How to replace your paid ads with SEO

- It doesn't matter how many links you have.
(graphics whooshing) If everyone lands on your site
and your ranking number one, (graphics whooshing)
they click the back button.
It tells Google, (graphics whooshing)
the site sucks. - Yeah.
- And they should rank it lower.
(bright music)
- Hey everyone, welcome to today's video.
We are backstage at ADCON 2023
where we've just had Neil Patel headlining the event
and we have decided to produce a little bit
of content backstage, which is selfishly for me
and I think you're going to learn a lot from it.
We have scaled our coaching business
to half a million a month with paid advertising.
Neil is the master at Google SEO.
You've been doing this for now, how long?
- Ooh. (graphic chiming)
Almost 22 years-ish or so.
- Okay, perfect.
So I've got some questions
because I need to extract 22 years worth of noise
(both chuckle)
from Neil's brain so that we as a company
can implement some Google SEO stuff.
So we can get more traffic.
Because where I see the game going is that paid ads
are only getting more expensive.
They're only getting more difficult.
They're still in something of a golden,
you know, a few golden years.
But it's not getting any cheaper, right? Paid traffic.
- It's not getting any cheaper.
But I think, there'll be a way to make money
from paid ads for a very, very, very long time.
- Yeah.
- Just like SEO.
SEO was much easier 10, 15 years ago.
- Yeah. - It still works today.
It's harder.
It takes more time, (graphics whooshing)
but it still produces results just like paid advertising.
(graphics whooshing) - Yep.
- because you learn more over the years
just like with paid ads,
you learn how to optimize your conversions,
your funnels or upsell and downsell-
- Yeah. - And all these things
help you get a better ROI over time.
- And new platforms
are going to keep emerging. - Yeah.
- We take the same skills over, so totally agree.
But I also want to add in the organic side of things
which we are not focusing on at all.
And I want to have that leverage as well.
And Google traffic is so valuable.
- Yes.
- But it's a little bit harder to get
and takes a little bit longer.
So we're going to dive straight in.
So where we're at, Neil, is we have done pretty much nothing
with Google SEO for 10 years.
Fresh as a bean- - Okay.
- And we need your help.
So what would be your starting point for us?
We are a marketing education company.
We're really good at what we do.
We focus on teaching YouTube ads, and webinars,
and teaching coaches how to get high-ticket clients.
And what would you say is our starting point
to get on Google?
- So the starting point is it's really hard
to rank a website without content.
And you probably have a ton of content from these events.
Video content, it's not bad but let's focus
on text-based content- - Okay.
- Because typically whenever you do a Google search,
yes, videos can rank, but it's mainly text-based websites
that you're landing onto.
So the first thing you'd want to do is give away the farm.
And what I mean by give away the farm
is think about everything that you're charging for.
Educate people through text-based blog posts
and give that away on your website.
No joke. - Okay. Right.
So, we have a $10,000 coaching and included in that
is a training program with a bunch of modules,
bunch of lessons.
So how much of that, what percentage of that
or pretty much type all of that up
and put it across lots of different articles.
Break it up. - Correct.
So you type up the majority of it, whatever that is,
80%, 70%, 50%. - Okay.
- Break it up into a lot of different articles
and put it on the web.
And it could be a variation of it, right?
It doesn't have to be- - Yeah.
- The exact thing but you want to give away
your most valuable content for free
if you're looking to rank. (graphics whooshing)
- [Host] Okay. Got it.
So how will I know which topics
from within my training, my valuable content
are going to pull well or not?
- Sure, so you have,
we have free tools like Ubersuggest,
you can end up typing in any keywords like
coaching or consulting or anything like that.
And you're going to get more specific.
Those one word phrases are too generic.
But like when you're in coaching,
what do you guys help with specifically with coaching?
- It's a really...
It's a three-pronged approach. (graphics whooshing)
So it's people that have a high-ticket offer,
they may need help restructuring that offer.
That's actually the session
I just got off finishing now. - Yeah.
- So I was teaching something called the "offer triangle"
where we have client results at the top.
We have lifestyle next to that
and we have scalability next to that.
So you've got to have an offer that can satisfy
those three things. - Yeah.
- So it's offer creation,
it's a webinar that's going to get people from.
I call this the conversion timeline.
They're at a zero, they have no idea who you are.
- Yeah. To buying. - About 10 to buying,
we want to get them up to a six or a seven
before we get them on the phone.
Webinar does that,
YouTube traffic to flood the whole system.
- And right now, if I had to sum it up
it's like you guys
do high-ticket coaching. (graphic pops)
(cursor clicks) - Yeah.
- Is that correct? (bell rings)
- Yeah. (graphics whooshing)
- So you would go to Ubersuggest and you type in keywords
like high ticket coaching.
It'll tell you the popularity of that term.
Plus it'll give you thousands and thousands and thousands
of other suggestions.
It would give you variations of high ticket coaching
as well as other long-term variations of it.
So now you have a list of a ton of keywords
within your industry that people are searching for.
Look for the ones with high search volume
because that means people are searching
for them on a monthly basis.
