Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

#5: The Biggest SEO Mistakes of their Careers

Aug 3, 2016

Dive into the world of SEO blunders as hosts share their biggest mistakes. Discover the fine line between blackhat and whitehat strategies and the necessity of sustainable practices for long-term success. Learn about the severe consequences of low-quality content and improper website redesigns. The episode highlights the crucial roles of content and backlinks—reminding listeners that patience is key in boosting search traffic. This seasoned insight balances humor with experience in navigating the ever-evolving SEO landscape.

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ANECDOTE

Portal 2 Walkthrough Site

Eric Suh built a site for the game Portal 2, using low-quality links to quickly gain traffic.
Within a week, Google's algorithms detected the shady tactics, and the site lost all its traffic.

ADVICE

Experiment with Black Hat

Experiment with black hat SEO on your own low-investment sites to learn.
Avoid aggressive tactics on valuable client websites to prevent significant revenue loss.

ANECDOTE

Aggressive Early SEO Tactics

Neil Patel used aggressive black hat tactics early in his career, ranking high for competitive terms like "web hosting."
Despite initial success, he regrets not focusing on long-term, sustainable white hat strategies.

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Summary:

Welcome to The Marketing School Podcast—your resource to learn, grown, and nurture your passion for online marketing! In Episode #5 Eric and Neil center the conversation on, The Biggest SEO Mistakes of Their Career. Enjoy!

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:38 – Eric kicks off with blackhat, whitehat, and greyhat SEO
- 01:29 – Building low-quality links to a brand-new sites
- 02:00 – Google’s Algorithm’s are smarter than you—they will always find out if something shady is going on
- 02:20 – That being said, it’s worth it to dabble in some “shady” business if it’s your own site as an experiment, to learn about both sides of the coin
02:48 – Back in the day, Neil would do whatever it would take to turn quick buck
- 04:12 – Don’t think short-term, you need to think LONG term
- 04:40 – Go whitehat and build for endurance
05:05 – Eric talks blackhat SEO in-depth
- 06:01 – Take blackhat tactics and use them in a whitehat matter
06:27 – Do not crank low-quality content
- 07:23 – The Google Panda Penalty
08:19 – a 35% drop in organic traffic
- 08:30 – Make sure you do a redesign properly or you will get crucified in SEO
09:51 – Content is King—it’s a cliché but true
- 10:16 – But you NEED backlinks too
10:53 – The two biggest factors to ranking in Google?
- Links and Content

3 Key Points:

Links and content, links and content, links and content!
Dabble in blackhat on websites that you own and don’t care about so you can better understand that side of marketing and avoid it on things that matter.
When it comes to client websites—and websites you care about in general—think long-term and always go whitehat.

Resources Mentioned:

The Google Panda Penalty – An SEO penalty Neil was hit with on one of his websites.