SEO 20: The Future is Now

Summary

• SEO is more than just Google now. To succeed, you need an omnipresent approach that includes various platforms and search engines.
• The traditional SEO model, SEO 1.0, was simple: find a keyword, create content, publish it on your website, and optimize for Google search ranking.
• Nowadays, Google considers more content types than just websites for its search results, including videos, social media posts, and forums.
• Despite changes in ranking factors, backlinks and website authority remain crucial for SEO success.
• With new SERP features, websites may see a lower click-through rate (CTR) as users have more options.
• To combat reduced CTR from Google, diversify your strategy to include multiple platforms.
• SEO 2.0 focuses on maintaining search engine visibility while embracing large language models like ChatGPT, which derive their ranking criteria from Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.
• Social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and others play a significant role in modern SEO strategies.
• Create and focus content around core money-making topics to build authority and improve rankings.
• With an omnipresent SEO strategy, use owned assets like your website first, then expand to rented or shared platforms, like social media and forums.
• Content creation, experience, promotion, and gathering reviews are things you can directly control to improve SEO.
• Traditional search engines are vital, but don't ignore possibilities in large language models and social media for content distribution.
• For rented lands like social media and marketplaces, become an expert on those platforms and regularly create optimized content.
• Use insights from analytics to continually refine SEO tactics and discover new opportunities.
• Complexity in SEO may require more expertise, which increases your value and reliance on you as an expert.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting with an omnipresent SEO strategy. Look beyond just Google and consider other platforms. Focus on social media such as YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn to reach more people.

A good way of doing this is by creating content around your core money-making topics, making sure it’s valuable and engaging. Use tools like ChatGPT to help you draft quick ideas and posts. Then, share this content widely on different platforms. This helps build authority and shows your expertise on multiple channels.

Also, work on backlinks and increasing your website authority. Backlinks from other websites still matter a lot! It shows Google that your content is valuable and trustworthy. You can do this by collaborating with other businesses or guest blogging.

To keep improving, track what content performs best using analytics. This helps you understand where your strength lies and what the audience likes. Keep refining your tactics based on this data.

Remember to focus on what you can control: the content you create, the user experience on your website, and actively promoting and seeking reviews of your products or services.

Lastly, don’t rely on quick numbers, but steady growth across various platforms. Engage regularly and learn the specific requirements of each new platform, making sure you’re always visible where your audience spends their time.

Quotes by Author

"SEO isn't just about Google anymore if you want to survive and thrive in 2025 and beyond"

"The biggest ranking variable in Google is backlinks and website authority"

"As dead as 'email marketing' is, every time I send an email, I get nearly 50% of people to open it"

"You have to be really, really focused"

"Focus on execution; the people that focus on execution are the ones that win"

