One of the best ways to help grow your website traffic, along with your podcast listenership, is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Improving your SEO simply means that you are increasing your ‘searchability’ organically within Google. You can improve the quantity and quality of engagement by simply optimizing the meta content and page content for your podcast show notes.
There are 5 simple ways you can drastically boost your SEO through your podcast show notes.
Keyword Research
The first way to improve your SEO is to determine what your people are searching for in relation to your topic. By discovering this, you can begin to include those key search terms in your episode title, description, and show notes.
You can utilize a tool like Keywords Everywhere. This Chrome extension allows you to analyze keyword metrics for popular and similar Google searches.
Simply install the tool, and start searching for the words your podcast episode is about. Taking those insights, you can easily incorporate these trending keywords into your podcast title, description, and show notes to optimize your website content.
At Gaffin Creative, we encourage this process during our content planning stage with our clients!
Install Yoast Plugin
Whether you’re a podcaster or not, Yoast is an important tool for any website to utilize. This plugin analyzes your content’s usage of keywords and phrases.
You’ll simply insert the keyword or phrase that you’re trying to rank for on that page, and from there, Yoast will tell you how to improve your content to rank higher within a search engine. It also helps improve readability for your audience.
We require all of our clients to utilize this tool at Gaffin Creative and will install and maintain the efforts on your behalf!
Descriptive Podcast Show Notes
A good portion of your audience will utilize your podcast show notes via the website. This is where they’ll head to find links to resources mentioned, easily digestible references to the episode, and more!
When you’re creating descriptive show notes on your website, you’re creating more content for search engines to pull from! You can easily write descriptive copy that will help rank you for the keyphrase you’re shooting for, reference similar podcast episodes to help with your internal linking strategy, and drive people to the show notes for traffic on your website.
Podcast Audio Transcriptions
In addition to creating rich, descriptive show notes, you’ll want to consider adding transcriptions to your podcast show notes! Search engines are unable to sort or filter audio-only content. Creating a transcription for each of your podcast’s episodes supplies keyword-rich text to the search engine.
Transcripts will enable search engines to better analyze the content, find keywords or phrases, and make your podcast more discoverable. Users searching for a specific type of content will be able to find your podcast easier.
To find out more about the benefits of an accessible podcast through transcribing, head to our post Why You Should Transcribe Your Podcast.
Include Alt Text on Images
Your podcast will likely utilize a graphic for the cover as well as for promotional purposes on platforms such as Pinterest. For each graphic or image used, you need to include Alt Text.
Alternative Text (Alt Text) is an attribute that explains what is going on in an image. Along with an image title, the alt text provides written context for an image. This creates further accessibility for the visually impaired engaging with your podcast (you can read more about the benefits of an accessible podcast through transcribing here).
Additionally, this improves your SEO. Google responds well with images utilizing alt text. The search engine better understands the image and its context. By fully describing the image and the context for its usage in your content, search engines can filter the content. This is also a great time to incorporate those keywords you found!
Now that we’ve covered some of the basics, it’s time to retroactively optimize your website and podcast show notes!
If you’re ready to take it to the next level, we offer a Podcast & Show Notes SEO Audit at Gaffin Creative! Make sure you inquire with us here and we’ll develop a full strategy and optimize your existing website!
