How Neil Patel Built a 9-Figure SEO Agency

The video is about Neil Patel's journey in building a successful SEO agency, including the lessons he learned along the way and the brands he has worked on.

This video by Nathan Gotch was published on Jan 17, 2023.
Video length: 42:53.

The video is an interview with Neil Patel, a successful entrepreneur in the digital marketing industry.

He shares his journey of starting an online job board, struggling to get traffic and monetize it, and eventually focusing on SEO and building his own agency. He emphasizes the importance of taking the long-term approach, building a strong brand, and focusing on what matters. He also talks about some of his successful and failed ventures, including Crazy Egg and Kissmetrics, and the lessons he learned from them.

Finally, he shares his experience of dealing with a class action lawsuit over data privacy and the importance of settling instead of spending a lot of money on legal fees.

• Neil Patel started an online job board in the early 2000s but failed to get traffic.
• He learned SEO on his own and decided to focus on traffic instead of the job board.
• Building a brand and taking a long-term approach is important in digital marketing.
• Don't take shortcuts or use black hat techniques to get rankings.
• Neil Patel's successful brands include ACS and Crazy Egg, but Kissmetrics failed due to lawsuits.
• Scaling a business to bigger contracts requires adding more people to the team and building reputation and relationships.
• The sales cycle for big contracts can range from three months to a year and involves many touch points.
• Separating hard and soft skills is necessary to give customers what they want.
• Content is important for driving traffic, establishing authority, and building backlinks.
• Personal branding is important for establishing authority and thought leadership.

How Neil Patel Built a 9-Figure SEO Agency - YouTube

Neil Patel's Journey in Digital Marketing

• Started an online job board in early 2000s.
• Paid a marketing firm to help him get traffic, but got little to no results.
• Learned SEO on his own after failing to get traffic.
• Decided to quit on the job board and focus on traffic instead.
• Realized the importance of taking a long-term approach and building a brand.

Valuable Lessons Learned

• Don't try to take shortcuts or use black hat techniques to get rankings.
• Brands are super important in digital marketing.
• Focus on what matters and don't chase the newest thing.
• Take a long-term approach from day one.
• Scaling a business from a few million to 10 or 20 million is difficult.

Successful Brands and Failures

• First successful company was an ad agency called ACS.
• Crazy Egg was the next successful brand that Neil Patel built.
• Kissmetrics failed due to FTC investigations and a class action lawsuit over data privacy.
• Learned that settling a lawsuit can be cheaper and easier than battling it out in court.
• Being in a market for a long time helps build a brand and customer loyalty.

How Neil Patel Built a 9-Figure SEO Agency - YouTube

Importance of Focusing on What Matters

• Focus on what matters and don't chase the newest thing.
• Too many things too soon will lead to nothing happening.
• Building a successful business takes time and effort.
• Don't take shortcuts or use black hat techniques to get rankings.
• Brands are super important in digital marketing.

Building a Successful SEO Agency

• Neil Patel's agency is called NP Digital and has 700-800 employees globally.
• The agency's focus is on selling contracts for millions of dollars a year.
• Scaling up to bigger contracts requires adding more people to the team.
• Reputation and relationships are key to winning bigger contracts.
• Traditional inbound techniques may not work for winning big contracts.

Executing Big Contracts

• Scaling up to bigger contracts requires adding more people to the team.
• Bigger contracts usually mean selling a little bit of everything.
• Getting bigger contracts is built from reputation and relationships.
• People from larger corporations are hired for their experience and relationships.
• Systems and procedures are in place for companies to sign big contracts.

Sales Cycle for Big Contracts

• The sales cycle for big contracts can range from three months to a year.
• Touch points to close a deal can involve many people from different departments.
• Most leads come from referrals, RFPs, or employees.
• Traditional inbound techniques may not work for winning big contracts.
• Accenture generates most of its revenue from sources other than advertising.

Importance of Focus

• Neil Patel's focus is on NP Digital and not on selling courses or doing masterminds.
• Focus on selling contracts for millions of dollars a year.
• Scaling up to bigger contracts requires adding more people to the team.
• Reputation and relationships are key to winning bigger contracts.
• Traditional inbound techniques may not work for winning big contracts.

