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Neil Patel is a Seattle based entrepreneur, angel investor, and analytics expert. He is best known for his work in digital marketing and as the cofounder of the analytics companies KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg.

Neil has been featured in outlets such as Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Business Insider. Besides that, he’s is also a contributor to many publications including Entrepreneur Magazine, TechCrunch, Mashable, Business Insider, SEOmoz, and Geekwire

Neil has helped companies like JC Penny, TechCrunch and GM to name just to name a few, increase revenue by millions of dollars and also increase their traffic by over 300%

After all, he is the undisputed SEO guy in the online industry and this is what he is known for best. Today, I’m proud to have him as a guest on my show and you guys have no idea how much value this will add to your bottom line once you’re done listening to this entire interview.

What prompted Neil Patel to become an Entrepreneur?

When he was a kid, he wanted to be rich and wanted materialistic objects. Instead of being a doctor, he wanted to be an entrepreneur when he was 16 just to buy expensive items. He wanted to be an entrepreneur ever since he was a kid but little did he know that shiny object wouldn’t make him happy as he got older.

What are some of Neil Patel’ failures?

When he started kissmetrics.com on building the product, he did not focus too much on sales. Now sales are a lot better. If he started selling earlier, he could have made a lot more money but he started selling years after the business started.
The lesson: even before your company starts becoming successful, it’s important to start selling. Another example was that if he had applied the Lean Startup methodology, he would have made a lot more money instead of spending a lot of money.

What are some ways Neil gets a lot done without getting distracted?

First off, Neil get’s a lot work done because of the sheer amount of hours he works. Neil works about 70-80 hours per week! He also blocks Facebook and Twitter. He has an assistant that manages the calendar and he streamlines everything for work –vs- packing his bags (as an example) – he gets help from someone from his assistant. He also uses a program called “rescuetime.com.” Besides that, he does one thing at a time, instead of multi-tasking.

How do you avoid becoming burned out?

The way to prevent it is the way to rage. He and his buddies go to Las Vegas and party. However, he also mentions that if you really love what you do, you won’t be burned out!

How do you get companies like NY times, Entrepreneur Magazine and Forbes to feature stories on you?

Hiring a PR Agency likes PRserve.com is one way. However, he tries to educate people when he’s blogging and by answering questions on twitter. That’s the best way because journalists will find you and interview you since you’ve been so helpful. Sooner or later, you will become recognized. Neil also suggests not trying to push it. Eventually by helping others, they will help you and you will be found.

How do you help people on Twitter?

You can do a search for things like “analytics” (which is one of Neil’s niches) and respond to them one by one. This is a great way to get traffic and it works out well. The same thing works out on Quora. Twitter and linkedIn as well works out the best.

Some advice for new entrepreneurs just getting started:

Learn how to execute and start your own company. Don’t ask for help. If you can’t figure out the basics, you probably won’t succeed because that is the easiest part about being an Entrepreneur.

What are the latest search engine developments?

Google is updating the Panda and Penguin updates constantly. This is because a lot of people have crappy sites linking to them and they do link building or have poor quality sites. If you’re just scrapping content or have regular user generated content, you will get dinged badly.

How do you get your rankings back if you were hit with the panda and penguin updates?

What I would do is if I was a user-generated site like goodreads.com, I would find all the crappy content and either noindex it or completely remove it. If its very short and doesn’t have any real meat, I would just noindex it. If its bad content, I would remove all that kind of stuff. From there, within 3-6 months, you should get back into the rankings with panda.

Now, If I had been hit with penguin, I would contact all the Web Masters and ask them to remove it. If they don’t then I would use the Disavow Tool via the Google Web Master Portal. Again, within 3-6 months you should be back.

I would suggest making sure content is unique, make sure you’re not using rich anchor text. Ask others to take passes it at. Once you figure it out, you should be better.

Can you tell us a little bit about your 200 outreach program?

What I’ll do is go to Odesk.com and pay someone like $100 to find 200 twitter users, 200 bloggers and 200 web site owners to write and talk about my related niche. I’ll have the Odesker get all of the relevant information for the web master as well as their email address.

So when the day comes when we create a really great blog posts or when I have an eBook that I want to give away, I will ask my Odesker to get those bloggers to reciprocate or more so to link to my content.

I will do the same thing with the Twitter users, I’ll direct message them with a unique message every time and the same with web site owners. Like “hey dude, you link out to other web site owners in my space, why not link out to mine as well and here is what we provide that’s different.”

Whats the success rate?

If your success rate is 5%, you’re doing pretty well. It would be a week at the latest.

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