Interview with Neil Patel @neilpatel

Howdy Inbound Marketers, Today we have an wonderful guest with us. At 21, he was named a top 100 blogger by Technorati and one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. Neil Patel is the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics. Through these 2 companies he has helped large corporations such as AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and Viacom make more money from the web. Hope you enjoy the interview. :)

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Q. In January 2013 you were interviewed by Jayson DeMers. In that interview you talked about link building and diversifying anchor text while link building. As you know, there have been several changes in Google algorithm in the past year. Moving forward what advice will you give for those site looking to “build links?”

A. If I were a marketer I wouldn’t worry about rich anchor text anymore or even manually building links. I would just focus on link building through content marketing. It will help you get more links to internal pages, which will help your overall site rank higher.

Q. What was the reason launched CrazyEgg.com? Please give us an example which shows crazyegg.com helped conversion rates?

A. When we had an agency, people used to tell us how they had all these visitors but they didn’t understand why they didn’t converted. We created Crazy Egg to help businesses understand what changes they need to make to maximize their conversion rate.

We have been around for around 7 years now and it has been an effective product, in which companies have been using us to maximize their conversion rates. For example Only Apartments ran a Crazy Egg test and they were able to increase their conversions by over 10% through placements of their CTAs. They were able to get this information through one simple report.

Q. http://www.onlinepokerlowdown.com/ - What were your plans with this blog? It seems now Mike Kam is managing the blog, did you sell it, if yes why?

A. I am not sure as it has been a back burner project. No one really works on it and I don’t see that changing anytime soon as poker isn’t a big passion of mine.

Q. What are some things to keep in mind when pitching business to investors? Please share some of your experiences with Kissmetrics and CrazyEgg.

A. This blog post will break down how we pitched investors: http://www.quicksprout.com/2009/01/21/how-to-raise-venture-capital/

Q. For visitors who convert after using multiple devices (mobile, tablets, PC), how does KissMetrics track this? How do you track and relate multi-devices visits? Unless a visitor is signed in, how effectively can KissMetrics relate this data.

A. We can track users across any device. Once a user logs in from multiple devices we connect the dots and data points on our end. But there is no way to track that it is the same person across multiple devices and platforms unless there is a transaction or a signing in that we are tracking.

Q. A heatmap only represents the distribution of interest on a page. How does CrazyEgg determine the order of elements viewed by a visitor?

A. We also have other reports like a scroll map that tracks things like mouse movements. So if a user isn’t clicking on elements that interest them, we can still show you what they are viewing.

Q. Any lessons learned in 2013 and actionable advice for 2014?

A. The big lesson I learned in 2013 is that I need to focus on my own businesses. I already knew that from past experiences, but I was investing in other companies as well. I learned that the best place to park my money is in myself.

As for 2014 I recommend that entrepreneurs focus on freemium. Paid ads are becoming expensive and through a freemium product or model you can create a large top of funnel.

Q. Whenever I see your blog, I am surprised to see the way you present data. You have a lot of inforgraphics. For example The advanced guide to link building chapter 1. What kind of tools/editor you use to create such blogs?

A. It’s all custom. I have a designer who works with me and she designs it all manually. No tools are used.

Q. Blogging and content marketing is the primary area which you target, please share some of your favourite tips and strategies you used to promote content.

A. You can find all of my strategies listed out in this guide: http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-content-marketing/

Q. Any advice for Internet Marketers / SEOs for 2014.

A. You should focus on long tail traffic. It’s becoming more difficult to rank for head terms, but through content marketing you can easily rank for long tail keywords that are relevant.

Thank you very much Neil for taking the time out of your busy schedule.

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