Mastering Podcast SEO: Strategies to Grow Your Listener Base – PCI 433

Hi. Welcome to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell, the VP of customer relations. And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist here at Blueberry. Today, we're gonna talk about podcast SEO and ways that you can grow your listener base.

You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting with all the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. Yeah. The one thing about podcast SEO versus regular old Google and whatever other search engine

SEO is they're they do differ a lot. But think of it this way. People are gonna find your podcast maybe first on Google. But they must then they might also, you know, search on Spotify or Apple or whatever other app they use. So then those are kind of two different things. Yeah. So so traditional SEO that we're all kinda familiar with is gonna be more so with, you know, with copy, with text. With podcast SEO, you do have the ability to kinda rely on audio, as well.

And then factoring in the whatever you're naming your your podcast episodes. Yeah. The the text that you're using in your show notes, the the title of your show in general, please Google it before you finalize it and decide on it. But one thing that we do recommend is that you treat your podcast show notes as like a web page itself because that's gonna be able to help you with Google. It doesn't necessarily matter in the podcast app so much, and people probably are not gonna

read it. However, it will get picked up, and it will be seen by all of these search engines. Yeah. And even if you're not using your own website to publish your episodes, in our case, Blueberry, you have a landing page at Blueberry that also gets indexed. So Yeah. All that, you know, each episode is kind of its own blog post or web page or however you wanna call it. But Mhmm. It, you know, definitely helps with, you know, regular search engine results

and maybe even AI results. You know, that's becoming more of a search. You know, your audio will definitely be picked up in AI at some point if it hasn't already or at least the transcript. So it could help you there too. But within

the platforms, there's like, Apple, you you can write all the show notes you want, and Apple's search will not search for that. Only thing they search in Apple, and this hasn't changed, and I've asked, the Apple team, it hasn't changed yet, titles. Yep. Alright. And the author. You know? So your name will come up in Apple Podcasts if you're the author or the host of the podcast and also titles, both episode titles and overall show titles.

Spotify is a little bit different. They do take into account show notes or blog post content, and all the other directories just do it on their own. There's no, you know, there's no rhyme or reason. So there's not a whole lot of you can do to optimize every platform. Basically, you write in your show notes and your titles and all that what you want everybody to see, and then, you know, certain places it'll help, certain places it might not.

But when you are doing SEO properly, that does help you attract those new listeners because they're gonna end up finding you. You know, you're they're they're gonna be searching for whatever it is that they're interested in. And if you're doing your job correctly, you're gonna be showing up in those results, whether that is, you know, with a traditional Google search, whether that is on social media, whether that's

in a podcast app directory, anything. Just by doing that regularly, you're gonna attract new listeners, and you're also going to, build some authority for your name. You know, if if you continuously show up in those results, you're gonna automatically become someone of authority. Here here's something. You know, we've talked about YouTube's, YouTube music and getting your podcast in via

RSS. If you're doing a regular video, just do a YouTube channel. But if you're doing just an audio podcast, it might be a good idea to get it on YouTube Music. And the reason for that is YouTube is also a big search engine. And you won't get a lot of listens there, but at least people will possibly find you. And then, oh, well, I I listen on Overcast. I'll go look for him on Overcast or whatever. Yeah. But, you know, that that that is one argument to be on YouTube Music to to get on that. You

know? Yes. You're not gonna build a lot of listeners directly on YouTube music, generally, sometimes, you know, certain shows. But, for the most part, people will discover you that way or could. And so part of, you know, being in this discovery is you have to do your keyword research properly. So you're gonna have your niche, and you're gonna have to identify, like, what are these phrases associated also with the word podcast? You know? Like, is anyone searching something like

fitness podcast? Yes. They are. But make sure that you're using that phrase specifically. You can't necessarily just say fitness. Mhmm. You just have to say, like, fitness podcast or weight loss podcast or something like that. So you have to brainstorm all of those topics, figure out what are people actually searching for, what's trending, and then learn how to leverage that. Whether that is just you

kinda going for it in the web page or if you wanna use, like, any specific tools. I mean, we've been using Semrush for a long time. You don't have to be a business to use that. Anyone can use it. There's a bunch of different softwares out there like that that can help you with SEO. Has some pretty good Mhmm. Search tools as well. So, you know, look in the search console at Google. Yep. Exactly. And, also, while you're doing this research on your own SEO, do it for your competitors as well.

