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Neil Patel – Co-founder of NP Digital, delivered a talk at the Worlds of Learning 2022 virtual summit on September 28th, and it was epic!
Neil went live on the event’s second day and shared some golden nuggets of wisdom on SEO. The advice was spot-on – so much so that many digital entrepreneurs and course creators considered themselves lucky to be at the right place and time to get direct feedback from the successful marketer on their questions.
While discussing SEO, Neil gave out some essential hacks that everyone doing digital business in the 21st century should know. He went through various topics relating to SEO and talked about effective budgeting, boosting SEO traffic, growth, and conversion.
For our aspiring course creators out there, who want to make the best of their online academy and boost their SEO efforts, watching – or rewatching, his talk is highly recommended.
If you missed Neil’s talk, don’t worry; there’s still time to watch the recording.
In this article, we will meet Neil Patel a little better and dive into the extremely useful SEO tips he shared on the day.
Shall we?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- So, who is Neil Patel?
- Everything about SEO: What does it take to succeed?
- Hack #1: Develop a marketing budget
- Hack #2: Stay consistent to achieve growth
- Hack #3: Create quality content to boost traffic
- Hack #4: Build personalized experiences to boost conversions
- Bonus Section: Top tips for social media platforms
- Ready to Grow Your Business With SEO?
So, who is Neil Patel?
A professional with a net worth of $30 million is one answer, but obviously, there is more to it.
As one of the top 10 marketers worldwide and co-founder of several popular and successful companies like CrazyEgg, Hello Bar, and KISSMetrics – to name a few, Neil has managed to climb to entrepreneurial success.
President Obama recognized Neil as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30. He also made the United States’ list of top 100 entrepreneurs under age 35.
As early as the age of 16, Neil sold his first company. Since then, the famous entrepreneur has helped major companies grow – Amazon, Google, and Facebook, make more revenue and boost their SEO results.
Apart from being an SEO expert, Neil is also a New York best-selling author, has his own marketing podcast, and frequently shares highly valuable content. Neil’s accomplishments have made him the professional he is today, and it was a pleasure to have him on our line of speakers during the Worlds of Learning 2022 summit.
Everything about SEO: What Does it Take to Succeed?
Suppose you have been experimenting with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In that case, you probably already know it is not an easy subject to study or excel. SEO requires a significant time investment, determination, dedication, ongoing support -often from an SEO expert- and trial and error.
Getting more visibility as a business through SEO – although it carries more benefits, it can have you working on multiple fronts simultaneously. It requires tactful monitoring and going all in, and if you want concrete results, you will need to show lots of patience.
But pretend like you haven’t heard this from us.
Let’s find out what Neil has said about it in his WOL talk.
Below you will find the 4 important hacks you need to grow your business and succeed in SEO today and near future.
Hack #1: Develop a marketing budget
First on the list is budgeting. Without budgeting, you can’t have a solid marketing plan, and without a plan, you lack direction and focus. Even if your company or team is small, you still need to have a budget to navigate the competition.
As marketing costs continue to rise post-Covid, marketers need to create a budget to effectively plan initiatives that will help them thrive in uncertain times.
Neil argues that the increasing popularity of social media channels like Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and YouTube has opened up a huge potential for selling courses. To make it happen, you need to split your budget effectively and invest where it’s right for you – whether it’s paid or organic ads.
As he goes on, Neil says you need to look further into KPIs, traffic, and conversions:
“To really do well, you need to be a high performer. And, when I mean high performer, it comes down to three main elements ability, sustainable actions, and consistency… If you’re not consistent, you won’t win. You need to have the right mindset; you need to continually work on it day in and day out.”
The market has become more competitive, and while there are many opportunities you can tap into as a course creator, you will need to think about every financial move carefully.
Neil’s advice is to make use of your data, get to know your customers’ needs and calculate their lifetime value. Look into those details that will help you build a long-lasting relationship with them, and keep searching for upsell opportunities along the way.
Hack #2: Stay consistent to achieve growth
To drive growth, you need to go out of your way and stay put throughout the journey.
“To really do well, you need to be a high performer. And, when I mean high performer, it comes down to three main elements ability, sustainable actions, and consistency… If you’re not consistent, you won’t win. You need to have the right mindset; you need to continually work on it day in and day out.”
The way Neil sees it, there is no other way of growing your business than being consistent and figuring out whether what you are doing is actually working.
As he suggests, you first need to evaluate your marketing strategy and look at all the channels you are on. Every channel is different, so you must be honest with yourself and discover when it is going well or bad for a specific channel so you can change it.
If it helps, check out what other people are doing, and if they are doing it better, learn how to replicate it and adjust it to your business. What’s necessary here is to always be in growth mode. You’ll need time to get there, but once you do, you’ll be able to accomplish much more.
In the process, ensure you get the right people, automation, and marketing tools to help you out. Neil’s recommendations as a few tools you can try were Uipath, UberSuggest, Semrush, and SimilarWeb.
