Podcasts are a great way to round out your marketing campaign. They make it easy to infuse your brand with authenticity, you can relax and enjoy talking about areas in which you happen to have expertise and you can record podcasts in your pjs and bed head. But just because podcasts are one of the final realms safe from the probing of a Zoom camera doesn’t mean they don’t require some strategic thinking, especially in the area of search engine optimization (SEO).
You may have already optimized your website and blog posts for SEO best practices, but it’s important to apply those same strategies to your podcast, both to improve your ranking and also to ensure someone notices and listens to your show. Here are a few steps for podcast SEO strategy:
Use Keywords in Your Title and Description: That same set of keywords that you know drive results for directing traffic to your site should also be applied to your podcast. Design your topics around what people are most likely to search for, and then be sure to include those keywords in your title and description.
Say Your Keywords, Too: You don’t want to sound like a robot, so don’t plug a keyword into every sentence. If you’ve designed your script around a topic that is based on a keyword, this should occur pretty naturally.
Publish Your Transcript: While Google is adept at scanning written documents, it’s not as great for audio files, so you may not see great success in expecting to have your conversations transcribed. Instead, use a transcription tool and apply it to your audio file to get a reliable transcript that you can make available. It will help your search rankings.
Engage with Google Podcasts: Your SEO will only improve around your podcasts if you walk through the simple steps to include your podcast on the Google application.
Keep an Eye on Your Ranking: Make adjustments as necessary to your SEO strategy based on how your podcast is ranking. Whether it’s a keyword refinement or including more visuals in your show notes, be sure to examine what might be impacting your ranking.
Getting a podcast started may sound intimidating, but it’s one of the easiest types of marketing to launch. Our team at SJC Marketing would love to help you with some ideas to begin your new podcast.