If you have been in digital marketing for more than a week, you know the Sales Funnel. It is the classic model we have all relied on: you pour traffic into the top, and gravity pulls a few customers out of the bottom.
But there is a fatal flaw in the funnel mentality when applied to modern SEO. Funnels lose energy.
Once a lead drops out of the bottom, the process ends. You have to start over, paying (with time, content, or ad spend) to acquire the next visitor. In 2025, where search is becoming more competitive and AI-driven, this linear approach is too expensive and too slow.
Great SEO doesn’t work like a funnel. Great SEO is a Flywheel.
In a flywheel model, every effort you invest doesn't just "convert"—it stores energy. A happy user leads to better engagement signals, which leads to higher rankings, which leads to more users. The wheel spins faster and faster, requiring less effort from you over time to maintain the same momentum.
Here is how you can stop building static funnels and start engineering an SEO Flywheel that dominates Google rankings.
The concept, originally popularized by Jim Collins and adapted for marketing by HubSpot, relies on three mechanical principles: Force, Friction, and Mass.
To make this work for your website, you need to understand how these apply to Google's algorithms.
High-Quality Content: Publishing articles that actually solve problems, not just "filler" content.
Backlinks: Earning authority from other reputable sites.
Technical Excellence: Ensuring Google can crawl and index your site without errors.
Slow Page Speed: If your site takes 3 seconds to load, the wheel has a brake on it.
Poor UX: Users bouncing back to Google sends a negative signal that slows your rankings.
Dead Ends: Content without internal links or next steps creates a "stop" in the user journey.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel, but you do need to choose the right type of wheel. Here are three specific structures you can build.
Instead of writing random blog posts, you build an interconnected library.
Pillar Page: You write a massive guide on a broad topic (e.g., "The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing").Pillar Page: You write a massive guide on a broad topic (e.g., "The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing").
Cluster Content: You write 20 smaller articles answering specific questions (e.g., "How to do keyword research," "Best SEO tools").
The Spin: All cluster pages link back to the Pillar. The Pillar links to the clusters.
The Result: When one small article ranks, it passes authority (link juice) to the Pillar. The Pillar rises in rankings, pulling the other small articles up with it.
Think of Canva or Ahrefs. They don’t just blog; they create landing pages that are the tool.
Intent Matching: Users search "Free Resume Builder."
The Landing Page: The page isn’t a blog post; it’s a working tool where the user can start editing immediately.
The Spin: The utility is so high that users stay a long time (Dwell Time) and share the tool naturally (Backlinks).
The Result: Google sees massive engagement signals and ranks the page #1, bringing in more users who create more designs, further validating the tool.
You provide the platform; your users provide the content.
The Seed: You create a page for a specific product or service.
The Input: A user leaves a review or a comment. This is fresh, unique content.
The Spin: That review contains long-tail keywords (e.g., "best gluten-free option") that you wouldn't have thought to target.
The Result: The page ranks for those new keywords, bringing in new users, who leave more reviews. The content grows itself.
You don't need to be Amazon to do this. You just need to close the loop on your current strategy.
Fix Core Web Vitals: If your LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is poor, your flywheel will never gain speed.
Kill Dead Ends: Every page on your site must have a "Next Step." Use "Related Articles" or "Read Next" sections to keep users circulating on your site.
Update Old Content: Don't let old posts rot. Update them annually to keep the "Mass" of your website fresh.
Internal Linking Strategy: When you publish a new post, immediately go back to 3 older posts and link to the new one. This connects the new gear to the spinning wheel.
Repurpose Content: Turn your best blog post into a YouTube video. Embed that video back into the blog post. This increases "Time on Page" (a huge ranking factor), which spins the wheel faster.
Optimize for Dwell Time: Use short paragraphs, clear headings, and images to keep people reading. Google watches this.
The "Brand" Halo: Become a destination. If people search for your brand name + keyword (e.g., "Ideas to Reach SEO guide"), Google views you as an authority, lifting your entire domain.
The difference between a struggling website and a dominant one is often not the quality of the individual articles, but the structure of the strategy.
A funnel mindset asks: "How many conversions did this post get me?" A flywheel mindset asks: "How much momentum did this post add to my site?"
Start building SEO momentum
Switch from a funnel to a flywheel. It's like reaching a tipping point in SEO and becoming a Purple Cow in the radar of search engines.
