From College Baseball to $18K/Month in 18 Months

Nathan got into SEO even before he officially started a business. Going into his senior year of college, his family wanted him to be a lawyer. That was the traditional path everyone expected him to take.

But Nathan really wanted to work online. This stemmed from spending most of middle school and high school playing online video games. He loved the internet. He remembers when YouTube wasn't even owned by Google, watching UFC highlights before the acquisition.

He secretly looked for ways to make money online while in college. He tried so many things that didn't work. Paid surveys, writing articles for AdSense revenue on EzineArticles. Eventually he found a sketchy $47 course called Web Colleges. It had crazy tactics like buying bot traffic, but one thing stood out: start a blog.

Nathan knew how to write since he was getting his degree in political science and wrote constantly. He figured he could start a blog. The problem? What to write about. He was playing college baseball, so he started a baseball pitching blog.

As you might imagine, when you start a website with no idea what you're doing, you don't know how to get traffic. He did what everyone claims works: content is king, just write content, build it and they will come, you'll be a millionaire. He pumped out content for months thinking he'd be rich by now.

He went back to Google and discovered this SEO thing. He tried it on his website and it started to work. He still remembers getting his first affiliate commission, where he was when it happened. It was probably $50, but to him it felt like a billion dollars because he made money on his own, not with a job.

That's when he was hooked. What got him excited wasn't even the money. It was realizing this SEO thing could be used to make money. He was going to figure out how to do this for real.

From 2011 to 2013, all he did was work on his own websites. Building niche websites just to refine his SEO skills, over and over. Eventually he realized he could sell SEO services to businesses.

Starting at ground zero again, he launched Gotch SEO (super creative, just his name and SEO). He tried to get clients through Craigslist, responding to Quora threads and questions, and doing SEO on his actual website.

His first pool of clients actually came from Craigslist. He wouldn't recommend that today, but businesses would post gigs and you could respond. Between Craigslist and Quora, he got up to about $5,000 a month.

Then he started doing SEO on his site and ranking for "St Louis SEO company." That's when the lid blew off. All of a sudden he was making $18,000 a month. He didn't even know what was happening. That was crazy money to him since he'd barely made any money ever.

That's when he knew: this is it. This is what I'm doing permanently.

Why Niching Down Makes Everything Easier

In the beginning, Nathan took any client that would come his way. A plumber one day, a company selling rugs the next. All over the place.

He doesn't recommend that approach. It's fine in the beginning to get cash flow and experience. But long term, it's actually very detrimental. It inhibits you from scaling because every time you bring on a new campaign, you're starting from scratch.

When you focus on one niche like pest control, every time you bring on a campaign there's a similar process. You know what to look for. You understand the industry. Things move quicker, which allows you to scale better.

It gets really hard on both the fulfillment side and marketing side when you're just "the SEO company." Nathan's sliver of a niche was dominating St Louis. That actually worked to bring in decent revenue, but he wouldn't recommend that strategy long term.

The long-term objective should be: what industries do I like working in? Maybe you like working with lawyers or SaaS companies. Figure that out and pivot toward that particular industry. That's the only way to build this right.

People don't realize how much easier it is to niche down. The fear is you're reducing your opportunity. But it's actually not true at all.

Think about it: is it easier to compete against 40,000 SEO agencies in the United States who target everyone, or compete against the 10 SEO companies that specifically specialize in your niche? The answer is obvious.

The hardest thing about Nathan's previous model? Every time he got a new client, he had to learn their industry. He didn't know anything about rugs, so he had to figure out what people care about with rugs. He didn't have ChatGPT back then, so he had to manually figure it all out.

The education of a new industry is very hard. There's so much nuance. This is why you have to niche down.

From Agency to Academy: The Evolution of Gotch SEO

From 2013 until 2016, Nathan only did client services. During that period, he realized he didn't totally love it. Yes, it made good money. Yes, it was great for many reasons. But he always had the ambition to start a course or training program because it aligned better with his skill set: education and teaching.

He has nothing against agency work. It's a beautiful business model. But there's an evolution with entrepreneurship, and client services has its challenges. It's not truly scalable. For true scalability to occur, revenue and expenses must go in opposite directions. As revenue climbs, expenses go down.

