- That's what makes SEO beautiful.
See, not everyone has money, right?
And I got into SEO because I can compete
with the big guys when it comes to ads.
- [Host] Sure.
- That's what's beautiful about it
is when you don't have a ton of money,
yeah, sure, if you spend more
you'll get results a little bit quicker.
In the long run, of course, you'll get way more traffic
if you spend more money,
but this is what allows the little guy
to compete with the big guys.
- So is it basically the great equalizer, SEO?
(light upbeat music )
All right, Neil Patel.
So Neil, you are the marketer's marketer.
You're truly an expert in your field.
I have one important question to ask you
and I'm sure every entrepreneur,
every online and offline marketer that's listening to this
or just business owner, what do we do to maximize Q4 sales?
But I know from my own business
from, it's like maybe of the week before,
a few days before Thanksgiving
straight through the end of the year, a few days after
I just did massive amounts of business
and I kicked myself in the ass afterwards,
said, "God, I should have advertised more, prepared more."
What is the best way for someone in my position?
Anyone listening to set themselves up now
from a massive end of year bonanza?
- So there's a few things that are happening right now.
One, ad costs are going to go through the roof in Q4.
Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do ads,
but what you should do is add in an upsell
and add in a downsell on your checkout.
It's literally the easiest things to do.
If you're going to do a third thing, add a checkout bump,
because that'll increase your average order value.
And then from there, spend more money on ads.
The second thing I would do is I would go
and go find all the complimentary people in your space.
So, you do sales related stuff, right?
There's probably other people who teach sales,
but not necessarily the same sales stuff that you teach.
- And of course, not as good.
- There you go.
But different angle of sales, right?
There's many different things you can fine tune in sales
such as how to fine tune your processes or software,
sales skills and the list can go on and on.
You can partner with some of those people
and have them promote you and then you promote them.
We're seeing that as huge wins.
Like think of it this way, if you can't add an upsell
or a downsell at your check, because you don't have one,
go find someone else in your space that you respect,
have them take their product
and do a upsell with them or a downsell with them, right?
And vice versa.
- Makes sense.
Okay, I like that.
This definitely got some potential there.
Okay, keep going.
- Then the other thing I would do
is I would just start creating mass quantities of content.
Okay, so do keyword research.
And here's what I mean by this.
Everyone always ends up spending money on ads.
It's why Google and Facebook are so huge.
That's a given.
But Microsoft ended up releasing a report
where that broke down what marketing skill sets people
should focus their time and energy on
if they want to be effective marketers in the future.
The number one tactic was SEO.
One of the least invested aspects in marketing is SEO.
So you can do keyword research.
There's tons of free tools out there.
Pick any one you want
and type in keywords related to your space.
When you type in keywords related to your space,
you'll see a laundry list of keywords
that are also relevant
that you can just go and start creating content around.
And if you just write tons and tons of blog content
that's really good about those topics, okay,
not mediocre, but just really, really good.
You're not going to get that much traffic for an end of Q4.
You're not going to get that much traffic
even middle of next year.
But by the end of next year
you're going to start seeing that content
generate a lot of traffic.
From there, drive those people into a webinar
and then from a webinar, pitch whatever products, services
you're opting to offer, even you can do it for e-commerce,
or you can just link within your blog content
to the product you're selling you,
let's say if it's e-commerce.
- So, let's slow down for a second here
because that's an interesting perspective.
I think that most people nowadays overlook this whole idea
of organic traffic, SEO, right?
So, I think for me,
I've been fortunate because I have a brand,
so I get a lot of organic traffic
where people will either maybe see something about me
or read or watch the movie and then come,
but what about the person that doesn't have that?
The real methodology for getting yourself,
and you're talking about getting ranked
on the first page of Google.
Is that really what you're talking about here?
- Yep.
- Okay, right.
So, what is it really about the fact
that most people spend their days making video content,
but video content isn't what gets you ranked high
because it's not blog, they can't crawl it.
Sometimes you're saying turn it into a blog
where the computers can actually read it.
Is that what you're saying?
- That's correct.
Now they are getting better at crawling video content
but it doesn't rank that well.
Like anytime you do a Google search,
almost all the results are tech space.
And if you don't have a brand,
see when I started off I didn't have a brand
and my brand's nowhere near the size of yours.