Dealing with Clients

• Dealing with multiple people in marketing, procurement, and different regions/divisions.
• Many touch points and not everyone is on the call at the same time.
• Large deals require a lot of people and money to close.
• Custom proposals require analyzing a lot of numbers and data.
• Sales division is separate from account managers, but account managers also have a book of business and upsell.

Separating Hard and Soft Skills

• SEO experts may struggle with client communication and building rapport.
• Account managers may not be as technical but are great at maintaining relationships and understanding business sense.
• Having different people in different roles is necessary to give customers what they want.
• Soft skills may be trained, but it is often a personality type.

Producing Content

• Most business comes from traditional means, but content is still important.
• Systems in place to produce content include a team of writers and editors, a content calendar, and a focus on evergreen content.
• Content is repurposed across different platforms and mediums.
• Content is used to drive traffic and leads, and to establish authority and thought leadership.
• Content is also used for SEO purposes and to build backlinks.

Personal Branding

• Personal branding is important for establishing authority and thought leadership.
• Personal branding is built through speaking engagements, guest posting, and social media.
• Personal branding is also built through providing value and being helpful to others.
• Personal branding can lead to more business opportunities and partnerships.
• Personal branding should be authentic and true to oneself.

Content Creation and Team Management

• Neil Patel has a team that helps him with content creation, including filming and outlining videos and social media content.
• He writes a blog post roughly once a week and has a team that updates his old content.
• Neil is hyper-focused on creating content and hands off the posting and optimization to his team.

Acquiring Ubersuggest and Answer the Public

• Roughly 40% of Neil's agency customers use Ubersuggest, which has driven revenue for the company.
• Answer the Public was acquired to replicate the success of Ubersuggest, but it's too early to tell if it will be as successful.
• Neil's team plans to improve Answer the Public's design, pricing, and functionality to generate more revenue.
• They also plan to store search data to track trends and popularity over time.
• There was no existing team for Answer the Public, so Neil's team will be starting from scratch.

Focus on Consulting

• Neil's team is more focused on the consulting end of the business than the software side.
• They believe there is untapped potential in the big companies that use their software but don't close any revenue.
• The goal of acquiring Answer the Public is to help feed the agency more on a global basis.

Challenges and Goals

• Neil's team spends more time updating old content than writing new content.
• They overpaid for Answer the Public and it wasn't doing more than 1.2 million a year when they bought it.
• The team believes they can generate way more revenue from consulting than from software.
• The goal is to improve the design, pricing, and functionality of Answer the Public to generate more revenue.
• Neil's team plans to start giving people search volume and CPC data for all terms and eventually allow them to automatically generate content.

Dealing with Haters

• Neil Patel doesn't waste time on haters and ignores them.
• He focuses on providing clients with results and going above and beyond to delight them.
• He doesn't read most of the negative comments and doesn't worry about them.
• He believes that ignorance is bliss and that the bigger you get, the more haters you will have.
• He implemented a policy of not reading comments on his social media.

Being the Face of the Business

• Neil Patel is less and less the face of his businesses.
• The Ad Agency used to be called Neil Patel Digital, but the name was changed to NP Digital.
• For bigger contracts, clients care more about who specifically is working on their account and their experience in the industry.
• Neil Patel's face may have helped get some clients in the door, but most of the businesses come from referrals, RFP, and employees.
• Being the face of the brand helps more when starting off a business than when already established.

Generating Revenue

• Uber generates 40% of Neil Patel's clients that pay for UberSuggest.
• Neil Patel's company is a nine-figure revenue company.
• The bigger contracts care heavily about the person on the accounts.
• GaryVee's success is not solely due to him being the face of the brand.
• Multi-million dollar contracts are not paying GaryVee for the stuff he speaks about on social media.

Overpaying for a Company

• Neil Patel admits that they overpaid for a company that churns quite a bit.
• They paid at least an eight times multiple on the company.
• The profit goes way down when there are support requests, etc.
• 70% of the traffic as UberSuggest was just a math equation.
• Neil Patel believes that they paid a premium because they see long-term potential.

Building a Successful Agency

• Ad agencies build revenue through relationships.
• Neil Patel's agency is larger in terms of cash flow than some competitors.
• Personal branding is important, but operations and execution are crucial for success.
• Creating ancillary businesses can also contribute to success.
• Understanding trends and picking a big enough TAM is important.

