Podcasts are growing in popularity today, so it’s one marketing tool you cannot allow yourself to miss out on. However, the current level of technology has not yet reached the heights that will allow you to draw SEO power from the audio file itself. Therefore, in order to make your podcast noticed, you’ll need to optimize it in the right ways.
- Prioritize the title
An expert on podcasts, Sam Balter, brings attention to the matter of audio SEO, which is now a major matter of concern for Google, in particular, because Android loses significantly to Apple tech in podcast popularity. The lack of good podcasts and inability to find the ones that are there are the main issues Google faces now.
This prompted Google to start indexing podcasts by name, which means the title of your podcast is now the most important thing for its SEO and visibility. When coming up with the name of your podcast, you have to use the best possible keyword combination, so go for accuracy instead of literary appeal. In the end, the name might not be all that impressive or clever, but it will be visible.
- Post a transcript
According to Chris Cantell, an experienced marketing pro and blogger, advises people using podcasts to post transcripts of those as well. The title and description packed with keywords will do a lot of good for SEO, but they aren’t enough.
Posting a transcript alongside the audio track will allow you to reap all the SEO benefits of a blog post. This means that your podcast must be designed in a way that will include relevant keywords.
If a transcript would be too boring/long/short or difficult to optimize for some other reason, consider posting a complementary article. Then you can optimize this text and gain more approval from your audience due to offering additional information.
- Keep it short and consistent
In a way, podcasts are like blog posts. This means that while an occasional big and detailed piece is welcome, the most important things about them are frequency and consistency. In the majority of cases, you won’t have enough new and captivating material to make a big podcast every week (that’s the least frequent you should post them). Therefore, you should make them rather short.
Remember that the quality of the content you publish largely determines your success. This means that every podcast must be original, interesting, and targeted toward a very specific audience.
Maintaining the highest quality consistently is essential to keep visitors interested in listening to the podcast completely and following any additional links presented in the attached post. Today SEO is affected not only by keywords but also the level of traffic and time spent by visitors on your website. Keep this in mind that make podcasts that will keep people returning to your website often and sharing this content with their friends through social media.
- Improve your hosting
Speaking of the things that affect SEO, page loading speeds and crash rates are important as well. If you want to post audio podcasts on your website, you need to have top-grade hosting that will ensure that every visitor can listen t it easily.
This kind of content requires a dedicated server at the least, so be sure you are prepared for the extra costs before you announce your upcoming podcasts.
Final Thoughts: How to Know You Succeeded
One of the biggest challenges you’ll face is tracking the success of your podcasts because this is a metric that’s rather hard to measure. A marketing expert Kathleen Booth says that the best KPIs to use are unique downloads and subscribers. But you also need to monitor the consistency of responses to each individual podcast and overall growth so you can understand what works best for your audience.
