Podcasting has always been an amusing way to humanize your brand, showcase expertise, and build relationships with people out there.
Whether you already create podcasts, have mastered the art or are interested in starting one, these tips will help you rank higher with increased visibility. So what are you waiting for?
What Are Podcasts And Why Are They Useful?
A podcast is a set of digital audio files that can easily be downloaded. A user could subscribe to the podcast to get notified and receive digital notes once they are uploaded. It has the following advantages:
It drives more people to your site
Can easily be created
They are extremely engaging
Excellent alternative to videos
Why Does Google Show Podcasts In SERPs?
Google has offered a speech-to-text feature as part of the Google Cloud Platform for a couple of years now which has been upgraded ever since it was introduced so it seems like Google is gaining a strong ability to pinpoint verbalized keywords within podcasts/videos for ranking purposes.
Choose your topic wisely: Choosing a topic requires a lot of time for a perfect podcast because people wouldn’t be interested in listening to any random thing, they would rather demand to hear something that adds to their knowledge base.
You won’t always be able to produce a hit for every podcast you release, but there is a simple strategy you can use to increase your visibility and as a part of podcast SEO.
Use a tool for content ideas and keyword research:
Google is able to crawl and decipher your audio and knows exactly what topics and keywords are all about. So, when you mention a keyword within your podcast, your podcast episode is more likely to rank for that keyword or phrase.
Develop a podcast voice:
It’s a part of podcast SEO, oneneeds to have a strong podcast voice to ensure Google can comprehend as many of the keywords and phrases within the conversation as possible which will help you rank higher on the SERPs.
Ultimately, a killer voice quality clubbed with interesting topics is what keeps people coming back to your blog.
Choose the right platform:
Podcast ranking may be influenced by how quickly your platform loads, the less optimally it performs, the less likely people are going to subscribe to your channel.
Many podcasters choose to host their podcast episodes on their own website then create dedicated episode pages to increase their chances of getting viewed using typical on-page SEO.
When going this route, you need to make sure your platform is properly optimised.
Create series for a particular topic:
Splitting up your podcast into series is an interesting way to make navigation easy and make people curious about its sequels. This will also avoid keyword stuffing and help in maintaining the keyword density.
Create transcripts as a part of podcast SEO:
Given the demonstration from Google I/O, it seems as though transcriptions will be the primary method of picking out parts of an episode to match a search query, so if your content includes more phrases and keywords, it would be extremely useful for google to scour the site and rank higher on SERP.
Try incorporating podcasts into your blog posts:
As a part of podcast SEO, clubbing your blog and podcast efforts would be very beneficial in driving traffic. You can create a blog post around a podcast episode.
So after recording your episode, repurpose it into a high-value blog post that you can then optimize with the best SEO practices in order to rank higher. Include as many keywords and phrases as possible.
Have a clear persona:
In order to stand out, you’ll have to narrow your audience down, you are expected to speak to a specific set of podcast listeners instead of trying to broaden your target audience.
The persona lets you figure out what kind of podcast content your ideal subscribers want to see and in return, shows you their likes, dislikes, lifestyle preferences and a lot more.
Post the link on various social media platforms as a part of podcast SEO:
Choose a snippet and convert it into a video or image format that could be posted on your Instagram feed, Facebook or Youtube. Create engaging content or some viral-worthy infographics to arouse curiosity among people.
FAQs related to SEO for podcasts:
1. What does higher search volume indicate?
The higher the number the better as higher search volume means more potential listens to your podcasts.
2. What are some points that should be remembered while incorporating keywords in your podcast?
Avoid keyword stuffing Titles should content keywords with high search volume to increase the reach
3. How does a podcast help in building better relationships with customers?
People listen to podcasts because they have something in common with the speaker and the brand that the speaker is representing. Such a good relationship helps in building trust. This encourages listeners to be associated with the brand and increases brand affinity.
4. Why should one interview prominent people and industry leaders?
Their supporters are more likely to listen to your podcast if they know that somebody they trust is sharing valuable information on your platform.
Watch: Is Your Podcast SEO-Friendly? Let’s Find Out
For Curious Minds
A podcast directly improves SEO by creating indexable content that drives organic traffic to your site and keeps users engaged. Google now prioritizes audio because its technology can understand spoken words, treating podcasts as valuable, searchable assets just like text.
Historically, search engines could only analyze the text surrounding an audio file. However, with the evolution of features like Google's speech-to-text, which has been part of the Google Cloud Platform for a couple of years, the engine can now transcribe and comprehend the audio itself. This allows it to pinpoint verbalized keywords and phrases within your episodes. When you create transcripts and host episodes on dedicated pages, you provide even more text-based content for crawlers to analyze, effectively doubling your SEO impact. This strategic approach turns your audio content into a powerful tool for ranking for specific search queries, making it much more than just an engagement channel. To fully capitalize on this, you must understand how to optimize both the audio and its accompanying text.
