Content Marketing Decoded: The SEO Hacks of Neil Patel – Part 2

Whoever deals with content marketing knows that the World Wide Web offers a wealth of concentrated knowledge, expert tips and training on social media marketing, content strategies, SEO and SEM, link building and much more. But in everyday life there is often no time to follow all these digital experts and platforms. Therefore, we have created our new blog series “Decoded”. We dedicate each article to a different specialist and his input on a topic from online marketing. In the second part, we look at seven other SEO hacks by Neil Patel.

Practical SEO tips from Neil Patel for a better search engine ranking

Neil Patel is one of the world’s best-known experts in digital marketing. He is just 35 years old and has built several successful companies, including Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and Quicksprout. The road to success has not been easy: He is now sharing the lessons he has learned from his successes and mistakes over the past 20 years in online marketing on his blog, his YouTube channel and together with Eric Siu in the Marketing School podcast series.

Hack 9: Improve search engine ranking through FAQ

They are more and more often seen on Google: frequently asked questions. When you enter a search term, the search engine lists a series of questions with the corresponding answers to your query. What if users could find this FAQ on your site and see it directly in Google? Even if not all users follow the link to your site, some will do so to learn more. The result: more traffic.

There are two possibilities: Either you create a separate page with the FAQ or you put three or four thematic questions under each article. If they pick up the focus keyword of the article, they will additionally strengthen your search engine ranking. You can find inspiration in the search results on Google for your particular keyword.

Neil Patel explains exactly how to do this in his video „How to Improve your WordPress SEO in 30 minutes“.

Hack 10: Detect and correct SEO errors

Nobody is perfect! Especially not in SEO – there are just too many variables. That’s why you can use tools like Ubersuggest to find errors in your search engine optimization. Ubersuggest is a mostly free tool developed by Neil Patel. He wants to help users to improve the performance of their websites. One feature of Ubersuggest is the page audit. Enter the URL of your website and you will receive a list of results within 10 minutes. To see all the details, it may be necessary to create an account.

Especially check out the section “Top SEO Problems”. These can be key issues like:

• Too few words
• Duplicate Meta Description
• Duplicate Title Tags
• Slow page speed

Dedicate yourself first to the critical points that have a high impact on your search engine ranking. The more bugs you fix, the better you rank in the search results.

Neil has another important hint about “too few words”: Not all pages have to contain the recommended 2500 words. On some pages, such as an overview page or on “About us”, far fewer words are sufficient.

Hack 11: Choose keywords with high search volume and high CTR

Keywords play a crucial role in SEO – we all know that. That makes it even more important to choose the right ones for your websites and contributions. Neil also recommends his Ubersuggest tool, but you can also use another tool of your choice. The principles you should follow are the same:

• Use keywords that have a higher search volume on the desktop than on mobile devices – studies have shown that the conversion rate is higher here
• Select keywords with high search volumes, high click-through rates and high cost-per-click (CPC) – since it is organic search engine optimization, you do not have to pay the CPC.
• Have a look at the suggestions for long-tail keywords
• Select the relevant keywords for your website
• Integrate them into your website and your high-quality content

As additional information, Ubersuggest provides the SEO difficulty. This value should preferably be below 40 points. Furthermore, you can get suggestions for similar topics, questions or offers (“near me”) in the tool. Neil explains exactly how to do this in his video „How to Find Lucrative Keywords That Are Easy to Rank For“.

Hack 12: Increase website traffic with backlinks

Did you know that links in the SEO ranking factors have an influence of 30 percent? That means: The more backlinks you have, the higher your website ranks in the search results. A certain SEO experts, the so-called Black Hats, have used private blog networks for this purpose: A person has several blogs and links the posts to each other in all directions. Google eventually found out about this and punished the respective sites. To generate valuable backlinks, Neil therefore recommends:

• write guest posts on other blogs
• publishes real testimonials and customer reviews
• submit your website to online directories
• create high-quality content so it is shared often and with pleasure

It is about building partnerships and creating backlinks in an honest way. Eventually, Google will punish dubious techniques, which will cause your site to slide down in search results.

Hack 12: Improve ranking with internal links

Search engines like Google use many algorithms to analyze and rank websites. It is up to the author of an article to structure and organize the content. To help Google understand the meaning of your blog articles, include internal links to other areas of your website. Neil Patel recommends a maximum of two to three links per post.

Hack 13: Optimize Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions

Meta Title and Meta Description belong to the basics of search engine optimization. Many people still neglect the possibilities offered by these two-page elements. For the ranking itself, the Meta Description has less importance. This element – together with the title – is the first text of your website that a user sees in the result list during a search. If the description is missing, users are more likely to click on a competitor with a description.

By formulating the title and the meta description appealingly, you make people curious about your product, your service or your blog post. Encourage users to take action by integrating a call-to-action. “Try to bring people to the point of sale”, as Neil Patel says: Bring people to the point of sale. Title and description should be as accurate as possible. Use adjectives to highlight the benefits of your product or service, such as “5 simple tips on how to keep your desk tidy”. In contrast, “5 tips for keeping your desk tidy” is less attractive.

With a tool like the Google Search Console, you can also filter out those pages that have high impressions but a low click-through rate (CTR). Optimize Meta Title and Meta Description on these pages so that more users click on them.

Hack 14: More traffic through URLs without date

You can easily implement this hack: Remove the date from the URL of your posts. Search engines assume that articles with a date are only relevant for the respective period. But if your content is timeless and will still be relevant in a few weeks, months or even years, then the date in the URL is unnecessary. You will see your traffic soar.

For more tips on the best URL, check out podcast episode #177 by Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Hack 15: Three invisible SEO laws you should know

After a whole series of SEO hacks, there are finally three invisible laws of search engine optimization, as Neil Patel calls it. They concern branding as an expert, the user experience and one’s own technological adaptability.

What does Neil mean by branding as an expert? We live in an age where fake news circulates on many channels. But the major search engines and social media want to provide their users with added value. Then write these well-researched articles in your subject area, on your blog. Build up a powerful brand and position yourself as an expert. This increases the chances that the search algorithms will rank your articles better and you will attract more traffic to your site.

And what does the user experience mean? You can do as much on-page and off-page SEO as you want. If your product and service are not good enough, there is no point in doing this. Big companies like Dropbox, Slack or AirBnB are successful in terms of SEO because they want to offer their website visitors the best user experience. It’s all about building pages that are user friendly and that visitors can quickly find their way around. Fast loading times also play an important role here. Pay attention to this.

Are you ready for a change? The own adaptability is another factor to be successful with your website in the long run. New technologies are constantly coming onto the market, algorithms are changing – and this requires constant adaptation to new SEO techniques. In 2020, for example, voice search, the oral entry of search terms via voice assistants, will play an increasingly important role. You must design your website to meet these new challenges to ensure that it will rank as well in the future.

What does Gerrit from Crispy Content® say about this?

“Neil Patel is simply incredible. Not only does he have an eye for the big picture, as shown in the first part, but his tactics presented here are brimming with pragmatism. His knowledge is almost inexhaustible. That he has integrated this knowledge into a tool that is free proves he has a much greater vision than most other digital experts.”

Founder & CEO Gerrit Grunert

Gerrit Grunert is the founder and CEO of Crispy Content®. In 2019, he published his book "Methodical Content Marketing" published by Springer Gabler, as well as the series of online courses "Making Content." In his free time, Gerrit is a passionate guitar collector, likes reading books by Stefan Zweig, and listening to music from the day before yesterday.