How to improve your SEO rankings through podcasts
Over the last several years, the popularity of podcasts has continued its upward trend. In fact, between 2020 and 2021 this figure grew by 51.5 million – from 332.2 million to 383.7 million worldwide per Statista.
And considering that there are more and more people listening to podcasts every year, it has fast become a highly recommended tool for brands to use within their marketing approach.
One major way that it can help boost your business is, when used in the right way, you can pair podcast marketing with technical SEO practices to improve rankings for your website. But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg; there are a number of key benefits of creating a podcast for your brand.
In this article, you’ll learn what some of these benefits are as well as the best ways you can optimise each podcast episode to ensure you’re getting the most out of them.
The biggest benefits of creating a podcast
It can be hard finding enough hours in the day to tick off all the things on your to-do list on a good day, let alone after bringing something like recording a podcast episode into the mix. But what if we told you it could really have a huge influence on your brand’s success?
If you’re considering starting a podcast as an additional marketing channel for your business, but aren’t completely sold on the concept yet, here are some real benefits from doing so.
Increase brand awareness
Adding another marketing channel can be a very effective way to increase the overall awareness of your brand and grow your prospective consumer audience.
Though in this case, it’s important to remember that it’s less about selling and more about talking about things that your audience will find interesting and engaging. Sure, it’s okay to give one of your products or services a plug every now and then, but do it too often and you’ll soon find your engagement figures decreasing as a result.
Keep your podcast informative and helpful and it’ll help to increase brand awareness substantially.
Boost brand authority & credibility
By becoming a voice in the industry about different topics (that are relevant), you are effectively building up the credibility of the brand itself. Even if there are other businesses within your industry who already have their own podcasts, you’ll still be able to increase the amount of authority your brand has against others.
This is especially true if you create high-quality podcasts with topics that are engaging and provide a new perspective on topics that may not have been explored before.
As such, it’s always a great idea to do extensive research on what competitors have already talked about, and continuously review their content so you can bring your own fresh approach. This is especially relevant for topics that are popular or have substantially higher engagement rates than others. You may also consider inviting well-known industry professionals to discuss topics with you in order to boost your brand authority and reach within the market even further.
Improve rankings to increase traffic & leads
You may not be aware, but when you create a podcast episode, you can actually use SEO practices to improve rankings of your website on SERPs (which we’ll get into in a moment).
And, of course, improving your site’s rankings, will have a positive impact on traffic and leads. The more people that see your website within the organic results, the more opportunities you give them to click through to your site and the more likely they are to convert into a sale or enquiry.
Create more meaningful connections
These days, your customers want to get to know the people behind the brand. This is where podcasts are perfect because instead of just text on a page, they offer a far more personal approach to communicating with your audience. Your customers are hearing your voice (and watching you, if you choose to film as well), which can help to build a better relationship with them, and encourages them to trust you and your brand.
Additionally, there are lots of different ways for you to get your listeners/watchers actively involved in your podcast, which is another great way to create a more meaningful connection with your audience. This may be in the form of requesting people to send in questions via social media or email, through competitions, or even simply mentioning different people’s comments from a previous podcast that you found interesting.
The more you make your audience feel involved, the more you encourage a following of loyal listeners that are more likely to talk about your podcast to others, effectively growing awareness for your podcast (and therefore brand) for you.
Extend your reach
Not every type of content is right for everyone. For example, some people enjoy long-form articles of 5,000 words or more, while others would rather listen to a 10-minute discussion on the same topic. Long story short, different content works for different people, and offering a wide variety of options for your audience is a highly effective way to reach as many of them as possible.
Therefore, by adding podcasts to your marketing strategy, you are employing another channel for your brand’s voice to be heard on. As a result, you’re providing opportunities to reach audiences you may otherwise never have been able to with your existing marketing approach.
Even if your customers do consume other types of content from your brand, offering interesting podcast episodes helps increase the frequency of your brand messaging, which boosts brand recognition and resonance. Additionally, one of the best things about creating podcasts is that you can repurpose the content within each episode in a number of different ways and publish the content across multiple channels, from video to blogs, social posts and more.
Optimising your podcast episodes for search engines
So, whether the above benefits have sold you and you’re now on board to make a new podcast, or you’ve already established one and are wondering how to properly optimise each episode for SEO purposes, we’ve got you covered.
Here are just 9 of the more simple and straightforward ways that you can bring SEO into your podcast to successfully improve your website’s rankings and supercharge your traffic and lead generation.
- Create a dedicated podcast page (or site)