You know? If you're if you're directly, in in line with another show, look up what they're using for their SEO. It's gonna overlap probably, but, you know, decide exactly what you wanna do there. And as we've said before, you know, if you're interested in a certain topic, you you may listen to more than one podcast. So you may, you know, why not be on that same list with this other show?

Yep. Yep. And then once you actually find all of this SEO, then it's up to you to incorporate it into, like we said, your podcast episode titles, your show notes, your website, any blog posts you have associated to your, you know, your website, any social media that you do. Yeah. Everything. It it all comes together. It's just the big old circle of SEO. Podcast title. You know? Keep it authentic and concise. You have to you know? And make sure you're not trying

to be too broad. You know? Narrow it down to what you actually talk about. Be descriptive, but, you know, don't stuff it with a lot of stuff. You know? I remember back when podcasting first started and Apple got into it, people would stuff every title with 70 keywords and and all their competitors, and, you know, Apple did crack down

on that. So resist the urge to overdo it, but make sure you have a very descriptive title of an episode and make sure your show title, the overall show title, does sort of tell people what it's about because sometimes that's all they'll see. Yeah. I mean, technically, Podcast Insider is supposed to be about, like, insider tricks and tips and thoughts and everything about the podcasting industry. So we think ours is set. Fourth name for the show. So, you know, don't don't be afraid to change it

up either. But But, also but, I would recommend having a show name that is relevant to if you do have a website, the website title as well, in that URL because people are gonna if you want people to associate the two together, you have to have some connection there. You really do. I do run into customers sometimes where their website's one completely different title than their than their,

show name. And Yeah. Sometimes that works depending on, you know, like, the the thing I'm thinking of is that there's a a veterinarian that has a podcast. Mhmm. They don't use their veterinarian website title for their podcast, but they have a really clever podcast that would definitely it would definitely say, oh, this gotta be a veterinarian. Yeah. But it's they're not the same, and

that does sometimes work. But in most cases, it's good to have your podcast title in your URL, for your home page, your, you know, your landing page. Yep. Because probably, you know, your show and your website, if you have both, the branding's gonna have to be somewhat consistent across those as well. They don't have to be exactly the same, but they they should look related. You know, people should be able to kinda put two and two together there. Talking about show notes, next.

Again, short SEO friendly synopsis of what your episode is about. You know, you could do one or two sentences. You maybe do a couple paragraphs.

Resist the urge to put the entire transcript in your show notes. Please don't, actually. Yeah. As text. Now you you do wanna use a transcript if you're making one, but you use that in the feed, not in the actual show notes, because, you know, how many times are we gonna say, and, and otherwise? You don't need a whole page full of that stuff as show note. Nobody's gonna read that. Also, depending like, if you actually wanted to include the transcript, that could totally mess up your

SEO in the first place. Yeah. It could be so messy that you it doesn't even pick up on the same words that you're saying over and over again that it doesn't even really do anything. Yeah. And it's, you know, too many filler words, things like that. Yeah. But we highly recommend using a transcript for your RSS feed, with whatever, you know, directories and apps and the Blueberry audio player that it works for, just in general because they're nice to have

and also for accessibility. Yeah. I was gonna say good for accessibility. So if someone, you know, wants to consume your content by reading it, they they have access to that. Yeah. But but, again, you don't want that to be what Google tries to index or Apple or anybody else in the search. Yep. So And you could include time stamps and bullet points that kinda helps people. Now, you know, we have a a neat feature with

Blueberry. We also have chapters. So if they land on your page and you have your chapters out, you know, say you interviewed somebody and then you talked about something else, you talked about something else, they could just skip to the part they wanna listen to first. Mhmm. And that, I guess, is okay. I'd rather they listen to the whole thing myself, but, you know Hey. As someone who, like, never watches the full YouTube video, I appreciate chapters and and content. I really do.