Agency isn't like that. Revenue grows but so do expenses at the same speed because you need people. You can grow an agency but you can't really scale an agency by definition.

In 2016, Nathan decided to start Gotch SEO Academy. He launched the first version but was deathly afraid to be on video. He had a traumatic experience with Yelp advertising where they came to record a video of him and he wasn't prepared. When the camera hit him, he was like a deer in the headlights. Nothing was going on upstairs. After that, he thought he'd never do video.

So the first version of the Academy in 2016 was all text. Basically a series of blog posts written specifically for the training. He had seven people join and got two refunds. He ended up with five net sales. That was pretty brutal.

He realized he had to do video. He had to get over this fear. He transitioned by doing over-the-shoulder videos. Recording his screen showing how to do things, but not showing his face. Just his voice. He had no idea audio was important, so he used the computer microphone. It sounded like trash.

He recorded hundreds of videos that way and relaunched the Academy. It did much better, maybe $15,000 in a week. To him that was pretty cool.

For the next launch, he re-recorded every single video but this time with a microphone. He kept using this open and close model from 2016 until 2021.

In 2018, Nathan made a crazy decision most people would consider stupid. He's a very risk-tolerant person who can burn the boats and still sleep at night, but he doesn't recommend this: he quit all client work. Called all his clients and said he was done, focusing only on the Academy.

In hindsight, that was rough. He lost serious cash flow. He felt the squeeze. But that's what he needed to do to really focus on the Academy. From 2018 to 2021, it was all Academy and it got significantly better.

The 80% Completion Rate Secret

In 2021, Nathan had a revelation. There's a statistic that only 10% of people who take online courses actually finish them. Nathan thought there's no way that happens in his course. His ego was involved.

He looked at the backend statistics and did the math. Only 18% of people finished his course. He was flabbergasted. If people would just go through it and implement, they'd get results. He was super frustrated and needed to fix this problem.

He got in touch with his now partner Simon, who had been with another training program that did coaching calls twice a week. Simon said the way to fix this was more touch, more support. Nathan thought twice a week was pretty rough since he wasn't doing anything at the time except course and Facebook group.

But he made the decision. Added coaching calls twice a week starting in May 2021. Moved off Facebook onto a custom platform. The results were insane. They went from 18% completion rate to about 80% completion rate.

When someone goes through the training now and hits a roadblock, they can ask Nathan a question every Tuesday and Thursday. He didn't want to do those coaching calls initially, but now he's done almost 400. He does it because they're incredibly helpful for members.

Now he has three coaching calls a week. Tuesday and Thursday for the Academy, Wednesday for Rankability. It works because people actually finish the training and get results.

Why Nathan Spends 20-25 Hours Per Blog Post

This blew my mind when I heard it. Nathan spends 20 to 25 hours per blog post on his own website. Most people can't even fathom that. They're thinking maybe a few hours.

What goes into those hours? When Nathan's actually writing with his fingers on the keyboard, depending on complexity, he's spending at least 15 hours. Some are longer, maybe 30 hours.

What takes so long? First, he doesn't target every keyword. He looks at the competition, not just from quantifiable metrics like links, but from a qualitative perspective. He asks: is there any gap here that I can attack? Is there an angle I can bring that no one else has covered?

For the keywords he's going after, it's very hard sometimes to find an angle. If he can't find an angle, he won't go after it.

He gave an example: he wanted to rank for "best CMS for SEO" back in 2016 or 2018. Very competitive keyword with HubSpot and other strong websites. He looked at the results and saw a huge gap. Every piece ranking was just a generic listicle about WordPress, Shopify, the usual stuff.

He thought: what if I could find data proving a particular CMS is better? So he created a data study analyzing 10,000 keywords. Come to find out, WordPress was the best.

He launched that case study and it started doing really well, getting links naturally. From 2018 until last year, that thing dominated. He even intentionally made the content short and put at the bottom: "This content is intentionally short. I guarantee this will still rank." He was proving word count didn't matter.

He was right. The asset did really well for a long time because he created a good linkable asset that attracted links. That was way more important than word count.