Full Transcript

so SEO isn't just about Google anymore if you want to survive and thrive in 2025 and Beyond you need to adopt an omnipresent SEO strategy I'm Nathan gotch the founder of gotch SEO Academy and rankability and the author of The SEO entrepreneur so my goal is to show you how to stay ahead of the competition by mastering the next generation of SEO so whether you're an agency owner or entrepreneur the stakes have never been higher so let's just dive into this first I have to do a little bit of a history lesson and this will not be boring it'll be fast so SEO 1.0 all right this is I I call this the good old days okay this is when things were real a lot more simple all right we would just find a key word that we wanted to rank for all right then we would write some copy for it okay now back you know back in my day uh when doing SEO uh you had to actually write it with your fingers right you had to actually like put your fingers on the keyboard and you type away and actually do it um but now you know obviously chat gbt's changed the game on that we'll talk more about that but the point is is we would find a keyword and we would need to write copy okay that's what we would do around that keyword we build it around that keyword then we would publish it on our website simple concept right put on the website then once our website is crawlable and indexable Google will come to the website it will crawl that content and then uh it will give us an opportunity to to actually use ranking factors to determine if that page should you know where its position should occur inside of Google's search engine okay and then if we rank depending on where we rank we're going to see a certain amount of CTR clickthrough rate um and then finally a portion of those Searchers will come to our website is traffic that's SEO 1.0 that's the way it used to work that was cool worked really well it was really you know very simple process that is not what we're dealing with anymore okay there's a lot more that's going on there's a lot more a lot of more moving parts and I'm not telling you this to scare you it's actually there is a there is a a a lot of good that's coming out of this but just keep in mind like we can't view SEO as this anymore there's much more going on and we can't just view SEO as only Google okay we got to view SEO much broader um so now I want to show you uh what I'm calling SEO 1.5 which actually in some scenarios is how it is kind of right now for Google specifically now still the same thing keywords and content still the same stuff okay but there's a few new layers going on here because Google isn't just looking at our website to determine what should rank in their search engine right because before it was just it was just websites and pages and that's what appeared in Google right that was it okay um and specifically like your website but now Google's going to be looking at a lot of other stuff they're gonna be looking at videos they're gonna look at social media posts they're going to be you know taking from your post you know Google business profile for local queries they're going to be uh using Reddit and Kora and forums they're going to be using micro content and blogs the list goes on and on all kinds of things that Google's now ranking outside of just pages from websites okay that's really important to understand Google and the ranking factors yeah they're constantly changing but for the most part pretty much the same right pretty much the same as far as SEO 1.5 ranking factors do change a little bit helpful content update all this stuff yes things do change but to the at its core the biggest ranking variable in Google is backlinks and website Authority those two things have not changed basically at all it's just continues to be one of the most important ranking variables the only variable that's been introduced over the last let's say I would say three to five years that's clearly very influential are user signals okay and we could talk all day about ranking factors but for now these are the you know this is the one area that's changed dramatically these areas have not really changed now the other part that's changed is what happens in the Surs okay so before it was you know 10 Blue Links which is the traditional now we're dealing with all kinds of other stuff right these are all the different Ser features that and there's more than this but this is just a few of the biggest ones that you'll see most frequently right we've got local packs and we've got the AI overviews and in some scenarios we've got an AI overview and a featured snippet in the same spot I don't think that's going to last I think the I think the AI overviews will replace the featured snippet but for now there's this mess going on uh there's a discussion section where it shows Reddit and core and all these other things uh it shows even a little and I'll be showing uh examples of this but what people are saying which is like it might be like a short YouTube video from me talking about you know I don't know content optimization or something and I'll show up in that little section okay uh people also ask images videos you get the point there's a lot of different areas on Google to rank right used to be we were just rank in the 10 blue you know 10 Blue Links that was it now we're we're we need to try to occupy real estate in multiple areas in the serps okay and there's a way to do this all right and the other part of the CTR and traffic this is the part that's been majorly affected by what I'm calling SEO 1.5 because all of these distractions take away from CTR right just naturally if there's if there's more going on and there's more options for people they're going to click less it's just a fact okay so this is kind of what we're dealing with we're going to see over time every website will likely get less clicks just across the board that will happen it's it's inevitable okay just going to have to accept that that will be the case and the way that you can combat this with your clients uh is you need to be focusing more on omnipresent type of strategy right because we if we're just if our only kpi is how many clicks we're getting from Google that's going to be hard really really really hard so now let's talk about what I'm calling uh SEO 2.0 okay so SEO 2.0 which you guys have maybe seen me talk about this already a couple times but it needs to be reiterated which is the most important factor right now in all of this actually on the traditional search engines believe it or not now getting actual CTR from the search engines is going to progressively probably go down over time just naturally that's just going to happen this is kind of like email marketing okay email there you you could be rich for the amount of times that people said email email was dead right email marketing's dead don't do it it's worthless that's all been proven to be wrong for me and and during all that time because I've been doing digital marketing since 2013 been doing it I've actually been doing it fulltime since 2013 so it's been over a decade and I've been doing email marketing that entire time and it still continues to do positive things for my business so if I would have just listened to all the people and the headlines I wouldn't have been making as much money in my business right so it's better to get your own proof and your own evidence and your own data to actually see if these Concepts and theories are true other than just listening to the clickbait headlines that