Podcast transcripts are the primary method Google uses to understand and index your audio content, making your spoken words searchable. This process is powered by advanced speech-to-text technology, which converts your conversation into a machine-readable format that search crawlers can analyze for keywords and context.
The core technology, as demonstrated at Google I/O, involves sophisticated algorithms that can parse audio files with high accuracy. When you provide a transcript, you are essentially giving the search engine a perfect script of your episode. This allows it to:
Identify all relevant keywords and long-tail phrases you mentioned.
Understand the topical authority and context of the conversation.
Serve specific audio snippets in search results that directly answer a user's query.
Effectively, a transcript makes every word you speak an opportunity to rank. Without one, you rely solely on the title and description, leaving significant SEO potential untapped. Exploring how to properly format these transcripts is the next step to maximizing your visibility.
Hosting your podcast on your own website gives you complete control over on-page SEO and drives traffic directly to your domain, while third-party platforms offer convenience but may limit your optimization capabilities. The best choice depends on your technical resources and primary marketing goals.
Choosing to self-host on an optimized platform allows you to create a dedicated, indexable page for each episode. This approach provides several advantages:
Direct Traffic: Listeners land on your website, increasing your domain's traffic and authority.
Full SEO Control: You can implement schema markup, optimize meta descriptions, and integrate the episode into your broader content strategy.
Content Hub Creation: You can repurpose the audio into a blog post, add a full transcript, and include internal links, creating a rich content asset.
Conversely, dedicated platforms handle the technical backend but often keep the traffic on their domain. Consider your long-term strategy for building digital assets before committing to a platform.
Google's speech-to-text technology analyzes the sound waves of your podcast's audio file, converts them into written text, and then indexes that text for keywords and semantic meaning. This allows your podcast episode to appear in SERPs for relevant spoken phrases, not just its written title or description.
The system, which Google has been refining for a couple of years, is built on advanced machine learning models. It can distinguish between different speakers, understand context, and identify key terms with increasing accuracy. This means the clarity of your podcast voice and audio quality are now direct ranking factors. If the system can easily comprehend your words, it can more effectively match them to search queries. This capability transforms your entire conversation into a series of potential ranking opportunities, making every sentence you speak critical for SEO success. Learning to speak for both your audience and the algorithm is a new skill for creators to develop.
The most effective method is to treat each podcast episode as the foundation for a comprehensive blog post. This repurposing strategy transforms a single audio recording into a multi-format content asset that appeals to different user preferences and is fully optimized for search engines.
After recording your episode, you should repurpose it into a high-value blog post that expands on the conversation. This involves more than just posting a transcript. The process should include:
Creating an SEO-Optimized Title: Craft a headline that targets your primary keyword.
Structuring the Content: Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to organize the key takeaways from the episode.
Embedding the Audio Player: Place the podcast player directly within the post for easy listening.
Adding a Full Transcript: Include a complete, formatted transcript for accessibility and to help Google index the spoken content.
This integrated approach ensures you capture traffic from people who prefer reading and those who prefer listening. Discover how to further optimize these pages with internal links and calls to action to see even greater results.
Creating a podcast series allows you to build topical authority and guides listeners through a structured journey, which boosts engagement and retention. This format also improves SEO by letting you target a cluster of related keywords naturally across multiple episodes without resorting to stuffing.
By splitting a broad topic into a focused series, you can dedicate each episode to a specific sub-topic and its associated long-tail keywords. This approach helps in several ways:
Avoids Keyword Stuffing: You can maintain a natural keyword density in each episode while collectively covering a wide range of search terms.
Increases Curiosity: The series format encourages listeners to subscribe and return for the next installment, improving your audience metrics.
Simplifies Navigation: Organizing content into logical series makes it easier for users to find the information they need on your website.
This method signals to Google that you are an expert on the subject, which can improve your rankings for the entire topic cluster. The key is planning your series arc to align with your keyword strategy from the beginning.
A successful B2B podcast launch requires a plan that integrates content creation with technical SEO from the start. The process focuses on choosing the right topics, optimizing the audio and its web page, and repurposing the content to drive traffic.
A clear, stepwise plan ensures no opportunity is missed:
Define Your Persona and Topics: Narrow your audience to a specific persona and use keyword research tools to find topics that address their pain points.
Develop a Clear Podcast Voice: Ensure your audio is crisp and your speech is clear so Google's speech-to-text technology can accurately transcribe and index your keywords.
Optimize Your Website Platform: Host episodes on dedicated pages on a fast-loading website. Use on-page SEO best practices for titles, descriptions, and headers.
