this is basically a series of blog posts essentially um but some people did stick

12:19 around so I learned my lesson though and the lesson was that I need to do video so that's when I had to get over this

12:26 fear of doing video and I basically from 2016 until 2018 I basically I created one new

12:34 version of the academy and it was like hundreds of videos and at the time I had no clue how to do video so the videos

12:41 after I had done I'm like these are actually really terrible so I need to I think I need to do this again so I

12:46 literally redid all of them again and uh then I was like okay these are getting decent and then I actually did it again

12:54 for a third time I went through all the videos again this I'm talking hundreds of videos so in the span of two years I

13:00 I created probably you know 300 videos uh just in the academy and it was

13:06 basically just kind of making them better each time um and then I basically ran the academy using a kind of closed

13:12 and open enrollment model uh from 2016 until 2021 and it was basically like I'd

13:17 open it up for a week and then I'd close it and then open up for a week and then I'd close it um and that worked pretty

13:24 well like it took me a while but after I think in 2020 I had my first like six

13:29 figure you know like open um enrollment six figures in one week right and I was

13:36 like yeah this is pretty cool but the downside of is is like an extremely stressful type of business model uh

13:42 because what would happen is I would I'd open it up and then it'd be this stress for a week of like am I going to make

13:49 money even though like I was pretty sure I was going to like I knew the model at that point it still was like always

13:56 highly stressful because funny enough it's about 8 % of the sales would come on the last two days right so you know

14:03 the first couple of days you get a couple sales here and there but then it's those last two days were like you know sales with Skyrocket just because

14:10 of urgency and scarcity um and so then you know I kind of got burned out doing

The Traditional Course Model

14:17 that and I I fortunately met my uh my now partner um and we decided to rebuild the academy from the ground up uh with a

14:25 completely different model altogether uh and this kind of stemmed from kind of one uh big piece of uh that that I I had

14:32 been noticing which was people just weren't going through the training and that really bothered me a lot because uh

14:40 like the I this statistic floats around but it's basically like they say between eight and 10% course completion rates uh

14:47 is the industry standard right eight to 10% so you know we're talking like you know only 10% of people actually finish

14:54 a course that they sign up for um and I went so when I found that that statistic

14:59 I went and looked at my data and mine was a little bit better than that but not much like mine was probably like 18

15:05 19% course completion rate and I was like what I couldn't believe it I thought for sure like it's gonna be 90%

15:12 right of course and then I looked like what people aren't even like they're not even watching anything like couldn't

15:18 believe it um and so of course instead of looking outward I I I'm someone who

15:23 tries to look Inward and see like what okay what can I do to try to resolve this issue

15:29 and what I realized is that like it's the way that courses were set up that

15:34 that is the problem right and the traditional course model is basically this you buy a course uh that

15:43 person gets a dopamine rush because they bought a course because they feel like they're achieving something right they

15:50 you know they it it goes into some little area on their on their uh bookmark Tab and it collects dust and

15:57 they never actually go through through it because what happened is they already got the reward by making the investment

16:04 and but they but we know that that doesn't actually produce any outcomes right just buying the course doesn't fix

16:09 your problems right so so what I realized is like I need a mechanism when

16:15 someone invests in the course that a they care more to want to go through it

16:20 uh and B they have a a level of accountability uh that would get them to

16:27 want to go through it right um and so two things that I did number one uh with the help of my business

16:33 partner uh raised the prices raised the investment significantly like a lot more

16:39 uh because we we we have this kind of saying it's like when you invest more you care more and it this has been

16:48 proven in our program at least that people who invest more care more it's just a fact I mean you know when you get

16:54 like free Swag like you're like ah thank you right here send it to Goodwill like

17:00 you just don't care about it right and but when you pay when you like if you bought a

17:06 $75,000 car you're GNA be like let's take it to the car wash every week right

17:11 like you're gonna treat it a little bit differently than you would some beater that you bought from some used car lot

17:17 right like it it's just your your mentality and funny enough there's some psychology behind this around as well

17:23 which is when people invest more in something it actually changes their perception of the quity of that thing so

17:31 there's actually been lots of studies on this where they've they've done this uh to to test it but the main point is that

17:37 price changes perception yes uh significantly so that was one thing we

17:43 we changed the investment uh we change the way that people could enroll so they have to actually apply and then they have to go on a sales call and there's

17:49 all this kind of enrollment uh process um and then obviously I didn't just

17:54 increase the price without making it better so what I did is I I once again for the I think fifth or sixth time I

18:01 rebuilt the program from scratch uh so I did that again but then what I also did

18:06 is I added the weekly coaching so I do uh coaching every Tuesday and Thursday

18:11 in the program and this I believe is the glue I truly believe it's the glue for

18:17 everything um because you know we get 30 40 people on these calls and um I've

18:24 done I think I'm going up maybe on 320 or so of these calls

18:30 um so I've done a lot but they make a such a significant difference because of the sole reason that when someone goes

18:36 through the training and they hit a roadblock they're not alone right because what happens in a normal course

18:42 environment is you go through a roadblock and you're like whoa where do I go like do I go to this like Facebook

18:48 group where no one is even here or like do I what do I do in our training program when you have an issue you know

18:54 on Tuesday or Thursday you can jump on a call get your question answered and you can keep moving right and so in my

19:01 opinion that's what's been the biggest you know change in all this and and the difference has been Monumental as far as

19:08 uh student results as far as obviously the growth of our business like everything has been better because we

19:13 just focused more on like how do we help them more I didn't focus more on like how do I make more money I said how do I

19:20 what can I do like what what pieces can I put yeah what can I put in into place

19:25 to help them get the result easier and faster and better so um and that's kind of how I've RI like

19:31 my my mind has changed so much about entrepreneurship over the years and that's kind of like one of the biggest things is okay when you when your

19:37 business is like plateauing it's easy to be like how do we make more money how do we get more leads how do we you start to think like

19:44 that but it's actually like wait a second how do I help people more how do I how do I help people more if you start

19:49 there then it actually all that stuff just happens so yeah those are words

19:55 right right right so so uh so still is a uh people now still needs to complete

Can People Still Join the Academy

20:01 the course or is there no course uh you're asking if people can get into the course still no no uh

20:08 because you said there are 20% people previously completed the course with this the

20:13 percentages yeah so the percentage is now about 80% so yeah so it's it's about 80%

20:19 course completion rate um and and keep in mind like we're we're not letting everyone into the program right we're

20:26 very selective with who we let in so like by by doing by being restrictive

20:31 about who can come in we increase our odds of success that they go through right and this is the same with like

20:38 agency work like when I started my agency I brought everyone in right and even if they weren't a good fit which

20:44 then actually made it worse for me because it made it more difficult to get results what like and then when I

20:49 switched that on the agency side it basically only took on clients where I knew it was like almost guaranteed that

20:56 I could get them the result right because that's what I'm thinking about is like I I want to make sure it's a perfect fit for us because if it is then

21:02 you know that that makes everyone's life a lot better right so yeah makes sense

21:08 so so uh these are uh most of these your academy uh enrollments are mostly from

21:16 the Su agency guys or suos I'm sure right uh yeah so it's largely agency uh

21:24 people so anyone anyone that's really doing client SEO essentially so that could be agencies Freelancers

21:31 Consultants uh that seems to be our number one just because um the need is is is there right you

21:39 need to get a client results like you need to get it now and also like um I've just I've talked to hundreds and

