What do you need to know about Podcast SEO?
Whether you already have a podcast or are interested in starting one, these tips will help make your episodes gain visibility in search.
As of June, there were more than 30 million podcast episodes in iTunes. Until recently, podcasts and other forms of audio content were not seen as direct SEO assets.
Podcasting really kicked into high gear around the end of 2004. Podcasting was more of a way to get your name out there, promote expertise, and network with others in the industry.
Making Your Podcast SEO-Friendly
Google has talked about making audio searchable several times over the past few years. Back in May, Google announced at I/O 2019 that podcasts will soon be indexed.
Since the announcement, we’ve started to see podcasts trickle into the organic search results.
YouTube clips have been a part of the organic SERPs for a while now. And it seems podcasts are gearing up to take on a bigger role in 2020 and beyond!
Knowing how to make your episodes SEO-friendly is going to be a factor in how you gain visibility.
So how do you do it? Let’s dive in.
Know the Trends
Just like a blog post or any other form of written content, you are going to need a knowledge of the trending keywords and topics to build your instalments around.
Let’s say we are trying to find a good SEO-related topic for a podcast. Once we have a list of keywords, we want our podcast to rank for, we can develop the outline or list of questions to naturally work them in. For the sake of the example, let’s say we’re going to run a podcast on the best techniques for conducting website audits.
Here are some of the trending questions around the topic — courtesy of Ubersuggest:
Develop a Podcast Voice
To reiterate, Google’s NLP capabilities are getting better at picking out verbalized keywords. However, mumbling or not speaking clearly will make life harder for AI bots. You need to have a strong podcast voice to ensure Google can interpret as many of the keywords and phrases within the conversation as possible.
If you’re just starting out it will probably take a little bit to get comfortable speaking into a mic. Sit up straight while you talk and do your best to project. Ultimately, a killer podcast voice combined with interesting topics is what keeps people coming back!
Importance of Transcriptions
Transcribing your podcasts can be a tedious task depending on how long your episodes are. There are plenty of tools out there that will transcribe your sound files. However, you will more than likely need to go through it and edit out the “ums” and the “uhs” to make the text more readable.
Additionally, this is where you can go in and add keywords if need be! Given the demonstration from Google, it seems as though transcriptions will be the primary method of picking out parts of an episode to match a search query. Sifting through and cleaning up all the text generated from your sound files can take a while, but doing so can be the catalyst to help your podcast rank.
Create Chapters
Splitting up your podcast into chapters is a fantastic way to make life easy for your listeners. They allow users to skip to the area most pertinent to what they’re looking for without having to listen to the whole audio file.
Creating chapters will more than likely involve you listening to the sound file and marking down the exact time (hour: minute: second) that a subtopic comes up. If your podcasts follow an interview format, creating each chapter at the exact time you start asking a question is the way to go!
Build Better Links and Closer Relationships
Developing strong backlinks (i.e., links from other websites to yours) is the cornerstone of every successful SEO strategy. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more authoritative and trustworthy your site is considered in the eyes of search engines and potential listeners alike. Plus, it helps everyone’s SEO efforts, putting you in your guests’ good graces.
When you co-create a podcast, invite guests, or appear on someone else’s podcast, be mindful the show contains links to every participant’s pages in order to boost your outbound and inbound link-building efforts.
Better Scannability via the Right Content Format
Finding keywords in a raw data dump is time-consuming and imprecise. Avoid forcing search engines to sift through 20+ pages of error-riddled transcripts per podcast.
Organize written articles and site pages with the correct keyword-rich titles, H1, and H2 tags. Using alt-text to label images or visual resources is an easy best practice to organize assets in a way that users and AI alike can easily discern. This can lead to more organic traffic and higher-quality referrals.
More social media engagement
Give your audience even more ways to connect with you by plugging your social media channels in spoken and written form. That creates virtuous circles of engagement that will keep people cycling through your official pages over and over again.
Content building with existing resources
Your podcasts can provide the building blocks for lots of other content, including blog posts, infographics, white papers, presentations, ad reels, and so much more. It’s always more efficient to repurpose existing content than to make up new content from scratch, so make the most of the resources you already have. Check out our Content Stacking series for an in-depth look at this strategy.
Outsource having your podcast episodes turned into SEO-optimized blog posts for instant sharing. You might use a service like Podcast Bloggers, or a Fiverr freelancer such as mediasips or mabendroth15. Or if you have the time and bandwidth to do so, write them yourself for even more attractive site content.
SEO Benefits of Podcasting: Next Steps
- Don’t have a website yet? Refer free podcast websites course.
- Not launched your podcast yet? Check out Launch Essentials course.
- Looking for ways to help more listeners find your show, check out keyword for podcasters.
What are your views on this? Let me know in the comments below!
If you have any doubts in the field of podcasting, feel free to message me jeffreyboopathyj on LinkedIn or Jeff’s podcast academy on Instagram.
Links available below
https://www.instagram.com/podcastforpodcasters/
Check out my podcast here
Happy Podcasting.