And on YouTube, it helps you skip the ads. Yeah. That too. So and then also, you know, links to your guests or websites, related blog posts, any sorta extra stuff you're talking about, it's good to have links in your show notes. Not not all apps will show the links just like Instagram doesn't show links in social posts. Mhmm. You

know, certain apps don't. Apple does. Spotify does. A few of them do, but not all. So, you know, don't don't be alarmed that your links don't show up in in certain apps because certain apps just don't want links. So I have a question about, SEO for the Apple directory specific, like, the Apple app specifically. Can you add, like, a podcast two point o tag to include a cohost, and then will that help the SEO? Well, it

could. It doesn't in Apple. Okay. Because Apple, you know, only takes certain podcast two point o tags. Mhmm. You know, they take they use the transcript and the link tag and some other one other tag, I I guess. And but, yeah, they do not, do the host and cohost thing. They have their own host and cohost thing. Yeah. You have to be invited to. That's that's always something that I kinda wondered about Yeah. Because I was like, I see a lot of shows with them, but it's

definitely not all of them. So that's exactly why I asked. You could if you want, you know, put the, guest's name in the author tag, but don't you know, you have to switch that every time because that's a channel level thing. So your podcast you know? And that may or may not get picked up quickly enough to make it relevant because, you know, Apple might take a while to add that. And then by that time, you'll have another guest in there, and so it's probably not a great idea, but it'd work.

It's a little unnecessary. Somebody really famous, that might work really well. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So for the people who might not be really famous with their podcast, you're probably gonna need a website or some type of page for your show that will help you build your audience. We really recommend that people build a podcast website, you know, solely dedicated to this or incorporate your podcast into an existing website of stuff that you already have.

Make it as simple and as bare bones as you want it to, but that SEO that you're gonna get just from having it exist in the first place is gonna be beneficial. Yeah. And, you know, we, of course, recommend our PowerPress plugin for WordPress, and you can make that website be as simple or as complicated as you want. The the additional benefit for SEO using your own website as where the feed comes from is your domain is in everything in the feed. And so that does help you a tad

bit. You're the origination point rather than a syndication point. But, again, you know, just having a dedicated website with all the links to where people can listen, That's a good thing. You know, depend it doesn't have to be WordPress, but, you know, the best all around is we call it the blueberry way, with a WordPress site. But, again, there's other ways of doing a website, so don't don't be afraid to experiment that way.

Yeah. But one thing I definitely would recommend is, we're gonna have some I mean, we're definitely gonna have some really rich show notes for you this episode of recommendations of what you should do. But my my biggest one is make sure that your website is mobile responsive. It has to work on someone's phone and look pretty and not immediately make them want to leave and bounce off of your website. Because most people at this point are using are googling first on their phone.

Yeah. You know, one thing like that is, you know, WordPress is pretty good. You you have to pick a a theme Mhmm. That is mobile responsive, but it'll look good on the desktop. It'll also look good on a phone. Yep. And, you know, the I I know people that that's their entire Internet is their phone. Yeah. That's Yeah. Phone, and that's way more common than it used to be. And I don't really see that switching at any time soon. Yeah. No. Yeah. You got it in your pocket or whatever. You know?

It's it's it's right there. So, you know, make sure your website looks decent. Yeah. And and this is goes beyond SEO. You know, people are gonna bounce off. As Mackenzie said, you know, I think people are gonna bounce off that looks ugly. You're like, oh, yeah. I'm not gonna go here. It's it's the credibility issue. It's like your reputation. You know? It has to look good, or else you're gonna think it's fake or old or not taken care of at this point.