21:45 hundreds and hundreds of people doing client SEO and uh there's I know all the

21:51 problems that they have like sure you know uh number one is

21:57 getting consistent results for the clients right that's that's a very serious challenge that a lot of people

22:02 have uh number two is not just getting consistent as your results but how do you do it in a scalable way right so

22:10 like you can know the strategies you can know the techniques but how do you do it in a way that you can actually like go

22:15 from $10,000 a month to $50,000 a month and you can actually make that transition uh and truthfully most most

22:23 people I talk to sadly get stuck in between1 and $30,000 a month month when

22:28 it comes to agency work uh that's like I call that the death zone because um

22:34 because it's like it's it's a weird Revenue number because like it's a lot of money for a lot of people right like

22:40 when I hit the when I got into that range I was like wow I'm making serious money here like I thought I was pretty cool making that much money uh which is

22:48 actually really bad because what happens is you get complacent right and you start to convince yourself that you like

22:55 being in that range right oh well you know 20,000 is good or 30,000 this is

23:00 good like I'm I'm I can pay my bills I can go on vacation I can do all this good stuff like you're you're good but

23:06 deep down inside the only reason you're staying there is because you don't know how to get out of there and so you start

23:12 to you start to come up with these reasons as as to why you're like well I don't want to scale or oh I don't want

23:17 to hire people or I don't want to you know I like being a you know having my lifestyle business and like at a certain

23:24 point you can only go on so many vacations right doesn't it it loses the it loses the appeal after a while so um

23:33 and I don't know I think most people in my opinion want to grow I think that is definitely something that most people if

23:39 you're doing business like you probably want to grow I think that's a general consensus usually so um so yeah but but

23:48 sometime the benefit of the in I mean your Academy is so somebody who's doing

23:53 an agency running in a silo doesn't even know how much he can achieve I mean he

23:59 he might know he has overachieved Because unless you have a number to compare it's very hard so for me I would

24:04 say okay I 50,000 is good for an agency but I don't know that there are agencies who are making 1 million a year so then

24:11 that comes in then that also enlightens uh when there are peer groups uh member

24:17 around I guess yeah that's a that's a very very good point yeah I mean I

24:22 remember when I was starting out and I heard that someone is making $100,000 a month I was like that's impossible I lit

24:29 like in my mind was so restricted because I had never even fathomed that someone could make that much money and I

24:35 was like there's no way someone can make that much money and then to be honest I hit that number and I was like oh I

24:41 guess I can do that like it you know it's like you it's it's a weird thing but then you every kind of every stage

24:47 you go through you need to find the next level and you have to be around people that have hit that next level I mean I I

24:54 have people in our program uh that I train obviously come and they learn from my training but their agencies make

25:02 enormous amounts of money I mean I won't name names but there's one agency in there that I mean I think they're doing

25:08 20 million a year right wow like so you know it's like there's levels to this

25:14 right there's levels to this but statistically most people never get

25:20 Beyond a million a year uh statistically it's about I think it's about 10% of businesses never get Beyond 1 million a

25:26 year um and so that's why that that number is always shocking to people because on social media it seems that

25:33 everyone has a seven figure business right so that seems to be the case 100%

25:40 of people on social media have seven figure per year businesses but statistically only 10% do um so so yeah

25:49 to be in that 10% you know you have to do things definitely differently and and what you're describing is surrounding

25:55 yourself with people who can kind of expand your mind as to what you believe is possible right um and I I grew up

26:02 with not a lot of money so like me getting to like $3,000 a month I was like if I can get to $3,000 a month I'll

26:09 be the richest person on earth right and like that was my mindset and like I did I got there very fast and I was like

26:14 wait a second I think I can go more than this I don't have to stop here like I could go more um and it's just like you

26:21 kind of just keep breaking these self- living beliefs every time you know it's it's just there's always a new level uh

26:28 is endless basically that's the beauty of Entrepreneurship there's no like income Plateau right so um there's

26:35 market like you can go too far in a market there's other things that can restrict your income but there is no

26:42 there is no ceiling so yeah so let's let's talk about your book I mean after

Book - The SEO Entrepreneur

26:48 your Academy you came up with the book The SEO entrepreneurs start a successful SEO business and turn your

26:54 entrepreneurship dream into reality I seen it as rece Reed great feedback so after this uh uh the academy what

27:02 inspired you to write the book and uh what key takeaways do you hope the uh

27:07 readers can take away from it yeah I mean it was kind of you know with the academy the academy is a big

27:13 investment and it's really focused on like the Fulfillment of SEO like getting doing the work consistently to get a

27:19 consistent result in a scalable way like it's really focused on that okay but I

27:24 found as we started to have these coaching calls and I kept hearing like a lot of these uh people in our program

27:31 were not just struggling with getting results they were struggling with some of the other business related stuff like

27:37 how do I get leads how do I close more deals like it's a lot of these kind of like there's a lot of soft skills and a

27:42 lot of other things that they don't they they didn't feel like they were confident in um and to me I was kind of

27:48 thrown back because like I had that Park I don't want to say it comes naturally to me in some ways but like that did that wasn't the hard part for me really

27:55 was like the closing of the deals and getting leads like that part was pretty easy so I was like well I guess I need

28:01 to I need to F like I need to fill in that Gap right and so um and knowing

28:07 that like a large percentage of people are not ready to make a big investment in training I was like well maybe I'll just write a book and share everything

28:14 that I had learned over the years doing this um and so that that was kind of the

28:19 the Catalyst and really my my hidden motive of doing that is that I know if the book does a good job of helping

28:25 someone that eventually they'd want to bring they'd come into the academy right that that's kind of what it is like so

28:31 if I help them enough who are they going to want to go and learn from it's going to be obviously the academy right so um

28:38 and so that book was like it I think it took us almost about a year and a half

28:43 from end end to finish it um and my partner worked with me as well he was you know helped with the edits and a lot

28:49 of stuff and brought his own unique insights in there as well um but yeah and that was that was the main reason

28:55 and um the other part too is I actually saw a huge Gap in the market so um I

29:01 created uh this blog post this was I don't know what year this was two three years ago um was I I basically purchased

29:08 every single SEO book on Amazon so I purchased um I think it was like 208

29:14 books on SEO and you literally that yeah yeah I purchased all of them yeah and uh

29:21 and so my idea was like I'm going to read every single one of these and I'm going to create a blog post saying what are the best ones so I I literally spent

29:29 like the next two weeks just I all I did was just read these books I just read all of them and uh after I was done with

29:35 that I was like Wow there are no books about building an SEO agency like I was like there there was like there was like

29:41 one and it was a little rough so I was like I think I could definitely deliver more value to kind of fill in this Gap

29:47 here so that's what I did I I just saw a little Gap and I'm like I'm just gonna go after this um and so yeah there's a

29:54 lot of reasons for it but that that was kind of like couple of the things that were in my mind was um you know and

30:00 there's other there's other secondary benefits like when you're an author that increases your Authority which then of

30:06 course um can help marketing and sales much easier so um so there's a lot of

30:11 secondary benefits but it definitely worth it definitely worth it for sure all right all

How Has Your Approach to SEO Evolved Over the Years

30:18 right so you've been in the Su industry for over a decade now uh how has your

30:23 approach to Su evolved since you first started and now especially in

30:28 the uh the uh light of recent AI advancement oh man it's changed the most

30:35 the last two years than probably ever right I mean um I've been through a lot of Cycles like I've been through penguin

