Optimize Your Podcast SEARCH with These Simple Tricks

James Dooley: Hi, today I’m joined with **Kasra Dash**, and the topic of conversation is SEO for podcasts. There are a lot of people now moving into podcasting and releasing large volumes of audio, often repurposed from videos or blog content. For anyone running a podcast who wants to improve search engine visibility and rankings, what would your initial advice be? Kasra Dash: Podcasting is a strong way to attract people back to your brand or website, because it creates another content entry point. It is worth investing in, but it is time intensive. You might spend an hour per episode on a single topic, so the commitment is real, but the upside in brand reach and authority can be significant. James Dooley: A lot of people distribute their podcasts across platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, and IMDb using syndication tools such as Buzzsprout, Podbean, or Transistor. Many of them are not writing descriptions, not publishing transcripts, and not converting the audio into text. How important is that from an SEO perspective? Kasra Dash: That is one of the biggest issues I see. Google can technically understand audio, but it is far more expensive for Google to process raw audio than structured text. If there is any ambiguity, transcripts remove that problem. My first step is always to generate a transcript, optimise it, and then upload it as structured content alongside the episode. This makes it much easier for search engines to understand the topic, entities, and context. James Dooley: I see that a lot myself, especially with names being misspelt in auto generated transcripts. If you correct those errors, you are clearly signalling the correct entities. It feels similar to early ecommerce when people ignored product descriptions. Kasra Dash: Exactly. You would never publish a blog post full of spelling errors, yet people do it with podcast transcripts all the time. Fixing names and terminology takes minutes but has a big SEO impact. If the transcript is wrong, the entity associations are wrong. James Dooley: Another issue people raise is indexing. They ask why their podcast pages are not indexing properly. What usually causes that? Kasra Dash: It often comes down to content quality and depth. If you only have a few episodes, Google has very little to work with. Uniqueness also matters. If descriptions are duplicated or thin, indexing suffers. Before using indexing tools, make sure descriptions are unique, cleaned up, and optimised. Tools can help, but only once the fundamentals are correct. James Dooley: I also think having a clear podcast entity home is critical. One page that lists all episodes, hosts, and guests, and clearly defines where the podcast is syndicated. That creates a strong first party source. Kasra Dash: I agree completely. That entity home anchors everything. From there, off page amplification also helps. Press releases, guest posts, and coverage announcing the podcast can improve both indexing and visibility, especially when a show is new. James Dooley: I’m much more strict now about making sure off page content reinforces who we are and what the podcast is about, rather than just building noise. Do you also recommend social media? Kasra Dash: Yes. Social promotion matters, especially when guests share the episode with their own audiences. That creates compounding visibility. The other key factor is guest quality. Strong guests attract listeners, mentions, and links naturally. Podcasts with weak guests usually struggle to grow. James Dooley: That makes sense. For anyone watching who wants to improve podcast rankings, indexing, and visibility, SEO fundamentals still apply. Structure, clarity, and authority matter. Kasra Dash: Exactly. Podcast SEO is not a separate discipline. It follows the same principles as website SEO, just applied to audio content. James Dooley: Kasra Dash, thanks for sharing your insights. This has been a solid breakdown of how people should approach SEO for podcasts properly.