Create and Post Transcripts: Publish a full transcript with each episode to make your entire conversation searchable.
Repurpose into a Blog Post: Write a companion blog post that summarizes key insights and embeds the audio player.
This methodical approach ensures each episode is an asset that works to attract and convert your target audience. Beyond these steps, promoting your content across different channels is vital for initial traction.
As audio becomes a first-class citizen in search, brands must evolve their content strategies to be multi-format, blending written, audio, and video content. This trend suggests that purely text-based SEO will become less effective on its own, as it will compete with more engaging and directly answer-oriented audio snippets in SERPs.
Looking ahead, your strategy should diversify content production to meet users wherever they are, whether they prefer reading, listening, or watching. Key adjustments include:
Integrating Audio into a Topic Cluster Model: Create podcast episodes that align with your core content pillars and link them to your existing articles.
Optimizing for Conversational Keywords: Focus on question-based and natural language phrases that people are more likely to speak than type.
Investing in High-Quality Audio Production: Since clarity impacts Google's ability to index your content, a clear podcast voice and good sound are no longer optional.
The future of SEO is not about abandoning text but augmenting it. Understanding this shift now will give you a significant competitive advantage.
The most common mistakes are neglecting website performance and failing to define a clear audience persona, which leads to generic content and a poor user experience. These issues can be corrected by optimizing your hosting platform for speed and narrowing your focus to a specific listener profile.
Many podcasters with low visibility suffer from easily fixable problems. Stronger performers avoid these by:
Choosing the Right Platform: A slow-loading website will deter both users and search engine crawlers. Ensure your platform is properly optimized for performance. A less optimally it performs, the less likely people are to subscribe.
Having a Clear Persona: Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, successful podcasters narrow their audience. This focus allows them to create highly relevant content that deeply resonates and ranks for niche keywords.
Maintaining High Audio Quality: Muffled or unclear audio makes it difficult for Google to process and index your content, directly harming your ranking potential.
Fixing these foundational issues is crucial before tackling more advanced SEO tactics. A technically sound website and a sharp content focus provide the base for sustainable growth.
Developing a distinct podcast voice and persona makes your content memorable for listeners and technically optimized for search engines. A clear, consistent voice ensures Google's speech-to-text technology can accurately identify and index the keywords within your conversation, directly impacting your ability to rank.
To optimize your voice for both audience and algorithm, focus on these elements:
Clarity and Pacing: Speak clearly and at a moderate pace, avoiding mumbling or rushing. This improves comprehension for listeners and transcription accuracy for search engines.
Consistent Terminology: Use consistent terms for your key topics throughout your episodes. This helps Google recognize your topical authority.
High-Quality Microphone: Invest in good recording equipment to minimize background noise and ensure a crisp audio signal.
Your vocal delivery is now a technical SEO component. By treating it as such, you can enhance your rankings while also building a stronger brand identity. The next step is to align this voice with a well-researched content plan.
A podcast often fails to gain traction due to topic choices that are either too broad or not aligned with what an audience is actively searching for. Strategic use of keyword research tools helps you pivot from creating content you *think* people want to content they *prove* they want through their search behavior.
Instead of guessing, use a data-driven approach. A simple strategy involves using tools to:
Identify Core Themes: Find the main subjects your target persona is interested in.
Discover Specific Questions: Look for long-tail keywords and question-based queries that you can answer in an episode.
Analyze Competitors: See what topics are working for other podcasts in your niche and identify content gaps you can fill.
This process ensures every episode is created with a built-in audience in mind. When you mention a keyword within your podcast that has proven search demand, your episode is far more likely to rank and attract new listeners. Moving beyond random topics is the first step toward building a successful show.
Podcasts are becoming an excellent and efficient alternative to video, especially now that their content is indexable by search engines like Google. While video often has higher engagement potential due to its visual nature, podcasts require significantly less production effort and cater to multitasking audiences.
The comparison for brands weighs heavily in favor of podcasts for certain goals:
Ease of Creation: Recording and editing audio is generally faster and cheaper than a full video production, allowing for more consistent content output.
Passive Consumption: Listeners can engage with podcasts while commuting, exercising, or working, a flexibility video does not offer.
SEO Parity: With Google's speech-to-text feature, audio now offers similar keyword-ranking capabilities to the text in a video's description and captions.
The choice is no longer about which format is 'better,' but which one aligns with your resources and audience's consumption habits. As audio SEO matures, podcasts represent a highly scalable way to build authority.
Chandala Takalkar is a young content marketer and creative with experience in content, copy, corporate communications, and design. A digital native, she has the ability to craft content and copy that suits the medium and connects. Prior to Team upGrowth, she worked as an English trainer. Her experience includes all forms of copy and content writing, from Social Media communication to email marketing.
Growth Strategy and Planning