30:42 and Panda and exact match domain update and the medic update I mean you go you go down I've been through so many cycles

30:50 um and there's been a lot of disruptive times uh but nothing has been it has been more disruptive to the SEO industry

30:57 than you know chat gbt launching right like that alone has been the craziest like

31:04 when that when that launched and my mind was just blown right I just I I couldn't even fathom what was going on but I

31:11 realized I'm like I have to change so much I have to change so many of my systems and in a good way too by the way

31:18 in a good way um as far as increasing profitability of SEO

31:24 campaigns which is now can be much higher than ever uh because so many of the things that used to be so incredibly

31:30 manual and taxing and time consuming chat gbt can handle a lot of those things um and it basically the way I

31:38 treated it is it's essentially a teammate right uh it's it's a data

31:43 scientist uh it it can you know synthesize data and give you findings from that data uh it can create it can

31:50 code right it can create link Bay for you like of course it can write content I don't typically like to use it for

31:57 that that purpose but for me I really love the just uh brainstorming elements the coding elements the uh even small

32:05 things like creating uh formulas inside of Google Sheets right like right such a simple thing but like create me a Google

32:11 Formula that does X and it does it and you're like wow this is amazing because you could like you couldn't really do

32:18 that before like if you wanted to create some sort of formula in Google Sheets you could try to dig through a bunch of

32:23 like random blog posts and try to find something but you could really never like

32:28 occasionally you'll find the answer but it was really difficult but now it's like I have this problem I need you to

32:35 solve it and it doesn't and um and it's not 100%

32:40 accurate obviously it makes a lot of mistakes but compared to where we were before I mean the speed at which we can

32:47 do things now is just unreal uh even a small example which if you if anyone

32:52 who's been following me um for a while when when chat gbt initially launched I was doing a running a lot of experiments

32:58 and one of the experiments that I ran was I was going to create a piece of linkbait uh and I'm not a coder like I

33:04 can I can understand code pretty well but like I I'm not gonna build something from scratch um but what I did is I

33:11 created a script timer because uh I I do my YouTube videos and every time I write a script I would go to this one script

33:17 timer and I'd see how long the script is and I was like well why don't I just create one so so I went to chat gbt and

33:25 I had it build out this whole all the code for this little tool and then I put it on got SEO and it's been working ever

33:32 since it ranks it does everything that it needs to do and it's just it's just unbelievable because I would have never

33:39 like I would have had to pay a developer you know a couple thousand dollars just to be able to do it and I did it in like an hour you know so and I this is these

How AI Has Changed SEO

33:47 are the things that I you know I show obviously to the people that I train like this is doing client work like you

33:52 can you can pump out two three linkable Assets Now at a speed you could have never done before

33:58 um and so for me like the biggest change is integrating AI into kind of each

34:03 little piece of the SEO process like I have ai integrated in the keyword research process I mean every single

34:09 part has some levels of AI uh integrated into it um the only piece that I've been

34:16 careful not to use too much is on the content side because and this is it just

34:22 really depends right there there's some scenarios where AI content is perfectly suitable uh number one is like it works

34:30 really well with local commercial pages so like if you're you know uh car accident lawyer in Chesterfield Missouri

34:37 okay it can it can do that right and there's ways to make it better too like what you would do is you would you know

34:43 you could like extract uh the topics from a tool like rankability like the NLP then you would upload those to chat

34:49 gbt and say write me an outline based on these NLP and then you'd have it write the content based on that outline and it

34:56 would be highly relevant and then what you would do this is kind of like my my way to make it more unique compared to

35:02 everyone else is I'll actually I'll download the about page from that company so let's say it's a law firm

35:08 I'll download their about page like I'll save it as a PDF on my on my uh on my computer and then I'll upload that PDF

35:15 and say okay now rewrite this based on this company's you know uh unique selling proposition testimonials and all

35:22 this stuff so what it does is it injects all of this uniqueness into it so now it's actually an original page right

35:29 compared to everyone else right so um so that's one kind of use case the other use case uh which I've I've done pretty

35:35 frequently is it's not that the problem is not that

35:40 the AI wrote the content right that's not what the problem is I think people think that like oh if AI writes it it's

35:46 bad that's not the problem that's not the issue Google has Google has an issue with it just not being original

35:52 and if it's not original that's where they get really mad they don't want you to do that um and so you can there's

35:59 some workarounds for this so like for example I have a couple um a couple case studies on got SEO like one of them's

36:05 like are H1 tags a Google ranking factor and another one's like is keyword density a Google ranking Factor both of

36:12 those are written with chat gbt but the reason why they perform well in my opinion um is because everything that's

36:20 in there is unique there's not like the data is unique my the way I collected

36:25 the data was unique because what I did to build that is I I went and actually collected all the data I analyzed uh a

36:31 large set of search results uploaded that data to chat gbt and had it analyze

36:36 the data and synthesize the data and give me findings and basically I just reported on those findings in my case

36:43 study and had chat gbt write that case study right so once again another use

36:49 case we like it's the originality of the content that I think is the Difference Maker uh but if you're just going to go

36:54 into chat you write me a Content about blah and then just you know dump it on your site I mean you shouldn't expect a

37:00 Survivor along do that most of the people end up doing actually right yeah yeah

37:05 unfortunately yeah yes so those are interesting use cases some more use cases for our listeners you can give

37:12 which you are using I get the data I get the link baits so some more yeah yeah so

More Use Cases for AI in SEO

37:17 definitely uh data and linkbait um on the on the link bait side another thing too is just using it to give you link

37:23 bait ideas um so like one of the things I'll do is I'll put in a prompt like uh

37:29 and and by the way this is a very like nuanced kind of piece here in local level because unfortunately a lot of

37:34 people get this wrong uh so there's this idea of like building topic Authority right like everyone understands you got

37:40 to build topic Authority that's the thing okay unfortunately on the local level some people have taken that the

37:45 wrong way and um and so like I'll give you an example I did nod it on a

37:51 financial adviser um and he was in I forgot what city he was in uh some east

37:56 coast city okay and so I was running I was running through the audit and I I found this blog post it was like best

38:03 place to do to do whale watching in this city and I'm like what why is this here

38:09 and I was like so confused why they why a financial advisor would be talking about whale watching I was trying to

38:16 figure it out and I'm like oh I understand why they did this they were trying to build localized relevance

38:22 right they were trying to build that localized relevance so in a way they were they were 50% of the way there

38:28 right they almost got it right they got the localized relevance but they forgot that you need to have the the domain

38:34 expertise relevance not whale watching so like so you have to have both of

38:40 those combined together so if you're a personal injury lawyer it needs to be about personal injury and that specific

38:47 City that you're attacking right um You need to have both those combined together you can have just one of like the opposite is also true which is if

38:55 you just go very Broad it's also not beneficial like for example if you go

39:00 like if you're a personal injury lawyer in Chesterfield Missouri and you write a blog post about what is personal injury

39:07 that's not really going to do it right because that all that's going to do is basically compete on the national level

39:12 and it's not really going to move the needle whatsoever as far as building proper topic relevance um and so both of

39:19 those are not the ideal way uh the ideal way is to combine both together so uh expertise domain expertise and location

39:26 so for example the reason I'm bringing that up is because you can run a prompt inside of chat GPT and say you know give

39:32 me 10 linkbait ideas for a personal injury lawyer that Services Chesterfield

39:37 Missouri right and then what it will do is it will give you a bunch of Link bait ideas and I I take it to the next level

