Interview With Neil Patel from Quick Sprout – Analytics Expert & Entrepreneur

This is our first Interview in SEO Siren and today we have Neil Patel from Quicksprout.com. It was hard to believe that Neil accepted to give his interview for a budding up blog like SEO Siren. In fact Neil responded to my request politely and sent his email to forward the questions. Neil replies almost every single message on Facebook, and makes sure we get his reply immediately. Soon after the conformation, we forward few questions to Neil Inbox and guess what? We got a immediate response from his side. Neil has inspired many bloggers, entrepreneurs, SEO experts and writers, as he writes amazing content at QuickSprout.com.

Who is Neil Patel?

Neil Patel is a Seattle based entrepreneur, angel investor and analytics expert. He co-founded 2 Internet companies Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics, and has helped many large corporations such as Tech Crunch, Microsoft, HP, GM, eBay, Amazon, NBC, Viacom, AOL, Salesforce, vmware, Zappos to make money from Internet. Neil was featured as one of the top influencers by Wall Street Journal, and was also named one of the top entrepreneurs in the nation by Entrepreneur Magazine. The United States of America President Obama himself recognized Neil as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age 30. Neil has also received Congressional Recognition from the U.S. House of  Representatives for his work in the nonprofit sector.

An Interview With Neil Patel:

We are proud to present you this close encounter with Neil Patel from QuickSprout.com. We hope you enjoy reading this interview, and share your comments and valuable feedback via comments.

1)  Hi Neil, tell us a bit about Quick Sprout, Crazy Egg, Kiss Metrics and other ventures of your company.

Quick Sprout is my personal blog where I share my learning’s in entrepreneurship and business.

Crazy Egg is usability software that helps you see where your users are clicking and where they aren’t. You can then take this data and adjust your design to make it more user friendly.

KISSmetrics is a customer analytics platform that helps you understand what your customers are doing on your website. It shows you data suck as what causes them to churn, what causes them to convert or even have a higher lifetime value.

2)  You’ve been in the SEO industry from a long time, what are the major trends shaping up in 2013?

Everything is shifting to become more personalized. Not only are results being tailored based on your geographical location, but they are also being tailored to your social preferences. If search engines notice that your friends like a specific site or service over others, you are more likely to see those in your search results.

3)  There has been a surge in people joining blogging and online marketing, but over 90% of them fail. Where do you see the problem?

The biggest problem is that they aren’t consistent. Blogging and online marketing isn’t a get rich quick scheme, it takes years to build something fruitful.

The other issue is, people aren’t learning. They are spending money on marketing and blogging, but they aren’t adjusting their strategies based on when their customers want.

4)  You’ve worked with a lot of international companies till now. What are the main challenges you have faced?

The laws are different internationally than they are here in the US. For example if a company in China wants to get ranked on Baidu, they have to pay them for the top organic spot.

In addition to that the tactics that you use to grow businesses internationally maybe different than what you are used to. For example in India, people usually don’t like the concept of swiping their credit card online. This drastically affects how online retailers do business.

All of these things make it challenging as you have to learn each countries culture and the way they operate businesses.

5)  You are an angel investor yourself, what will any angel investor look for to support a startup?

I am looking for a startup that has a great team and is trying to solve a big problem. Then an angel will try to leverage their connections to help the entrepreneur, but before they can do that the entrepreneur needs to have the drive and ambition.

6)  Forgive me if it’s not appropriate, but how do you balance your personal life inspite of so many responsibilities and so much work pressure?

I don’t. I just work all of the time and I don’t spend much time on my personal life.

7)  You have been very successful in SEO and online marketing, are there any tools which make your work easy and efficient?

• SEOmoz
• Raven Tools
• Word Tracker
• SEMrush

8)  Many SEO experts are inspired by your work, are there any tips you would like to give them?

Whatever you do, just put 100% of your energy in it. Never put out crap and always put your best foot forward. If you try your best, over time people will appreciate your work.

9)  Would you like to give any suggestions to our readers before they get into SEO and blogging?

Make sure you look at it from a long term approach. Don’t go for the quick wins that require you to bend Google’s guidelines… go for creating value for the end customer, which should help you rise to the top in the long run.

10) What are the qualities you look for in a team working under you?

I am looking for people who are smarter than me. In addition to that they have to be a cultural fit.

Follow Neil Patel

 

We personal thank Neil Patel for spending his valuable time in replying our questions. You can like Neil Patel Official page from the above Like button for regular Facebook updates and notifications.