Eric Siu and Neil Patel argue that brand authority now matters more than backlinks for SEO rankings. Building a recognizable brand takes 3 to 6 months to show results, but pays off long-term across YouTube, podcasts, and social media together, not one channel alone.
Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.
And I'm Neil Patel.
And today, we're going to talk about how SEO will change in 2019. How in the world is it going to change in 2019? It's coming up in a month.
That's right. If you think about it, over the last few years, what's the number one factor that's helped with Google's rankings?
Brand.
Before that, links.
Links and content. There you go.
Eric answered it. So in 2019, the change is going to be brand. Oh, thanks, Eric. No worries. Eric and I, for some reason, are really off today. At least I am.
Me too.
But this is making an entertaining recording session. We're having fun. If you notice over the last years, what's happened is the more links you build, the higher rankings you've gone. In 2016, that was definitely true. 2017, Yes, but not as much as 2016. 2018, yes, links matter, but not as much as 2017. We're continually seeing the trend in which links are still powerful. They drastically can affect how you rank on Google, but brands not only rank, but they rank in the long run and they have much more stability with algorithm updates. Eric Schmidt once said, brands is how you separate the good or bad sites. I'm butchering the quote. I always— It's just poor. Credible, exactly. And when he talks about this, he breaks down things like fake news, which is really popular these days. And he talked about this a long time ago. So when you build a brand, they know that you're legitimate, you're less likely to dupe people, and for that reason, you're going to have higher rankings over time.
Yeah. I'm going to take a more philosophical approach around this too. So A, like brand, you know, you think about like the Nikes, the Apples of the world, you don't need to build a mega brand per se. You can build a mini brand and still start to get something going. And the reason why I think it's important to build a brand, no matter if you are just getting started today, you're working for somebody else right now, you're an entrepreneur. Here's the thing. If you build a brand, you're— or a mini brand, you're virtually indestructible. Because here's why I'm saying that. If you start a business and you lose it, you completely screw it up. You get the experience, by the way, which I think is really valuable, but you lose it. You lost everything. You still have a mini brand. Worst case scenario, you'll probably get a high-paying job. We're talking like, you know, multiple 6 figures or so if you're like in the United States, right? Yeah. So that's why I think it's really important to build a brand. Now, the question is, how do you start building a brand? Well, the cool thing about this podcast is a lot of the stuff that we talk about revolves around brand building, whether it's SEO or content. Those 2 we consider as part of the pillars to building a great brand. So—
Yeah, marketing has moved to omnichannel approach in which you need to do multiple things to build a brand. SEO, content marketing, social media marketing. In the last episode, Eric and I were talking about doing live videos. Live videos is a great example of another thing that you can do to help build up your brand, whether it's personal or corporate. You just need to leverage a lot of channels. It used to be where you could just build a business through one channel and a brand. For example, Facebook, when they came out, they grew by saying, hey, sign up, and they automatically blasted everyone in your address book inviting them as quote unquote you telling them to sign up for Facebook. That's what put them on the map. Those kinds of things don't work as well as they used to. SEO still works, but not as well as it used to in 2010. Yes, there's more traffic now, but it's much harder. For that reason, you need an omnichannel approach because most of these channels are saturated and it's the only way to build up a brand because one channel is not going to drive enough demand and presence for you.
Actually, a really good example, I was looking at a lead that came in yesterday. And then, so, you know, this lead I was looking at, I was like, okay, it said, you know, how did you hear about us? So this person put YouTube, right? I was like, okay, that's interesting. But what's interesting is this person clicked on an ad and it showed the UTM parameter. So I can see the campaign that he came through, which channel he came through. He actually came through Facebook. So he saw a YouTube video and somehow he like got retargeted. He probably visited a page on our site and then he got retargeted on Facebook, ended up clicking through. But this guy was also a listener of my Growth Everywhere podcast. So that is an example of omnichannel kind of an omnichannel approach. And I just want to give that example before I clear my throat. Go ahead, Neil.
Yeah. And when you're building up a brand, be patient. In the first 3 to 6 months, you're not going to get the results you're looking for. By the end of year 1, people are going to say like, oh yeah, we're seeing your company a bit more around, or we're seeing your face more around. You really start noticing the brands start kicking in around the 3rd year mark. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's the reality.
Hey, look, if you can't wait, maybe you should go do something else. That's the reality too.
Yep.
Yep.
So that's it for today's episode. As we've mentioned in previous episodes, go to marketingschool.io/stats. That's where we show you our journey on the way to a million podcast listens per month. Once we hit that, we are going to throw a free in-person event. So please help us get there so you can attend for free, free food, free networking. We'll have a blast together. And make sure you review, subscribe, share, all this kind of stuff so that way we can get there faster.
Thank you very much. Goodbye.
