Podcast has become a very popular and effective way of SEO, SEM and digital marketing now-a-days. While marketing something digitally, along with various digital marketing platforms like blogs, social media and websites, podcasting has also ranked really high in this era of digitalization. There are a lot of podcast channels in the market these days and as we all know the competition is increasing day by day. So, if you own a podcast channel, it is very important that you optimize your podcast for SEO very carefully so that search engine can discover you soon and in the right way. It is very important to understand, benifits of coverting documents. click here to get full details.
What is podcast and how to optimize for SEO?
The dictionary definition of podcast is – ‘A digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, typically available as a series, new installments of which can be received by subscribers automatically’. The word podcast is actually the summation of iPod and Broadcast. It is an integration of recordings of blogs, shows, topics or anything of people’s interest or a marketer’s interest to showcase their products or services which can be explored, download and listen to at any time. Primarily podcast was started as a way for individual’s interest to record and give out their massages to the community of similar interest. But later on this network grew to a larger dimension and now it is used not only by individuals, but also by small to big companies, radio networks, tv channels, story tellers, comedians, tech persons, news channels and many more. It is indeed an on-demand technique for growing network now-a-days.
Podcast is one of the newest and unique ways in digital marketing. It can be called as the radio for the digitally advanced society and the new generation. The marketing podcasts and the podcast ads works well in digital marketing of any brand and help the business to gather more loyal customers. So if you are thinking of why you should have a podcast for marketing of your brand digitally, here are the reasons:
how to optimize podcast for SEO
What is podcast in SEO?
Once you have a podcast for branding of your product, it is important that your podcast should appear rightly in search engines results and right people should get into it. Simply going, search engine optimization, SEO helps finding your content (specifically quality content!) by the search engines, popularly Google, (there are also others like Spotify, Apple podcasts that have their own search engine features). Podcast SEO is all about optimizing your podcast content so that it can be found by the search engines easily and can be showed up to people who are actually searching for the same.
Now, you should pay attention to this- following an example, suppose you have a podcast channel on cooking. Now someone who is interested in cooking can search in Google or in any other podcast platforms as ‘podcast on cooking’ and can find your podcast. But if someone searches for ‘how to bake a cake’, he might not find your podcast that way. So in this case you should optimize your content in such a way that it appears in both the search. Here it is necessary to do SEO for your podcast channel and your podcast episodes as well. Podcast SEO and SEO for your podcast episodes sounds similar but it is a way different and both should be handled sensitively to get good results.
How can you optimize your podcast for SEO
Use proper keywords
Use of proper keyword is a major rule in SEO. Keyword rich, high quality contents are always given preference for search engine rankings. So, you should always focus on using proper keywords for your podcast channel and also for each and every podcast episode. You can search for high volume keywords in Google by using various online tools (for example Google keyword planner, small SEO tools etc.) and use them in your content. There again lies a strategy that, if you find that using a very customized keyword will not work because there are already many results popping up for the same, use keywords that is much specific. That way you can even tell your listeners more clearly about your content and they will also love to listen to what they exactly want to listen to. It is even better if you focus on different keywords in different episodes.
To find more information about importance of branding, you should try how to make money on Amazon for Amazon sales
Choose the title wisely
Using a keyword-rich title for your podcast is good. But it should not be something people would be confused of. That means your podcast title should be attractive, could be easily understandable by people, should describe what your podcast is about and keyword-rich at the same time.Along with factors like total number of subscribers and reviewers of your podcast, title is also a chief factor that matters a lot that helps your podcast to be found on platforms like iTunes and Google Play.
Optimization of podcast description
After title, metadata is the another most important factor in SEO. It is the small description of your big content and people generally decides or judge about your whole content just by going through this podcast description. This can even lead people to subscribe your podcast channel. You can use other keywords along with the main keyword that you have used in title and make the description more authentic. If someone is searching directly in the podcast platforms such as Apple podcast or Spotify, this SEO technique of focusing on proper keywords in title and metadata is very much useful for those searches.
Do you have a website?
If you have a website and a podcast show as well- what can be more amazing than this! Just optimize your content, follow few SEO tips, know the search engine rules properly and you are done with getting more audience to your site. Having a website adds more benefit to podcast. It helps in podcast SEO. It becomes easier for Google to crawl your podcast when you describe about your podcast on your site’s content. However, it is not mandatory to have a website for podcast SEO, but the process of finding your podcast by search engine becomes smooth and it becomes easy to promote your podcast if you have a website. Moreover, featuring your podcast in your site and in other platforms makes people believe that your content is trustworthy and worth to subscribe.
One of the newest SEO techniques is to get your website optimized for mobile through AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page- a project by Google with the aim for optimizing web pages for mobile users). With a lot of people accessing content through their mobile devices, this will help you get more listeners, because a lot of people download and listen to their podcasts according to their own time.
Turn your podcast content into blogs and more
When you click a good photograph, is it not like you want to upload it in all the social media platforms that you have a account in! It is a most common scene or can be said as habit now-a-days, right? The concept of converting your podcast episodes into blogs, videos, infographics or slide shows and featuring it in different platforms is not a very different one. It is a good habit or a good SEO strategy to transcript your podcast and to publish it as a blog. It should be taken care of that the blog should have the link that connects to the actual podcast episode.