are incentivized to drive clicks because that's the only way they make money right so you got to be really careful with that that's a really dangerous game to play you need to actually see if it's true so the reason I'm bringing that up is because email is not dead it's just not as good as it used to be right because it like you've probably heard if you if you follow Gary V atall he was very early on email marketing and when he started he said he had like 90% open rates you don't get 90% open rates anymore that just does not happen unless you have like a list of 10 people you might be able to get 90 then but as soon as your list reaches any decent size you're going to start to see that it's going to drop very hard so give or take with my email list and I'm constantly pruning it um I'm probably around 45 to 50% in that in that range okay so just keep that in mind that's my open rate for an Engaged list that's not just like a list of people that I just like scraped and you know threw onto a list like these are people that actually signed up for a lead magnet and know who I am and there's like a lot of stuff and I'm still only at 45 to 50% right but I'm willing to accept that because it's still a a marketing channel among many other marketing channels if I if email was my only marketing channel I'd maybe be a little scared but still once again As Dead As quote unquote email marketing is every time I send an email I get nearly 50% of people to open it and usually I think in my last email I got over a thousand clicks on my links in the email so think about that I mean that's that's a lot that's a lot and that's for something that's dead so just keep that in mind um now you just have to accept that over time natural progression of these platforms is going to be less clicks and things that we're hoping to get but as long as we're focusing on many other platforms which is kind of SEO 2.0 you'll be fine okay so the reason why this is most important which is the traditional search engines so Google being uh Duck Duck Go uh and brave which is kind of a like a privacy based search engine as well but let's just say like we'll call it the the big three at least in the United States Google Bing and Duck Duck Go so these search engines are critical that we get visibility on them obviously because we get traffic from them that's the most obvious Point uh but but the other reason reason is because they actually inform the large language models right they train the large language models so when someone runs a search on search GPT it's pulling it's using the same ranking variables as duck ducko and Bing basically okay um and so you have to be there because it's it's literally pulling its sources from those search engines so if you're not there you're not going to be a source in the large language model so all these things are tied together you have to be like that's why I'm showing this one first because visibility in the traditional search engines the most important part of this whole process we have to be there okay good news is the ranking factors across these are basically the same okay basically the same Google uses much more complex algorithms for its for its organic results but once again you know links user signals making sure you're matching intent you guys know all the stuff okay all right uh and this is the next progression of this is the large language models right which there's no denying it people are using these large language models like search engines they are they are doing it I'm doing it I know Simon does it like I know a lot of people who are doing it um it's inevitable it is happening so uh but the good news like I said is it is it does function very similar to other search engines so as long as we have visibility here we should likely also get visibility in search GPT and perplexity and whatever other one there is and there will be right so that's that's the good news um you don't need to be too concerned about in fact if you I would keep an eye on your Google analytics because we've been seeing traffic coming from uh open Ai and perplexity it's actually starting to see that now uh so it's pretty cool obviously it's no Google yet but it's something that cannot be ignored because I think uh chat gbt I think is now in the top 10 most popular websites on the internet uh last time I checked it was in the top 10 now which may not seem like a big deal but the fact that it did that in just a couple of years is crazy that just means that there's a lot of people using it a lot um and I don't see that slowing down anytime soon so this is this is what we have to be doing but just remember the traditional search is the foundation for getting into the large language models uh the other part of this too is the the algorithms for the search component of these large language models so like specifically search GPT they're using back links as a big factor um so once again doing link building generally and building your brand and uh doing digital PR and all those things is going to help you perform not only in the large language models but also obviously in traditional search okay so these things all the factors that you should be focusing on you should continue to focus on those because they're going to benefit you okay uh and then the social media search engines this is the other big piece of this a lot of these like YouTube in particular there's a lot of YouTube videos that pop up in Google search results and I'll be showing you an example of this but same with Tik Tok and some of these other ones obviously Reddit um and Linkedin so a lot of these a lot of these platforms like we should be thinking about is like all right well start here with Google or how do I figure out my Google strategy my general search strategy uh and then how do I figure out my strategy on these other platforms right that are of course Contex relevant to the stuff that you're selling like if I'm selling content optimization tool I'm not going to go on Pinterest right my my target market is not there right so just make sure it's specific to the thing that you're selling or that your clients are selling but it's still critical pick a few of these and start to make build a presence there and I'll talk kind of what that looks like in a sec um and then e-commerce search engines this is the last as far as priority but if there's some if there's some uh relevance there you should certainly try it right and this is like I've been testing doing Amazon because I have the book obviously um and it it's pretty cool how easy it is to do SEO there it's like way easier than uh Google Google's the mo Google is the hardest I've tested many of these platforms as far as SEO and just creating content in general I'm telling you Google is hands the hardest it's like Google probably YouTube second and then everything else is honestly not that hard to learn most they're they're pretty simple to learn for the most part okay so that's SEO 2.0 um and I you know the only thing that's really going to change here is platforms coming in and out but the general idea here I don't see it changing very much coming up here soon okay so with all that said now that I've scared everyone to death uh over all of the changes uh this comes down to a very simple idea which is we just seem to focus on what we can actually control there's a lot of stuff out here that we can't control we can't I can't control nearly any of this right I can't control Facebook and Instagram their algorithms I can't