Importance of Operations and Execution

• Personal branding is just one piece of the puzzle.
• Executing well is crucial for building a successful business.
• Creating an operational team and executive team is important.
• Helping with strategy is also important.
• Other elements are more important than just brand.

Personal Branding and Business Success

• Personal branding is only a small piece of the pie.
• Other things are needed to build a successful business.
• Time and experience are important factors in building a successful business.
• Starting with a personal brand may not be necessary for success.
• Large companies are not built solely on personal branding.

Starting a Business

• It's hard to say whether Neil would have done things differently if he were starting today.
• Personal branding may or may not be necessary depending on the business.
• Starting with a corporation style may be a viable option.
• Experience and knowledge are important factors in starting a successful business.
• It's important to understand the market and pick a big enough TAM.

Building NP Digital

• Neil Patel invested between 3-5 million of his own capital to start NP Digital.
• The first year of the agency's operation generated around 5-6 million in revenue.
• The second year saw a significant increase in revenue, with an estimated 15-16 million generated.
• Neil's CEO drove over 7 million in revenue by himself in the previous year.
• Neil believes that hiring experienced people who have built successful companies before is the quickest way to build a business, but it is also one of the most expensive ways.

Hiring Experienced People

• Neil suggests hiring people who have already done it before to get bigger much faster.
• Experienced people are expensive, but they can help scale a business quickly.
• People who have built successful companies before are usually not interested in joining a startup from day zero.
• It is important to hire the best people you can afford for the current stage of your business.
• Personal brand is not as important as hiring experienced people who can help scale the business.

Starting an Agency

• Neil started an agency because he received a lot of inbound inquiries for consulting from large brands.
• There was a lot of demand for Neil's services, so he decided to respond to these people and start an agency.
• Building a personal brand for over 10 years helped Neil cash in on the demand for his services.
• The first year of the agency's operation had little to no profit, and the second year had some profit but not a ton.
• The capital was being reinvested into the agency's expansion, including different countries and regions.

Reinvesting Capital

• Neil reinvested the agency's capital into expanding to different countries and regions.
• NP Digital is currently operating in seven countries, including the United States, Canada, Brazil, the UK, Germany, India, and Australia.
• The agency is looking to expand to Singapore and find someone to head up the rest of Latin America for Spanish-speaking countries.
• The agency's expansion includes hiring people to lead up different regions and countries.
• Neil believes that reinvesting capital into growth is essential for scaling a business quickly.

Expanding to Different Regions

• Interviewing someone for Portugal to expand into Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
• Looking to expand into France, Italy, Spain, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia.
• Avoiding some countries like Russia and China due to political issues.
• Partnering with local agencies in regions like China.
• Going after the top 50 countries by GDP.

Working with Local Companies

• India team pitches India companies like Tata in India.
• Agency alone makes millions in profit per year.
• Scaling regions can make a good amount of money.
• Big businesses in countries like Brazil, India, Malaysia, and Thailand.
• Marketing for a company in a hundred countries can produce a lot of profit.

Day-to-Day Operations

• Spends 60-80 hours a week on the business but doesn't do day-to-day operations.
• Focuses mainly on client work, results, strategies, and tactic marketing.
• Doesn't deal with finance, accounting, HR, or legal.
• Mainly has phone calls with the team to brainstorm and have fun.
• Enjoys client marketing and figuring out new strategies to grow traffic.

Motivations for Building the Agency

• Not doing it for money but for fun.
• Doesn't care for multiple homes or Ferraris.
• Wife focuses on raising children and philanthropy.
• Eventually plans to give away all their money.
• Loves making money and sees it as a game.

Neil Patel's Philosophy on Giving Back and Raising Children

• Neil believes that people with money should use their power and resources to help others, especially in areas like education and crime prevention.
• He acknowledges that he and his wife don't do as much as people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but hopes that everyone can do their part to make the world a better place.
• Neil's wife is more focused on raising good human beings than pushing them towards entrepreneurship, but Neil still teaches his children some business skills and encourages them to think creatively.
• Neil believes in having fun and growing his business, but doesn't have a specific long-term vision or goal for his agency.

Watch the video on YouTube:
How Neil Patel Built a 9-Figure SEO Agency - YouTube