39:43 and I actually give it um like linkbait Frameworks that I have like in in my in

39:49 my agency so it'll be like give me data driven content give me uh tools give me

39:54 like I I'll give a whole list so that way I fed it and now it will pump out all kinds of really unique ideas so it

39:59 might be like do a data driven piece of content about slip andf accidents at Walmart in Chesterfield Missouri right

40:07 and so that to me is like the most beautiful type of content because number one it functions perfectly to build

40:14 topic Authority right it's that perfect kind of blend right but number two it also functions as linkbait right so

40:20 you're getting kind of The Best of Both Worlds um and that's kind of on the local level for me like I I basically

40:26 disregard search volume when it comes to creating like informational content because you're not going to find any

40:32 volume for that stuff you're just not so you have to use your best judgment and um for me I'm just trying to I'm trying

40:37 to cast a lot of lines in the ocean knowing that 20% of those will pick up

40:43 some links right right and so that's kind of what we're going for um and so

40:48 link bait is a huge one like it it's absolutely huge um yeah and then

40:53 obviously actually building the link bait in some ways you can do that with chat gbt but if you're doing some sort

40:59 of dat data driven piece of content that's like curated type of data where you're like collecting data from a lot of different sources you probably have

41:06 to manually go and and find that data um yeah okay but but uh have you tried

41:12 perplexity just out I have yeah I have okay yeah yeah I've test I've tested it

41:18 pretty well um and once again though it's you know it's I don't believe it's

41:24 as useful for building things as chat gbt like as far as coding um I

41:30 haven't seen that it's as effective um okay maybe I haven't used it to its fullest extent but uh but yeah I've just

41:39 I've been successful using chat gvd so it's kind of like if it ain't broke don't fix it type of

Biggest Mistakes While Building an SEO Agency

41:46 situation all right all right so so uh so now uh uh everyone make mistakes uh

41:54 what are your biggest learnings uh biggest lessons you learned while building your SE agency in terms of

42:01 mistakes of course and how did you overcome those challenges yeah um I mean so many

42:09 mistakes uh that Nation IOD right yeah yeah I mean um you

42:15 know it's always hard looking back because like you needed to make the mistakes to learn so like I wouldn't

42:20 want to change anything uh even though like obviously I don't want to make more mistakes but um but one of I'll say

42:27 there's a few number one is like when you're starting an a client SEO business

42:33 you should absolutely take everything you can get right like it every client you can get you should take it because

42:39 at that point you're just trying to build cash flow to survive that's what you should do you

42:45 should build enough cash flow so at least you know you're you've matched or exceeded your income from whatever else

42:51 you're doing right so for me that was really easy because I had zero dollars coming in so all I had to do is make a

42:57 and I would have exceeded that right so so it wasn't hard but for other people you know maybe You' got a family and

43:03 you're you've got more let's say liabilities and responsibilities be careful right like

43:09 don't don't burn the bats right like that's not something I recommend at all uh like just do it as a side hustle

43:17 quote unquote until you've replaced your income and once you feel confident I even say like maybe slightly above your

43:24 income and then you could maybe make that move to go all in um so that's kind

43:29 of the first thing is like take everything you can get in the beginning because truthfully like it's really hard

43:34 to Niche down in the beginning because you need to know first who you like working with you need to see the types

43:40 of Industries you enjoy or you could see yourself working on for five to seven years right this is a significant

43:46 investment of time so you don't want to pick a niche that like you hate working on right like you just can't do that so

43:52 the good news is about taking PE taking everything on in the beginning is you get to you get to taste a lot of different uh you know flavors um and

44:00 plus in the beginning you're going to have to use a lot of different techniques to get clients right to build your portfolio so you might have to go

44:05 on upwork can't really Niche down when you're on upwork right you just you just got to basically apply to everything

44:12 right so there's it's just in the beginning you know once you get up to you know significant uh kind of capital

44:19 then you can start to think okay I enjoy working with hbac or I enjoy working with lawyers or whatever it may be then

44:25 you can start to think about building kind of a siloed out agency that's niched down I think everyone in my not

44:33 everyone I mean most people should should consider at least building out a silo out agency that specifically

44:39 targets one particular industry right um so the way I teach it in the academy now

44:45 is like you have your mother agency right so you have like your big agency and that's like let's say Neil Patel

44:51 digital right like he's got his his his big one right but then you've got your kind of separate ENT entities that

44:57 specifically go after one type of Ideal client profile right or ICP so like you

45:04 might have like your HVAC SEO pros.com right and you just Target HVAC companies

45:11 and that is it right um and I cannot express how much easier it it gets when

45:16 you hyperfocus your targeting right it just makes everything easier your

45:21 marketing gets easier because you can actually write very targeted messages towards the people that you're going after your sales gets easier because

45:29 HVAC companies like working with an SEO company that's worked with other HVAC companies just makes perfect sense uh

45:37 and then the operations gets easier because every campaign is basically the same so you're not having to reinvent

45:44 the wheel every single time that you launch a new Campaign which is what I did um and so when it comes to mistakes

45:51 that is the mistake that I would have adjusted back then uh if I had known better uh that's the biggest one I I I

45:58 truly believe and like you know I one of my one of my agency friends Chris drer uh he only does personal injury lawyers

46:05 and you know he's built a very very successful agency just doing that right it's all he's done and he had he did the

46:12 same thing in the beginning he started with springing everyone on and then he's like no I'm just gonna focus in on this

46:17 best decision he ever made right so it works the proof is there it works um so

46:23 yeah I I I would say if anything that's the the biggest one there's many others but that that's a huge one so right

Biggest Learning from This Interview

46:31 Nish is the biggest recommendations you will biggest learning you will take from

46:37 this right oh definitely yeah and I'll even tell you like in the context of the academy um we have specific silos like

46:45 specifically for agencies and for a while when I used to uh run my program used to be like SEO training for

46:51 everyone um and that was all I did was like just SEO training doesn't matter who you are I didn't really sorry it was

46:57 just best SEO training program nothing wrong with that a broad kind of uh total addressable Market but I'm telling you

47:04 when I siloed out and I said I'm just going to go after agencies it's like night and day difference um because when

47:12 you can actually call someone out you say uh are you an agency owner making less than $10,000 a

47:19 month like if that's you you're going to raise your hand like it's very very easy

47:24 right if I but if I'm like m joined my SEO training program well who Am I who

47:30 am I who is that to is it an in-house team is that a a business owner is that an agency like it's really hard to kind

47:37 of decipher so that's why like there's nothing wrong to having a broad Market strategy but when it comes to your

47:43 funnels you got to get super super specific with who you're going after it makes a huge difference so yeah okay so

47:52 now uh let's talk about a little bit about Su strategies so I I know you are a strong advocate for a Content Centric

Content-Centric SEO

47:59 Su approach so can you break down your process for keyword research content creation and uh content

48:06 clustering yes um yeah so I'm definitely a big content Centric type of SEO um I

48:12 used to be more of a link Centric SEO uh and so that was and that led to many

48:17 problems for me um and so I this is like my gray hat days I used to be obsessed

48:23 with just link building right so I I would just you know I built out a blog Network it was hundreds of websites I

48:30 had the whole thing going you know separate hosting and all I was doing all this crazy stuff and then one day I got absolutely

48:37 destroyed by Google uh and and got manual actions on a large number of my clients uh on my own website like across