control what Google's going to do I can't control what what new large language models are going to come and which ones don't it's just a waste of time it really is it doesn't make a difference there's just just accept that there will be change that is going to happen and you just need to roll with the punches but we there are certain things that we can specifically control when it comes to SEO hey I hope you're enjoying the video so one of the biggest ranking factors in Google and llms like chat gbt are backlinks from authoritative websites and that's when a service like search intelligence comes in they handle all of the grunt work of digital PR and land you power backlinks that the algorithms love now yes it is a decent investment but it also saves you a massive amount of time and effort because a you don't have to spend thousands of hours Mastering the Art and Science of digital PR and B you don't have to suffer from opportunity costs because you can continue focusing on your core strengths in your business so I'll have a link below the video where you can check them out number one content simple as that this isn't just applicable to se like in Google it's applicable to any brand that we're working on we can always control content we can actually create things and put it into the marketplace that's something we actually have control over uh we can also control experience this is on our site itself like actually influencing uh the the people that are there right making sure that their experience is solid and we know there's so many variables that can influence this page loading speed the general design of the site um how easy it is to consume the content the quality of the copywriting to keep people engaged there's a lot of stuff that influences that but we can directly influence and and modify this and we can do it Based on data by using tools like mouseful or hot jar we can see actually how users are engaging on our Pages now you can't really influence it as much on other platforms but at least on our website we can okay and then number three is promotion we have full control over this we can promote our content however we want right we we can do Outreach we can do paid ads we can do the list goes on and on we can create micro content there's there's just so much we can do these are things we can actually control we need to be doing it and then the fourth one which I'm saying is in kind of control which is reviews right we can control in the way that we can actually request reviews we can try different strategies to colle reviews um those are things we can't control we can we can control the outputs there but we literally cannot control someone leaving a review like I can't force them to leave a review I can do I can set a lot of systems up that increase my odds of success but uh we're certainly not going to be able to force anyone to do that for us that's kind of in the it's in the kind of category but the point is these are the things we can actually control and this is where our time and our effort and our attention atton should be spent don't worry about so many of these other things that are constantly changing um you do need to make adjustments obviously don't put your head in the sand but you want to be in the middle and focus on execution the people that focus on execution are the ones that win it is just a fact uh the people that are either fear-mongering or they're way too optimistic you don't want to be on either of those ends you want to be right in the middle putting your head down doing the work and reaping the benefits of all these people that are just sitting on their hands just a fact people are sitting on their hands they're sitting all this beautiful technology that they could take advantage of and they're too afraid it's like they're Paralyzed by all the change that they're not actually doing anything don't do that that's not good okay so now let's talk about how to actually execute this of course I'll use references to my favorite shows and movies so but the first thing here is most important like out of all this stuff which is can seem very intimidating okay very intimidating you have to get really really focused and the way we get focused is when we're going to build out a strategy we need to we need to specifically pick what is the main thing that we're selling so whether it's our own business or whether it's our client's business figure out what's that main thing that makes us the most money what's that kind of core thing that we're doing okay so I'll just use a small example for rankability we sell content optimization software very simple okay my entire strategy needs to be built around fortifying and building authority around that one idea that's it that is my number one job so I'm going to do that across multiple platforms but first identify what's that moneymaking topic money-making thing that that either your business or your client's business needs to focus on okay because that's the center of it all okay so as I mentioned here content optimization tools um it's actually even more specific we're actually content optimization tools for agencies okay so even more specific but with this example I'll just show you a little bit broader okay so figure out what that thing is it's going to be in the middle that you're going to build your whole strategy around now from here what we're going to do is we're going to start to layer on the things like I mentioned so first focus on your owned assets these are the things that are actually under your control your website is the mo is like the hub for your entire strategy so you want to build your whole strategy around developing content on your website makes perfect sense nothing new here this is what we should have already been doing but just to reemphasize this should be the focus initially get this squared away uh small example is you know I'm I'm kind of in a unique situation because with rankability I've got my old aged and authoritative website goo.com and I've got a new non-authoritative site in rankability decom right so going back and forth trying to figure well should we publish this content on the newsite or publish it on goo.com and of course we publish it all on goo.com because it has way more trust way more Authority and I know stuff's going to rank on it a lot better so looking at your owned assets and doing that and so what we're doing is we're starting to hit the different stages of the funnel uh and the different stages of custom awareness that I've talked about before um and you know you're going through these different stages and you really want to focus more the bottom of the funnel and then work your way up so for example for us like if you look up you know rankability verse clear scope or rankability verse insert whatever other competitor phrase to you won't be surprised by this but you're gonna see Goa ranking okay this is all on purpose because I'm building out these clusters to attack these very very specific key words uh to make sure that I'm hitting every nook and cranny of the content optimization to a market okay so I'll show you a quick example of this because I track um I track everything so give me one second here open this up because it's good it's good to think in terms of clusters because this is like really really important is when like instead of just kind of like you know this kind of like just spraying approach um you know call it pay and spray you know um but spr or spray and prey uh is what it is