Podcast SEO: Tips to Improve Your Rankings

As more and more people turn to podcasts for their daily dose of information, news, and entertainment, an interesting question arises—do podcasts also need SEO?

We do, after all, live in a world that consumes more content than food. Take one look around and you’ll see the sheer volume of blogs and videos being churned out on a daily basis.

So, how then do you get a podcast to stand out amidst the vast ocean of content? You can’t exactly tweak and optimize it in the same way you would other web content.

SEO for Podcasts: Is It Even Necessary?

Google’s strength lies in deciphering written content, however, it cannot fully and accurately index complex audio like podcasts—even though the technology to read audio exists.

The only way Google can include podcasts into SERPs is by indexing clearly spoken words within your audio content, along with all the written and visual content around it. The latter includes:

• Titles

• Headings

• Body content

• Meta description

• Image contents

• Image alt and title text

With that said, it’s clear that podcasts can leverage SEO to improve their ranking. In fact, they’re a great tool to enhance your overall online presence. Let's take a look at how to make that happen.

Tips to Make Your Podcast SEO-Friendly

Podcasts are different to sites full of lengthy blog posts, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be optimized in their own way. Below, we’ll run through how you can use SEO to grow your podcast organically.

Brainstorm on Topics

Like any business, it’s easier if you’re niche specific. So, for example, Lower Street runs the WFH Daily podcast, which is all about working from home.

With a clear niche for that podcast, it’s easy to brainstorm relevant podcast topics, like:

• Battling procrastination

• Communication skills

• Home office set-up

• Remote work culture

Once you’ve gathered your thoughts and decided which podcast topics you want to talk about, the "how" becomes so much easier.

Make a list of all the topics your audience is actively looking for. Figure out how you can answer their questions and cover all the relevant queries about the topic.

By the time you’re done, you should have a good list of your planned content. This can be used to structure your website in a way that allows you to interlink similar topics to create a flow for your podcast episodes and related content.

Focus On the Right Keywords

Now that we know Google can index and rank your podcasts, it would be silly to not include keyword research in your podcast production process. At the very least, keywords tell search engines and people what your content is all about.

Including a keyword in the title of your podcast, for example, is always a great start. Mentioning it (naturally!) a couple of times in your audio? Even better.

As for getting your hands on the keywords themselves—tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush are super helpful. If you’re on a budget, a free alternative is Google’s “Related Searches” feature, which you can find at the bottom of every search results page.

If this doesn’t sound like something you’d like to invest your time in, a keyword research company can help speed up the process.

Have a Dedicated Blog Post for Each Episode

Creating a related blog post for each of your podcast episodes is a fantastic idea for two reasons:

1. It’ll be a platform for people to find your podcast.

2. It can be used as a reference tool for your listeners, making it easier for you to convey complex ideas with other forms of content.

Very often, podcast owners will go to the effort of publishing show notes, but skip over the opportunity to dominate a keyword using written content.

Make sure your written content isn’t just large blocks of text though. Focus on using a mix of the following to write a great blog post for your audience:

• Bullet and numbered lists

• FAQ sections

• Infographics

• Quotes

• Images

• Videos

When writing content, I get a lot of value out of planning the blog post's structure of the content first. This not only helps me to think clearly and write more efficiently, it helps to make the end result much more logical and easy to either read in it's entirety, or skim.

This is important as it keeps readers on the page for longer, while also making it easier for them to walk away with a clear message.

Get Your Website up to Speed

User experience matters now more than ever, which means that slow websites are an absolute no-go.

No matter how “valuable” your content is, nobody’s going to stick around to consume it if your website takes more than a few seconds to load. Sounds harsh, but that’s the reality of an industry where barriers to entry are so low.

There are a bunch of ways to speed up your website, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. As a general rule, however, you should:

• Resize and compress images

• Use a high-quality web host

• Get rid of unnecessary plugins

• Cache as much of your content as possible

Build High-Quality Backlinks

When it comes to ranking your podcast episode blog posts in Google, backlinks are the equivalent of internet gold. Search engines value them a lot since they add to the credibility of your content and website as a whole.

Building backlinks involves getting high-quality links back to your website from authoritative and credible websites. Getting these links can be time-consuming, but the reward is well worth it.

Some of the best ways to get backlinks include:

• Circulating your content within your network

• Writing guest posts

• Pitching journalists and reporters via Help a Reporter and Profnet

• Blogger outreach

Share Your Content

Whether social media helps with SEO or not is questionable. However, if you have a decent number of followers who enjoy your content, you can always share your blogs and podcasts on your feed.

If social media isn't your thing, you can share your content with your direct network or email list (if you have one). The more people who see your content, the more likely they will be to share it with others or link to it on their website (giving you a coveted backlink).

Optimize Your Podcast Description

Given that your podcast description appears in so many different places (your podcast hosting platform, search engine results, social media, podcast directories, etc.), it's worth optimizing it for SEO. It's a relatively easy win too, since you only have to write it once. After that, it's a simple matter of your podcast RSS feed updating it in all the relevant places and you're good to go.

Here are some tips for optimizing your podcast description:

• Find and include relevant keywords that accurately describe your podcast and the content you produce. This helps search engines understand the topic and then offer your podcast to people searching for those keywords.

• Keep it short and to the point. Briefly summarize the main topics and themes of your podcast in 2-3 sentences.

• Brief doesn't mean boring. Make sure your description is compelling and engaging in addition to being informative. If it's enticing, people are more likely to click on your podcast and give it a listen.

• Add links to your website, podcast blog, social media profiles, or any other online presence related to your podcast, so that it's easy for people to find and follow you.

Don’t Skimp on the Transcription

Offering a transcription of your podcast is helpful from an accessibility perspective, but it can also boost your SEO. Google's NLP capabilities may have improved, but they're by no means flawless. A transcription can help search engines to more effectively understand your content.

To make the most of the opportunity you'll need to focus on the right keywords, structure your content correctly, and highlight key topics. Get this right and the discoverability of your podcast will improve.

Transcribing a podcast can be a time-consuming task. However, if you're dedicated to growing your audience and optimizing your podcast for SEO, it's worth the effort. There are also plenty of tools available to help speed up the process. Remember to edit out any filler words or pauses and use the opportunity to add in some keywords that weren't included in the audio recording.

Leverage Google Podcasts Manager

Google Podcasts Manager is extremely useful for podcasters. While it's essentially a tool to help you manage and track your podcast's presence on Google Podcasts, Google Podcasts Manager can also be used to improve podcast SEO.

It does this by helping you index and verify your podcast within the Google-sphere. When you claim and verify your podcast, there's a better chance of Google including it in relevant SERPS, which in turn means there's a better chance of it reaching a wider audience.

Podcast SEO: Better Late Than Never

Over 82 million people listened to podcasts in 2021, and that’s just in America. If that's not motivation enough, know that this number is estimated to break the 100 million mark by 2024.

As search engines continue to improve the way they index and rank podcasts, and more and more podcasts are published every single day, it’s never going to be easier to capture your audience’s attention than it is today.

If you want to grow your podcast, SEO is a great strategy. It requires regular effort, but there's no doubting it'll be worth it. By making SEO a part of your podcast production and marketing process, you'll have another wheel in your marketing machine.

That said, handling all the elements of SEO can be a little intimidating. If you aren’t sure how to proceed, a good idea would be to hire someone to do your podcast SEO for you.

While the results may feel slow in the beginning, this machine will compound over the years and the pay off will be worth your effort.