Right. Right. And, you know, same thing with URL structure on websites, you know, keep it simple. You know, a lot of lot of WordPress sites by default will have either a a question mark equals and a number for the page URL. No. Don't do that. The you go into your permalinks and you set, you set it to title or what I forget what it was. One of one of the settings in there is just the title.

So your title of your host is gonna be your domain slash podcast slash, you know, whatever, and it it's way easier for the search engines to index that stuff and Mhmm. Also gives you an SEO boost if the title is in the actual URL for that podcast episode. Absolutely. That's why we kinda recommend having a website associated to your show. That double whammy there is a positive in this scenario.

Have you ever gone and searched for something and you see this little I forget what they call it, but it'll show the website name, and then it'll show, like, several other pages on that website. It's kind of a, you know, special, structured Yeah. Search result. And if you get to that point, you know you're doing your SEO right. Yep. But, what's cool about that is if someone's looking for a topic and they see your podcast there, they're also

gonna see that you have other episodes. They're gonna see, you know, other pages you might have put on that website about that topic. Yep. Yeah. You know? And I guess the the whole, you know, SEO, yes, we're trying to trick the computers a little bit, but it's also humans. You know, we want humans to be able to use this and find things. And sometimes, you know, you talk to an SEO expert and it's all about tricking the system.

And sometimes it's just, let's make it human readable, and everybody else is gonna you know, the search engines will follow. Yes. They will. Yes. They will. I don't wanna go into too much specifics with optimizing for each directory. That's what the show notes are for. But I just wanna say, in general, for, you know, for Apple and Spotify, They do have slightly different

things that they'll focus on. But when you submit in Blueberry, like, if you're doing direct submission in Blueberry, we're gonna have all of those things that you should fill out anyway. All of the say like, all of the recommendations of what you should be doing, we're gonna already have lined up for you. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and like I said before, don't don't overthink it. You know, it'll look decent in Apple. It'll look decent in Spotify.

It'll look decent in all the other hundred or 200 apps out there that people can listen to podcasts in. Just do what you know, do make sure you fill everything out that you need to fill out. But once you've done that, you know, it's kind of not much else you can do with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. But that does lead us into the next thing that we wanna talk about, which is promotion and link building. So that promotion is being a guest on someone else's show,

repurposing the content that you already have, whether that is, you know, a blog post separate to go with your episodes, turning it into an ebook, you know, just using it on social media, whatever you wanna do. All of that is gonna help your SEO as well. Like we said in that kinda SEO circle of Yeah. If it works over there, it's gonna connect to it over here on this other side. And guest appearances or having other podcasters with similar shows on

your show Yes. Also builds credibility, builds, you know, word-of-mouth. Mhmm. You know, if someone hears you on some other podcast, and they say, hey. I like that person. Let's, let's go find their show. And, you know Yep. So that word-of-mouth stuff is sometimes as important as SEO. And it's and, I mean, it's good too whenever you are trying to add all of these things onto your website or your even just like your, you know, your, Linktree on your social media accounts or something like that.

I mean, we have something called quick links with Blueberry that can you can list whatever URLs that you want. Right. So that is where you should put your press releases about your show or your business or whatever it is. If you were a if you were a guest on a different show, say, like, make note of it on your own website as well. All of this builds up together

for you. And within Blueberry dashboard or PowerPress, there's also ways of putting those links in the metadata with podcast two point o tags, you know, host guest, links to other podcasts. There is a feature there where you can list podcasts you like too. Yeah. So you are doing all of these things properly. You're, you know, doing the SEO. You're working with other people in your niche, all these types of things. Now you have to monitor, measure, and refine.