specifically uh but if you look at this this is a much more deliberate approach okay being very very deliberate about what we're doing not just being random and chaotic um and so what I do and by the way I'm I'm not immune to making mistakes so but the way that I can see when I'm making mistakes is based on the organization of this so if I sort this by cluster I can see where my deficits are right so like let's say I wanted to improve for Boston SEO uh well I would see like okay well what other assets do I have to support that right and come to find out not a whole lot so I don't really deserve to be ranking anyway but what I do want to look at as content optimization tools is a cluster right and so this started as one simple seed the first seed that I created was this one right which is going back to what I'm talking about is like create that mother asset that attacks that main keyword you really want to go after so for me makes perfect sense SEO content optimization tools I'm GNA go hard on this I actually wrote it I I put in the time all that good stuff okay because I knew this would be my that pillar that I need to build support around then from there starting to attack all of these other supporting ideas naturally looking at the competitors because in SAS that's one of the best strategies you can use so I'm building out all of these supporting assets um to ultimately build support around this General topic of content optimization and content optimization tools right and I'm just going to keep building and building and building to the point where basically I've punched Google in the face a million times and it can no longer deny that I am the authority of content optimization tools I need to I need to make it so clear that there's no other possibility right um and that's how you have to do it don't don't leave a cluster you're working on this cluster don't leave it until you it it's clear as day that Google has established you as the authority on that topic right and I'm starting to see some signals of this like every time we publish a new asset like the we get like instant rankings basically right so like if you look up I don't know any of these you look up like rank IQ Alternatives I and we published it on the 31st let's just for fun let's just see how we're doing this was what a couple days ago okay and this is not a like a it's not a competitive keyword really but just to show you you know like two days ago like this is I'm looking at this because I'm saying okay if we're getting if we're getting this traction this early then uh it's a signal that Google's starting to kind of put us into a bucket uh and I want to be put into that bucket because if the more I'm put into that bucket the more visibility I'm going to get for the core thing that we're selling right so it's the same thing that you want to do with this we want to figure out what's that core thing that we're selling and we want to be crazy about building topic support crazy like don't I I really mean it like you you should really be thinking about how do we cover this topic to the fullest extent okay so going back to this focus on your main website and there's so much work to do there that you know you're going to spend most of your time just doing that until you've tapped everything out and once you've tapped every and keep in mind this is just for one topic you you really need to do this for all of the topics which the reason why this is important to understand is because we want to go in like a mile deep on these topics not just like scratching the surface and once you realize how deep you can actually go on one specific topic you realize there's just a lot of work to do a ton because you think about it e let's say let's say you're an absolute Beast you get through every single topic that exists around this one main one and you publish everything on your website well the next logical step is actually not to go on any other platforms it's actually to think about considering building some micro websites and the reason for that is because now we want to think about okay we're crushing it our website's crushing it for all these important key wordss okay that's great we're doing a good job but what if we could rank more than once for these keywords what would happen then right so naturally what would happen is you're going to get more CTR you're going to occupy more real estate you're going to get more clicks and you're going to be doing much better okay so this is a that I call this more of an advanced strategy I wouldn't deploy this right away and I'd be pretty deliberate with it but you you know you're going to see once I feel like we've tapped it out um the next logical step is thinking either a looking at our other our other owned assets that we can create content on um and once we tap those out then considering like okay what are some micro websites you can so an example a micro website would be best content optimization tools.com that would be an example of a micro website because it has one function I'm GNA show all the tools and I'll probably create some dedicated posts specifically about content optimization tools and I'll just rep rep what I've already done again so uh Brian go for it yeah I was just going to clarify with you you would definitely repeat even though you had that cluster on your main site this is just an additional site that you can internally link between the two of them you know in a nonchalant way that brings authority to everybody in the chain around that specific okay correct yeah and and and I wouldn't I would redo the content for each keybo on that yeah um and I would also make sure that that entity lives on its own it would not be Associated yeah under the same registar and hosting and it would be its own its own entity yes it would be certainly linking out but the waters would be muddied because I'd also link out to my competitors so right yeah and also you would probably also have your name somewhere on that website it wouldn't be like not branded Nathan gotch I mean if Google really wanted to know they'd know who did it I mean they they're not dumb you know no no no and I mean if they if they wanted to manually dig through and try to do it but technically I'm not like breaking any rules I'm just no no one said you were yeah it's it's all you know it's all fair game right it's all fair game I mean major companies do this all the time right they do this all the time and they they they don't even hide it like they don't even hide it you know so you know and it's well and I was gonna say I was gonna say too I it I've I've used this strategy in the past but I actually really learned it from a client of mine that I had because they did something really fascinating which is they built out a whole a whole media business basically just for informational content about Disney Disney Travel Disney Parks whatever it is this beautiful basically informational website and it was really just a strategy to drive leads to their travel agency and I was like wow that was smart that was really smart um and so I kind of got that inspiration from them but the thing is it's it's easier to get links to an informational website than it is to a company site right so that's why like you know even me trying to decide like oh do we do it on goo.com or rankability I pick goo.com because it feels more informational it feels more uh less biased right also it's now a tier one direct link to your main site right which a high Authority and people don't