Podcast SEO Best Practices

You’re podcasting, and while your audience may not be growing as fast as you'd like, there’s a solution. Podcasting is a labor of love; you're ready to see your efforts pay off. By implementing podcast SEO, you can start to see significant growth in your podcast downloads and website traffic. It's time to take the next step and watch your audience expand.

Why do you need to do podcast SEO anyway? 

Think of podcast apps as your familiar search engines like Google, YouTube, or Pinterest. Just like you’re used to doing SEO for these platforms, podcast apps work similarly. When a user searches for a new podcast, they’ll enter a keyword or a series of keywords. You need to optimize your podcast for search engines (SEO) to ensure it appears in these search results. This helps the podcast app understand the content of your show and episodes.

How does podcast SEO work? 

When you do SEO on your podcast, you make it easier for the app to understand your content. This also helps your potential listeners understand what your show and each of your episodes are about.

What do you need to do for podcast SEO? 

Like Google SEO, the starting point for podcast SEO is your SEO keyword. You’ll want to choose keywords your potential listener uses when searching their favorite podcast app. You can use keywords in several places with your podcast.

Optimizing your podcast name 

You can use SEO keywords in your show name. Think about your ideal listener and what they’re searching for or asking about. You want to use the same keywords they’d use when looking for a podcast like yours. Naming your show isn’t the time to be super creative or clever; don’t use misspellings or symbols instead of letters. Keep it simple, straightforward, and easy to remember; you’ll have more luck growing your podcast’s audience. Include a keyword or keywords that your customers/listeners use.

If your show name isn’t well-optimized yet, you can always change it to something that’s more SEO-friendly. When you have good SEO keywords in your show title, you’re more likely to show up in the Shows tab on Apple podcasts when someone searches for that keyword. It’s similar to Google SEO – we’re helping the podcast search engine understand what our content (in this case, our show) is about, and when they understand it better, they’re more likely to show it to people searching for the keyword you’ve used.

Optimizing your podcast episodes

The next place you’ll want to use SEO keywords is in your podcast episode names. Using the keywords your ideal listener searches for will make it easier for your episodes to appear in the podcast app. It’s similar to Google SEO: When you have the keyword they’re looking for in your episode name, your episode may appear on the episodes search tab in Apple podcasts or other podcast players.

Some podcast hosting companies have AI tools to help you with your episode titles. I suggest you don’t use them and write your titles yourself using your SEO keyword. I tested out the AI tool in my podcast host for a few months, and I saw much better downloads when I wrote the titles myself and focused on choosing keywords for the episode title. If you need a bit of help or inspiration, you can always use Chat GPT or another AI tool and ask it for ideas for a podcast episode title using the keyword you’ve selected. 

Optimizing your podcast description.

Your podcast description is another place where you can use your SEO keywords. This will help the search engine and your potential listener understand what your show is about and see if it’s one they want to listen to. Adding your keywords to your description will help with search engine optimization.

Optimizing your podcast show notes

If you have a website or blog, you’ll want to make sure you’re creating podcast show notes, and you optimize them for Google. It’s going to be a bit different here because you’re no longer optimizing for the podcast search engine but rather Google with your show notes. Your show notes can help drive more traffic to your blog via Google if you create them following Google’s SEO best practices and include your keywords in all the places that Google will look for information on your page. Rather than just creating a short show notes page, if you create a blog post with the information related to your show and include your links it generally works better for SEO than simply posting a short show notes page. You can also include your podcast episode transcript at the bottom of the page. If you want to see how I set this up, here’s an example of a podcast episode blog post I created.

Why do I care about Google SEO for my podcast?

Your podcast can benefit from Google SEO. Your show notes blog post pages can rank for the keyword you use in your optimization elements, which can help you rank higher in the search results and get organic traffic to your website from Google. If you’re not sure what to do for Google SEO, request a copy of my Beginner’s Step-by-Step Guide to SEO here, and I’ll walk you through it.

Google also indexes podcasts and shares them in the search results so potential listeners may find you via a Google search rather than searching in the app itself.

How does podcast SEO help grow your audience?

Following podcast SEO best practices and optimizing your show name, description, and episode titles makes it easier for new listeners to discover your podcast. When you also optimize your show notes page and turn it into more of a blog post style with content and helpful information, you boost your website or blog’s SEO, which can help drive organic traffic to you. When I started using podcast SEO best practices for my podcast, I quickly saw my downloads increase, and the number of visits to my website’s podcast episode pages also increased. My podcast downloads have more than tripled since I started doing podcast SEO. I’m creating fewer episodes and getting more downloads. I was recording and sharing two episodes a week in Q4 and switched back to one episode each week in Q1. My downloads are 60% higher now than in Q4, and I’m creating half of the content. If you want your podcast to grow, it’s time to learn podcast SEO best practices and get started.