TPU162: Podcast SEO Best Practices – How to Optimize Your Podcast for Search Engines

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Dilip

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Does podcast seo really work?

If so, how to optimize your podcast for search engines?

In this episode, we will be continuing our discussion on podcast Search Engine Optimization and will talk further about podcast seo best practices, how to optimize a podcast using SEO and how SEO can help you get more audience.

You might want to listen to the episode till the end to learn a nice little trick to find new audience with your interview episodes.

In the last episode we understood the basics of SEO and how it helps in getting your content ranked on Google.

We also discussed about how SEO works in the case of Podcast.

If you haven’t listened to that episode then I would recommend that you listen to it first. You can listen to this episode on Podcast SEO it here.

Now onto today’s topic – podcast seo best practices and how to optimize your podcast for search engines.

We discussed keyword research in the last episode. Now that we have identified the keywords that we want to optimize our podcast for, it is time to work on the optimization steps.

Podcast SEO best Practices

From a textual content perspective, there are a lot of things that you can do in terms of optimization. But when it comes to video and audio, the optimization steps are very few, in fact only 3.

Keyword in Title – This is one of the most important pieces. Ensure that the keyword that you have identified is there in your podcast title if you are optimizing your podcast and in the episode title, if you are optimizing your episode.

One important thing to keep in mind is that preferably the keyword should be the first term in the title. For eg: if I am optimizing this episode for podcast SEO, then the title should be something like – Podcast SEO: The Basics of optimizing your podcast or, something like that.

But if you are unable to use it that way, you can use it anywhere in the title. Whatever you do, ensure you are doing it naturally

Keyword in Description – This is where writing a good podcast description becomes important. You don’t need to write a long paragraph but write a little about what the episode is maybe in about 200-250 words.

And when you do that, ensure you are including the keywords in the description.

Ideally, your keyword should appear once in every about 100 words.

A couple of things to keep in mind are –

  1. Ensure you are not stuffing the keywords in the description. Write in such a way that the keywords appear naturally.
  2. You can use variants of the keywords as well in your content

Keyword in link – This is something that a lot of podcasters ignore but can play a very important role in getting your episodes ranked on Google.

Your podcast host provides you with an option to create a custom link for every episode that you create. This link is basically the link to the page where the episode is hosted.

Ensure that this link includes your keyword. Also ensure that the link isn’t very long and has only 3-4 words in it.

These links can quickly rank on Google if you use it the right way, for the searches on your keywords.

That is all that is there to SEO, when it comes to podcasts.

Now let us look at some keyword research techniques that can give you the edge over other podcasts.

Keyword Research Techniques

SEO is an everchanging landscape. In order to win against the competition, you will have to be smart and think differently.

Here are a few simple techniques that you might want to keep in mind when you are researching for your keywords.

Think like your audience – Google is focused on giving a better experience to its users. And hence it wants to rank only content that is relevant to what a user is searching for.

What you need to understand is that SEO is about optimizing your content in order for Google and its users to feel that your content is important enough.

So, when picking keywords and optimizing your content, ensure that you are thinking like your audience.

What are the terms that they might be searching for on Google?

What information about that term is it that they might be looking for?

What variants of those terms are they using to search for information?

Ask yourself these questions and then create content that can help the user with these searches, by providing relevant information.

If you do that, Google will easily rank your content on the first page.

Look for questions – People are always looking for answer to their questions. As a creator your job is to find those questions and provide answers through your content.

If you can find those questions, then you have found the perfect keywords that you can use for your Podcast.

Another important aspect that you need to keep in mind is that voice searches are gaining prominence with more and more users accepting voice assistants into their lives.

Podcasts will be on the top of the list of search results, when it comes to voice searches. And hence it makes sense to optimize your podcast for voice searches as well.

And voice searches are always in the form of questions.

So if you can optimize your podcast for questions, then the possibility of your podcast featuring in the search results is pretty high.

Don’t ignore low volume keywords – The tendency for anybody researching keywords is to go for high search volume keywords.

But that’s a wrong strategy to follow.

Don’t ignore those keywords with a slightly lower volume like around the 100 searches.

Imagine if you could create episode around 10 such keywords. That adds up to 1000 searches. Instead of going at a keyword that has 1000 searches and high volume, these low search volume keywords are low of competition and can help you get almost the same number of listeners, but with a little more effort.

Podcast SEO – The Importance of a Website

Do you know what is it that podcasters like Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, all have in common?

It is a website.

The importance of a website for a podcast is often undervalued.

Most podcasters feel that a website is not required. They feel that it is an unnecessary additional activity.

But that isn’t true.

A website is a must for your podcast for 3 reasons –

  1. It helps in search engine optimization. We had discussed this in the last episode. Search engines like Google easily rank textual content. If you can put together a post for everyone of your episodes, write a good show note and optimize it, then you can easily get it ranked on Google. And when this piece of articles ranks, your podcast also ranks.
  2. A website can help you build credibility and authority. It can help you position yourself as an expert. You can display testimonials and other forms of social proofs which will help build your trustworthiness.
  3. It can help you sell your products and services. You can easily use your website to sell your products and services by showcasing it to your audience and also positioning the USP.

I always recommend adding a transcription to your show notes for all of the interviews that you do. This can also help get your content ranked on search engines.

And a website is the best place to add this transcription to.

So ensure that you are putting together a website for your Podcast.

Resources that I recommend

Here are some of the resources that I recommended in this episode and the ones that I recommend in Podcasting.

  • Ubersuggest – The Keyword research tool that I recommend

Below are the tools that I recommend for podcasting –

  • Acast Podcast hosting – I recommend and use Acast for podcast hosting. I absolutely love their support, simplicity, and their monetization feature. You can even start for FREE!
  • Behringer Audio Interface – You will need an audio interface if you are using an XLR microphone. This is my recommended audio interface.
  • Zencastr – Zencastr is the easiest option to record interviews, both audio-only and audio+video. This is a must for an interview podcast.
  • Audacity – This is the best and the most feature-rich free audio editing software. It gives you a lot of options while editing your interviews.
  • Blue Yeti USB Microphone – My recommended microphone
  • Tidycal – My recommended calendar and booking solutions

Thank you for joining in

I hope you enjoyed the information that I shared in this episode.

Do subscribe to the show on your favorite podcasting platform in order to stay updated with the latest episodes that I release.

The Podcasting University is available on almost all podcasting platforms. The link to the prominent ones are mentioned below –

Planning to start a podcast?

Then you might want to join me free 10-day ecourse on “starting a podcast the right way“.

podcast SEO best practices

About the Author - Dilip

Podcaster, Blogger and Affiliate Marketer, I love the internet for the many opportunities that it offers.
I started my first podcast way back in 2009. Till now I have released more than 600 episodes including my own podcasts and some episodes that I did for my clients.
I share all of those simple, practical and implementable podcasting tips in my show, "The Podcasting University".

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