What we learned from Neil Patel’s SEO Summit (you’re doing too much, take a nap)

Neil Patel’s most recent summit, “The Future of SEO,” provided a wealth of new knowledge and insight into the world of SEO. As a content specialist, my personal wheelhouse lies in the details of data, reporting, and analytics. Basically, this summit was created for me. 

Neil touched on various topics and subjects and offered an open Q&A session for the over 7,000 participants that joined from across the globe. I learned so much from the digital wizard, but my biggest takeaway from the day? In some cases, we’re doing too much and I deserve to take a nap.

Repurposing content 

Content plays an important role in bringing new traffic to your site. Your bounce rate will be exceptionally higher if there’s no engaging content to hold your audience on your site. While content does have to be strong and consistent, it doesn’t necessarily always have to be brand new. 

Neil suggests saving time and effort by repurposing content. Rather than writing endless articles on the same or similar topics, best practice is to update articles with new relevant information and republish them. The key is to republish them under the same URL but update the published date and content to include additional information or updated news if applicable. This is a critical life hack to gain more traffic to your content – and maybe even save your team time.

Link building

Link building is a great way to draw traffic back to your site however, you need to recognize that it won’t happen instantly. When it comes to backlinks, slow and steady wins the race. As long as you’re being consistent with content and linking, the traffic will come. 

Over time visitors will become loyal to your site and if they begin to invest in your content, they’re more likely to share it with their followers. Organic traffic growth will be slow but will pay off in the long run. Paying big money for followers will only help grow the number that you see on your account, not engagement, or traffic. On the other hand, organic growth will take longer, but in the long run, will be more successful. Pay closer attention to your engagement rather than simply the number of followers.

User experience is KING

Always think of your audience. Try putting yourself in their shoes to determine what would be best suited for them. The ultimate goal of any marketing campaign is to be the brand to best serve your target audience, so it needs to be part of your implementation process from day one.