Performance SEO Strategies for Agencies That Want Results | Mark Herre from SEOgame 

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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. Today we’re joined by Mark Herre. Mark is the CEO and founder of white label company SEOgame. Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Herre: Hey, nice to be with you, Rick.

Rick: Likewise, likewise. Mark, I’m excited to dive in and jump into what SEOgame is all about. We were just talking about it a little bit offline, but now we get to share it with our audience, and, Mark, it will be good to hear again.

Tell us a little bit about SEOgame. What’s the heart of what your company does? And if you were explaining this to a friend over coffee, how would you describe what you do?

Mark Herre: SEOgame is a white label SEO company, and a lot of people have heard the word SEO and SEO companies, and I always wanna say, “But do you know the difference between a white label SEO company and a traditional SEO or legacy company that does marketing services that have an SEO component to it?”

Like the marketing agency that sells SEO services. SEO still stands for search engine optimization, and white label SEO is somebody who does the search engine optimization for another SEO company, and that’s what differentiates SEOgame, and has been doing it for 30 years, since 1996, so I’m having an anniversary year, so thank you so much for having me.

Rick: Of course. And the phrase that comes to mind is not all heroes wear capes, right? ‘Cause you’re the guy, essentially your company is the company behind the company. You know what I mean? Just to understand a little bit about the type of companies you work with, yourself, which type of businesses or industry even do you feel you’re able to serve the best with the kind of service offering that you have at the moment?

Mark Herre: Certainly. I will bore the details of how I became a white label SEO company, but I basically learned about relationships in Chamber of Commerce with my first company I owned, which helped me understand who my ideal client was for my second company I started.

SEOgame was founded in 1996 to basically exist for other digital agencies to have a resource. The superpower that I have is I could still get any website ranking in under 30-day trials, so I do performance SEO, and I help digital agencies with that superpower so they can look good and grow and scale their business so they don’t ever have to find another company, like a vendor to kick around.

I am a partner or vendor for digital agencies, and I help them look good by realizing that they have retainers to keep lifetime clients. And SEOgame’s really good at helping, keeping their agency going with lifetime opportunity because a lifetime client is a digital marketing agency’s dream to have a website owner that pays them on a retainer until they die, sell or retire their business, and that’s a retainer on a lifetime contingency.

Rick: That makes a lot of sense. And by the way, it’s impressive being around for 30 years now, right? I’m sure you’ve seen all kinds of transitions in the digital world, and also maybe the brick-and-mortar, how people are transitioning from that to being able to sell online.

But more than anything, how do most people discover you? And I guess in a way, I’m sure word of mouth is up there, right? But are there any marketing channels that become your go-to for bringing in more clients?

Mark Herre: I started off telling you about networking in Chamber of Commerce with my first company, and that has always been the only way of filling my pipeline.

To continue to be introduced to other marketing agencies, I always try to be intentional with networking. And so the networking goes on throughout the day, all week long, in various ways that it’s rewarding to show up and say, “Mark, I got an introduction for you. You need to meet with this digital marketing agent. You need to meet with this SEO company.”

Outside of introductions, you nurture. You get your LinkedIn profile up to 20,000 people, right? There’s first connections right there. You need to go back and keep those first connections knowing what’s going on in AI searching, AI search visibility and search recommendations, and you need to let them know what’s the latest in AI search tracking and how that’s gonna help them.

You’re constantly having conversations with those first connections, and those are some of my go-tos, networking and LinkedIn.

Rick: Networking and LinkedIn. It makes a lot of sense. Now, I have to ask this ’cause Pathmonk is a website tool, right? So we were talking about this offline a second ago about websites, right? About your client’s website, and how much of a role does your website play in pulling in new business, and is there anything about it that you think really works?

Mark Herre: Oh, yes. Having a little social proof doesn’t hurt either. And my website, it’s just gone through a new transition, and I’ve got my team back on top of it.

I wanna basically focus on the 160 case studies that I’m throwing in there and be number one ranking for a case study. One of the case studies would be like the 160 that I just described. In the bricks and mortar space you’ve got med spas, chiropractors, dentists, lawyers. You got a whole bunch.

