SEO Hacks You Need to Start Doing Today

- They want Nike to create content around soccer
and basketball and football, right?
So the same goes with you creating content
that you're an expert on.
They want you to tie in your own personal experiences,
what they should avoid, stuff, storytelling,
things that no one else is talking about.
In essence,
they don't want you to write the same thing
that 10 other people wrote.
They want you to write something new.
(upbeat music)
- A very important question
for all the people watching us right now is about the tools.
Is about the tools, right? - [Neil] Yeah.
- If you could give us some, three to five
recommended tools for developing the SEO part
of the business, what could they be?
- So number one is going to be Google Analytics.
It's a free tool from Google.
It tells you not just what keywords
you're getting traffic from,
but it tells you which ones drive revenue.
Just because you rank for a keyword
doesn't mean it's going to make you any money.
If you rank number one for a keyword
and you make zero dollars,
who cares, it's useless traffic.
The second tool is Answer The Public.
Remember how you talked about these long tails,
like how to pick the right stock to invest in
when you're starting off.
It will tell you all those long tail keywords
that people are typing in.
The third tool is Google Search Console.
If you want to rank in SEO,
it tells you what errors there are on your webpage
and how Google's crawling your page and what's wrong
and what you need to fix.
The fourth tool is vidIQ.
- [Host] VidIQ.
- [Neil] If you want to do really well, and-
- [Host] I use that one a lot. - Yeah.
VidIQ and TubeBuddy, they're both good.
And if you want to do really well in YouTube
it's a tool that you have to end up checking out.
And then the last one that I would check
out is Google Data Studio.
See if you're going to do SEO
you want to do paid advertising, you want to do emo marketing,
you want to do social media marketing,
you want to leverage all the channels.
Google Data Studio will take the data from all those places
and you can put it into one dashboard
so you can see all your data in one place.
- Let me ask you something.
It's a particular question here.
When I produce videos for YouTube.
- [Neil] Yeah.
- And I want to rent them organic,
I've seen a lot of companies making good videos
and then they pay traffic for this video.
And in my point of view, when you do that,
you kind of like mess everything about the algorithm here
and something happens and then this video stops showing
to the audience, a good organic video, when we pay traffic,
it just stops showing after we stop using traffic.
I have a lot of theories about this
but do you recommend using traffic to a video?
You want to rank?
Is there anything related?
- No, I don't recommend paying for the traffic.
Google clearly tells you that if you pay for traffic,
it doesn't help or hurt your rankings, it's separate.
But the issue is when you pay, you get all these views
in engagement and then you stop paying
and it goes away and it can send negative signals.
- Yes. Yes.
Imagine we are starting right now to use SEO in my company.
- [Neil] Okay.
- And I hire something, someone.
- [Neil] Okay.
- To do it for me working in my company.
What could be like the beginner's guide
for this one person to start developing an SEO area
in my company?
- Sure, so the easiest way to do is we have a guide
called SEO Made Simple, a step-by-step guide
and it's in Portuguese and in English
and it tells you what to do, step one, step two, step three.
But you're actually, the easiest way
to get started is we have a tool
that's in Portuguese called Ubersuggest.
You can add your website
and it'll crawl all your pages, tell you what's wrong,
it tells you how to fix it
and it'll even prioritize what to fix first,
second, third, fourth, fifth, and so forth.
That'll get you the best rankings.
- Wow. Wow.
And so, this person could use this tool.
- [Neil] Yeah. - To like improve my website.
- [Neil] Yep. - And what should be a routine
for someone working with SEO?
- They should be checking every day
for any errors and fixing up.
They should continue to publish new content each
and every single day.
They should try to build links each
and every single try day.
They should try to get more social shares, each
and every single day.
But those are the main things that someone would focus on.
- Okay and are there any mistakes that everybody
makes when they are,
like trying to rank a page or working with SEO?
- There's not one mistake we see people make
but there is one that is very common
which is people create crap content
and they expect to rank well, the reason you do well
on YouTube is because your content is good.
If your content suck, no matter how much marketing you do,
over time, your rankings and your views wouldn't be good.
You need to really go out there
and create amazing content and people just forget that.
Instead they create the same stuff that everyone
else creates and they regurgitate the same information
of creating something new.
- Yeah, but you're telling me about a good content
and what exactly is a good content?
I mean it's personal or is it-
- Yeah, no, no, you're right, to some extent it's personal.
But imagine you searching for something,
you got this problem, okay,
like how to pick the right stock when you're starting off
or which trading platform should I buy my stocks in?
Your content should answer the question so thoroughly
that the person knows what to do next.
That's the first step.
The second step is the content needs to be
easily digestible, so can someone quickly read it
listen to it, watch it, and understand the main points.
The third is it needs to have personal experiences.
So with SEO, Google
and their algorithm has something called EAT.
EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trust.
They want people to create content that they're experts on.
They don't want Nike to create content on investing.
They want Nike to create content
around soccer and basketball and football.
Right, so the same goes
with you creating content that you're an expert on.
They want you to tie
in your own personal experiences, what they should avoid.
Stuff, storytelling, things that no one else
is talking about, in essence, they don't want you
to write the same thing that 10 other people wrote.
They want you to write something new and unique.
- And you are 37 and like you have 800 employees,
you operate in like the whole globe.
You have people working in India, right?
- Yeah, we do a lot of work for companies in India.
Like have you heard of like PWC?
- Yes.
- PWC, ESPN, do you guys have ESPN here in Brazil?
- [Host] Yes, yes, yes.
- So we do a lot of marketing for, like even in Brazil,
we have a CNN.
They're trying to make a big push in Brazil.
So we're now doing their marketing in Brazil.
- Very cool.
And you have Brazil, you have United States.
Like where are you going to, from a personal perspective,
I mean you've reached a lot of success
especially corporate success, money.
You're famous in your niche
and you're traveling to other countries.
I mean, what, where are you going to, where are you headed?
- So we'll continually to expand globally.
I don't want to take the company public.
We were the 21st fastest growing company
in the United States two years ago.
- [Host] But why don't you want to do it?
- I don't want the headache, I don't have investors.
- [Host] Okay.
- So I'd rather stay private, we make good money.
I don't care for the headache.
I've already made good money in my past
so I don't need more.
We're continually buying up a lot of companies.
We want to do two, three acquisitions next year.
And the other thing that I want to do is,
I think eventually we'll have a company that has five,
10,000 employees as we get into more countries.
But my big personal goal is to give back more.
Like the money is not that more meaningful.
I make more money,
what, I have another bigger home?
I already have a house in Vegas that's expensive.
My house in Vegas I think is 18 million dollars.
My house in Beverly Hills,
once I'm fully done building it is around 20 million.
So that's 38 million in real estate.
How many more homes do I need,
right, how many more cars do I need?
You know, my big thing that I want to do, I have children,
one's a one year old, one's three years old.
We want to give all our money
and show our children that there's more
to money than just keeping it for yourself.
Why not use it to help people throughout all the world?
You know, I've been to Brazil, I've been
to like favelas, you know, so many kids are struggling.
Why not help them out and give them a better life?
Why not give people better lives in America, India, UK,
everywhere around the world?
Why not try to use the money to try to solve diseases
and problems, instead of just giving my kids money
and having them be lazy and doing nothing?
- Did you have this point
of view when you didn't have money
or is it something that you discovered?
- No, when I had no money,
all I wanted to do was become rich.
And I remember when I had no money,
my first goal was I wanted to be a millionaire,
then I wanted to be a 10 millionaire,
then I wanted to be a hundred millionaire, then billionaire.
But it doesn't stop, that's the thing.
What point does enough, you're not going to use the money.
You know, it's funny, I was talking to my wife,
during Covid I started flying on private planes.
So instead of going to the airport and flying commercial,
I would be in the plane all by myself.
And sometimes we'd get really big planes that can fit 18,
20 people, right?
Usually not 20 but 17, 18 people, the max,
somewhere around there.
And I was spending all this money and there was,
it was never ending.
What do I buy next?
Yachts, big boats, I don't need any of that.
And then my wife and I came to the realization
is we're happier when we actually help other people.
Instead of me spending a hundred thousand dollars
or call it, I came from Las Vegas to Sao Paulo,
if I flew private, it would cost me maybe 200, $250,000.
So maybe a million reais, that's a lot of money.
And instead of spending it on a plane to go back and forth
I'll go to the airport, I'll sit in a normal plane
and I'd rather donate the money
because when I see other kids living better lives,
it makes me happy.
But I didn't get there until I started to make money.
And I have it.
And I'm not rich like Elon Musk or Bill Gates,
that's a whole new level, I don't have that kind of money
but I have enough where I don't have to worry.
My wife doesn't have to worry, my kids don't have to worry.
And we just found that we're happier helping other people.
- And that's very beautiful to hear.
And you talk a lot about helping children in India,
here in Brazil.
And it makes me think like, how was your childhood?
It was hard or?
- No, my childhood was pretty good.
My parents didn't have money.
We grew up in housing that was,
for people who don't have much money.
But my family helped us out.
So my mom's brothers helped us.
My dad's family, brothers and sisters helped him.
So my parents had helped from their siblings.
So my upbringing wasn't bad.
I grew up middle class and I was really happy
but I wanted to be rich.
And I never really realized that when you have more money,
you keep buying things and it doesn't make you happy.
I remember I went to the store,
bought a watch for maybe five, 600,000 reais.
That's a lot of money for one watch, happy for one day.
