8 Things About SEO to Unlearn in 2019 (And What You Should Learn RIGHT NOW)

– There are SEO tactics thatwork really well in 2010, that people are still doing today.

Hey everyone, I'm Neil Patil, and today I'm going to share with you eight things that you need to unlearnwhen it comes to SEO and what you should bedoing in 2019 instead.

(bright music) Before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel, that waywhen I release more marketing advice like this, you'll get notified.

Question for you, hasyour website been hurt by some old school SEO techniques? Or have you found out thatwhen you use these old school SEO techniques, for some reasonyour traffic isn't going up? If that's you, leave acomment below with yes.

If it isn't, you leavea comment below with no.

I'm curious because ifit is, I want to find out what these old schooltactics you're leveraging, because I'll show you what to do instead.

The first thing I want you to unlearn is only focusing on external links.

Everyone's like oh my god, back links is the number one factor in Google.

No, there's a ton of factorsin Google, and just building links from external sitesisn't going to do you justice.

You need to also build internal links.

If you don't build internal links, your rankings aren't going to climb.

If you look at my site, you'll notice that I rank for thingslike online marketing, and I rank for things like SEO, it's because I'm internallinking my pages together.

If you don't internal link, you're not going to do as well.

And I interlink throughout my content, throughout my sidebar, wherever it makes sense.

Those internal linksdon't just have to be rich in key words, they needto be more so relevant.

So when you find a goodopportunity to internal link, even if it doesn't have theright anchor text, that's okay.

You need to do what's best for the user.

By doing what's bestfor them, you'll be able to drive them to otherrelevant sections of your site, so that way they cancontinue to get education, find out more about yourproducts, find out more about your services, and buy from you.

The second thing I want you to unlearn is, you can't just write content for SEO.

Everyone's doing keyword research these days.

Heck, I even had a toolcalled Uber Suggest that I've released for free that helps you do a key word research.

And you should be doing key word research, but when everyone does key word research, like you go to Uber Suggest, you type in a key word like digital marketing, or Google analytics, or whatever the phraseis, dog food it could be, you'll see a list of resultsof all the other similar terms.

But there's an issue.

When you see a list of allthe other related terms, you may end up taking them and just putting them into your website.

Yep, putting them into your website is writing content for search engines.

You got to reformat your content.

You got to rewrite it.

You got to extend the length.

You got to make sure thatyou're powering the best experience for peoplebecause you don't want them reading your dog foodarticle and just be like wait, this just has key words in there.

It doesn't teach me anythingabout the right dog food for my puppy, if it's goingto help him lose weight, gain weight, be stronger, fitter, leaner.

All that it's doing is just inserting 500 key words related to dog food and this article doesn't provide any value.

So you can't just write contentbased off of search engines, you need to write contentbased off of people because Google is now using user metrics, in which if someone reads your content and they bounce awaybecause they don't like it, they hit the back button, go to Google search, it tells Google that your content sucks no matter how many back links you have and no matter how manykey words you inserted.

The third mistake that you need to unlearn is targeting high traffic keywords that have no intent.

For example, I rank for terms like SEO.

Do you think that termsdrive me any business? You would think so, butno, it doesn't, why? Because most people who research that term are just looking to understandwhat SEO is, how it works.

They're not necessarylooking to pay an ad agency.

A better term would be SEO agency.

Yes, SEO agency gets a lot less traffic, but the people who come from that key word and more likely to convert into revenue.

The fourth thing I want you to unlearn is building a lot of back links.

Everyone believes that you need quantity.

No you don't need quantity.

A good example of this ismy friend Todd Malicoat.

Years and years ago had a forex site, and he ranked on page two of Google in less than six months of creating it.

Can you guess how manyback links he built? Less than 20.

All he did was went to thesites that already rank in the top 500 for the term forex, and he went to those sites and convinced the owners to link to his site.

And he got those exact pagesalready ranked in the first 500 to also link to some of his articles and that drastically shot up his rankings.

It's not about quantity, it's about quality.

The fifth one is SEO is abouttactics, tricks and gimmicks.

No it's not, SEO is aboutputting the user first.

If you look at Google, theirmission is to make sure that when someone does a search, they're getting the best mostvaluable information for them.

They don't want themto have to go to five, 10 different pages, they focus on the user.

So if you also focus onthe user in the long run, not the short run, but in thelong run, you'll rank higher.

The sixth mistake that you need to unlearn is focusing on rankings.

Ahrefs did a study, and doyou know what they found out? That the number one listingonly gets the majority of the clicks 49% of the times.

Rankings aren't everything.

For example, I get moretraffic than some of the people that rank higher for me for terms like SEO tips because of Rich Snippets.

Even though I don't rank at the top, I still get more trafficdue to Rich Snippets.

When you get included inthat, that's what's called ranking zero, you canactually get more traffic.

If you also have more appealing title tags and better descriptions, even when you rank lower, you can also get more clicksthan your competitors.

It's not always about ranking number one, it's about ranking for the right terms, providing the best user experience, and eventually slowlyclimbing up to the top.

The seventh mistakethat you need to unlearn is focusing on key words in the bad ways.

What I mean by this is a lot of people still go after exact match domains.

What worked for hotels.

comis not going to work for you.

People still stuck keywords in their title tags, their meta descriptions, their content.

We already went overwhy you shouldn't do it in your content, but again, if you stuck key words in your title tags, metadescriptions, you'll find that hey, everyone is just clicking onother people's results, why? Because their title tagand their meta description is appealing, they'reusing copywriting to appeal to people and get them toclick versus just having five keywords in a rowthat don't make any sense.

So what worked for some ofthese people in the past when it comes to key wordstuffing won't work for you.

And last but not least, content marketing replaces SEO.

That's a huge myth, that's not true.

Everyone's like yeah if you want ranking, you just need to create a ton of content.

Not necessarily.

If you don't have agood click through rate, if you don't have good on page code, if your URL structure isincorrect, for example, when I removed my dates inmy URLs, my traffic shot up, I got over 100, 000 extrasearch visitors per month.

If you don't have the fundamentals right, content marketing isn'tgoing to do wonders for you.

Now if you need help growing your traffic, growing your rankings, getting more traffic, check out my ad agency Neil Patel Digital.

Of course if you enjoyed this video, I would appreciate ifyou'd like it, share it, tell other people about it, subscribe to the channel.

Thank you for watching.

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