This eventually increases your website’s authority and with the consistent involvement and providing of fresh content each time (of course with proper keyword), the chance of appearing your podcast in search engine results becomes high. Along with this, by availing your podcast content in different mediums, you can offer your listeners (or loyal customers in case of podcast ads and business-related podcasts) to get through your content in different other ways- by articles, by videos, by infographics or by any other means.Thus, you can increase your brand visibility with the same content that you have created for your podcast, just by recycling it and converting it into different forms.
YouTube, after Google
YouTube is itself a huge search engine on its own. After Google, YouTube is the most trafficked site on web. So, when it is the question of podcast SEO, YouTube should not be missed at all. There are several tools and software that can be used in converting the audio file of your podcast into video files. There are tools for video editing too. You can make a real video while recording for your podcast episodes or you can make videos using interesting images, infographics or slides that best describe your podcast and publish it in YouTube channel. YouTube SEO is again a large chapter and cannot be covered in few lines, but at the minimum we can say that it is necessary to create an optimized title with proper keyword and catchy meaning words. Description should be nice and should have a link to the show notes and episode page.
Social media promotions
Though it seems social media promotions are not directly linked with SEO, but sharing your podcast episodes in various social media platforms helps in boosting the number of your listeners. Whether facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube, pinterest or any other social media, almost everyone in the world is connected electronically through these mediums. It doesn’t take much time to take your massage to people through these social mediums. So, if you share your podcast in these various social media platforms, you can easily spread your recordings among people and if they like your podcast they will even spread it further by sharing, commenting or liking your posts.
As mentioned earlier that the number of subscribers and reviewers is an essential part of podcast SEO, along with that the more your audience engage with your podcast on social media the more your source will become reputable and the logic is that search engine always prefers reputable sources in their search results. You can convert your podcast episodes into blog posts or any interesting images or infographics and then share it on social media. You can even ask your viewers or audiences to share your episode if they like it.
Linkbuilding through podcast
Another very effectual process for podcasting SEO is through linkbuilding. If you have a good content and you are podcasting in regular basis, audience will definitely love you, but there are also other ways to attract audience by giving some more interesting links or links with similar interests.
You can look for podcast guests who want to promote their products. It may be a small enterprise, a big company, any brand launching their new product, an author, an artist or any service provider. They will be interested in promoting the episode because they will get a business benefit out of the increased exposure. Secondly, you can get a guest speaker who will promote your podcast in their own site. If you interview someone, they will surely like to post that in their own platforms and thus promoting your podcast as well. But it should be make sure that you ask that person or source and validate before you link back or post on social media. You can do it just before recording the interview and then email the same after your podcast is public. The vice versa of above mentioned is also applicable. You can link back to the site of anyone participating in the podcast through your podcast page. If the one participating in your podcast knows the value of getting a good click, they will definitely be willing to do that. Thus building links through any good source is really a very effective and helps a lot in growing your e-community.
Grow your podcast audience with SEO
So now that you know the basic SEO strategies of SEO podcasting, you can grow your audience in a proper way. With the increasing number of podcast channels and regular updates of podcast episodes it’s a big challenge to reach out to the potential listeners. It becomes a provocation for the listeners as well to find the right podcast which provides actual information that they are looking for. But if you are the owner of a podcast that is having quality content and consistent in the process, you can grow easily by optimizing your channel a bit.
Popular podcast platforms
If you are thinking of podcasting and want to reach a million of potential listeners through your great recordings, you can unquestionably approach for listing of your podcast show in these popular podcast platforms and start your episodes. Some of popular podcast platforms are: Spotify, Apple podcast, Stitcher, Google podcasts, Amazon alexa etc. You can easily create and publish episodes there. You can even track the records of your episodes like total plays over time, no. of listeners, no. of subscribers, what app people are using to listen to your podcasts and so on.
Popular podcast channels in India and abroad
It is fun to know about and listen to the popular podcast channels in India and abroad. You can go through them, try to know what strategies they are applying , the quality of their content, trending features, what people like most in their podcasting episodes, new ideas for expanding your content according to people’s interest and many more.
In podcasting you need not really worry for people being offline or busy when you are making an important announcement, because people can download it and listen to it anytime they want. But in very few cases if someone is not having the access to internet then podcasting is not the way to adopt.
Podcasts are easy to share. If you use someone’s content in your podcast (which strictly should not be done) you may get in trouble. In this case you have to take steps to protect it against unauthorized copying and file sharing. Again the reverse is also possible. Someone may use your copyrighted content and use it or share it. So you should pay attention to these factors too while you start your podcasting channel or wanting to use effective SEO techniques for your podcast in regards to grow audience in a genuine way.
Podcasting and SEO are the two sides of a coin. In digital marketing they work together to support each other. With the rapid expansion of podcasting, it has become a huge challenge to get the right people that stay connected with you, that believe you and listen to you. For a business to grow or for a real community to grow you need not require a billion and trillion of people, you just need the true people that are actually worth for you, that are actually your true followers. These actual audiences of your channel will buy what you sell, believe in what you say and will further wait for your next episode. So it is the foremost thing that you find out these people first and stay connected with them- putting right SEO techniques in right form and in right time help in doing so.