feel you know people will be more likely to link to you so it's almost like you get the two-tier link juice from your tier one site that you own both I love the idea love it um and just yeah well and also one one thing too is um just think about what other assets you own like sometimes I even forget that I own other domains like right I have Nath got.com why can't I publish stuff about cons automization tools there too nothing that can stop me right I can do it anywhere so what I think about though is like it is a it is a matter of prioritization right and so yeah looking at your assets and which ones are the most powerful the most aged the most trusted start there and then work your way down the ladder so um so yeah that's that's the way that we can approach this is is is first going after our owned assets I also would argue that under owned assets I put email in here but email doesn't directly influence search uh it's more of an indirect influence um because you can promote your content so yeah yeah no no no I I really love that idea and um you know I've been I've been toying with that idea as well to to help some of my customer sites and and also my sites right so uh it's just been um I I love that you're introducing it to the group because it makes me feel more confident in doing it at first I was like I was worried about too many you know making a link web and I was like it doesn't make any sense because as long as you're delivering value on these topics based off of these items I I feel like it's it's fair game but yeah well and of course there's always risk right Google may I don't know for whatever reason may not like it but um but at the same time like if if it's for a client your client will literally love you if you rank in multiple properties on the first page for their most important keywords you will never lose that client never never also the funny discussion is if they ever even entertain that idea it's like oh you know this site is technically mine you know yeah right yeah just threaten them not yeah no Kidd I'm just kidding yeah yeah but it sometimes works now go ahead what exactly yeah so um okay well let me check let me check Sam's question here let's see uh okay when building out topic Authority many of the keywords in my experience don't have a lot of search traffic but you still recommend building out these Pages how do we explain this to a client yeah so it's It's tricky because sometimes you don't know if the idea has search traffic until it ranks so this is always a this is a really difficult situation because sometimes you do have to use some intuition to go after a keyword like that um and that's why like for me going after uh I'm with with rankability I'm anticipating search volume in advance so what I'm thinking about is like okay I'm going to have people that want to sign up for rankability and I know that they're going to search for my competitors to see if they're better than us right or what like they're going to try to find a reason to not join or a reason to join that's just what people do so I was thinking like okay well I need to be visible right now for these queries for when they eventually come so the the the idea is like ranking for rankability verse X um I know right now if I do it first of all I'm going to rank really easily second of all all uh I'm going to be the most aged for that content because no one else has gone after it um and and see it's GNA be hard to beat me right it's gonna be much harder to beat me because now I'm I'm the one that's already attacked that keyword right away so I've already got the I've got all the good the good signals going um so now what I'll do is over the course of three to six months I can go into Google search console look at that URL and see the the searches that are coming in to that URL specifically and I can confirm that that was a good idea or a bad idea it's the same with what you're describing um and I like I said I think it should you should use the the 8020 rule here like 80% of your ideas should have quantifiable demand before you publish right but the other 20% I think you should you should take some bets definitely take some bets and hopefully you know some will work out probably it be like the 8020 of that 20 which means like you know maybe 20% of your bets will be really good payoff the other 80% will be so so or not good at all but um but it's worth it it's worth it so but you the only way to really do it in this scenario is when you don't have when you don't have that quantifiable demand from the traditional tools you're just gonna have to create it and see what it does uh in Google search console so yeah all right so this is part one your owned assets get this squared away you've got all the systems in this training to be able to do this uh just do this first okay next one are what I call rented assets so you'll see on the internet or if you go to chat gbt you'll see traditional Medias like earned owned and paid and there's also like shared I actually have a different definition I call rented assets because these are the assets where like it feels like they're yours but they're not right like my Google business profile is like that's my profile or like oh my Amazon listing like that's my book no it's not you are on rented land all of these platforms if you like if you can be suspended or your account can get deleted at any time it is not it is rented land it is rented land so there's a lot of risk here on all these platforms I mean Amazon if they wanted they're like hey you know we flagged one of your reviews we think your grandma left you a review and they suspend our book they could do that in seconds they wouldn't lose a single ounce of sleep over me losing my book right they wouldn't so it's rented land okay so just keep that in mind but at the same time it is still valuable land that we need to attack okay so I really think that you know pick the ones that are most relevant to whatever the business is you're working on I'd say probably three or so uh go after maybe three of the most important Platforms in whatever industry you're attacking and then just really really learn how those platforms work okay and I can I'll just give you a real quick synopsis of of how these platforms work it's actually really simple and I'll I have to kind of put them in buckets because each platform's a little bit different but I'll tell you this okay so YouTube Tik Tok uh LinkedIn x Facebook Instagram and threads okay all of those basically all work the same okay almost identical the way they work the only difference is with YouTube and Tik Tok it's much more video focused so there's a little bit more you know things that go on there but essentially at a very high level what happens is content is published on a platform okay that content is then put into the algorithms the algorithms use natural language processing to understand what is what it's actually about okay uh on YouTube for example it will when when the video goes live YouTube will pull the transcript from that video it will also pull the metadata so the title the description whatever else you can supply it it will pull all that out and then it uses NLP to understand what that video is actually about okay and from there then it will push that video out to a small group of people based on all kinds of variables could be personalization could be the fact that they follow you could be the fact that they uh engaged with something in the past whatever it is there's a reason for