Special thanks to our first guest writer, Mr. Joe Balestrino, aka: Mr. SEO for this article.
How to Optimize your Podcast
Optimization can be a complex process. You have to research, optimize, track and maintain your SEO efforts constantly in order to stay on top of your game. When it comes to optimizing for podcasts, there is an entirely different set of rules than for traditional sites.
More and more people are getting involved with podcasting. The more people that become involved in podcasting, the steeper the competition for new listeners. Of course, there are things you can do to your podcast to make it unique. Production values, topics and the professionalism (or lack of professionalism) of the host or hosts can help separate your podcast from others in the same genre.
But what else can a podcaster do to increase listenership?
There are many directories that will allow you to submit your podcast. These directories are geared specifically for podcasters and people looking to find audio on a particular subject. There is a list of these directories updated regularly on my blog.
There are some sites that are transcribing the content of podcasts. One of them is Podscope. What is the best way to optimize a podcast from an audio standpoint, you may ask. Is there one? There isn’t a method, so to speak, to optimize a podcast in this way. I would suggest staying on topic as much as possible. It will help ensure that your audio is relevant to any search your podcast may come up for.
Depending on what you are using to create your blog entry, optimizing the podcast’s page is a good start. Sites such as PodOmatic allow each podcast episode to have its own page and unique URL. When choosing the title of your podcast, you need to keep in mind what relevant keyterms or keyphrases people would likely search for that could lead them to your podcast. For example, my podcast is about SEO or search engine optimization. If you type “SEO podcast” on Google, you’ll see me in the #1 position.
Next, think about what your major phrase or term might be. This should be something that reflects the overall purpose of your podcast, not necessarily aimed at a particular episode. Let’s say your podcast is about 80’s music. It would be nice if your URL had eightiesmusic.Com or podcast-on-eighties-music.net or something along those lines. This will give you brownie points with the search engines.
Creating your title is of the utmost importance. The title will never change. It needs to describe what your podcast is about, so think carefully before choosing it. If you need help, you can use to see how often a phrase is searched on Yahoo. This will give you a basic idea of what people are most likely to find you under. Keep in mind, however, that the more popular a term is, the more competition there will be.
The next step is to use those same words in the description of your podcast. Using our fictitious 80’s music podcast as an example, that might read, “Listen to retro music from the 80’s in our podcast. The selection of 80’s music for this podcast is chosen by our listeners.” See how we added both “80’s” and “music” twice? Don’t go overboard, but more than once never hurts.
What about posts/episodes? Can you optimize those posts? That can become difficult if you’re not well versed in optimizing content. The best advice I can give is to try to keep your episodes on one topic at a time. If one episode was about Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album, it would be easier to optimize for if that were the only topic discussed. Writing about 100 - 200 words while repeating the keywords or keyphrases two or three times may be enough to drive in some traffic. Be sure you also type those keywords into the title and description on that particular episodes page.
Last but not least, try some traditional optimization methods to advertise your podcast. Create a site specifically for your podcast and optimize several pages for different keyphrases related to your show. Make sure each page has a link to where your traffic can easily download your podcast or view your catalog of past episodes. Create articles and submit them to article submission sites while pointing the one way backlinks you are creating back to the site. In our 80’s music example, you might write an article on the resurgence of popularity 80’s music is experiencing. This will help your podcast site rank well, and along with your optimized content, can bring new listeners to your show over time.
Make sure to visit Joe’s site for more great articles on SEO optimization.
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I very much enjoy Lino Rulli’s program on Sirius Satellite Radio. Getting satellite radio is just not in the cards so I was pleased to find the ‘Lino at Large’ radio show available as a Podcast.
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