48:45 the board it's like 2015 and I woke up and I'm like oh man it's like this is the day that I go out

48:51 of business so I just looking I was like I am done um but then I was like I I I

48:57 collected myself and um I actually went through and decided number one I need to

49:02 get these removed right so I need to get these manual actions removed so I went through the issue was and this is I'm

49:08 not trying to give advice to black hat or grey hat SEOs here but the reason why I got hit is because I left a massive

49:14 footprint right and the footprint that I left was that I was I was using the same

49:21 domains for all the clients so I would I would uh link out to a lot of my my

49:26 clients from similar domains and it just left a huge web footprint that like okay this is artificial right um and so that

49:35 is not good and so that's what led to that and so I actually fortunately I got all the manual actions

49:40 removed and I didn't lose a single client during that time which was I'm very grateful for um but that was like

49:47 the biggest like I'm done type of moment right like I was like I am never taking

49:53 this risk again this is unreal so um and you know the I'll be honest like the

49:59 reason why I did gray hat SEO back then is just because it was easier it was way easier it just like I could just throw a

50:06 web 2.0s or I could build up a fake website and drive links to a site and it worked and it's like well why would I

50:12 focus on like oh now I got to learn the psychology of outreach and build relationships and all these things are

50:18 like way harder and more difficult right but of course anything in life that comes easy is not typically a good thing

50:25 right and so um so I learned from my mistakes and I changed my whole strategy to transition more towards like all

50:31 right what's what's the thing in SEO that will likely never change right and

50:36 this there's things that are always changing right the little tactics and variables the one thing that has remained consistent to this day is content right

50:44 like Google needs a page to put into its index simple as

50:49 that it's at least right now right that could change at AI who knows but right now that's still the case um and so

50:57 so I decided to kind of transition my strategy towards that um and so now for me it's like I still do link building

51:04 it's still a critical piece of what I do but it doesn't happen until way later on into into the process right so there's

51:11 many things that have to happen before I say okay now it's time to build links right uh but as before used to be

51:19 campaign starts let's build links and then I do everything else after right and so it's just a switching of

51:26 priorities uh and so the the way it shifted now is like now it's you know keyword research is the beginning of

Keyword Research

51:32 every campaign I always started keyword research um and my keyword research process has evolved dramatically over

51:40 the years um it's actually gotten more technical over the years uh because

51:45 before it used to be a lot more simplistic and not very smart which would be like going to do some keyword research

51:53 uh here's a bunch of keywords that have low KD let's go after

51:58 these and that was my strategy right and that was not a good strategy for many

52:03 reasons number one it didn't consider the intent number two it didn't consider will these keywords actually drive

52:10 Revenue uh and so many other reasons so I had to kind of go back to the drawing board like all right wait a second what

52:17 can I do to to prioritize keywords right so not just find them but also be like

52:23 okay what what data can we use to make better decis decisions about what we should go after because you don't have

52:29 unlimited resources and time and money to go after every key word so you have to be really intelligent with what you

52:35 go after um and at the end of the day this comes back to like what the client really wants and the client wants to

52:41 make money right they're not they don't care about traffic like there's some clients that do they're like oh traffic

52:47 they get all excited but it's like well but did it make us money and like so you kind got to reel them back in right um

52:53 and so and unfortunately there's a lot of agencies that will Ed their traffic numbers right so they know that clients

53:00 are easily uh seduced by traffic right right and so what they'll do is instead

53:07 of doing the right thing which is going after the keywords that are actually difficult to rank for but actually drive real Revenue they say well look at these

53:14 you know informational keywords at the top of the funnel that have a lot of search volume and low competition so

53:21 what they'll do is they'll allocate their resources to ranking for that and you'll look at the graphs and the graphs

53:26 look beautiful nice traffic growth just going up every single month and you're like man these these SEO guys they must

53:33 be so smart um and then but then you look at the revenue numbers and they're

53:38 the same and that's because they're going after keywords that mean nothing you

53:44 might as well have not even gone after them in the first place because the traffic is literally useless and all

53:49 it's doing is just vanity it's pure vanity traffic that doesn't actually grow the business at all so um so I do

53:58 the opposite I don't care about search volume in fact when I go down my list of like what matters the most as far as

54:04 like keyword selection search volume is probably like number eight or nine on the list I mean it's so far down the

54:10 list of of variables um I could spend all day talking about keyword research but just's a couple kind of couple big

54:15 ones okay right number one is uh is relevance okay so how relevant is this

54:22 keyword to the thing that we sell simple as that and if can't say it's like a clear you know five out of five

54:29 relevance then it needs to go lower on the priority list right so like in the context of my business I sell an SEO

54:35 training program so a keyword like SEO training Denver is highly relevant right

54:41 very very relevant to me or SEO training St Louis is even more relevant because that I I'm based in St Louis right so

54:47 like five out of five relevance and you look at the search volume on that it's not going to be very high but it's

54:53 incredibly relevant even if a hundred people SE sear that a month the likelihood they'll convert is

54:59 astronomically High compared to what is SEO so you like it's just a very

55:07 different thing so that's that's kind of the first thing is like relevance and and I will use relevance and by the way

55:12 you can use chat gbt to help you with this as well so you can take like we'll usually take like a set of a hundred

55:17 keyword opportunities we'll run it through cha gbt and we'll say uh rank these keywords or score these keywords

55:23 based on relevance on a score of zero to five to this thing that we sell right um

55:29 and it will and it does a really really good job like super good job um and then we'll put that back in our keyw database

Intent

55:35 so that's kind of the first part is relevance that's probably like if you can get that right that that knocks a lot of dominoes down right away uh and

55:42 then intent spend a lot of time thinking about intent and so obviously there's

55:47 many different categories of intent you can get really granular and say oh video intent versus image intent and you but

55:54 at the end of the day there's basically two or categories of intent informational

56:00 and Commercial does is this one designed to make money or is this one designed to build brand awareness or Drive traffic

56:07 right so you can basically Clump almost all intents into those two categories and so for me um we always assign more

56:15 weight to keywords that are more commercial in nature right so something like uh best SEO training programs

56:23 that's a very commercial based keyword it's more if you want to get more specific it's more investigative intent right no one really know they're not uh

56:30 necessarily brandware at this point but after they read that listicle now they're brandware so maybe now they know

56:36 goao Academy and they now know there's a sem Rush Academy as well right so their next their next query might be more

56:43 comparison in nature it might be like gacho Academy vers semrush Academy right

56:48 now we're getting into some good stuff because that's where conversions occur is when we go deeper into the funnel so

56:54 at a very very high level my strategy is start at the bottom of the funnel and then work our way up so anytime that we

57:01 do go after an informational keyword the only reason we'll do it is to is to

57:06 support the bottom of the funnel keyword and that's it if it doesn't align if there's not like a linkage to it

57:13 probably not going to focus on it so so let's say the keyword is shortlisted and you've chosen a commercial keyword so H

How Does the Process of Content Creation Work for a Commercial Keyword

57:19 how does the process of a Content creation works for a commercial keyword like this and the content clustering

57:26 yeah great great question so uh the process is pretty much the same

57:32 regardless of whether it's commercial or an informational it really stems from like at a high level which is like okay

57:38 we've identified the SEC we want to go after very first thing we're going to do is an SEO content brief simple as that

57:43 we're going to create an SEO content brief um and obviously we use I use rank ability which is my tool so we can build

57:49 that brief inside of rank ability and it shows all the you know the NLP keywords and all that good stuff uh is and then