them pushing up to a particular small segment of the market on that platform then based on how users respond to it then it gets pushed out further okay that's basically how all of these work there's a trust me I was a major oversimplification of how this all works but at a high level that's kind of the process so it's just important to remember though that SEO comes first that's the thing that's crazy about this and that's why picking a topic is critical because you have to pick a topic to feed into the algorithms right most people go on social media they post whatever and no surprise they don't do particularly well right and yeah maybe if you're Kim card a and you can get away with that but if we're like building a real business here we have to get really really specific to train the algorithms about what we do um if you go and look at some of my you know my profiles like I've been on um I've been on X for example and their algorithms have changed you know first of all they used to be Twitter and now they've you know literally completely changed their branding um but like I've been on that that platform for I don't know 10 years or something that's it's like 10 years of training data about me talking about SEO think about that that's like I am in that box and you want to be in a box actually when it comes to these platforms you want the platforms to know what you're about it's really important because if it knows what you're about it knows what to expect right and it knows who to push it out plus your audience will know what you're about right so it's really really important um and so figuring and this goes back to what I talked about earlier picking a topic picking a keyword building content around that optimizing that content around that that keyword and then publishing it uh and then repeating that I'll talk I'll show you process what this looks like but the point is same thing on these platforms okay content you content optimization via NP and user signals okay that's it uh and then lots of repetition okay earn media this is the other piece of the equation especially on Google because we can go on all of these platforms and and publish content on these platforms to occupy more real estate on Google once again okay that's the goal but also at the same time all of this earned media which is obviously you know in other words get doing link building in some ways but also doing marketing for your brand um all of this stuff will benefit you specifically for Google and the large language models because we know both of those plat traditional search engines and large language models use backlinks and Authority um and other brand signals to determine who should show up right uh that's a big piece of this equation so just doing marketing outside of these is really really important outside of your owned and rented assets you need to also be expanding out into these other platforms now keep in mind notice we're still focused on content optimization so when you go and let's say you go and get interviewed on 10 podcasts I would want to focus just on content optimization or SEO content like specifically like that's going to be the focus of my of my interviews because once again I want the I want the Crawlers to see oh Nathan gotch entity associated with content optimization another entity those entities are together right now make I'm creating that Association so that means all of my associations will begin to be towards that right it's the same thing like Nathan gotch SEO like those things are associated together uh it's not like Nathan gotch and I don't know some other Rubik's Cube solver like that those things are not connected like although I can solve a Rubik's Cube that's those things are not Sol they're not connected in the knowledge graph okay you want to train the knowledge graph and if you're seeing there's a trend here all we're doing essentially in a kind of complex way is we're just training the algorithms train train train just keep training it over and over just beating it over the head over and over over a specific topic that we're trying to make money on okay simple as that and then lastly paid you can certainly use you can pay for advertising on search engines large language models I know perplexities starting to run some ads uh and the other ones are in inevitably going to do this as well social media influencers e-commerce ads this is a way to amplify your results but that's why I showed it last because there's a lot of work to do here and I would recommend spending most of your time on this stuff because this is these are the things that actually influence all the other platforms right especially large language models so this is the stuff that's going to have the biggest impact this is when like if you've got budget to to throw some fuel on the fire to accelerate your results okay you should try to do it all all right so so going back to what I was talking about the process pretty simple pick a topic create content around the topic distribute that content right and actually go back one here on on the content side the content obviously needs to be contextually relevant to that platform so if it's YouTube you have basically two forms of content that are proven to work number one is long form and the other is short right micro content one to three minutes those are proven to work okay on X there's a variety of content types that work there's uh shorter content but there's also threads that work well on X uh on LinkedIn you have uh carousal and decks those also work like there's a lot of different content Types on each platform but at the end of the day it's just content right and then we're going to distribute on the platforms then we're going to promote okay sometimes that's trying to promote it like internally Within thatat platform but it's more than likely promotion outside of the platform so you know like if I want more uh more subscribers and more visibility on YouTube I can pull a lot of different levers to drive internal uh visibility and traffic to my YouTube videos like on the YouTube platform but I can also just send an email to my list and promote my video right so that we can bring external traffic to that platform to grow that platform okay uh and then learn every time we create content we should be learning from it we should see what works what doesn't work that's why going you know I wanted to mention the the the uh goal piece of this um making sure that we're on a quarterly basis that's why we're putting our head down we're doing the work and then at the end of the quarter you lift your head up and you say whoa with a lot of stuff just happened let me process all this and then kind of see what worked and what didn't work right that's what you want to do uh and then repeat right just repeat this process over and over it's not super complicated um so people get too wrapped up in the details of this stuff okay I'm telling you sometimes when I publish something very little thought like if I publish a post sometimes it's like hey this looks pretty good post because you know what we don't know what's going to happen when I post something I have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen I have a I've got a hunch because I've published so many pieces of content I have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't work but I'm not always right I publish something and sometimes I'm like yeah I think it's going to do really well it just bombs right and I think about like why