Hack #3: Create quality content to boost traffic
Neil says you need to go big with content marketing if you want to boost traffic and make SEO work for you. Creating high-quality content is essential here.
Start looking for fresh ideas on social media or using tools like Answer the Public to ensure that you build content your customers will want to read.
Also, make sure that you prepare plenty of testimonials for potential customers to see. Even though you are selling an info product, people will still do their research, get feedback, and want to see reviews on your product. This will help you get more word-of-mouth, purchases, growth, and key feedback on what you can improve.
Here are some interesting facts from Neil on content marketing:
Focusing on that last point, Neil says you need to learn to investigate search intent – what are people searching for online and what keywords they are using.
“Your audience has questions that they haven’t searched for before. You need to provide content on these other aspects that people aren’t really thinking about yet, but they will be in the future. The simplest way to think about your content is: the more people that can learn about X -X being whatever it is- related to your product that you’re selling without buying your product, the more people that buy from you.”
Getting to know what people search for on Google can give you an advantage over content creation because it allows you to provide information through your content that is fresh and as customized to your audience’s needs as possible.
Apart from creating valuable content, Neil recommends the following tips to boost traffic:
Try different remarketing approaches
Get your audience to engage with your brand in various ways. If you are remarketing your content, for example, send them on a landing page or sales page with a lot of motion and storytelling to allow them to hear a different pitch. Neil confirms this can increase your sales by 38.2%.
Use push notifications
Using push notifications can help you get more sales. Once your audience comes to your site to agree to give you their email address, create a drip sequence promoting your content and keep sending whatever you think they will find helpful. Neil sold a lot of ebooks and digital products this way using Subscribers, and it’s working well. So, why not try it out?
Host your site from a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Neil says every second delayed and load time costs Amazon $1.6 billion! The faster your website loads, the better your CDN positions your site worldwide. Having your servers everywhere allows people to buy your products from various countries and makes your website load fast, improving its Google page speed score and rankings.
Update your content frequently
Updating your content is one of the most important things you can do for SEO. Instead of heavily investing in creating new material for your blog, spend more time updating your existing content. Old content will continue to rank higher when it’s fresh and up-to-date.
Send out email blasts
Email blasts can help your rankings go up as well. Neil recommends sending an email push notification blast within the first 24 hours of your video coming out. Doing this within the first few hours is ideal because, in a matter of days, it will help your video rank at the top for many searches on YouTube.
Translate your content
Make your content available in different languages, including your online courses and ebooks, to get more traffic from translations. It can generate great revenue and growth since you will start receiving sales from all over the world.
Send emails with questions
Did you know emails with questions can get 30% open rates? Neil says that questions like, “Hey, do you want me to release this feature this product?” “What do you think about this?” -or simply encouraging them to reply with a yes or no- can get many people to respond. Plus, it adds their email to your address book, which is a win.
Hack #4: Build personalized experiences to boost conversions
Neil suggests a couple of things you can do to get your customers to convert. These include pre-qualifying your visitors, creating personalized experiences for your customers, and introducing some fun and mystery into the process.
Let’s discuss these further.
Pre-qualifying your site visitors is necessary, especially when you have multiple marketing campaigns. So before your audience even lands on your website, find out your potential customers’ goals and then direct them to your most relevant landing page or product. By doing this, you can create a customized customer journey based on their needs.
Such practice fits perfectly with personalization tactics because it helps you create landing pages that answer specific questions your visitors have or that are adjusted to their own preferences.
To boost conversions, Neil uses geotagging, for example, and his website recognizes the visitor’s geographical location – presenting information that is relevant to them and only. Pretty neat, right?
An excellent way to gather information about your visitors is using quizzes, which according to Neil, is one of the best ways to sell online products.
On top of that, you are free to experiment with any fun and mystery elements you can find. Neil says people love playing games – so “let your audience play games.” Games like ‘Spin the Wheel’ and ‘I’m feeling lucky’ can boost conversions by 3% and 11%, respectively.
Last but not least – adding countdown timers and conditional-based pop-ups is an effective way to engage your customers. For Neil, countdown timers inside emails increased conversion by 6.81% when selling ebooks. With pop-ups, Neil also boosted the lead collection by 47.7%, which is quite impressive.
To sum up, making things easy and more enjoyable for your customers does a greater good for your business. Instead of solely focusing on better product positioning, think about your brand – how can you make people feel unique, welcomed, and engaged?
Associate your brand with great personalized experiences with the peak-end rule. And then, you can hear people talking about your brand like they talk about Nike. That’s all you need.
Bonus Section: Top Tips for Social Media Platforms
Neil has already tried what works and what doesn’t when it comes to social media channels, so here’s the best of his advice on what to do on each platform:
Ready to Grow Your Business With SEO?
If you want to enhance the effectiveness of your marketing strategy and boost SEO, all you have to do is put Neil’s hacks to good use. Try them out, see what works for you, keep testing different tactics, and, as Neil says, have patience.
Stay relevant, keep building your brand, and success will come to you – just as it did to him.
Further reading you might find interesting:
Kyriaki is a Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.
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