57:55 on top of it also build the outline right so first the brief then the outline uh and then that outline is sent

58:01 to a writer um and the way that page is

58:07 structured will be based on the intent of the keyword so uh so if it's

58:13 informational in nature it's like um how to learn SEO okay let's just say

58:19 very very easy informational keyword that's going to be probably that's probably going to live on the blog right

58:25 so it's going to be a Blog post it's going to be very informational you're not going to see a lot of like me pitching goio Academy or like other

58:31 things it's going to be just pure value and then at the end I'm G to try to push them deeper into the funnel so getting a

58:38 little bit outside of SEO here but what I would do is I you know that's my top of the funnel keyword when they consume

58:44 that content my next thing I'm thinking about is like okay what's the next step in this process right the next step in

58:50 this process is like okay now you understand to learn SEO so I want to get you on the email list right so go and

58:55 down Lo this onpage SEO checklist they'll actually help you get results even faster it's 100% free right so get

59:03 them on the email list and now I've got them in a controlled environment where I can nurture them and continue to push

59:09 them deeper into my world right so yeah that's that's an interesting take right

Importance of Comprehensive Content Coverage

59:16 uh uh so of course uh you you often mention the importance of focusing on

59:21 high value or let's say commercial keywords uh how do you balance this approach with the need of comprehensive content

59:29 coverage in a particular Niche so again it's just a add-on question to what I asked yeah yeah so um so like I said

59:38 when it comes to clustering or building topic Authority or building support it's always at a very very granular level so

59:46 um I think sometimes we think it we will see like the topic and we'll be like oh we got to go after so much to be able to

59:52 cover this but I like to just get really really granular so like let's say the topic is SEO is our broad you know broad

59:59 category broad industry well my company is SEO training so it's a very it's a

1:00:05 small subset of that right so basically for me when I'm thinking about building that that Authority I'm trying to build

1:00:12 the authority around that one kind of core thing that we offer so that's why like if you looked at a lot of the pages

1:00:19 of my site you're going to see SEO training Los Angeles SEO training St Louis SEO training Denver like I'm doing

1:00:26 intentionally because I'm building topic support uh and trying to just cover I'm trying to blanket everything right I

1:00:32 want to cover everything to the fullest extent so for me it's it's a matter of doing I think uh unfortunately

1:00:39 people they move uh Beyond clusters too quickly so they may they may hit like

1:00:46 you know they try to support a topic and they hit it like two times for two different keywords and I think that's supporting it but like there's so much

1:00:54 material and so much opportunity in just one small little pocket like for example

1:00:59 um like if you look at the topic like on page SEO right like to most people that

1:01:04 might seem like a pretty simple topic like put your keyword in the you know the title and the URL and the H1 like okay pretty straightforward right okay

1:01:11 well on page SEO there's a bunch of other little linkages that directly go to that topic so you have you know

1:01:18 onpage SEO Checker um sorry once again I was just seeing

1:01:24 what was going on back there uh yeah but we have we have onpage SEO Checker we

1:01:30 have onpage SEO checklist we have what is onpage SEO we have uh onpage SEO

1:01:36 Services we can go down the list of all these different keywords that have different intent um and so what you want

1:01:42 to do is you want to hit on each of those different topics that have different intent to support what I call the mother topic right and so you know

1:01:50 that onpage SEO might be like some epic piece of content that you have but even when you create an epic piece of content

1:01:57 around one topic you're never going to fully you know hit on that topic to the fullest extent right and so you need to

1:02:03 go and build out these these separate dedicated assets that that really hit that hit that's what the silos are right

1:02:10 correct yeah yep okay all right uh so I

1:02:15 know we're running short of time so I'm going to go how much time do we have now uh we go like five more five more

1:02:24 minutes yeah I got to run all right all right all right so I I'll very quick so

Top 3 Link Building Strategies

1:02:29 we talk about we'll talk about link building so with SEO becoming more competitive what are your top three link

1:02:35 building uh strategies for 2024 yeah so you know my my theme is

1:02:41 pretty pretty consistent here which is start with content right that to me is the like the most scalable link

1:02:47 acquisition technique you can use is content like hands down the most effective um and unfortunately when you

1:02:54 when it comes to like buying links I'm not like against it of course it's against Google's guidelines but I'm not

1:02:59 against it uh it's just the way that people do it that I don't think the strategies the right technique uh that

1:03:05 that they're using uh and the and the challenge is when you when you buy links

1:03:11 you can only get as many links as your budget can afford right so you're always Capp by the budget and so you if you

1:03:18 just rely on buying links you're never going to truly be able to scale and build a big link profile and the only

1:03:24 way to truly do that is you have to have content assets you have to have linkable assets it's the only way because really

1:03:31 the dream you know perfect SEO scenario is you create the linkable assets you do

1:03:38 Outreach whether you do Outreach or you buy them Google doesn't know the difference so but you do that to give

1:03:44 those assets the initial push that they need okay and then once they're ranking

1:03:49 hopefully if you've done a good job of the content that Snowball Effect will occur and you'll start to get the links

1:03:54 naturally uh because people do tend to link to top ranking results just because

1:03:59 they're there not because they're great so next question technical Su so of

Lesser-Known Technical SEO Tips That Can Have a Significant Impact on Website Performance

1:04:05 course technical Su is crucial yet of an Overlook can you share some lesson known technical Su tips that can have

1:04:11 significant impact on website performance yes uh a few so first one I

1:04:18 would say is internal linking very very big and I think majorly underestimated

1:04:24 as far as effectiveness um and so a couple kind of key things on that is uh number one is crawl depth

1:04:31 right so you can go into a screaming frog uh SEO spots what I personally use and you can see once you run the crawl

1:04:37 you can go to the craw de column and see how deep are these pages in the side architecture which basically just means

1:04:44 how many clicks does it take a user to get to this page essentially right and so what you want to do is you want to

1:04:49 any page that's important we want to push that further up into the architecture and there's a lot of ways you can do that obviously more internal

1:04:55 links to that page can certainly help from you know higher uh from Pages higher up in the architecture but you

1:05:01 can also create what I like to do is create a hub page so if I wanted to get like a lot of internal link coverage I

1:05:07 might create a hub page for let's say YouTube SEO and I'd link to all my YouTube SEO content assets and then I'd

1:05:13 put that YouTube SEO Hub page really high up in the architecture that way I get proper coverage on all of those

1:05:19 assets um so that's kind of that part and the other part is just increasing the amount of internal links toic

1:05:25 specific pages that you want to rank um I I think any any page that has less

1:05:30 than five internal links is usually an opportunity for us that's usually where we'll say it needs more coverage so um

1:05:37 and you know going and finding opportunities that are relevant on the site that's obviously smart but also look at pages that have a lot of links I

1:05:44 like to leverage pages that have a lot of back links because you can drive that link Equity too internally to those

1:05:50 pages um and then one kind of secondary part of that is if you're having a hard

1:05:55 time finding internal linking opportunities for a page it's usually a signal that you need more content

1:06:02 so right right right right now uh you your YouTube channel has generated over

How Did Your YouTube Channel Impact Your Career and Business

1:06:09 95k subscribers which is of course an incredible achievement can you share

1:06:14 what motivated you to start the YouTube channel and how did it impacted your career and

1:06:20 business oh man yeah um well first of all I avoided it like the plague for a

