How to Do SEO for Podcasts and Rank Your Episodes in Google

Intro

The popularity of podcasts is at an all-time high. No, really, according to an iHeartMedia study, audiences of all age groups have started listening to podcasts more than ever and for more time.

Just to put this into perspective, podcasts now have a bigger reach than Netflix in the United States, with the former having 89 million listeners and the latter having 69 million subscribers.

Bottom line, podcasts are a big deal, and if you have one, now is the time to get recognized with SEO efforts, mainly because, as a channel, podcasts are still untapped (for reference, there are only 4 million podcasts in the world, as opposed to the 600 million blogs).

Who can create podcasts?

There’s a running joke on the internet that not everyone should create a podcast.

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The inverse of this joke is that technically everyone can have a podcast, but it makes more sense to leverage this channel if you have a business or something credible to say.

For example, a company that offers well-built real estate lead services can use podcasts to educate their audiences (think something like the Agent Advice podcast).

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Aside from that, podcasts can also help with branding, community building, and storytelling — so they have multiple advantages for any and every business type to create a podcast to educate or engage their audience.

How to do SEO for podcasts and rank your episodes on SERPs?

1. Optimize for keywords

The friendship between search engine optimization (SEO) and keywords is as strong as ever. So, it comes as no surprise that to rank on Google, you’ll need to optimize your episode descriptions, metadata, and titles for trending keywords.

It’s also worth noting that Google gives importance to topical authority, too, when ranking a piece, so you might benefit from using the names of the host and the guests in the title/description, too.

SEO experts like John Butterworth also suggested using keyword-optimized questions, so they can be used to your benefit when you transcribe your podcast episodes.

2. Transcribe your files

Now that we’re on the topic of transcribing podcasts, let’s discuss why one should do it:

• It makes your episodes more accessible.
• It helps Google crawl and index your podcasts faster.
• It allows you to add relevant keywords.
• It lets authoritative sites backlink to you (and you get to interlink as well).

So, it’s safe to say transcriptions are a great idea to rank on Google.

3. Ask listeners for reviews

Remember, we spoke about topical authority before? Well, reviews and ratings are one of the things that’ll suggest to Google you have the topical authority or that you’re someone who can be trusted and has credible opinions — and this can do wonders for your SEO score.

“While it's not a direct ranking factor, user engagement can indirectly influence your podcast's search engine visibility,” said Muhammed Yasir, SEO Specialist at Writesonic.

“Encourage your audience to leave reviews and ratings on platforms like Apple Podcasts. A high volume of positive feedback can lead to increased listenership and downloads, which in turn may help improve your rankings.”

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4. Repurpose content

Repurposing content into various mediums will help your podcasts get noticed faster.

For example, if you have created a podcast on Topic X, also write a social media post, create a blog, and upload a video on the same topic and link back to the podcast.

And if you have a unique take or angle on a topic, chances are, other websites covering this topic would be more than willing to link back to your episodes.

5. Create listicles and focus on outreach and partnerships

Another way to get your podcasts noticed is to create listicles and focus on outreach and partnership opportunities.

For example, Omniscient Digital created a Surround Sound SEO campaign for their The Long Game podcast. The brand started creating its own listicles on “best content marketing podcasts” and featured them on its company page, as well as their co-founder, Alex Birkett’s website.

Once that was done, the Omniscient team then focused their energy on backlinks and partnership opportunities to get noticed on other people’s listicles. For reference, the top search results from HubSpot, 99Signals, Siege Media, etc., all mention The Long Game.

Their listicles started ranking on the first page of the SERP, and their podcast traffic increased thereafter. However, a point to be noted — podcast analytics don't tell you source data, so it’s possible that the traffic could’ve been more organic, but it did grow.

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6. Aim for consistency

Consistency (either on a particular topic or concerning the number of times you upload podcasts) signals to the search engine as well as your audience that you’re someone who can be relied upon, which can help you boost your SEO score.

We’re not saying you need to schedule podcast content every alternate day on your calendar, but if you do upload a podcast bi-weekly, stick to that schedule.

Oh, and don’t forget to upload your podcast episodes to the same platforms each week (Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.)

7. Add show notes and timestamps

Show notes are an opportunity for you to improve content accessibility and integrate your keywords and links naturally.

Another thing that’ll help you make your content more accessible? Timestamps.

Use timestamps effectively to include relevant keywords and tell potential listeners what topics you’re focusing on and what sections they should skip if they only want to get the relevant answers to the question(s) they might have.

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8. Choose podcast names strategically

Experts like Ryan Jones suggest choosing the names of podcasts strategically.

“I'm not a huge fan of podcast titles like 'The Ryan Jones Podcast' as something like 'Marketing on Mondays' would be better. It gives more information as to what the podcast is, generally, going to be about,” he said.

It’s also possible that first-time podcast listeners would be searching for recommendations by writing keywords like “best marketing podcasts” or “best real estate podcast” into the search engine.

And if your episode title aligns with their area of interest, it provides ‌confirmation (to both the search engine and the reader) that your podcast might be what they’re looking for. The result? Drive search volume to your audio content.

9. Create specific web pages

In the words of Mordy Oberstein, “Let’s not forget one thing: we’re talking about Google here, and Google deals with webpages.”

In fact, Google quite especially requires webpages to be associated with podcasts to rank them. Mordy also said he personally noticed site visibility increase when he started applying this strategy.

So, it seems like a no-brainer to create websites for podcasts and make web pages for individual episodes, which include the relevant keywords and links, name of the podcast host and guests (and more information about them that shows topical authority), podcast description, transcript of the episodes, reviews and ratings, etc.

For reference, here’s an example of a podcast webpage featuring Jerine Erice (this is for the RMR podcast):

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10. Other necessary elements

If you’re new to the podcast game, then the above tips and tricks should be a perfect starter for you to boost your podcast SEO score.

However, if you’re a podcast native, you might benefit from using and/or knowing about other advanced elements and podcast SEO tips like:

• Using schema markup and structured data. Schema markup and structured data essentially signal to search engines that your website is well-formatted and contains relevant information. Doing so will help you get noticed faster and might even cause search engines to use your content as snippets.
• Making your website mobile-friendly. Easy accessibility is the 101 of SEO (podcast or otherwise). And since most people use mobile phones to listen to podcasts, it makes sense to make sites mobile-friendly.
• Removing errors and improving website speed. If you create specific web pages for your podcasts, ensure they load fast by removing unnecessary plugins, errors, and redirects.
• Adding your podcasts to the necessary directories. Adding your podcast name to a popular podcast directory builds credibility and trust and allows other folks to add backlinks to your podcasts. Alternatively, you can also create an RSS feed for your podcasts.
• Using pop-ups and messages/emails to build a relationship with your subscribers. While this may not be entirely relevant for SEO, sending thank you and welcome messages/emails to your subscribers helps build a relationship with them (and an email list), which ultimately boosts the chance your podcast audience converts into regular listeners.

Boost your SEO score with Ranktracker

While these strategies can help you improve your SEO score, we’d like to share another resource that can be a game-changer vis-a-vis SEO, and that’s us, Ranktracker.

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However, we understand if you might be hesitant at first. In that case, may we suggest opting for the free Ranktracker trial to check the product offering yourself?