In 2023 it started to slip, falling to the second page. His theory? It became outdated. The data became stale. So he did the study again for 2024. Now he has benchmark data from 2016 and recent data from 2024. You can see which CMS platforms have climbed or fallen. Duda is now used a lot. Webflow is up high on the list. Neither existed in the first study.

Now it's ranking well again. The key? Finding an angle. Nathan spends a lot of time thinking about that because it's so important.

In this day and age where anyone can create content, AI makes everyone mediocre. Anyone can create a very decent average piece of content now. Prior to AI, you'd outsource to a non-native English speaker and it would be really bad. Now the barrier is that everyone can be average.

But to beat everyone else? A little bit more effort goes a long way. You're either trying to be Christopher Nolan or Gary Vee. Both approaches work, but Nathan leans toward investing a lot of time in one asset so when he publishes it, he knows he did everything he could to actually rank.

The Technical Elements That Actually Matter

I wanted to get tactical on what specifically needs to be on pages to make them rank.

Once you've got the angle squared away, Nathan's process is simple: find a keyword where the authority of the site you're working on matches or exceeds at least one or two competitors for that keyword.

Looking at overall site authority is really important. He wants to see if there's someone in their range doing well. If he only sees DR 90, DR 90, DR 90, he'll pick a different keyword. This is a very important distinction because he's not looking at links going to individual pages. He's looking at the overall strength of the site, which is way more powerful as a factor.

Next thing: build out a content outline. This can be done manually or with ChatGPT depending on complexity. If it's something Nathan's writing where he needs to bring his A-game, he'll probably manually build it out. If it's a commercial page for a local business that's not super competitive, he'll probably use ChatGPT.

The key with the outline? Use NLP (Natural Language Processing) to build it. NLP is basically relevant ideas or entities pulled out of content. The reason it's important? Google can't read. Google can't objectively measure content quality. So it scans headings to try to figure out what the content is about.

It looks at title tag, meta description, H1, H2. That's why it's critical for basic on-page SEO.

Keyword placement? Title tag, meta description, H1, first sentence, and typically some variation of the keyword in the first H2. That's bare minimum on-page SEO.

Nathan found a competitor ranking on page two whose title tag was just "shoes" for the keyword "bowling shoes." If they just added "bowling" to their title tag, their rankings would go up three spots. Sometimes little tiny actions have big impact in SEO.

The next level is NLP, which is about making the most relevant page possible. That's it. That's the number one objective.

The Quick Win Almost Nobody Uses

I asked Nathan about quick wins for local SEO agencies or local businesses.

Obviously putting keywords in the right spots is the fastest thing you can do. But there's only one other technique Nathan can say reliably works almost every time as long as you do it right: upgrading any page you're trying to rank.

When his "best CMS for SEO" page got stale and started falling, he didn't upgrade initially. He did a refresh later that brought it back to life. Every time he does upgrades, he loves them. It's his number one go-to tactic.

The key to this? Nathan looks at view page source in Google Chrome. He looks in the code to see how fresh the page is. He searches for dates like 2018, 2019. If there's old outdated stuff in the code like old images from 2018 and CSS files from 2019, Google sees that.

Remember, Google is just a bot. It doesn't objectively know things. It looks at the page and concludes it's outdated. Its conclusions are very fast.

Nathan tested this rigorously. He had a page "SEO for roofers" that started to fall. Perfect opportunity to test. He took the same exact content, didn't even change it. He just replaced all the images. Re-uploaded them so they'd have a fresh file name for that year. Changed the publish date on the asset. Boom. Number one.

He's done that multiple times with the same exact images. All he did was re-upload them so the file name was consistent with the year.

That's the quick win. Though it doesn't work every time. Sometimes you do have to rebuild a page from scratch.

Backlinks for Local: It Depends on Competition

I asked Nathan how important backlinks are specifically in the local scene.

It's always based on competition. He's fighting very specific battles. If you're in personal injury, you're probably going to need backlinks. But if you're a hot dog stand in Chesterfield, Missouri, you probably won't need a lot of backlinks.

Most campaigns will need some backlinks because it is truly the number one signal that even AI can't replicate. You can't replicate a real backlink from a website with editorial standards. You can buy them or fake them, but it is a point of differentiation.

If you view backlinks as votes, it makes perfect sense.