1:06:25 very long time um so yeah because I just I I hated video I

1:06:32 just hated video I didn't want to do it um I was defly afraid um which is so funny because like I have my my YouTube

1:06:38 setup right here if you see my YouTube videos you probably see this background but like my YouTube setup is right here

1:06:43 and like it's funny because you know all you're doing is just talking to a camera and the camera has no emotion it does

1:06:50 not care what you look like it doesn't care what you say it doesn't but for some reason when that thing turns on

1:06:56 everyone just turns into a deer you know in the headlights right including myself and that's what used to happen like uh

1:07:03 and I used to be just like when that would turn on it just like would turn into feel like I turn into a different person almost right like you gota become

1:07:09 an actor almost or something um but what I realized during that time this is like

1:07:15 I guess my this been 2017 I saw the trend that video was getting more and more popular and it's

1:07:22 not that video wasn't popular prior to that I mean I had been watching YouTube since I was was in like middle school so

1:07:27 been watching YouTube for a long time right but like it was really starting to pick up as far as people using it for

1:07:32 business right um and so I was like all right I can't just watch this happen and just like sit sit on my hands so like I

1:07:39 gotta I gotta just man up here and I need to start recording YouTube videos right and so that's what I did I was

1:07:45 like all right I'm gonna publish my first YouTube video and I was so afraid that the first one I published was

1:07:50 actually I just downloaded a video from Goa Academy and uploaded it to my channel so actually go back you can go

1:07:56 back and see that first video it's still there um there's a video about anchor Texs uploaded that first one I was like

1:08:02 ah I did it I didn't really do it so then the next one I uploaded was my first one which was like a talking head

1:08:08 video about like how to start an SEO agency even back then talking about that um and it was brutal just a brutal

1:08:16 brutal video in hindsight like but I keep it there I keep it there I don't

1:08:21 like a lot of people will hide their old videos because they're like oh it's embarrassing and I don't want to show no I I want to be embarrassed I want to see

1:08:28 what I used to look like I want to see how I used to perform because you need to have a benchmark you need to see that

1:08:34 you've progressed over time you need to look back and you if you're not looking back in your content and saying like and

1:08:40 you're not embarrassed like that's a problem you should be looking back on your old work and say like wow I've

1:08:45 grown a lot since then right that's like what you should do so for me it's more for the business side of things like I

1:08:52 knew I needed to do it um and it's you know it's been a grind I mean I've been I've been doing this um I I think I

1:08:59 published my first video I think it's may like early 2018 and now it's been you know we going

1:09:04 on six years of of creating video content and I still feel like I barely know anything I mean it's just like

1:09:12 trying to figure it out but as far as the business side right best decision I ever made hands down like YouTube

1:09:19 crushes as far as lead generation as far as building Trust And getting people to know like and trust you Nothing Compares

1:09:27 like even when it comes to writing copy like I'm a pretty skilled copywriter for the most part I can't even match a

1:09:34 single YouTube video W it just nothing compares because on YouTube like like we're doing right now we're having a

1:09:40 conversation we we can get we can accelerate our relationship at a speed that you could never through do through

1:09:45 text right it's just not possible right so yeah so huge right so so so how do

How Do You Decide the Topic and Content for Your YouTube Videos

1:09:51 you decide the topic and content for your video because I watch your videos and they are every time wow so how do

1:09:57 you come up with these wow ideas oh man it's not easy it's really really hard um you

1:10:06 know I I try to do things that I know have already worked right so occasion

1:10:12 I'd say like 80% of my content I'm doing angles that I know have worked in the

1:10:17 past the other 20% I'm testing new angles right okay um and so you know

1:10:22 it's for me I'm the type of guy we like I I like to just do more of what already

1:10:27 works right and um and so that's what I do I look back at my old bu and say okay can I can I do this same angle but kind

1:10:35 of better can I do this better and funny thing is like when you publish enough like I'm I'm basically at a point where

1:10:41 I publish like once a week essentially so I try to publish like once a week I miss sometimes but for the most part I'm

1:10:48 pretty consistent at once a week um but when you go back and look at your videos even a year ago like sometimes I'll look

1:10:54 at my videos even from earlier this year and I'm like this video is like bad like

1:11:00 like even that's how much I've grown just from this year to now I look at the difference and I'm like man I could do that video so much better now right and

1:11:07 so I'm just trying to make my videos a little bit better uh you know all the time um but as far as the topics you

1:11:13 know they kind of come they come naturally because I'm just doing SEO

1:11:19 right so I just like well I guess I'll just talk about this thing that I'm currently working on and go after it so

1:11:25 one I'll just tell you the types of things and I think you do have a YouTube channel right so this might be helpful

1:11:31 for you but there's certain types of content that works well in the SEO industry and digital marketing um and I

1:11:38 think one of the issues is people will try to emulate YouTubers that are more

1:11:44 uh entertainment focused right and they try to they try to bring that over to

1:11:50 B2B or education focused channels and it's not the same thing

1:11:56 um and I've actually found this it's kind of crazy because some of my most polished videos like my highest quality

1:12:03 like most well edited aren't my best performing videos um some of my best

1:12:08 performing videos are just real raw real technical really over the shoulder um

1:12:14 that stuff tends to do a lot better um so you know it's it's really hard like I

1:12:19 I've I've I've done extensive analysis of my channel and it's basically like 5050 like 50% of my top videos are

1:12:27 scripted and 50% of them are totally unscripted so when I when I look at I'm

1:12:32 like how am I supposed to use this data here I'm just gonna have to try to guess uh so correlation is really hard to find

1:12:39 there but the one consistent variable is staying in your lane as far as what your

1:12:45 relevance is so if you look at if you look at my channel any video where I don't talk about SEO I get slaughtered

1:12:53 like as far as views right so like I just published one actually recently about digital marketing and I like I

1:12:58 went through it was like an hour and a half long like digital marketing end to end like my whole process laid out it's

1:13:05 got like maybe 5,000 views and like it was like an hour and a half long video like I put a lot of time a lot of effort

1:13:12 like I did everything I could to make it succeed but it's it doesn't appeal to my

1:13:18 audience and it also doesn't appeal to the algorithm right because the algorith

1:13:23 so what happens this is like more recently which now is applicable actually to every platform not just

1:13:29 YouTube but YouTube X LinkedIn Instagram Tik Tok they're basically all the same

1:13:34 now which is kind of nice the good thing is once you've established a certain relevance for your

1:13:41 Channel or your profile or whatever it is whatever your expertise is the algorithm will push that out to the

1:13:47 right people all the time right so like when I talk about SEO my stuff gets pushed out to SEO people all day that

1:13:54 just I just get pushed all the time as soon as I don't talk about SEO though the algorithm murders me right it just

1:14:02 it just it's just does not work right and so pros and cons of things but that

1:14:08 you know if you're trying to get as much visibility as possible keep keep that relevance really really tight like you

1:14:15 may have a really beautiful child and a beautiful family but it's not going to work in the

1:14:21 algorithm this day day and age right even even content that's like very brand specific like I just helped

1:14:28 this person in goao Academy increase the organic traffic by 600% like the algorithm will kill me for

1:14:35 that because it's not it's not going to be the proper type of content that likes to be pushed out to people right so it's

1:14:43 a very interesting time but being very educational is helpful right and that's

1:14:48 where that's where I think the most benefit is is if you can focus on just giving as much value as possible right

1:14:55 pretty hard to lose that's an interesting Insight right yeah our listeners will take that home