Got a lot of really good case studies in there, and each… I should have evergreen content on my website for all those case studies in the bricks and mortar space, and then be number one for let’s say, lawyer marketing, lawyer SEO, for lawyers, dentist SEO, and then I can attract CMO fractionals. I can attract digital agencies looking for a white label solution.

It’s very niche in that, and then you got the other category of 160 categories. So you got the bricks and mortar, and you got the home services like plumber, roofer, HVAC. I should have a case study for every one of those, and each one is a case study for SEO for plumbers. I wanna be number one ranking for that.

That is a real new work in progress now that I’ve just rebuilt my new website and it’s just launched a few weeks ago. So I’m totally excited about the ability to use AI Studio. Basically it’s a Go High Level product of AI, AI Studio. And yeah, it’s fun to do that.

Rick: Yeah, as you should be excited, right? It sounds of course there’s a lot going on and you’re always looking for business, but also maintaining your clients, and that’s a whole job in itself. But 160 case studies, that’s impressive. That’s just the highlight for me. Speaks to the level of your work, right?

And consistency. ‘Cause it could be 160 case studies gathered, I don’t know, in a few months, but what’s the quality of them, right? Just the time you’ve been around, the 30 years you’ve been around and you’ve been doing this, I think if we go and check those case studies it will speak to each and every story, every unique client, the way you help them out.

Hats off to you. Hats off to you.

Mark Herre: The homepage has to do something too, right? Performance-based SEO has always been my keyword that I’ve always popped up on the first page. Performance SEO, performance… And it’s amazing when I get that phone call that says, “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Performance SEO? You mean no rank, no pay? I can kick the tires and try it out for 30 days and get all my keywords number one?” Who does that, right? When people are tired of paying somebody and, “Keep your fingers crossed, let’s see what we can do,” and they’re dishing out a lot of money.

Business owners love that there’s a performance solution to business. Owners that I like to work with are fractional CMOs and digital agencies who are gonna white label SEOgame. And they’re finding me going, “I’ve been looking for you.”

Rick: Where have you been all my life?

Mark Herre: Yeah.

Rick: I mean—

Mark Herre: That’s what a website should do, right? In conversion rate optimization.

Rick: Yeah. Exactly. And now on the note of business owners, Mark, you’re a business owner yourself, right? So maybe we switch gears for a second, we talk about you as a leader, and the companies you work with. If you don’t mind, what does a typical workday look like for you?

I know you’ve taken some time out of your day now to record this, but what else is going on? What are the main things you focus on a day-to-day once you sit down to work?

Mark Herre: I love that. I’m gonna lie, I’m in the Mountain Time Zone. Most of my meetings all start at 8:00 Eastern Time. That means I have to be up and ready at 5:00. In the wintertime, this is tougher. All right? 5:45, challenge you, and be networking with people who are trying to introduce you to other people.

My networking events start at 8:00 AM ’cause that’s when the best networking goes with good networking groups. So if you’re a business owner and you’re not networking and you haven’t figured that one out, that’s how the day begins. That charges me. I’m a people person, and if you’re not an introvert but an extrovert, I guess, I don’t know what I am, but I just know that charges me in order to keep going through the day.

Goes all day till my Pacific Time, my California buddies are still working at 6:00 o’clock. Sometimes that means I’m having to stay up till 7:00. I keep my calendar very guarded, but my calendar appointments are generally three digital marketing agencies a day and discovery.

If you know what a discovery call is, that’s where they’re trying to find value in SEOgame and trying to find a way to get started on a 30-day trial on a website of theirs. Nine times out of 10, it’s the SEO company who says, “I’m in Houston, Texas, and I’m not number one ranking for Houston SEO. Can you help me with that project first?”

What does that do for the Houston SEO company? That brings in social proof. Now the Houston SEOs can say, “I don’t have a problem, Houston. You do not have a problem anymore.” And that way they could have social proof, get introductions themselves on their own website by being number one ranked for Houston SEO, and then they can start working with me with their book of business.

Logic, right? They could start saying, “Yeah, now I am number one for Houston SEO, Houston web design, and I can grow my market share in Houston,” which is a great place to grow a business if you’re number one ranking. And they can say, “Look at me. I’m number one in SEO Houston. I can help you be number one, Mr. Business Owner with Website.”

