Podcasts and other audio content are now in demand more than ever. Podcasts are getting more and more significant in every aspect of a company’s growth trajectory. A podcast can be useful for branding to customer acquisition. It should go without saying how important it is to have a significant presence on podcasting directories like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
We are all familiar with SEO and older digital marketing techniques, but everything changed in 2019 when Google stated that podcasts will be played and surfaced on SERP. We are all aware that Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a crucial part of comprehensive digital marketing campaigns.
SEO makes it easier for users to find pages and information on search engines and attracts more people to your website.
Podcasts, on the other hand, are one aspect of digital marketing that many people believe doesn’t require SEO.
As an audio medium, podcasts don’t adhere to the same SEO guidelines as text content does.
However, given that Google has modified the search engine results page, podcast SEO must now be included among your brand’s other strategies.
What is Podcast SEO?
Podcast SEO is a subpart of audio SEO, and is a method for assisting audio-specific material to rank for Google search phrases. The objective is to have audio material appear on the first SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for specific keywords on Google.
Let’s say you want to show up in Google searches for “handpicked guitars.” You may employ an audio SEO strategy to rank highly for that search.
You will use this kind of audio to rank for search queries. Otherwise, you could use a webinar or an audiogram, but those probably won’t be as effective as a podcast. It is only because of the podcast inclusion on the Google SERP.
Also Read: Top 10 Most Effective Content Types for Social Media
How to Get Started with Podcast SEO and Get More Traffic
Build a website for your podcast.
Google is great at analyzing textual information, but it can also crawl and index audio recordings. To host their podcasts, many marketers decide to build websites. These websites publish content like:
- Blog articles which show notes for each episode
- Information about the hosts’ history or qualifications
- Display historical and geographical details
- Links for each platform where the show is available
These details provide crawlers with more context for the program. By providing the search engine with a range of content to display on SERPs, they improve the podcast’s discoverability.
Additionally, the audience is expanded as a result. Having a website places your show information where rivals might not be battling for visibility, as some listeners locate their podcasts through Google.
Keyword analysis and Planning
You must cover pertinent subjects if you want people to locate your podcast via search engines.
This entails structuring your podcast’s content around popular search terms in your industry.
Start by making a list of prospective themes that you believe would be interesting to your target audience to locate relevant ideas. After that, edit your list and expand your search for the ideal podcast subjects by conducting keyword research.
To find the most relevant search keywords for your main keyword, you must conduct keyword research. The word “social media marketing” is the one you want to investigate, for instance, if you run a podcast about it.
Page-specific meta descriptions for the website
With several custom pages, episode pages, a blog, and other content, your podcast website would quickly fill up. For each of those URLs, it is crucial to provide unique meta descriptions for Google to display more relevant information in the search results and, eventually, rank your website higher as a result of the fact that search engines often take these descriptions into account.
Your meta titles, taglines, and descriptions need to be well-written and pertinent to the material found in each of those URLs.
You may create a “default” site slogan and description for your website so that it will always fall back on those. For every entry (such as blog posts, pages, or episodes), you may create unique SEO titles and descriptions.
Use the keywords in your episodes and text material for the episodes
Now that Google has integrated indexing of audio content, this means that podcasts can appear in search results. This is a great opportunity for podcasters, as episodes may turn up in any search, not just when users are specifically looking for podcasts. Make sure your show contains the target podcast keywords your audience is searching for.
Google and other search engines easily scan written text to decide whether your content is relevant. In giving Google some written content to “read” to complement the audio content, it has more of a chance of ranking an episode in search results.
Syndicate your podcasts to Google Podcasts
You could have missed this one as a novice podcaster: Ensure that you have syndicated to Google Podcasts.
Syndication simply means that when you upload new episodes to your podcast hosting provider, it instantly updates podcast players (also known as directories). This makes it so you just need to upload an episode once.
How to Syndicate for Google Podcasts (H4)
Put at least one episode up on your hosting platform.
You may either provide the URL of your RSS feed to Google or wait for it to crawl it.
Google can trawl your page or website for the RSS feed since it doubles as a podcast directory in addition to a search engine. But there are ways to submit it manually if you don’t want to wait for the crawlers.
Google should now have no trouble finding the information related to your program. That is the main goal of SEO.
Schema markup, identification of entities, and authority
A podcast is a thing, and that must be understood. It’s an entity that (in the form of program hosts and guests) intrinsically absorbs other entities.
It’s interesting to wonder how Google is aware of the entities contained in the podcast. As was previously indicated, Google has occasionally automated podcast transcription (which has been one of the company’s declared aims). Of course, you should also explicitly identify the hosts and guests by name and link to their social media accounts or websites on pertinent web pages and episode descriptions. Whatever Google is doing, it can occasionally extract pertinent elements from a particular audio episode.
Also Read: How to Optimize Your SEO for Voice Search Organic Result Rankings
Use Social Media
When it comes to marketing your podcast, social media is your best friend. Link your podcast to various platforms to get the best reach possible.
The success of your podcast is indicated by the number of likes and shares it receives from the peer, and sadly, it’s the algorithm. The social site platform supports engagement platform. Let’s be honest to grow, use social media.
Go for Feedbacks
Podcasts aren’t about speaking or throwing words, it’s about listening too. As a podcaster, you must ask for feedback to better know your mistakes and limitations and know what the taste of your target listeners is.
Whether it’s positive or negative feedback, ask your listeners to drop a comment.
Wrapping Words
Followed by videos, podcasts are the second-most grown engagement content in the market.
Brands who don’t use podcast SEO techniques on their own networks run the danger of missing out on important growth prospects and falling in search engine results.
You can help your podcasts rank better and get found by your listeners by putting these suggestions for podcast SEO into practice and making sure they are part of your regular responsibilities.
