Hello and welcome back to SEO is not that hard. This final Christmas special of the year, and I hope that you've all enjoyed Christmas. I hope you're full of leftovers and whatever it is that you do between Christmas and New Year, and today I'm going to have just one more SEO themed Christmas emergency question, and then we're going to cover an old favourite from the back catalogue that I just wanted to share with you at this time of year. So, first of all, the question so what's the seo equivalent of finding coal in your stocking? So, okay, if you're not sure what coal in your stocking is, um, that's where, if you've done something bad, you know, if you're on the naughty list, then you'll get a lump of coal from santa in your stocking. And this actually happened to one of my daughters a few years ago I think they were she was probably about seven at the time um, but you know the advent calendars with chocolates in them for every, every, um, every day of advent. She'd gone to my other's daughter's advent calendar and had stolen a load of chocolates out of those. So when it came to Christmas time, she got in her stocking from Santa. One of the presents was a lump of coal wrapped up with a note saying I saw you steal all those chocolates and it's still something she talks about now, seven years later. So coal in your stocking is if you've done something wrong. So in the SEO equivalent it's got to be getting a manual penalty from Google for doing something that breaks their terms of service, something black hat or something you know you shouldn't be doing. They've caught you. You get that. Wake up one morning. You get that email. You've got a notification in your search console. Go there and you've got a manual penalty. Fortunately, to this day I've never had one, because I try to avoid that kind of thing. Spoken in the past about having plenty of algorithmic penalties, like paying to win a panda back in the day, but no, I never had had a manual penalty. But that's got to be. The equivalent of a calling your stocking for an seo is to get that manual penalty right. So that's the emergency question. Done on to the episode that I've chosen today to um play again from that that was played earlier in the year and that's the one about um, the binge bank strategy which, I have to admit, I you know, happened upon accidentally, but I can see now how it's worked and it's something that, if you're thinking about what you're going to do in the year, whatever you do, it's worth considering if you can make something that's binge binge worthy, that people binge on um and it's a really good strategy. So, without further ado, let's go on to that next episode and I'll see you, um, in the new year. Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed dawson, the founder of keywords people usecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. I'm an seo developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetizing 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.

Hello, welcome to the latest episode of SEO is Not that Hard. It's me, ed, here, as usual, and today I'm going to talk about how I accidentally implemented the binge bank strategy with this podcast. Now, the binge bank strategy is not something I've ever heard of before, but as soon as I did hear about it it was like, oh, I've actually done that, so let's go back to the beginning. So when I started this podcast, I had no real grand strategy for it. I just thought I wanted to start a podcast. I want to try and be consistent and I decided on three times a week. And I also decided that if I was going to produce that many podcasts I couldn't rely on other people. I didn't have enough people to um who could reliably come on and talk with me on it, and I also had no grand plan on what the content was going to be. I just thought I've got a whole load of SEO knowledge in my head. I want to try and get it out. I want to do it in a way that's useful for people.

And after trying to record the very first few episodes I realized that I found it at that time very hard to talk for probably more than 30 seconds at a time and to build up even like a 10 minute podcast took hours at that time and now much faster. And in many of these podcasts that you hear are pretty much come out all in one go. And I also didn't want to spend a lot of time sitting down writing scripts. I wanted it to be natural. I wanted it to be, you know, sort of straight from out my brain through the microphone, you know, into your ears. So that meant making every podcast, trying to make it actionable on one topic. Maybe it covers a few topics. Sometimes I know the recent um top tips ones have covered a whole bunch of things in 10 minutes, um, but again, that's. It's on a type of topic, isn't it? It's short tips. It's just trying to help in that way.

So that was how I decided to go for it and I thought I'm just going to talk into the ether. I'm not going to do a lot of promotion to start with. I am just going to start publishing and keep publishing and keep publishing to try and get over a the fear of, you know, listening to my own voice. B the fear of drying up. C the fear of no one listening. So, rather than worry about whether anyone's going to listen, just assume that no one was going to listen and not try to overthink it too much, but just start putting them out, be consistent and see what happens over time. Now, on a personal level, I've really enjoyed doing it because it's helped me improve my speaking ability loads. As I say, I can now speak, I think more clearly, I think more coherently and I can certainly speak for a much greater depth and length than I could previously, sort of you know, back in September of 2023.

Now, what I've actually built up over time is actually a large number of podcasts. What I've actually built up over time is actually a large number of podcasts, sort of short form for podcasts really, sort of anywhere between five and sort of 15 minutes. The average is probably about 10 minutes, I suspect. I've not worked it out, but it actually turns out that these little podcasts are quite bingeable and I've noticed this from the stats, because obviously we can see which podcasts get downloaded on a daily basis and obviously when we release a new podcast, that gets a big chunk of um of listen straight away and over a period of a week or two and then it'll die down um, but sometimes in those um stats and on a daily stats, I can see where, all of a sudden, we might get a whole load of earlier podcasts get listened to in a row. Just, you know, one, two, three listens, you know, and I can see that someone being on the podcast, that's someone who's gone back and discovered the podcast. However, by whatever means, I've discovered it, but they've then gone back and started to listen to podcast after podcast after podcast, and when they're only sort of 10 minutes long.

