In this episode, we cover:

Today, we speak to Neil Patel, the real big daddy of SEO. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web. 

He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

In this episode, Neil will talk about building the perfect backlink in 2020 and beyond.

Stay tuned for the next podcast episode, where our guest, Andy Crestodina, tells us how to create a killer content that Google loves to rank.

Show notes

• [00:39-01:02] What made you create such a fantastic tool like UberSuggest? 
• [01:03-01:42] How did you manage to add so many features to your tool in such a short time?
• [01:45-02:52] What do you think is a perfect backlink in 2020?
• [02:55-04:09] How do we use UberSuggest to build a perfect link?
• [ 04:27-05:15] How did you arrive at the Domain Score metric in UberSuggest?
• [05:48-06:20] Are there any hacks that we can use in UberSuggest to spot guest post opportunities at scale?
• [06:42-07:28] Are there any advanced filters that we can use to filter out country-specific domains or language-specific domains in the tool?
• [07:30-08:16] Where do you think the future of backlinks is headed? Will it still be relevant after five years? 
• [08:26-08:51] Can you give us a sneak-peek of the new features that we are going to see in UberSuggest in the coming few months? 
• [09:07-10:58] Can you share some productivity hacks for agencies to scale up their link acquisition campaigns? 
• [11:14-11:54] Can you tell us some of the common mistakes that affiliated sites should avoid while trying to build backlinks?
• [12:10-13:40] Last year, Google came up with rel=nofollow, rel=UGC, and rel=sponsored tags. Do you think it is going to affect how we build links, or is there anything that we should be following going forward?

Show Notes Explanation

Hey guys, welcome to a special episode of SEO On-Air. Our guest today needs no introduction. Every digital marketer would have come across his blogs or his shows for sure. He also conducts a lot of podcasts that receive millions of downloads. Let’s welcome the real big daddy of SEO-Neil Patel, to the Stan Ventures show.

Time Stamp: 00:39-01:02

Senthil: What made you create such a fantastic tool like UberSuggest? 

Neil: I wanted to create a tool that’s usable for people who were interested in growing their traffic. There are a lot of advanced tools out there, and there’s nothing wrong with using them, but if you are just starting out and interested in growing your traffic, some of these tools can be really hard to use, which is all that I thought.

 Time Stamp: 01:03-01:42

Senthil: Great! How did you manage to add so many features to your tool in such a short time?

Neil: The way I was able to do it using just a lean team is with the help of all the latest and greatest technology out there. Amazon web services help a lot; it beats up the development time. Their server infrastructure isn’t the most affordable but allows development to be quite a bit quicker as well.

Senthil: So, there aren’t hundreds of developers behind it?

Neil: No, we have eight. 

Senthil: Seriously? Wow! You’ve pulled out such an incredible tool with eight developers. This is awesome, Neil!

Time Stamp: 01:45-02:52

Senthil: So, our topic for today’s podcast is how to unleash UberSuggest for link acquisition campaigns. We know there are many features in UberSuggest, but we wanted to specifically pick up backlinks and understand how we can use it for link acquisition campaigns.

Before we dive deep into it, what do you think is a perfect backlink in 2020?

Neil: I think that is related. If you can end up getting a site that is super-related to you, have a ton of authority, is contextual, and has a high domain score, then it is a perfect site to build backlinks. However, if you get a high DA site that is not contextual or not a relevant page or a site, it doesn’t help as much. 

Time Stamp: 02:55-04:09

Senthil: Now that you’ve said relevancy is the key to build perfect links, how do we use UberSuggest to build such a perfect link?

Neil: Let me tell you the way I do it. I like going to the top pages report; this shows me all the top pages of my competitors. I look to see if I have similar content, if I don’t, I consider writing content similar to their top pages but better in quality using the “skyscraper technique” that Brian Dean breaks down. 

Then from there, I’ll reach out to all the people that linked to the competitor’s article. It shows you that data within UberSuggest. You can just click “view all” under the link account, and you see every single person that hits each other’s site up. 

