As a podcast host, you’ve probably heard about the importance of optimizing your podcast over and over again. Yet, the concept of “optimizing” can have several meanings these days. What does it actually mean to boost your Podcast SEO?
Essentially, there’s optimizing your podcast episodes for podcast players, and there’s using your podcast to optimize your website for search engines. In this guide, we’re going to go over the difference between the types of optimization and how you can succeed with both.
Optimizing Your Podcast for Podcast Players
Podcast players don’t offer much in terms of optimization. They don’t have a ton of backend optimization hacks to push your episodes out to bigger audiences. Instead, you’re relying on your episode titles and podcast name.
Your titles should be short, to the point, and include keywords that listeners are searching for. If your episode is about money management, you want it to come up when someone searches for money management on their Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other podcast players. Don’t start your title with the episode number since that takes up valuable space.
Your podcast name should also be clear and easy to understand. Don’t choose something too artsy that requires a long explanation. For example, my client Bernel has an awesome podcast called Branded by Bernel. Listeners immediately know what the podcast is about with a clear title like that.
Play around with your episode titles and track your stats for a few months to see which episodes perform the best. Having great episode art and making sure your podcast is categorized correctly are also great ways to get ahead in podcast players.
Using Your Podcast SEO for Your Website
Your podcast is a powerful tool that you can use to boost your brand’s SEO. The cool part about it is that the benefits work both ways. Your podcast SEO can help your website perform better on search engines, and your website can lead visitors to your podcast.
If you aren’t up to date on the best SEO practices, check out this episode of my podcast first.
Here’s my easy process for repurposing your podcast content and boosting your brand’s SEO:
- For every podcast episode, post a corresponding keyword-optimized blog post on your website
- Post your show notes for each podcast episode on your blog as well
- Create a Google Search Console account for tracking of your SEO performance
- Create a resource hub on your website to house all of the content
This podcast SEO strategy takes a long-form piece of content, like a podcast episode, and repurposes it for other platforms. Along with your blog post and show notes page, you can also repurpose podcast content into several social media posts to help drive traffic to your website.
This method goes a long way in boosting your SEO and setting yourself up as an expert in your niche without creating too much work for you. It’s the ultimate way to work smarter, not harder.
Podcast SEO: What to Consider for Your Accompanying Blog Posts
It’s important to remember that your blog post for each podcast episode is different from the podcast show notes. Show notes are additional content that listeners reference after listening to your podcast.
The blog post is for readers who haven’t listened to your podcast episode and are learning about this topic for the first time. Think of it as a translation of the podcast episode into written form.
Make sure you optimize each blog post for SEO with the following tactics:
- Research keywords to base the blog and content around
- Install the Yoast SEO plugin to fully optimize the blog with metadata
- Include images with Alt text
- Structure the blog with headings and subheadings
- Include internal and external links
You should also apply these tactics to your show notes. Learn more about how to create show notes that boost your SEO here.
Learn More About Podcast SEO Inside the Mic Check Society
If you’re ready to improve your podcast SEO, come join Mic Check Society! Inside our annual membership, you’ll get access to a podcasting community, monthly hot seat calls, and our educational training.
One of the trainings included is detailed training on Optimizing Your Show Notes for Search Engines. Join the Mic Check Society today!
