When should you do guest posts, and does guest posting for backlinks really work? In this video Neil Patel and Eric Siu are on the main stage of the entrepreneur event, Marketing School Live talking about where to find data for your articles and how to stay informed with buzzworthy news.
Full Transcript of The Video
Neil: The purpose of guest post, let's say you have a website. Whether you have traffic or no traffic, you want a guest post on sites that can drive business. A back link should be an indirect benefit, but you should be guest posting only to generate revenue and traffic from that guest post. Because the back links these days from guest posts don't work as well as they used to. Search engines that are familiar with it, your rankings won't climb as fast. Write a guest post because it drives business.
Just for example, people that submit their business to directories like the city searches, the Yelps because they would want back links. Now they do it because Yelp drives business. Do you get it? Right? In which you want to do something because there's a long-term play. You don't want to do something just for short term hit or quick win. Usually those things go away really fast. It's all about the long-term place. If you're going to put effort on something, put effort into stuff that's long-term. That's how you create value.
Speaker 2: I'll give you an anecdote on that and then we can move to the next question. For the longest time, we did a guest blog post on different marketing sites and you know, always in the footer or maybe inside the article, we have to have something around digital marketing agencies. So we ranked number 1 for digital marketing agency for a couple of years, brought a lot of great business. And Google's gotten a lot smarter about it, so thankfully, we don't rely just on SEO anymore. But now, I mean, what Neil's mentioning, like if it's looking to drive business, you go to a site like clutch.co if you're an agency, and then you get your agency on there, you get a lot of ratings on there and you're going to rank well. People will find them by searching for key words and then they're going to come find your agency. Conversion rate's pretty high.
Speaker 3: Just a quick question. I know you two are very data-driven. Where do you get your information from? You know, for example, like algorithms and all of that. Where do you- like who are your sources?
Neil: It's either experimentation or reading other people's shit.
Speaker 2: yeah, so I guess-
Neil: Let's say you wrote a post on ... what you learn from analyzing a hundred thousand businesses. I'll go take some of your data, assuming it's awesome, which it probably would be because you seem like an amazing guy, and I would go and cite you and borrow some of your information. Of course, I'll give you credit but that's how I get a lot of my stuff for my content. There's so much information on the web. Just do your research and cite people where they deserve credit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess I'll give you a tactical stuff on how I get better. So one podcast I listen to is- I mean there's two. There's one from Digital Marketer called Perpetual Traffic, other one's called The Art of Paid Traffic, that's more focused on Facebook ads. Then if I'm looking to learn, like read blogs. I mean, Noah Kagan of App Sumo, he hired this guy from ... He hired this Australian guy that was living in China, and somehow convinced him to leave his girlfriend to come work for him in Austin. He's still with his girlfriend, it's okay. But this guy writes these epic case studies. How Intercom grew to a hundred million dollar company. And he's just cranking out case studies right now. So if you go to the sumo.com blog, he's got a lot of good stuff there. I really like reading case studies all the time. And you can go to Neil's site, Neilpatel.com or quicksprout.com and finally two more growth hackers.com and inbound.org. He's probably not [inaudible 00:03:19] all this, but just get one.
Speaker 3: And so, what kind of numbers do you look at when you try to analyze whether you should go for a certain business or not?
Neil: It's all about if it moves the needle. So I look at how much money do I need to make for it to be worth it for me. And then I work my way up backwards on what's the average customer going to pay, what's the conversion rate going to be, how many businesses I need to get, where am I going to get those visitors, if I'm going to buy them, how much is it going to cost. I just go start from the top on how much money I need to make for it to be worth it for me, and then from there, work around the back.
Just for example, people that submit their business to directories like the city searches, the Yelps because they would want back links. Now they do it because Yelp drives business. Do you get it? Right? In which you want to do something because there's a long-term play. You don't want to do something just for short term hit or quick win. Usually those things go away really fast. It's all about the long-term place. If you're going to put effort on something, put effort into stuff that's long-term. That's how you create value.
Speaker 2: I'll give you an anecdote on that and then we can move to the next question. For the longest time, we did a guest blog post on different marketing sites and you know, always in the footer or maybe inside the article, we have to have something around digital marketing agencies. So we ranked number 1 for digital marketing agency for a couple of years, brought a lot of great business. And Google's gotten a lot smarter about it, so thankfully, we don't rely just on SEO anymore. But now, I mean, what Neil's mentioning, like if it's looking to drive business, you go to a site like clutch.co if you're an agency, and then you get your agency on there, you get a lot of ratings on there and you're going to rank well. People will find them by searching for key words and then they're going to come find your agency. Conversion rate's pretty high.
Speaker 3: Just a quick question. I know you two are very data-driven. Where do you get your information from? You know, for example, like algorithms and all of that. Where do you- like who are your sources?
Neil: It's either experimentation or reading other people's shit.
Speaker 2: yeah, so I guess-
Neil: Let's say you wrote a post on ... what you learn from analyzing a hundred thousand businesses. I'll go take some of your data, assuming it's awesome, which it probably would be because you seem like an amazing guy, and I would go and cite you and borrow some of your information. Of course, I'll give you credit but that's how I get a lot of my stuff for my content. There's so much information on the web. Just do your research and cite people where they deserve credit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess I'll give you a tactical stuff on how I get better. So one podcast I listen to is- I mean there's two. There's one from Digital Marketer called Perpetual Traffic, other one's called The Art of Paid Traffic, that's more focused on Facebook ads. Then if I'm looking to learn, like read blogs. I mean, Noah Kagan of App Sumo, he hired this guy from ... He hired this Australian guy that was living in China, and somehow convinced him to leave his girlfriend to come work for him in Austin. He's still with his girlfriend, it's okay. But this guy writes these epic case studies. How Intercom grew to a hundred million dollar company. And he's just cranking out case studies right now. So if you go to the sumo.com blog, he's got a lot of good stuff there. I really like reading case studies all the time. And you can go to Neil's site, Neilpatel.com or quicksprout.com and finally two more growth hackers.com and inbound.org. He's probably not [inaudible 00:03:19] all this, but just get one.
Speaker 3: And so, what kind of numbers do you look at when you try to analyze whether you should go for a certain business or not?
Neil: It's all about if it moves the needle. So I look at how much money do I need to make for it to be worth it for me. And then I work my way up backwards on what's the average customer going to pay, what's the conversion rate going to be, how many businesses I need to get, where am I going to get those visitors, if I'm going to buy them, how much is it going to cost. I just go start from the top on how much money I need to make for it to be worth it for me, and then from there, work around the back.