The other thing that really helps when you are trying to build links is that if you see a page that’s already popular on your competitor’s site, you turn their content into an infographic. 

It doesn’t work with all content pieces, but it does really work with the data-rich ones. You can publish it and hit up all the people linked to the original article from your competitors and let them know about its visual version, in any case, they embed it, and link to it as well. 

Time Stamp: 04:27-05:15

Senthil: We know that you have a domain score metric in UberSuggest, how do you arrive at this metric? 

Neil: Domain score comes up from things like which site is linking to you, which sites are linking to them, how many keywords are they ranking for, what’s the position they are ranking for, social shares on the pages of their websites, how often they publish new content, how often they refresh old content. So, by taking a lot of metrics like that, we come up with the authority of a site.

Time Stamp: 05:20-05:36

Senthil: Does that count the spam score as well because it is one of the metrics we consider when we initially want to outreach. 

Neil: Yes, it does.

Time Stamp: 05:48-06:20

Senthil: Are there any hacks that we can use in UberSuggest to spot guest post opportunities at scale?

Neil: Not really to spot guest posts, you can use the tool to find content opportunities by using “content ideas report” that tells you what’s hot around the web and what people want to read based on social shares, backlinks, and search traffic. However, there’s no dedicated feature that can tell you that these are all the sites that accept guest posts. 

Time Stamp: 06:42-07:28

Senthil: Are there any advanced filters that we can use to filter out country-specific domains or language-specific domains in the tool?

Neil: You can. You can do a lot of filtering around languages; you can browse and see websites that are doing really well or sites that are pushing a lot of content, that’ll help you know what to target and what not to target. You can start filtering by authority, keywords, and what people write on, etc.

Time Stamp: 07:30-08:16

Senthil: Where do you think the future of backlink is headed? Will it still be relevant after five years? 

Neil: I think so. It won’t be as relevant as it is today, but the user metrics will be the key to winning in the future, such as dwell time, how many pages someone is visiting, are they finding value in the page, are they searching for the brand on Google, etc. 

That doesn’t mean links will go away. It just means if links have a certain portion of the algorithm at present, they may have 20%-30% less in the future. But they are still going to be a significant portion of the algorithm. 

Time Stamp: 08:26-08:51

Senthil: Can you give us a sneak-peek of the new features that we are going to see in UberSuggest in the coming few months? 

Neil: The chrome extension is almost done, we are wrapping up testing on that, and as you browse on the web, you may see more keyword ideas, link opportunities, social share data and stuff like that in the coming months. 

Time Stamp: 09:07-10:58

Senthil: Can you share some productivity hacks for agencies to scale up their link acquisition campaigns? 

Neil: Scrapebox is a really good tool. The people there have added more features that make it easier and more automated. My ultimate dream is to tell you within UberSuggest, here’s the lead you should build because they are most likely to link out to you. I want to make it super simple. I want to automate it as much as possible so that it could save you time.

Time Stamp: 11:14-11:54

Senthil: Can you tell us some of the common mistakes that affiliated sites should avoid while trying to build backlinks? 

Neil: You don’t need all page links, focus on the highest authority, and focus on the relevance and quality of the content. The other big mistake that we see is people trying to do rich anchor text links. You don’t need them. Instead, think of user experience, what will benefit them, etc., because, remember, quality wins over quantity. 

Time Stamp: 12:10-13:40

Senthil: Last year, Google came up with rel=nofollow, rel=UGC, and rel=sponsored tags. Do you think it is going to affect how we build links, or is there anything that we should be following going forward?

Neil: I don’t think most webmasters are using these tags for now because Google is not saying you are required to use them. I think people focus too much on things like SEO and link-building. Instead, they should focus on the user experience and doing what’s best for them. This is what is going to help them in the long-run. 

Senthil: Great. That’s all I have for today. It was a pleasure speaking to you, Neil. I’m pretty sure UberSuggest will be adding more features in the coming months, and we wish you all the best. Thank you for coming to our show.

Neil: Thank you for having me.