Advice for Those Looking to Break into the SEO Industry

1:15:03 now uh just final couple of questions for those who are looking to break into SE industry uh or enhance their skills

1:15:11 what foundational advises would you offer them for long-term

1:15:17 success yeah I mean SEO now is so many skills combined together so you really

1:15:22 have to be good at a lot of things I would say out of like i' say out of all the digital marketing skills SEO is

1:15:29 probably the most difficult to be honest like it truly is like because there's so much you have to be you have to not only

1:15:36 know the art side but you have to also know the science side and you have to be good at both you have to be able to look

1:15:42 at data you have to be able to draw conclusions based on that data but then you also have to come up with like unique strategies for content and

1:15:48 there's just there's a lot of moving parts right um and so I think you know

1:15:54 hon H ly it's kind of weird but I I think learning soft skills should be a

1:16:00 focus um I think there's too much focus on like the real hard technical skills

1:16:06 but honestly anyone anyone can learn technical skills right like I can teach anyone keyword research I can teach

1:16:11 anyone on page SEO right but can I teach someone how to close a deal that's a lot

1:16:16 harder right that's not as simple I can't have you go through a system I mean there's there we obviously in our

1:16:21 in our company we use scripts for you know our sales and all this stuff but even then you still have to put in the

1:16:27 Reps to really learn um so I would say soft skills as far as like your earning

1:16:33 potential that is what I would really try to work on and of course that's the hardest to do um but like anything else

1:16:41 like even me doing video I've put in so many reps like an ungodly amount of reps

1:16:48 and like I still have so much room to grow but it's become easier and I become more comfortable and I become more

1:16:54 confident and it's not some magical reason why it's just because I've just

1:16:59 done it so many times at this point the basically that that fear that used to be

1:17:05 bigger than the earth is now about only the size of a marble right so it's just

1:17:10 it's just changed and that just comes with repetition so I think I think learning soft skills learning how to

1:17:16 communicate with people learning how to you know get on a sales call like I think if I think the best seos can also

1:17:23 sell right I think that's a big a big piece of it so but in general the best seos are not

1:17:31 necessarily the most technical in all regards the best seos understand the big

1:17:37 picture at a higher level right it's not just about SEO it's also how does SEO fit into the business strategy how does

1:17:43 SEO fit into the other digital marketing pieces that we're running like if you can see that landscape at a higher level

1:17:50 you'll be a lot more successful um so learning digital marketing in general is probably a really smart move so right um

1:17:58 and learning how to write I think that's another good one so coming from you right you yeah right now now uh could

Nathan’s Go-To SEO Tools

1:18:06 you share some of your goto SEO tools and uh uh I mean the tools which you

1:18:12 like to use and why they are I mean just give us some tools yeah I mean these days I I'll just

1:18:18 tell you the tools I use the most frequently okay so uh obviously semrush just because it's you know it's the most

1:18:24 comprehensive tool really at this point uh there is HRS and I have subscriptions to both I do use both but these days I'm

1:18:31 pretty much on semrush almost all the time uh the reason I hang on to HRS is

1:18:36 because they have an API in screaming frog and Sam Rush does not right so that's you know kind of an issue so I

1:18:43 have to I have to keep that uh the other one honestly and I know I'm extremely biased when I say this but the one I

1:18:48 probably use the most is rank ability um and that's because I actually use it to create content so I go in there and it's

1:18:55 not just like creating SEO content but actually will write YouTube scripts in rankability as well to use the NLP um so

1:19:03 because all these algorithms live and breathe with NLP that's that's how they initially understand what it's about

1:19:08 anyone can subscribe to your tool yeah yeah it a free trial yep oh all right

1:19:14 yeah yeah so it's just a Content optimization tool and onpage SEO type of tool so helps you create content that's

1:19:20 highly relevant I'll put a link in the description below yeah awesome thank you uh and then the other one the the other

1:19:26 one which we are actually building a lot of this functionality into rankability but like one of them is Hemingway editor

1:19:32 right I use that all the time um like I'm always writing in there when I write when I write uh social media content I'm

1:19:39 writing it in Hemingway editor a lot of the time like it's just how I can refine my writing make it better um I it's so

1:19:45 useful uh grammarly another one like I I'm always using grammarly once again that's we're going to have that native

1:19:51 inside of rankability so you w even need grammarly right um and then oh I forgot about the biggest

1:19:57 one chat gbt so uh I use chat gbt every single day literally every single day I

1:20:03 use it countless times throughout the day uh it's yeah it it's it's amazing so

1:20:10 uh and then aside from now ones that I I do more infrequently but I still use significantly is uh screaming frog I use

1:20:16 screaming frog quite a bit run crawls run audits right uh sideliners another

1:20:22 good one um and then as far as like General reporting Google analytics Google search

1:20:27 console I use agency analytics for broader kind of reporting right um and

1:20:33 then there's some other ones in there I'm sure I'm missing but those are the main ones for sure all right those are a

1:20:39 handful of yeah forers for our listeners right so uh are there any resources book

Resources and Books Nathan Recommends for SEOs and Entrepreneurs

1:20:45 you recommend for seos uh and entrepreneurs and ENT uh yeah as far as

1:20:52 books um I have a blog post on Goa SEO best SEO books I definitely check that out you can Google it I think I'm

1:20:57 ranking in the top five somewhere for best SEO books so you you'll be able to find it um but there are there are not

1:21:05 many books I would recommend for specifically the skill of SEO all not because of anything that's

1:21:12 wrong with those books it's just because SEO changes so much and books are really slow to change so so like a lot of the

1:21:20 time you're reading kind of outdated stuff um and it's not that you won't learn you'll learn some foundational things but the best way to stay on top

1:21:28 of SEO is like join some sort of community or something where you're you can stay on The Cutting Edge because

1:21:33 this stuff changes fast like really fast um and so I I would recommend just

1:21:39 that's how you kind of keep a pulse on it uh as far as entrepreneurship obviously very biased but the SEO

1:21:44 entrepreneur if you're trying to start an agency it's it's the book you should get uh so um but yeah I mean I truly

1:21:52 believe the best way to learn is is just by taking sign significant amount of action and using um the the justtin

1:21:59 justtin time uh versus just in case learning right so just in case learning

1:22:05 is the way that we learn in school right so we're going to learn about the moon today and it's like okay uh what am i g

1:22:12 to do with this like we in school we don't know what we're going to do with any of this information right we're learning about poetry and all this stuff

1:22:19 we don't really know what we're maybe down the line at some point it will make sense Justus in case we need it right

1:22:26 just in time learning is very different and that's what I deploy every single day in my business which is I take a

1:22:32 massive amount of action I hit a roadblock that I don't understand how to fix and I say okay now I'm gonna go and

1:22:38 try to find out how to fix this one problem I fix that one problem and then I keep moving and you just do that back

1:22:44 and forth and you do that so many times that you just get so much better at everything it's I think it's best way to learn personally so um because you can

1:22:51 read a book all day but if you don't actually act on it yes doesn't matter so okay uh thank you Nathan for joining

Outro

1:22:59 us today on agency Insider it's been an enlightening conversation a lot of knitted nuggets came out of it and I'm

1:23:06 sure our audience has gained a wealth of knowledge uh to our listeners thank you for tuning in be sure to subscribe for

1:23:13 more insights from industry experts until next time keep pushing the boundaries and thriving in the digital

1:23:18 marketing world thank you Nathan thank you so much appreciate it