Speaker 1: 0:54

Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organise the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetising websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years. Hello and welcome. Back to SEO is not that hard. It's me here, ed Dawson, hosting as usual, and today I'm going to do a podcast about the flywheel affecting content marketing, and this has been requested by a listener, michelle, who found the click here to record a question link that's in the show notes to every podcast episode, where you can actually just click, ask a question and I'll feature you on the show. So here's Michelle's question.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Hey, ed, my name's Michelle. I've got a question for you In your podcast about your latest integrations with Google Search Console and this idea of embeddings and making your tool very unique. You mentioned the flywheel effect. I was wondering if you could do a podcast on the components of that flywheel and what's the ultimate outcome. Thanks, mate.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Thanks so much for the question, michelle, and I'll do my best to try and give you a good answer. Okay, so, first of all, flywheel. What is a flywheel? Well, a flywheel is a. It's a thing that's used in engines and other industrial uses like, and it's basically a big circular disc or a wheel that's really heavy, okay, and it's used in engines to smooth out and store energy. The key thing about a flywheel is it's heavy. It takes a lot of energy to get moving. Once it's moving, it kind of sustains itself. It needs much less energy to sustain itself or to speed it up. So this whole idea around it being heavy and difficult to start once you get moving it kind of sustains itself is the whole flywheel effect that we can translate as an analogy to content marketing and seo.

Speaker 1: 3:03

Now, the term the flywheel effect was created well popularized, by jim collins in his book called good to great. So in this he talks about imagining trying to push a massive, heavy wheel. Now, at first it will barely move and you've got to push harder and it starts to turn just a little and as you keep applying a sort of steady, consistent effort, the wheel starts to gain momentum and eventually it's spinning so fast it almost seems like it's moving on its own, requiring very little effort to maintain its speed. So, in the context of business, the flywheel affects how consistent actions build momentum over time and this leads to a compounding growth. So it's not just one big push or a single breakthrough. It's about lots of small, little strategic steps and efforts working together to create a long-term success. So when we apply this to content marketing, you can see how the flywheel effect is kind of. The effect of taking little steps consistently, over and over again will start to build that momentum and get you moving forward faster and faster and almost to the point where it feels like after a while, it builds the same momentum and starts doing things by itself.

Speaker 1: 4:13

So, in terms of the flywheel effect in content marketing, so how does it actually work? Well, first of all, you've got your initial push right, and that's your content. Content is always the initial push. So this is the very like. You know we're pushing on the stationary flywheel, okay, so we're going to create blogs, right, create videos, podcasts, web pages, websites. It feels like you know you're shouting into a void. To start with, there's no traffic, there's no audience, there's no backlinks. You know, you're just, you're at the very initial phase. It's hard. Okay, I know it's hard. I've been there several times, but it's normal. Okay, just like with the flywheel, the first push is always the hardest.

Speaker 1: 4:53

You have to keep creating, publishing and promoting your content, even when the results aren't immediate. So when I started this podcast back um, what september 2023? You know no one was listening, and I knew no one was listening, but I just had to keep going. Okay, you've got to talk into the void. You've got to create the content, even though it feels like no one's listening and it feels pointless. Okay, it is at the start, but it's not actually pointless. The point is, you're starting to push that flywheel.

Speaker 1: 5:27

Now, as you continue producing this content, you'll start to see results. This is when we're starting to build momentum. So maybe a blog post gets shared on social media or, you know, an article starts to rank on the second page of Google and starts to get the occasional click. These are the small little wins that they're like the flywheel starting to turn. The key thing is, though, these wins don't happen in isolation. Each piece of content can drive traffic, which might lead to a backlink, which then helps improve how Google sees your site, the more links you've got. We know it impacts your search range and rankings getting those links, but each that first link that comes along starts to build your authority, starts to lift everything else and then each of these little successes then starts to build on the last one. So this compounds over time and these efforts you know, all these content efforts, all this work you put in, starts to snowball. So as your site's authority starts to grow, your new content will rank faster and it'll bring you more traffic. And that traffic will generate more engagement, more leads and then even potentially more backlinks. And because you're consistently publishing, this cycle continues and at this stage, this it's like the flywheel is spinning faster and faster. Okay, it takes less, less effort to keep it going because your previous efforts are working for you. So the big thing being, obviously, once you start to build that authority, every new piece of content you build will rank quicker and faster and draw in more traffic than it would do if you published it at the very start. But it's only because of all that work you put in at the start that it actually is working for you and this is the flywheel effect in content marketing. So if you want to sort of apply the flywheel effect to the maximum extent.