I think it's easy for you to invest in just listening to another one and to another one, and to another one, and I, for example, when I binge tv programs. A couple of years ago I had a hernia operation and I was laid up in bed, um, for a couple of weeks afterwards and on some quite strong painkillers and I just wanted to put on some tv that I could just zone in and out of, basically, and binge in that regard. And I chose the american office, um, because there were short episodes, because on netflix without and the adverts and stuff, they're like 20 minutes each, because on Netflix without the adverts and stuff, they're like 20 minutes each. And you know I could just and there was lots of them. I think there's 300, 400 episodes. There's a huge number of episodes.

I knew that I could spend two weeks on that and it just fit that binging pattern. If it was something that was a smaller number of episodes, I wouldn't be able to get invested in it before running out of them. And also, if there were long episodes, I couldn't kind of snack on it at 20 minute intervals and start a new hour-long episode always felt like a long, big commitment up front, whereas if it's just 20 minutes, I could be there again thinking, yeah, I've got 20 minutes in me, I can keep my eyes open. For the 20 minutes I'll watch another one, whereas if it was coming up and saying you've got to invest an hour, then no, it wouldn't necessarily do that. So I've realized that what I've done is created a whole bunch of podcasts that are easily snackable, bingeable, and I say that it's come up to me twice today.

That's because I was having a call today with a Keywords People Use and a podcast listener Hi, richard, if you're listening. And he just said you know how he found the podcast and he'd been binging on it and you know that word binging came up and then later in the day I'd gone out. I just put a podcast on. I'd gone out to actually muck out the horses, because my wife and daughter they're off with the horses today and I was and I've been left had to turn a couple of horses out and then just muck out the stables. It's not a big job, but you know it takes, uh, 20-30 minutes. So I was like, right, I'll put a podcast on.

While I'm doing that and I came across a podcast. I don't normally listen to it, but it's called. It's on my feed and it's called. Let me just check. It's called my first million. It's a hub spot podcast and it was how to how to master storytelling and I interested in storytelling. It's something that's important if you're writing any kind of content. I'm always trying to improve my storytelling. I thought, well, I'll listen to this one.

And the guy who was being interviewed in it is called Sean Puri and he discussed quite early on this concept of a binge bank. And it was from a couple of um guys that he'd he'd come across um who basically were creating lots and lots of little snackable bits of content and weren't really worrying about whether any of them really hit the mark or went viral at any one point. And you know he said to them why are you bothering if no one's listening or no one's watching? I think they were doing videos, but if no one's watching, why are you doing them? And they were like I know what we're doing. We're creating a binge bank.

This is so that when someone does discover us the ones that do pop and get discovered, those people, if they find them, didn't like us they can then go back and there's a whole load of content for them to listen to and they can binge on it, and I just thought that's when I realized, hang on, that's what I've done by accident, but it was never a strategy I set out to achieve. I would say that it's now something that I'm going to consider for other things that we do and other people who you know. When I'm consulting with people with their asking advice, it's definitely something that can work in certain circumstances. It's certainly worked for me on this podcast. I certainly see people obviously discover the podcast at a certain point and then dive back and listen to loads and loads and loads. And you know I've chatted with loads of you out there. There's a whole bunch of you out there who've had chats with me and you know who you are. So thank you very much for being listeners. Really, I do. Really I say it in the at the end in the pre-record outro, but I do really appreciate it. It is great to have people listening.

I started off not expecting anything. It was more to sort of get myself out of my own, out of my comfort zone and do something different, but it's actually been one of the most, yeah, valuable things I think in terms of my growth to have ever actually done to start the podcast. So, yeah, thanks for all the guys and girls who have listened, binged and got in touch. If you are one of those people and you're listening and you want to have a chat, my door is always open. There are links in the show notes on how to get in touch. I do find it really valuable talking to listeners because, a it helps me improve the podcast. B it helps me improve keywords people use. You wouldn't believe how valuable it is to see how different people use the product and have different people listen to the podcast and what they find valuable and where I can improve. So if you've been sitting on the fence thinking should I get in touch, then please do. I always spare half an hour for people and I say, yeah, the ways of contacting me are in the show notes.

So that's the binge bank strategy. It doesn't have to be podcasts, can? It doesn't have to be podcasts, doesn't have to be videos. It can be blog content and page content. It can be essays, it can be all sorts of things. But if you can make something that is bingeable, then do, because you'll see that that content will pay off over time. Doesn't always have to pop instantly to be worthwhile things will. You know? Things will get the listers over time if you make it that kind of bingeable content. So it's a really interesting strategy. Anyhow, thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. So it's not that hard.

Before I go, I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools that keywords people use that you can 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 keywordspeoplesusecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up. Once again, that's keywords people use, dot com 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.

Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywords. People use dot com, 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 channel five on twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywords people usecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of seo is not that hard.