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.

1. Create a dedicated podcast page (or site)

Plan for & use keywords

It’s all well and good to just throw on the headphones, switch on the mic and get chatting about one topic or another. But it won’t help with SEO.

You need to carefully plan each of your podcast episodes around keywords you’re looking to rank for and use them throughout. But, like page content, don’t stuff them into what you’re saying so it sounds unnatural and jarring. Rather, plan around them and write down some talking points that will help you mention keywords, synonyms, and related words naturally.

And remember to talk clearly, because mumbling your way through an episode will not only be a huge no-no for attracting listeners, but can also be detrimental to SEO.

3. Write titles & notes using keywords

The title of the episode should most definitely include the keyword in it, as should the notes (the short-form summary blurbs that describe the episode’s content) accompanying each podcast episode.

But again, making sure they are used naturally, without making it sound like a bot has written them is important to keep both search engines and your listeners happy. If you’ve created an episode that hits the appropriate keywords well, it should be pretty easy to write the title and notes so they both use the keyword(s), and read well.

4. Create transcripts

It may sound like a time-consuming chore, but there are quite a few tools out there that make transcribing audio really quite quick and easy. Not only do transcripts make your podcast more accessible to consumers, but they allow you to target longer-tailed keywords mentioned within the episode, and they’re a great tool to offer search engines a detailed run-down of each show.

5. Don’t go overboard with length

Yes, there are some podcasts out there that are over an hour long. But if you’re specifically creating podcasts for SEO purposes, don’t make yours too long. Aim for around 15 minutes or so.

This isn’t just a way to rank higher, but also to entice someone into listening/watching other episodes. Because at the end of the day, if someone’s after a quick answer to a question they have and your podcast pops up as a solution provider, is there a better chance they’ll click on a show that goes for over an hour, or a quick twelve minute show?

6. Share across all your social profiles

Promoting each episode across all of your social media profiles will increase the amount of exposure it has to your audience and provide higher shareability opportunities.

On top of that, though, creating backlinks from social platforms to your site (and the page where the episodes live) can be a ranking factor for search engines and improve SEO.

But remember, unless it’s a paid social marketing campaign, don’t use your profiles to solely post ads for your podcast. Your followers won’t like that. Instead, think about ways that you can offer them value in some way. This could be either within the podcast itself, or in other ways, like a codeword within the show they can use to get a percentage discount off purchasing their next product from you.

7. Add relevant metadata

Include all relevant tags for each of the episodes you create, as these can play a part in the SEO and overall searchability of your podcast. You can also write up accompanying meta descriptions that provide a brief summary and include the show’s keywords.

8. Repurpose the content

You might think writing up a transcript is enough in terms of accompanying content. But there’s so much more that can be done if you really want to maximise your SEO potential via podcast marketing.

Repurposing unique content that you’ve already created is a very effective way to expand your reach and brand awareness – and requires little effort. For example, you can write up a blog to publish off the back of the podcast that includes quotes. You can also create infographics that include researched statistics of any major talking points or keywords within the episodes, and build out a social media schedule surrounding each of the shows you have planned.

Finally, by recording both audio and video for each episode, you’ve then got content for YouTube ready to go, as well as plenty of footage that can be cut and created into teasers and the like for social media.

9. Make reviewing & sharing easy

If it’s even slightly difficult for your audience to leave reviews and share your shows, it may as well be impossible. People are doing you a favour by sharing and reviewing your content or products, so reward them by making it as easy as you possibly can.

Provide them with one- or two-click actions and you’ll find they’re much more likely to actually do it.

Hot tip: Podcast outreach can be a massive audience booster for new shows

Unsure what podcast outreach is? Also known as guest podcasting, this means inviting someone in to be a guest in one of your episodes. And as you can imagine, using podcast outreach the right way, and with the right person can be just the thing your new podcast needs to gain exposure.

Leave outreach & podcast marketing to the experts

Thinking you’d rather call in the pros to make sure your podcast marketing or outreach is done effectively, and you’re leaving nothing to chance? There’s really only one agency out there you can trust to get the job done well – First Page.

No matter what your budget, our team of podcast marketing experts will make sure you’re getting the absolute most bang for your buck. In no time at all, with our first-class technical SEO strategy you’ll start to see just how effective your podcast is at bringing in substantially more website traffic, leads, and conversions, and growing your revenue exponentially.

Ready to take the next step? Give the First Page team a call now on 1300 479 226. You’ll be happy you did.