On the local level, what people get wrong: they get links that are not relevant in any way. An SEO company will buy links from mommy blogs for a St Louis pest control company. Google sees this as weird. Why is a mommy blogger in California linking to a St Louis pest control company?

There are ways to make it appear more natural. Most people link to their homepage or some geo-targeted lead generation page, which leaves a massive footprint.

The way to make it appear more natural? Instead of slamming your homepage or service page, create a linkable asset. Maybe some data-driven content about cicadas in St Louis and their influence on trees and houses. Then you link to your data-driven piece from the mommy blogs. Now you've muddied the waters. If the algorithm can't decipher, that's what you want.

This works whether you're buying links or doing outreach. Linking to linkable assets is the safest and most natural approach without leaving a footprint.

Usually the first thing Nathan does in a campaign is build one to three linkable assets for local. He's not trying to build topical authority. He's just trying to build assets that deserve backlinks.

The second thing? Focus heavily on the city you're targeting. Look for sponsorship opportunities. If you're a Chesterfield pest control company, get a link from the Chesterfield Baseball League. Get a link from the Chesterfield theater. What this tells Google is you're a part of that city. You're a business operating in that location.

Most importantly: if you're operating in the city and not in the Chamber of Commerce, you look really sketchy. Why are all your competitors in the Chamber but not you? Shell out the $90 a year. Small details like that make a big difference.

Nathan got interviewed by KSDK in St Louis about his book and scored a DR 73 dofollow link. Specifically a St Louis link. Very relevant. The opportunities are all around. Anything with local relevance is going to be big time for performance. And they're dirt cheap compared to going national.

Building Authority from Zero: The Rankability Strategy

I asked Nathan about starting a company from scratch with basically no traffic, no DR, no links. Are they screwed?

It depends on what they're up against. If you're trying to start a software company in the CMS space, you better have a 10-year plan to fight that war. But if you're starting a pest control company in Chesterfield, it's very doable.

Nathan gave the example of his strategy with Rankability.com. Brand new website, six or seven months old at the time of our conversation. People wonder what he's doing for SEO on that site.

Here's the surprising part: he hasn't published any content on that site. The reason? He's not going to publish content until they build up a lot of authority.

He already has a DR 73 with Gotch.com. Does it make more sense to publish content on the fresh domain or the site that already has a lot of authority? Most content is being published on nathangotch.com. Once Rankability starts to catch up with some traction, then he'll start publishing there.

This is reverse to what a lot of people push these days, which is creating a ton of content to cover the topic. Nathan is not a fan of that at all. That's not his strategy.

He has a website called StLouisSEOConsultant.com. If you look up "St Louis SEO consultant" or "St Louis SEO," this site ranks. It's a one-page website crushing all the agencies that have multiple pages and have been around for years.

How? Number one, he's using an exact match domain. They're stupidly overpowered. Number two, he spent all his time driving links to the site. Just links, links, links. He keeps hitting it over and over. When it gets to number one, he can take his foot off the gas.

As JK Molina says: likes ain't cash. Everyone focuses on likes and subscribers and vanity metrics. But what are you here for? Nathan honestly started YouTube to use it as lead generation. He never thought he'd hit 100,000 subscribers. He thought 10,000 would be crazy. But he knew video was going to be important, so he needed to be there.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest thing I learned from Nathan is that quality beats quantity in content. Spending 20-25 hours on a single blog post sounds insane, but that's why Nathan ranks and others don't. Most people aren't willing to put in that effort. SEO is all about competition, and there's only one person ranking number one.

The second takeaway is the power of the refresh strategy. Just re-uploading images with fresh file names and changing the publish date can boost rankings dramatically. It's about showing Google the page is current and fresh.

The third thing is backlinks still matter enormously, but they need to be relevant. For local businesses, focus on local sponsorships, Chamber of Commerce, local news outlets. Geo-relevant links tell Google you're part of that community.

The fourth lesson is that building authority takes time and strategy. Don't publish content on a new domain until you've built up authority. Use your existing authority where possible. When you do publish, spend 80% of your time promoting it, not just 20%.

If you want to learn more from Nathan, check out Gotch.com for the Academy, Rankability.com for the software, or find him on YouTube under Nathan Gotch. That's where his best free content lives.