I get right now 10 million visits
to my website each month without ads.
And then what happened was all those visitors through SEO
ended up helping to build my brand.
So now on any given month I get around 180,000 visits
just from Google of people typing in my name, Neil Patel,
and clicking on over to my website.
But it first started off where I was getting zero people
looking for my name.
I was creating all this content.
And when you're creating all this content
eventually you start getting traffic
and then people start subscribing
and it eventually builds your brand.
- How long is the lag time?
This is a really important question
So since you brought up the idea, okay,
so if you do this and you start writing blogs
you're not going to impact it tomorrow.
You're not going to make money off Christmas time
and you're probably don't even see any results
during the beginning and middle of next year.
But by the time it comes around to next Christmas
you're going to be golden.
So, is the problem that you think most people have
with SEO is that they start doing it,
they don't see the near term payoff,
so they say, "Ah, it's not working" and they quit.
Versus realizing that it's more of a long term investment
in your brand in terms of building up that name recognition
and also just getting yourself ranked up.
Is it a matter of time just wearing down the algorithm?
Is that what it's about?
- It is just time
and that's where most businesses make mistake.
They know it's a long term thing
but they'll do it for six months,
look at how much money they spent and then they just quit.
But if they just want for that extra six months,
at the end of a year
you start seeing some really decent results,
usually you can see good results.
But at the end of two, three years
that's when it really kicks in
and it's just a snowball effect
and it can exponentially grow
especially when you're starting off.
But businesses usually aren't willing
to put in the time and energy into it and the investment.
But when you look at it, the grand scheme of things,
it's so much cheaper than ads, much more sustainable,
much more profitable in the long run.
- Oh, I would think so for sure, right.
So what's the type of things do you want to,
so you mentioned, looking up the keywords
and writing about the keywords.
So where would you put those articles?
Do you put those on your website in a blog section?
Where would you publish those?
Would you try to get linked to other magazines
and other online periodicals?
How do you get your stuff out there?
Or it doesn't matter as long as it's just out there
and searchable, they'll eventually start picking it up.
- So, I'll give you four steps, okay?
First is I have a free tool called Ubersuggest.
You can go find the keywords
and then from there you can begin creating content.
Publish it on your domain.com/blog/whatever it is
so that way all your blog content's in a blog folder.
All right.
That's the first step.
The second step is taking those articles
and then pushing them out on the social web.
Sharing them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
Instagram you can't do much.
Tell people to swipe up,
but Instagram's not great for promoting content.
LinkedIn's another place.
So that'll help starting to get the traffic rolling in.
The third thing I want you to do is,
and you mentioned this is links.
See, the way internet works or Google works,
it's like a voting system.
In the presidential election,
the candidate who's most likely going to win
is the one with the most votes.
I know it's on an electoral basis in the United States,
but in general, you know, generally speaking,
the person with the most votes usually wins.
Google works the same way.
The person with the most votes ranks at the top.
But a vote on Google isn't someone saying,
"Hey, I vote for this site."
It's me saying, "Hey, I link to this website,"
and a link being a vote.
because you can't talk to the search engine.
But they can understand what you're saying by links.
So if your website has more links than someone else
and they're more relevant, the better off you're going to be.
Just like President Barack Obama telling you
to vote for a candidate, whether it's Trump or Biden,
is going to have more weight than me, Neil Patel,
saying vote for a candidate because he's a politician.
On the flip side,
if I talk about marketing or entrepreneurship
still probably don't have as much weight as President Obama
but I have quite a bit of weight in that category
because that's what I'm known as an expert.
Just like with you in business and sales, right?
So when you're writing the content,
and this is the third step,
when you're writing the content
usually link out to other websites
to site your sources, break down some stats, some data,
case studies, whatever it may be.
When you naturally link to people, email them.
Let them know that you linked to them.
Ask them to share your content
and if they like it, even link back.
Some of them will, some of them won't.
And don't worry if they link back or not.
But doing that one little thing
will get you more social love
and it'll also get you ranked higher on the internet
because some of those people will start linking back to you.
- Interesting.
Yeah, keep going.
- And then the fourth one is you need to fix your code.
So if your code, like you mentioned, it's easier
for them to crawl text-based content over videos.
