Are you looking to enhance the visibility of your podcast and reach a wider audience? Optimizing your podcast for SEO is a crucial step in achieving this goal. In this guide, we’ll unveil the five critical steps to crafting a perfectly optimised podcast as part of your performance marketing strategy that not only enhances visibility but also drives outstanding performance. Let’s dive right in.

1 – Create a dedicated Podcast Home Page

The first thing that you will need in order to get your podcast off the ground is a home for your content. Consider creating a dedicated webpage on your website to house your podcast episodes. All too often I find businesses and website owners simply add their podcast to  the blog section of the site, making it very difficult to find podcast specific content. 

This page should introduce your podcast, list episodes, and provide relevant links. We will need a section that we can load a paragraph or two of copy explaining the purpose of the podcasts, and where we can link to any popular podcasts or to podcast series that a user may want to listen to. We can also use this page to promote the platforms that the podcast appears on and encourage signups.

A crucial part of your content strategy, this not only helps users easily find and access your content but also enhances SEO by having a single, authoritative source for your podcast. This is a fairly obvious point, but a crucial one if you want your podcast to be successful. 

Here is a Podcast hub or home page layout from https://theverticalspace.net/ that incorporates many of these elements – this is a solid page structure for your podcast. 

2 – Develop a Structured and Uniform Podcast Page Format 

Consistency is key when it comes to organizing your podcast content. Just like any of the big podcasts that are already successful, structure your podcast page in a uniform format. Include a brief description of your podcast’s purpose and highlight popular episodes or series. 

I highly recommend defining a blog page format and content direction when creating your podcast page and develop supporting content for the podcasts. The post will need to include an introduction to the podcast while including links to the podcast platforms for users to listen further, and you should include the podcast transcript in the post, link to additional resources, and provide a little more insight and thought leadership on the topic to add value to readers.

Here is an example of a page layout that you may want to use: 

A structured approach like this ensures that your podcast develops its own identity, is easily recognizable, and provides enough content to add value to the casual reader as well as adding more to the experience for a hardcore listener. 

3 – Optimize for SEO: 

For each podcast episode, provide the target keywords to include in the page copy and ensure that headings and copy are utilising these before being published, just as we would for any other piece of content. 

The steps involved here would be

• Podcast platform meta optimisation – see this article for more info. You would want to make sure that each podcast is well optimised in Apple and on Spotify for its key terms. Areas to focus include:
  • show title
  • publisher (also known as ‘author’ for Apple)
  • show description
  • episode title
  • episode description
  • category

• Use relevant keywords: Identify keywords related to your podcast topics and incorporate them naturally into your podcast titles, descriptions, and transcripts.
• Create descriptive titles and tags: Craft compelling episode titles and use descriptive tags that accurately represent your content.
• Publish transcripts: Providing episode transcripts not only makes your content accessible but also adds valuable text for search engines to index.

4 – Sign Up for Google Podcasts Manager 

Google Podcasts is a significant platform for podcast discovery. Registering your podcast with Google Podcasts Manager ensures it’s accessible to a broader audience, and this step can significantly improve your podcast’s visibility in Google search results and the Google Podcasts app.

Google  Podcasts Manager gives you more information about your podcast and your listeners’ habits, which you can use to improve future episodes and get more engagement from your audience. And even better, the service is completely free.

Listeners can find and play your podcasts on many different apps and services, including:

• Google Podcasts website
• Google Podcasts app for mobile devices
• Google Assistant smart speakers and displays
• Content Action for the Google Assistant
• Android Auto and Apple CarPlay in your car

Prerequisites for appearing in Google Podcasts

Your podcast must follow these guidelines if you want it to appear in Google Podcasts:

• Your RSS feed must be accessible by Google. Your RSS feed cannot be blocked by login requirements, <itunes:block> tags, or anything else that would prevent Google from reading it. Therefore, custom feeds (sometimes called private feeds) are not eligible for Google Podcasts.
• Your feed must have at least one episode.
• Use a supported audio format for your episodes, and episodes must be available to Google. Video files are not supported on Google Podcasts.
• You must provide an image for your podcast.
• You must follow the RSS guidelines for Google Podcasts. If you are using a podcast hosting service, they should handle this for you. Required fields include:
  • Podcast image
  • Podcast description
  • Owner email
  • Link to a homepage for the podcast
• Do not mix http and https URLs for your resources. If your content is served over mixed protocols, your listeners can have a bad playback experience in Chrome browsers as well as other playback devices. Bad experiences include popup warnings and blocked playback. Therefore, we recommend that your RSS feed, podcast homepage, and all audio files be served from HTTPS addresses.

See this page for more detail on how to set up your RSS feed

5 – Promote Your Podcast

Don’t forget to promote your podcast across various channels. Share it on social media, email newsletters, and your website to attract a larger audience. Encourage listeners to subscribe and leave reviews, as positive engagement can further boost your podcast’s visibility.

By following these steps, you can effectively optimize your podcast for better visibility and reach. Remember that SEO and consistency are key elements in enhancing your podcast’s discoverability. Implement these strategies, and watch your podcast grow in popularity and reach a broader audience. Happy podcasting!