And then they can target on my favorite two types of products. You got your bricks and mortar and your home services, which are gonna reward that digital agency with a lifetime relationship. Now, what that just does is it 10 times the SEO company’s business model. 10 times. If they’ve got social proof and they’re getting leads, they can hire people, they can grow, and they have a vendor like SEOgame that does all the work behind the scenes.

Rick: Wow, that’s amazing. That’s a full day, I’m sure, ’cause you’re talking about spanning across different time zones, right? And you start with the networking, which of course if you’re a people’s person that charges you. Some people are like, “No, just get me away from others. I just need to sit down and focus on something specific.” And then, when you speak to people there’s different variables.

But with all that, I wanted to ask you this ’cause, especially understanding from someone experienced like yourself, there is a flood of content out there, Mark. And I’m curious to know how do you stay focused and keep learning among all of this? Maybe there’s certain places or people or routines that you turn to for staying ahead, for inspiration, if you will. Is there anything like that going on in your life?

Mark Herre: I think my clients keep my feet to the fire really. I’m 200 digital agencies all trying to tell me what’s going on and what’s happening. They’re digital marketing agencies who are followers of a… I don’t really know. I do a lot of adjusting.

So talk about what I’ve done in 2026. So if we had this conversation January 2026, and now we’re moving into July, right? So six months have passed. We’re going seven months now into… Can you believe it that the year’s almost over?

So what’s happened in such a quick time to keep up with everything? My team was saying, “Hold on, Mark. We’re going to reinvent the wheel. We’re going to rebuild an agency analytics for our reporting tool. We don’t need all 99 integrations that do nothing for our clients. We’re gonna build our own. We’re gonna vibe code this, put together. We’re gonna get 10 deliverables out there that are evergreen links in our reporting.

Our reporting’s gonna be… we’re gonna kill the competition in white label SEO companies ’cause I’m not the only white label SEO provider out there. And we’re gonna just smash it. We’re gonna crush the deliverables, and we’re gonna focus on these reporting tools that really help the digital agency look good and grow and scale their business.

That way we can be the one company that does it all, and we do it more effectively with our 30-day trials and everything else.”

And all of that came about like by February, March. Okay, get all the bugs worked out, right? Things are just… And now we’re just like seeing our fruits. It takes time to build a huge software that duplicates a product like AgencyAnalytics, which is completely venture backed for 50 years, no, 20 years or so over in Silicon Valley.

We created our own program. And so a lot of digital agencies go, “Wow, this is amazing. I don’t have to use AgencyAnalytics anymore,” or something like that. That’s just my world of how I help the digital agencies look good with a reporting tool and three reporting tools and 10 deliverables and weekly reports, things like that.

Rick: Okay. Gotcha. So it sounds like there’s really not much time to spend outside of the working hours, if you will, learning new things or anything. That it’s just spending time with your clients, understanding their issues and fixing them is actually what makes you learn and staying up to date. ‘Cause of course the SEO world, it’s constantly evolving, right? So there’s always new things that you have to keep up with and—

Mark Herre: It’s always new. And I’m getting constant, “Hey, did you see this?” “Oh, did you see the big algorithm change?” “Oh, did you see this?” Yeah, I have to go through all those emails and it’s enough.

And I have a team backed me up for 20 years that’s constantly, when I send stuff like to my team, I go, “Okay, what are we doing about this, guys?” “We’re on it. We’re on it.”

It’s great to know to have a team backed up that has been with me for so long that I credit. I’m maybe the face of the SEO company and being the face of the white label SEO company, which is different. It’s not just a corporate machine and you’re gonna get assigned a college representative who’s out of college trying to sell white label web design services first, things like that.

Other white label SEO and digital agencies offer the full gamut of everything marketing. We’re gonna offer a CRO package, we’re gonna offer a web design package, we’re gonna offer a paid media package. We’re social and then, yeah, we’ll do SEO. We’re good at it. Remember the keep the fingers crossed program. I’m just stuck in my lane. Love it. Does that make sense?