And look for the ones that have a high CPC,
you do pay ads. - Yeah. Yep.
- CPC is cost-per-click. - Yeah.
- Typically the higher CPC.
That means the better that keyword
is because people are getting more conversions.
- [Host] Right.
- So what you want to do is then create content
around those keywords, assuming it's relevant
to the products and the services you're offering.
- Right.
- And you would want to put that up on the internet.
That's the first step. - Okay.
So a few questions now.
So I'm wondering where to go next
because we're talking about finding high-value keywords.
- Yeah. - With a high CPC.
Surely, they're more competitive.
So if I'm- - Not always.
- Brand new, new site. No?
- No. A lot of those aren't necessarily more competitive.
- Okay.
- In many cases they are, but in some cases they're not.
(graphics whooshing)
And with Ubersuggest, you can put in your domain name
and it'll tell you out of the list of keywords
it'll filter the ones that you have the highest probability
of ranking for right now based on what you've done so far.
(graphics whooshing)
- Okay. That makes sense.
So would I be picking a combination
of what I would deem high-value keywords
versus low-hanging fruit keywords?
- Yes. - Okay.
- And the app will sort the low-hanging keywords
for you first- - Okay.
- Once you put in your domain name.
So then you would create text-based content-
- Yeah. - And put those blog posts
on your website. - Yeah.
- You could use things like ChatGPT and Bard
or the Ubersuggest AI Writer- - Mm.
- But you still want a human to modify the content-
- Yeah. - Your content
needs to have E-E-A-T.
What that stands for is? (graphics whooshing)
Experience. Expertise.
Authority, and Trust.
And Google breaks that down. (graphics whooshing)
They want your content to be unique and it to stand out.
They don't want it to be regurgitated information
that can already be found on the web.
- [Host] Okay.
- So if you can end up creating really, really unique
content that stands out and is super helpful,
it's more likely to rank. - Okay.
- And you just publish it on your blog, on your website.
And then what you'll need to do is
A, you need to get some social shares to your articles.
So share it on your social profiles.
- Okay.
- And you can also reach out to other people
who share similar content on Twitter
and other social networks and ask them to share content
and maybe you reciprocate and share their content.
- Okay.
- And then B, you need to get links.
Links are one website linking to your website.
- Yeah.
- Without other people linking to your website,
you're not going to rank as well.
- Okay. (graphics whooshing)
- So in Ubersuggest, there's a report called the
Backlink Opportunity report.
So you put in a few of your competitors
if you don't know your competitors,
just Google the terms you're trying to rank for.
- Yeah. - You'll see who's at the top
and you'll put in your domain name
and a few of your competitors. - Yep.
- And in this Backlink Opportunity report,
you first start off with your own domain name
and then when you put in your competitors,
it'll tell you who...
It'll give you boxes for your competitors.
It'll show you everyone who's linking
to your competitors but not you,
see if someone links to one of your competitors,
they may be biased and they may like them
and they may not link to you. - Yeah.
- If someone links to two, three of your competitors,
the chances are (graphics whooshing)
they like your industry.
- [Host] Yeah.
- They don't care about a specific competitor
and they're open to- - Right.
- Linking anyone in your space.
(graphics chiming)
You'd head up those sites and talk to them
about how you have better content, more thorough.
And they're already linking to a few,
how you can get them to link to you
and why it provides more value.
And over time you'll build some links.
- [Host] Okay.
- And what you'll find in this process
is you'll start ranking higher.
- Okay. - Now there's some
on page SEO issues that most sites have.
In the Ubersuggest report,
there's also a site auto report, you put in your URL,
tells you all the basic stuff you need to fix.
- Yep.
- So that way you can rank higher from a code perspective.
At this point, you just do this,
you create at least three articles a week.
You do this for a year,
you'll start seeing some really good traffic.
What you'll notice though is as you get more traffic,
you may not get more conversions.
So just like how you take someone from zero to 10,
you got to warm them up.
Some may read your blog and they may be at a two.
- Yep.
- And now the other two, you may in within that blog post,
want to collect their email address, okay?
From an exit intent or you could do,
Hey, join this webinar and you're starting to warm people up
so you can get them from a two to maybe a six.
And then they're more likely to be ready to get on the phone
and talk to someone. - Yeah. Okay.
So let's just come back to backlinks in
because that's one of the things on my list to ask you about.
because back 10 years ago, I used to do a little bit
of Google SEO and it was really easy, 10 years ago.
We would just go to Fiverr and just buy a bunch of backlinks
(Neil laughs)
and it actually worked.
I'm aware that that's far from the truth now.
- Yep.
- What you've just described is very helpful
but sounds very manual.
Is there any way to automate this,
leverage my time better than reaching out manually
to all these different competitors sites?
- No, there isn't. - Okay.
- You have to just create amazing content,
reach out to them, get links. - Okay.
- There are some other ways you can generate links.
Like, you can create infographics.
(graphics whooshing)
People are more likely to link to infographics
from what we see.
You can use Canva to create them.
Infographic is just a visual
that breaks down the story- - Yeah.
- You're trying to tell. (graphics whooshing)
You can also create free tools.