Speaker 1: 7:24

There's a few things you've got to do, okay. First of all, you've got to focus on consistency. You know it really really really makes a difference if you're consistent. So if you can create a content schedule and that you can stick to, then do it. You know whether that's once a week for a blog post or you know once every two weeks for a video, the key is to keep showing up every time consistently, if you can. If you notice, I do a podcast every monday, wednesday, friday. That's the consistency I've built into this podcast and that's what people are going to expect and the fact that that's now there. That is part of the flywheel. People know that be there. People now show up and it's a. It's that consistency that is key.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Second thing is repurpose where you can. So you know, obviously it's great to reuse content where you can. I do with this podcast. Every podcast leads to a newsletter post, it leads to a blog post, it leads to a linkedin post and now also video, myself doing these a lot of the time and I use little video clips to put in linkedin. So yeah, repurposing where you can is great because it means you can work on a piece of content once but then reuse it multiple times.

Speaker 1: 8:29

Always try and be quality. Okay, I know it's difficult, but you shouldn't publish rubbish if you can avoid it. Um, you know, although don't let quality become such a driver that you don't do anything. I've done previous podcasts. You know you don't need to be perfect and to turn up is better than not to turn up, but do try and be good when you do it. Um, and then track and adjust. So see, see what's working. So, as your flywheel starts turning, pay attention to what works, because not everything will work. Some things will work better than others. So keep an eye on your analytics, see what's getting engagement and then double down on those areas that really work to keep that momentum going.

Speaker 1: 9:08

Now, one particular way that they use keywords people use and the flywheel effect is in the google search integration tool. Our content optimization tools that michelle was referring to, that was talking about in the previous podcasts, was implementing that flywheel effect on individual pieces of content, individual pages. So within that, that tool that we've built, you can now see, because we connect to google search console we can see what queries your pieces of content are ranking on and where they are ranking, their sort of average ranking position, which means we can identify, on existing pieces of content where they're almost ranking, almost getting traffic, but not, you know, but they're not quite ranking high enough those areas of opportunity where you can improve a piece of content to build on the flywheel that it's already built up within that individual piece, because every individual piece of content is its own flywheel and as it starts to gain more traffic, it will gain more traffic. It will gain more keywords that it starts ranking for as it starts coming up the search engine rankings, it starts being for. As it starts coming up the search engine rankings, it starts being, um, sort of appreciated essentially by google as it, as it builds its page, rank all those kind of things and those metrics. That rises it up, as it rises up, it'll start to drag in more keywords that it's it's not quite ranking for, sorry, it's not quite driving traffic for, but starting to rank for. And these are the easiest, easiest wins when it comes to, you know, improving a piece of content and getting those extra terms ranking, because to write a whole new piece of content is a lot more work than just improving an existing piece.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Okay. So again, this is the flywheel that piece of content's built momentum and we only have to give it a little push by altering the content, updating the content, adding a little bit of extra context, all those kind of things to get it to push it just a little bit higher and it starts generating more traffic for yourself. And this is again the flywheel effect. And then you can do that across all your pages. All these little flywheels each individual page is a flywheel working together and building momentum that then drags, pulls them all up and you get that one big flywheel of your entire site. And this is how. This is what we mean. This is what I was talking about when I was talking about the flow and effect of the search optimizer. So the content optimization tool, that google search console integration that we've built so that we can understand your content and understand how it's ranking and where it could be improved think of the sort of personalized optimization specific to your site that we can do and this helps that flywheel. This is the flywheel I'm talking about. So I hope, michelle, that's helped clarify things a bit.

Speaker 1: 11:45

I hope to answer your question. If anybody else has got any questions um seo wise, content marketing wise, anything um related to the podcast or anything I talk about, you know, just do follow that link. It's in the show notes of every episode. It just says click here to record a question and you'll find it there in the show notes. Dead, dead simple, dead, dead easy. And I'd love to answer any questions in the podcast if I could. Just to leave them. And so, yeah, until next time, keep optimizing, stay curious and remember SEO is not that hard when you understand the basics.

Speaker 1: 12:21

Before I go, I just want to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools at Keywords People Use that you can book a free, no obligation one-on-one video call with me where I show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have. You can also ask me any SEO questions you have. You just need to go to keywordspeopleusecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up. Once again. That's keywordspeopleusecom slash demo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode. Hope to chat with you soon. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really helps.

Speaker 1: 12:57

Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywords people usecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywords people usecom to get an instant hit of more seo tips. Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick seo tips in the show notes of today's episode. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at channel5 on Twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.