“Content is not king.” Al Jazeera asks and Neil Patel answers

Neil Patel had an engaging session at Web Summit on the importance of content over engagement (Web Summit)

Neil Patel is one of the most prominent experts in the field of marketing and digital content production over the past decade. According to Forbes magazine, he is one of the top 10 marketers in the world in electronic marketing.

He is the co-founder of NB Digital and Scribers, through which he seeks to help individuals and companies in the field of electronic marketing through his articles.

He is considered one of the most famous marketers in the world, and has greatly influenced the field of e-marketing in particular, and entrepreneurship in general, and many giant companies such as Amazon and HP have benefited from his services in the field of e-marketing.

Awards and honors

Many websites and personalities appreciate Neil for his role in the field of electronic marketing, including:

The Wall Street Journal described him as one of the top influencers on the Internet, and he won an award from former US President Barack Obama as one of the top 100 global entrepreneurs. Forbes says that he is one of the top 10 marketers in the world, and Entrepreneur magazine says that he created one of the world’s leading entrepreneurs. He is also a New York Times bestselling author.

Al Jazeera met with Neil on the sidelines of the Web Summit held in Qatar, which lasted for 4 days, where he was one of the participants in an important session that changed many concepts about content production entitled “Content is not King.” We had the following dialogue with him:

• In the field of search engine optimization, what are the most important strategies that companies recommend to improve their search ranking in 2024?

  
  

Content producers can adopt a number of tools that help them know what their audience wants to see now. For example, a tool such as “Answer the public” keeps you up to date with what people are searching for at a particular time.

15% of search attempts on Google are for new things that no one has searched for before. Therefore, when you use these tools, you will have a number of topics that you can cover, whether on your site, or on the communication platforms that the user is searching for, and there are not many of them on the Internet. This will of course benefit your site's ranking in the advanced ranks.

• How can you create content that not only attracts audiences, but also turns them into loyal customers?

The basis in this matter is to create new content and not repeat existing content. Authentic content has always attracted the appetite of customers, which makes your brand or site different from others. No one likes imitators.

The second thing is to rely on your experience and skills more than relying on creating content that you know nothing about just to attract the audience. Sometimes I see many companies seeking to create content that does not suit their audience just because it is attractive to a specific group, which makes them a victim of trends, and they do not have enough personality to make Customers are loyal to them.

15% of search attempts on Google are for new things that no one has searched for before (Shutterstock)

• Is long content better or short?

It does not matter whether the article is long or short. What matters is whether it is appropriate for what the audience wants and motivates them to interact with it. What I mean by interaction with regard to written or visual content is whether the customer continues until the end of the content or does he leave it?

If the customer leaves the article or video without finishing, know that this is a bad sign that will be placed by the algorithm on your content, and if this happens again, unfortunately, your content will not reach a large segment of your followers, as you have doomed it.

• What digital marketing trends do you expect to become crucial for businesses to adopt in the coming year to stay ahead of the competition?

The trend that I see will become decisive for everyone, whether companies or individuals, is to focus on quality instead of quantity. This has now become the trend even for algorithms. The large number of non-interactive content will lead to withholding your content from many customers, because the algorithm will treat it as content. Poor, and should be reduced.

Whereas if your content is interactive, even if it is not as abundant as you see fit, the algorithms will treat it as good content, and it should be disseminated to more people.

Can you share customer base or sales growth techniques that startups can use to quickly expand their user base without a big budget?

I will tell you one that I consider to be the best technique for growth. Give your customers something for free, whether a product, course, file, or service. I have always believed that giving a customer something for free is better than setting budgets on increasing interaction, marketing, and buying clicks, and it will also not cost you huge sums of money.

• In your experience, what are the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face when trying to grow their businesses online, and how can they overcome these challenges?

  
  

The biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs in this context is their focus on increasing the number of followers and views instead of converting these followers into permanent customers. What is the importance of having a million followers on a site that sells a product if this number is not reflected in sales, but unfortunately we find that most of the current business models for entrepreneurs Trying to attract the largest number of audience without focusing on how to convert them into buyers or loyal customers.

• In the royal court of digital marketing, who is the king, who is the queen, who is the jester, and who is the knight in the eyes of Neil Patel?

The king is interaction, content is queen, the jester is content updating, and the court knight is links.

• If Google's search algorithm were a man, what is the first thing you would say to him?

I'll tell him how can you be less biased?

Because sometimes you have to be silent and not answer, because your answer is clearly biased.

Neil Patel concluded the meeting by calling on content producers to change their outlook on the modern content creation process, and not to focus on artificial intelligence in the production process, as there is still a long way to go for this technology to catch up with human-based work.

Source: Al Jazeera