If your code isn't friendly for Google,
you're not going to do well.
So we'll go back to Ubersuggest, it's free.
There's a site audit report in there
in the lifetime navigation
and just your URL, put it in
and it'll break down all the errors that are found
and what you need to fix to rank higher on Google.
And it breaks them down step by step
on how to fix them for free.
- What's it called?
How do you spell that?
- U-B-E-R.
- Oh, Ubersuggest.
- S-U-G-G-E-S-T.
Sadly the name isn't the best,
but when I bought the company that was the name
and it's too much work to change it.
- Got it.
Okay, so, essentially making your website more friendly
for Google's engine to crawl
and ascertain what's relevant and what's not.
- Exactly.
- Okay.
And if you do those four things,
you're saying it's not,
when would you start to first notice a change?
How long out?
Six months, a year, three?
When would you first start to get glimmers of it?
- Within three months you'll start noticing something.
Six months it starts kicking in a little.
Within a year you really start seeing the results.
Within three years, you're off and to the races.
- Got it.
And are there ways that an entrepreneur
with somewhat of a bank roll, not a big one
but let's say someone's willing to invest
some amount of capital that can hasten that process
through capital investment.
Is there ways to,
I wouldn't say just cheat the system,
but to expedite things, to tip it in your favor.
Obviously, I guess you could write more articles,
create more blogs, but are there other things
that you can do that are legitimate,
not like cheating the system but sort of really gaming it
in a positive way to get yourself there quicker?
- It comes down to what you said.
You would have to either write more content,
build more links, get more social shares.
But even then it still takes the same timeframe.
You'll get more traffic within that timeframe
but the first year,
you won't get the results you're looking for.
And that's what makes SEO beautiful.
See, not everyone has money, right?
And I got into SEO because I can compete
with the big guys when it comes to ads.
- [Host] Sure.
- That's what's beautiful about it
is when you don't have a ton of money,
yeah, sure, if you spend more
you'll get results a little bit quicker.
In the long run, of course, you'll get way more traffic
if you spend more money.
But this is what allows a little guy
to compete with the big guys.
- So is it basically the great equalizer, SEO?
- I genuinely believe it is
That along with social media.
because if you look at a lot of the people who are popular
on social media, yeah, you got your celebrities
but it's not a lot of big companies
And you have a lot of micro influencers
who are making a killing
and just having a big following.
Like I was asking one of my teammates earlier today,
his name was Fabian,
and Fabian's just like, you know
I was talking to him and we were talking about social
and he's just like, "Give me a quote for social."
So I gave him one or he's like, "Gimme a question."
So I gave him one.
"Would you rather have a million followers,
or 10 million followers, or $1 million?"
And he's like "I'd rather have a million dollars
than 10 million followers."
And I'm like, "The followers are real, you sure?"
He's just like, "Yeah, I'd rather have a million dollars
because you can invest that million dollars."
I'm like, "You have 10 million followers.
You know how much money you can make from that
time and time and time again?"
- I saw that same question posed but with a billion dollars
and a billion followers
and I said, "I'll take the billion dollars."
You know why?
Because I could just put the billion dollars in a bank
and can and live off the inches for the rest
and it's game over with a billion.
So, I think that system doesn't work with a billion.
I was like, "That's a really stupid question they asked"
because I understand what they're trying to say,
but I'll still take the billion
every fuckin' day of the week.
What would you take, a billion dollars
or a billion followers?
What would you take?
- I'll take a billion dollars.
- Right, right.
because bye-bye.
- Yeah, I would be like, you know what
I don't need to work anymore.
Let's call it a day.
- But a million dollars and 10 million,
I'll take 10 million followers every day of the week
and twice on Tuesdays, you know.
- That's right.
And that's why I posed it not a million followers
with a million dollars
because a million followers depending on the industry,
it could be hard to monetize,
but the moment you have 10, you're big enough as a brand.
- Oh sure, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, let's switch gears for a second
to the typical strategies
that your run-of-the-mill expert marketer uses
is "I'm an expert in Facebook."
Like that's the big one.
I'm a Facebook advertising and Facebook slash Instagram
and they know a little bit about Google sometimes
and even less so about YouTube.
But what about these other platforms now?