And then I was like, ah, it's just a watch.
I don't even wear it.
I haven't worn it for maybe three, four years.
But then when I help some kid, who you know,
needs eye surgery or doesn't have clothes
to go to school, you change their lives.
That makes me happy, not for one day.
It makes me happy for life.
You just got to keep doing it.
I look at that as investing.
I'm investing in the future of planet Earth.
- Wow and do you have faith in something bigger?
- I don't know if I really have, I have faith in mankind.
That's probably the best way to put it.
And what I mean by that is,
I believe people can do so much to help more people out.
You just have to give more people opportunities.
So what my wife
and I have learned is when we help more people
and they start doing better, then,
because they realize how much better their life was
because other people helped them,
then they start helping others as well when they grow older
and it creates this big chain
and hopefully more and more people help each other out.
- Okay. Okay.
You do have like a, first of all,
congratulations on on this thinking.
I think a lot of people should be happier
if they discovered how good
and satisfying it is to help others.
Especially when you can help a kid, a child.
And I was very helped by a lot of people
and I think what explains the small success I had
is more related to the things I don't control
than the things I do control.
But the things I do control, I worked a lot.
And the things I don't control, I think a lot of people
help me out and then I try to help others,
especially entrepreneurs
because I think it's like a chain of people helping others
and it's very good for the economy, the health, the family
and the country and the world, the planet, as you said.
And before we finish here,
do you have like a final conclusion, hint, tip, suggesting
or something that you would leave us to help,
especially on the business part of it,
on how to operate a business,
how to make better SEO, how to acquire more clients,
make better acquisitions with lower costs, acquisitions.
Do you have like a final conclusion?
- Yes, I'm going to give you three things for the finale.
Okay, number one is no one has all the answers.
So in business it doesn't matter if you've done it 10 times
or for your first time, everyone's going to make mistakes.
But if you avoid making the same mistake
over and over again, at the end, you'll be left
with the stuff you should be doing.
The second thing is hire amazing people.
Invest in talent, invest in good labor
and pay them the money they need to be successful.
So that way they give it all in your company.
And when I say pay for good talent,
when you're hiring an employee,
don't just try to hire people who are the cheapest.
Hire people who are already successful in this space
and have solved the problems that you're trying to solve.
- [Host] Okay.
- And the third thing is with marketing,
if you want to get a lot of traffic,
experiment, there's algorithms,
YouTube has an algorithm, TikTok has an algorithm,
Google has an algorithm, everyone does.
Their algorithms constantly change.
YouTube's algorithm from what it was six,
seven years ago is different than what it is today.
Try to run a marketing experiment once a week
so you can learn what works and what doesn't.
At my ad agency, NP Digital,
we're running experiments for our clients
at least once a week and we're learning from it.
But what's interesting is we'll run experiments
with our Brazilian clients, our clients in America,
our clients in the UK, India and so forth, so on.
So you can see all these patterns and figure out what works.
And then you apply it to businesses throughout all the world
so that way you can grow your traffic faster.
It doesn't matter how long you've been doing marketing for
because algorithms change so often,
the best way to improve
and get more traffic is to run at least
one new marketing experiment a week.
That could be try to create a new form of content,
maybe try a new social channel,
try to use infographics to get links
or try to start a podcast because it's not that competitive.
Right, there's a lot of people want to listen to podcasts
but not that many people who create them yet.
- Yes, well, very good finale
you just gave us and for the people willing
to get to know you better and know your company better.
Like do you have any social media to leave the audience,
to follow you and maybe learn more from you?
- Yeah, they can always go to Neil Patel on social media.
- [Host] Okay.
- We also have the social handles, NP Digital,
so N as in Neil, P as in Patel, and then digital.
And we also have them all
in different languages, including Portuguese.
- Wow, so do you have like an Instagram, LinkedIn,
and all these social media?
- In different languages, yes.
- [Host] In different languages?
- Yes.
- So you produce content in Portuguese
and you also have a-
- [Neil] English. - An English account.
- Yes and same with other languages.
- Okay and we usually leave a gift for our audience.
We call them the cousins.
It's primos and primas.
Do you have like a book you can sign for us or something?
- I don't have a book here.
- [Host] But you have a book, right?
- Yes, I have a book.
- Can you send us one signed book for a gifting?
- Yes, I can do it.
- [Host] Okay. - Sounds good.
- Okay, so I'll talk to the Brazilian audience right now
to tell them the specifics and make the the conclusion here.
But Neil, thank you so much.
Like talking to you today is an honor.
I got to know you maybe, I dunno, seven years ago,
eight years ago, I'm not sure.
And I never imagined I would talk to you.
So it's very important for me.
Thank you so much, Neil.
- Thank you for having me.
And you've had an amazing career
and I know the next five years will be even better for you.