Rick: Yeah, it does. Yeah. And I think that’s how you get good at something. You know what I mean? You picked a specific, I don’t know if you wanna call it niche, you picked a lane as you’ve been talking about, and you stayed on it, and you got good at it, and it shows with the results.

Now, speaking of lanes, we are approaching a fast lane, and what I mean by that is we’re in the back half of our episode together here, Mark, and typically what we do at the end is we do a rapid fire segment, right?

So rapid fire is essentially just a few questions. We’re gonna keep things professional, of course, but we’d love to hear from you, as far as these questions go. Now, I wanna keep it a secret until I ask them, but my question right now is, are you ready for it?

Mark Herre: Ready.

Rick: All right, let’s do it. So when it comes to consuming content, whatever you consume at home, in your personal life, at work, do you prefer reading, watching, or listening to things?

Mark Herre: Oh.

Rick: Reading. Okay. So what’s the latest piece of content, it could be a book, could be an article, whatever, that you picked up, and was there any ideas or gems that really stuck with you in it?

Mark Herre: How about I do a little reverse on my answer? Reading and little short YouTube videos that are related to case studies on my favorite thing. My favorite thing ever is case studies on how traditional SEO, such as Google business profiles and the maps, and how a good number one ranking is still affecting the AI search models, how AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini.

I love reading and I geek out of these things because I actually produce some of the content for marketing influencers that do the podcast. So I write, I’m more of a researcher, and so I love reading the details. I’m just gonna go with that, of my favorite thing to do is to see case studies, because my digital agents are freaking out right now about the whole AI world.

So that, I know we’re going through rapid fire, but I had to really, like sorry, give me a little more time on that one.

Rick: All good. All good. No, that’s a good answer. Mark, if you had a magic wand and you could fix one frustrating thing in your marketing life with tech, what would you pick?

Mark Herre: I got my magic wand here, and the way it would improve everything is to send this magic wand to my digital agencies and have them wave it and litter my website with my testimonials of them all waving it. And then they say, “Mark is my magic wand. He’s the wizard behind the curtain. He can help anything. He can get any keyword ranking.” So I turn that one on you.

Rick: Okay. You’re the magic wand. I get it. So Mark, tell me, what’s one repetitive task in your daily workflow that you’d love to put on autopilot forever?

Mark Herre: It’s my LinkedIn lead generation. And I finally found a system. I’ve been out of a system for about a year, but I’ve just found recently that’s it, automation LinkedIn. You gotta have one. You gotta be able to do that.

Rick: Fair enough. Fair enough. And Mark, I wanna thank you again for being on the show with us today. I also wanna give you the last word before we wrap everything up. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, which I doubt, what is the one thing that they should remember about SEOgame and the work you guys are doing?

Mark Herre: Remember my magic wand. This is no ordinary magic wand. This is an SEOgame wand that I mail to you. If you’re a digital agency, you get one, and I want a testimonial from you that says I can just wake up in the morning, wave that magic wand, and when I do and I find this on my bedside, it’s the special magic wand.

Really, this is a boba straw. But you get it, and you could probably use it for your bobas. But I’ll tell you what, you’ll get your number one keywords ranking in 30 days, and that’s what SEOgame does on any website that needs a 30-day trial, and that’s what I want people to know, that I’m a performance SEO.

Rick: That’s amazing. Love that, Mark. And if anything, then people get the results. Also, they get refreshed ’cause they had their boba. It’s a win-win really.

Mark Herre: You get the boba and a magic wand that gets you any keyword ranking in a Google search.

Rick: That’s perfect. Mark, thank you for your insights again. I love that. Also, if someone wants to check you guys out, if they wanna know more about SEOgame, where can they go? Where could we send them?

Mark Herre: SEOgame.com and LinkedIn you can just find me.

Rick: Amazing. All right. Too easy. Mark, again, thank you for your insights and thank you for the conversation. It’s been great. We’re gonna have a little chat offline, but in the meantime we’re gonna say bye to our audience and our listeners here. I hope it was as insightful for them as it was for me. And, Mark, again, I wish you a wonderful day.

Mark Herre: Thank you.

Rick: Of course. Thank you.

Mark Herre: Thank you, Rick.

Rick: All right. Bye, everyone.