My Biggest SEO Fail (Unbelievable Rookie Mistake)
– If you look at me you see someone who's probably done well in SEO. Most of you guys see me as a SEO. Not really a marketer or entrepreneur, but specifically a SEO. And a lot of you guys are
like, "Hey, whatever Neil does he succeeds when it comes to SEO." But I've had a really huge failure in SEO. And funny enough, it's not just one. I've had many. The thing about me is I've gotten decent or good at SEO not because
I'm smarter than you. There's so many people out there who know more about SEO than
me, or who are smarter.
It's that I'm relentless. I keep experimenting, testing, and trying until I figure something out. It's just my personality. I'm obsessive. And one of the biggest failures I had was I would buy websites that were expired. I would spend a lot of money building their links, getting their rankings. And eventually Google
would hit me with a penalty 'cause I was too aggressive. I bought links that you shouldn't have. I was using expired domain names on things like "national parks" because they had all these EDU
and government links and then turning them into a casino site. I was just asking for it. But I ranked really high up on page one for terms like "online casino." And yeah, I did get caught. But the thing I learned about SEO, my biggest mistake was being shortsighted. It's not necessarily a tactic because there's a lot of tactics
that I failed with that got me quick results,
but most of the ones that got me quick results
made me quick money, but that money went away
really fast as well.
And the biggest SEO mistake I made was having the mindset
of being shortsighted. With SEO, think long run. Yes it takes you a long
time to get rankings if you do it right and
you don't take shortcuts. But the rankings stay
there for a very long time. Creates stability. Will create genuine solid income for your business that you can rely on. Don't be shortsighted like I was when I was a kid starting out as a SEO. You can experiment, you
can do some fun stuff. I understand you can break rules. I don't recommend it,
but if you wanna do it for experimentation and fun purposes don't hurt anyone else. Don't do anything unethical. Experiment. You'll learn that way. And eventually you'll learn that, hey, it's the stuff that is providing value.
Doing what's best for the
user is what's gonna rank you the highest and keep
you there in the long run. 'Cause Google's not
about, "Oh, if this site has more links it should
be ranked at the top." The way Google thinks
is, hey, whatever's best for the user is what we
wanna place at the top. That is really the core purpose
of their search algorithm. Yes, they don't want
people manipulating it and they're using things like links and brand signals and on-page SEO to help determine where a
website should be ranked, but if you look a the
over-arching picture, in their mind the website that provides the best value to the user, not to Google, but to the user, is who they
wanna be placed at the top. So if you do what's best for the user, you may not get the best
results in the short-term.
Heck, I would bet you're not gonna get the best results in the short-term. But you will get the best
results in the long run..