They're easier to generate links to.
And what I mean-
- And sorry to interrupt just before we move on infographic
that's something I would just embed into the blog post.
- Uh-huh. Yes. - Okay.
With any kind of SEO benefits in the way that I'm-
- Just some bed to the blog post.
- You just literally- - People like it,
the link to it. - Okay.
- And then free tools.
You can do, you know,
I don't know the coaching space too well
but like a form in fitness, BMI mass calculator,
body mass index calculator.
ChatGPT was able to create the game Pong
in less than 60 seconds.
So you can have it create almost any tool for you.
(graphics whooshing)
You can also use sites like CodeCanyon to buy tools
that you can white label and put on your site
for like under 100 bucks, maybe 50 bucks.
- [Host] Okay.
- And these tools over time will help build links as well.
(graphics whooshing)
- Okay. That's good to know.
- You just got to find tools within your space.
But on sites say CodeCanyon,
there's tools in almost every space.
- Okay, so what I'm hearing and I want to make sure
I'm understanding this correctly
is now the game is we want high-value backlinks
but perhaps less of them than just trying
to get thousands and thousands of backlinks
just for the sake of having a backlink.
Is that, am I understanding that right?
- Ideally high value and quantity.
- Okay. - But high value quantity.
- Okay.
- And if you can't get that high value is fine,
relevant sites linking to you,
you don't want Neil Patel linking to you
when you're in coaching. - Yeah.
- You may want another coaching site linking to you
or you may want to CNBC or Bloomberg website linking to you.
That's breaking down how people are making a lot of money
through coaching and it's the up and coming industry.
- Right. - I'm making it up.
Maybe they would write about that,
maybe they wouldn't. - Okay.
- But that's the kind of stuff that you want
and you'll get that over time.
You just got to do it often enough.
Create enough content, add enough value
and people link to. - Okay.
- This is like a conference.
If you get (beep) content,
are people going to come back next year?
- (laughs) Nope. - No.
And excuse my language- - Yeah.
- But it's the same with the internet.
If you create good content, people will come back
they'll be loyal, they'll give you their email address,
they're more likely to convert, they'll link to you
they'll share your content, all that stuff.
- Okay, so we used to, again, back 10 years ago,
we used to prioritize things like getting a backlink
from a government website or an education website
and things like that. - Still helps.
- Okay. Still relevant?
- But it doesn't matter too much.
You just want to create good content.
- (clears throat) Okay. All right.
So how many backlinks would I be expecting
to generate over what period of time?
And then when would it really start to kick in?
- Don't worry about the number.
- Okay. - It will be slow and steady.
You may trickle in and get a few a week
but after doing it for a year, your few week may turn
into five or 10 a week. - Okay.
- And it just adds up over time.
- Okay.
- You don't need quantity to rank,
you just need quality content.
That's amazing. (graphics whooshing)
The best user experience.
Put the user first, do what's best for them.
- [Host] Yeah.
- And in the longer run you should start ranking higher
and higher assuming you're doing the other factors
like we mentioned.
- Okay, so if I did want to, you know,
I'm hearing this has going to be a manual process.
We need to be reaching out. - Yes.
- Building a bit of a relationship with those other sites.
Can I still leverage my time by just hiring a VA to do that?
Would you trust someone to be...
- Not a VA, someone who has a little bit more experience
who specializes in it.
They're going to have much more success than a VA.
- Okay.
Just because of their knowledge of those competitors.
- Yeah. Maybe they've sent out enough emails
for link building so they know, you know,
what has a better success rate.
- Mm.
- They know what kind of content converts better,
things like that. - Okay.
- Via has to learn it all from scratch.
- Okay. So what we'll move
to the content itself in a minute.
The text that we're actually putting in there
and how long and things like that.
But before we move on from linking outside of that,
outside of the backlinks,
are there any other factors that we want to incorporate
in our article that helps rank in terms of we talked
about finding some keywords,
some high value ones, competitive ones?
- Naturally, you'll have the keywords in the article
without forcing it. - Yeah. (clears throat)
- And you don't need to emphasize on how many times
or anything like that.
Just whatever is natural.
But you got the main factors on page.
- Yeah. Yeah. (graphics whooshing)
- Which we talked about the site auto report will help.
- Yeah. - Backlinks and content.
Those are the main three areas.
(graphics whooshing)
- So interesting because back when we used to do it,
it seems so artificial to me now,
but the way we used to do it
is bolding certain words and- - Yeah.
- And underlining certain things and putting a certain thing
in the head of text (graphics chiming)
and things like this.
So truly- - It doesn't matter.
- That's all not very relevant anymore.
- Nowhere near the other main three factors
because look at that then when you're reading an article
do you really care if a word is bolded?
You care if it provides the best experience.
- If it doesn't, you're going to click the back button
and go onto the next article. - Mm.
- It doesn't matter how many links you have.
If everyone lands on your site and you're ranking number one
and they click the back button, it tells Google,
this site sucks- - Yeah.
- And they should rank it lower.
- Got it.
Okay. This is really, really interesting and also helpful.