did that BM think about it and say okay well next time I'm G to try an adjustment on that idea I think that I think the rude idea is good but maybe the execution was poor so I'm G try something new next I the way to do this is to remove all emotion from this no emotion you just publish you see how it does and you're just just unemotional about it and just keep making adjustments it's all there is um there's not this Spotlight effect on us right people aren't monitoring our every move and every piece of content no one's looking at my YouTube video oh he only got 3,000 views on his last video like no one cares people only care about themselves so get focused on your stuff and get really really really focused on it hard uh and then you know one kind of reemphasize on this point just feed the machines feed the machines focus on creating good stuff that users also like too right that's the key um and just to give you a brief idea this is what you know NLP this is kind of how it works essentially okay very simple you don't need to understand all this stuff but essentially this is what's happening when you you know when you pull your phone if you do a you know a voice search it it doesn't really understand what you're saying not really it's it's going to take that audio file it's G to transcri cribe that audio file then it's going to use NLP to understand what you're actually saying and then it's going to feed that back to you right so this is the root of the technology that's being used across every platform not just a few all of them like literally all of them YouTube Google Amazon you name it they're all using NLP so uh it's very very powerful technology so um very important okay just small couple examples all right so is SEO dead I ran this test this was in May once again this is one of my hunches where I was like I think this will probably work but I'm going to test it I knew that LinkedIn was uh way overweighted as far as Google caring about it so I went and published an article on LinkedIn which I could have easily published on my website but I published on LinkedIn because I wanted to prove that tapping into website Authority uh and doing a form of parasite SEO is incredibly effective okay so once again works really well because I'm in the AI overview and I think I'm actually only ranking number like six or seven in the traditional but I'm ranking number one in the AI overview so just to show you you know the the differences now you can technically not be number one in traditional but be number one in specifically AI overview which is kind of cool to be totally honest so keep that in mind um another one here going back to the content optimization tools uh Focus that I'm on right now you're going to see me starting to do a lot of stuff related to this but small example publish a little short video on YouTube is only two you know two minutes and 45 seconds uh and immediately on the first page in fact you know in three weeks it's beating this piece of content that's been live since September okay uh and it did it you know basically in no time at all with very little effort uh I got on the first page with this compared to this which required significantly more effort significantly more time and significantly more money to get to this point right and I'm still got a long way to climb so just to show you the difference this is why being on the other platforms is not just it's not just more effective in a lot of cases it's actually way more profitable in a lot of scenarios so and we know that video sells way better than TCH does just a fact this one here another example just published this two days ago I'm on the first page for SEO techniques I don't even know if I could ever rank for SEO techniques with my site because it's so competitive in the traditional organic results but not when I'm on another platform on another platform I can do it much faster right so just once again showing you an example of this this took me from end to end probably took me I don't know four to six hours maybe to create that video so four to six hours of work to rank on the first page for a highly competitive keyword uh with basically no investment other than time right so you compare that to the alternative for me to write a a long form asset on this topic I would have to do something that's some sort of dissertation that would take me probably 25 to 30 hours to finish end end right but it wouldn't even be over then because as soon as I publish then I gota go invest several thousands of dollars into backlinks just to get it there right so when you're dealing with Hyper competitive keywords there's a much simpler path uh in a lot of cases not all cases but definitely in in a lot of cases uh Amazon another example ranking on the Amazon search it's like so easy compared to Google like so easy like all I did in here was just write a very simple description uh made sure that the parts of the keyw in the title that was it nothing complicated I didn't have to build back links I didn't have to do some crazy stuff simple as that and of course get reviews and all the other good stuff but the point is it works uh this one I want to show you because this is an example of building uh training the knowledge graph uh because my name is associated with agency related stuff so when I publish anything related to agency I tend to do very well right and this is an example like I have multiple videos in the pack I've obviously got's ranking well for it as well but the point is like when you train that Knowledge Graph and you really really train it hard it it's it just benefits you so so much across all these other platforms uh including Google so uh and then this one here just another example in YouTube search same same idea right like training it multiple times if I keep publishing content about the same couple of topics I'm going to train the algorithms on those you know on my authority associated with those topics okay uh and lastly couple simple ideas here complexity equals more expertise that's required okay so if something is more complex you need more expertise more expertise equals bigger investment and Reliance on you as an expert right so it's just naturally if something is more difficult it's going to require a bigger investment to make it happen or to find or to to hire someone to do that work for you right uh which brings to the most important part which is and I've talked about this concept before I learned this from Dan Kennedy this is my new way of saying it which is if you understand how to make businesses more money you'll never go broke okay this is all that we're doing here if you understand how to help businesses get more customers in this new world you're going to be just fine if and and SEO to me is the biggest piece of this whole equation because SEO is applicable to every platform that you're working on it's not just like you think about the process find topics that are related to the things that we sell create content on those topics and then make sure that users actually think that content is good that's what we're doing right and then for Google obviously the back link element but all the other platforms uh doesn't make much of a difference now there is actually on YouTube there is some possibility that getting referral traffic from other platforms back to YouTube May influence your videos performance there's some possibility that does something but for the most part it's all pretty simple just based on user signals on that platform