Like you have TikTok and Snapchat
and these other places that you can actually advertise
and this thing I keep calling seeing
like Taboola or the display ads.
What about all these other sources of traffic?
Do you think that it makes sense nowadays
to start putting some of your budget
towards things like TikTok, Snapchat?
And are there certain things that convert well
on those platforms and things that don't convert well?
What do you think about that?
- Sure, so if you have an app, like a product,
most of the platforms convert really well for that.
E-commerce works really well in TikTok and Snapchat,
Pinterest, Taboola and Outbrain work really well
for lead generation courses.
Reddit works well for a lot of different industries as well
other than e-commerce.
So when you think about these platforms,
and they work for B2B and B2C,
and there's different platforms out there.
Google and Facebook of course are the best
because they drive you the most volume
and they're the easiest to scale.
And when I talk about Google
I also include YouTube within Google, right?
Just like Instagram is owned by Facebook.
But there's an issue, they're expensive.
Taboola and Outbrain may not scale as well
but they're fractions of the cost.
You can literally spend sometimes a fifth, a sixth,
sometimes a 10th and get great conversions.
Can you ramp it up to 100,000 a month
on some of these platforms?
No, but who cares if you can spend 2, 3, 5, $10,000 a month
and you're getting a solid ROI?
because if you do that on six, seven of these platforms
it adds up and then go tackle the big players later on.
But I think they're actually a better opportunity,
especially if you're starting off
or if you're a small business.
- So what would you, of those alternative, like Taboola,
what are the top three or four
that you think are the best ones
for people should experiment with?
- Number two would be Snap.
Number three would be TikTok.
Number four would be Pinterest.
Number five, and this is B2B, it's expensive,
but it converts well, which would be LinkedIn.
- LinkedIn.
Okay.
And do you, in terms of, you think it's,
so you mentioned that with TikTok
and it's more about, it's good for e-commerce,
there's certain offerings that are better
on certain platforms you recommended,
like for instance B2B is more about LinkedIn.
What would you say in terms of the others?
Is it equally good B2B, B2C?
Or any industry specific recommendations?
- Snapchat and TikTok, B2C.
Pinterest, B2C.
Taboola, Outbrain, they work for both B2C and B2B.
Taboola, Outbrain works for pretty much any industry.
- What do you think it is that separates a great marketer
from an average marketer
in the world of like the whole Facebook, Instagram,
what we're talking about here?
I don't mean at your level,
I'm talking about the average person you see right now
that's sort of like there's 1,000,001 agencies, right?
You probably laugh when you hear that word, right?
Because they're just a lot of one man shops.
But you know, I respect the entrepreneurial effort.
What do you think it is that separates the good ones
from the bad ones?
Is it some of the ones
that are more into the testing side of things
or is it about the creatives they create?
What do you think it really is
that makes a good a good marketer
or a good marketing agency?
- I think it's creativity.
So not necessarily the creatives that they're creating,
but the creativity, like the ideas and the concepts
that they're coming up with.
Because right now everything is saturated.
We all have to go omnichannel,
leverage all the channels out there to do well.
So, your only way to win is thinking outside the box.
For example, when I talk about SEO,
everyone's going to be creating content,
doing QR research.
Doe it mean you shouldn't do it?
No, huge ROI.
But if you want to really do well,
you got to think outside the box.
And here's an example of that.
In my industry, if I wanted to bid on my traffic
it would cost me somewhere around one and a half
to $2 million a month just on ads just for Google.
Okay.
That's a lot of money that I would be burning each month.
I can't afford that.
That's a lot of cash.
It would eat away at my margins.
My business wouldn't be profitable.
Well, on the flip side,
I did things away like create a free tool
and just give it away, right?
And I was just like, "Huh,
if I take what people are charging for it or give it away,
I can get a lot of people."
Just like those assessment tests
when you're talking about sales.
Everyone knows about those assessment tests.
Hey, would this be a good salesperson to hire?
Creating those for free on your on your website
and releasing them out there can get a lot of links,
it can get a lot of traffic, a lot of rankings.
And then, that way when you create the content
you're already going to have more eyeballs,
more social followings, and you're going to do well.
That's an example of creativity,
or like upsells, downsells, or creating better funnels.
All examples of creativity.
And I think that's what it takes to do really well
in marketing these days.