See what is going well and what is not going well, and are you happy

with the results? So first off, podcast analytics. Oh, yeah. That's not what they say. Yeah. Is this SEO actually getting people to listen to your show? Yeah. But, you know, you wanna measure your growth. You wanna keep track of where people are coming from, that kind of thing, and most hosts, including Blueberry since we pretty much invented the stat system back way way back when.

But, you know, Libsyn, Buzzsprout, Captivate, and all all the major hosts have pretty decent data on downloads, geographic locations, what you know, how the listeners are actually using your show. Yep. You know, Apple and Spotify both have dashboards that tell what happened within those apps. Now don't be alarmed that if what Blueberry says and what Apple says and what Spotify says isn't exactly the same, it's because they have client side data. We get server side data.

So Yep. Being geeky, that is gonna come up somewhat different. Usually, it's higher on Apple and Spotify than it is on Blueberry. But ours are IAB certified. Theirs are not. So Yeah. So Not a big deal. So get your get your podcast analytics. Review those, and then we recommend moving on to your website analytics. Yeah. We we didn't really say this when we

were talking about setting up a website. But when you do set up Google Analytics for your website, do it immediately because you're gonna wanna know, you know, from the jump how things are going. So Sometimes the web analytics are as important or more important if you have a website for your show to to know, you know, hey. I put out on Facebook the direct link to this episode. Yeah. How did it do, you know, as far as people landing on the page? And then you can look and see how the plays were.

You could see, well, 50 people landed on that page, but only 20 listened. You know? And so you compare your your, statistics from your hosting platform to the statistics in Google. They're never gonna be the same again. You know, not everybody hits play on a page when they land on a page. And then once you've looked at your podcast stats and once you've looked at your website stats, that's when you start doing a little bit of AB testing or changes, or you don't change something.

Maybe maybe you just leave this one thing alone. Maybe your social media on TikTok is going really well. So you leave that be. But this is where you're like, okay. The the SEO is not working for the titles. Maybe I should change that. Or, you know, maybe I should change the the about me on my website because no one's going there, or they're going and they're immediately leaving. They're bouncing off of it in two seconds. So this is kinda where you you evaluate what you have and what you

wanna change. Right. And one thing we didn't write down in our show notes, but one one thing I wanna tell people is that the actual file name of your m p three file is not going to ever help you with SEO. That is just a simple file name and make it simple. Because if you make it complicated, you could accidentally duplicate a title, which causes Mhmm. Other problems. You could you know, the title could be too long, and that can cause trouble with certain apps.

So, you know, keep your file names. That's different than the title of the episode. The file name of the episode is not going to to help with SEO. So so don't be ridiculous. It will help with your sanity. So we do recommend Naming is something you don't understand. But Yes. Yes. Like, praise recommend, you know, doing a, you know, just have a naming convention. Yeah. You know? Even if you don't use episode numbers, best way I've done it with with all of mine is I have, like, a three letter

like, Mike Dell's World. That's one of I guess I've had forever. Mhmm. And all my files are MDW and a three digit number dot m p three. Yep. That way I know that's episode 280. And as that. And that's all I need. You know, with this one, we date it, I believe. We do. File names. Probably helps with, like, if I'm out, you know this episode file needs to go on such and such date. Correct. Correct. That way. So you know? But have a naming convention, and don't make it too complicated.

Yeah. Yeah. So to wrap it up, we're kinda gonna go rapid fire a top 10 checklist for podcast SEO success. So, Mike, kick us off. Alright. So the first thing is conduct thorough keyword research. Identify your niches topics and use tools to find popular and long tail keywords. Yes. And then optimize your show and episode titles, prioritize clarity, front load your keywords, and maintain authenticity.

Yep. And write your detailed show notes, don't overdo it, and, transcripts to ensure that they're well structured, keyword rich, and for both readers and search engines. Use that dedicated website. We really recommend it. Create individual episode pages. That's what we do on Podcast Insider. You can see how it looks and include an embedded player with your structured metadata.

Always validate and optimize your RSS feed. Now if you're using Blueberry's tools, we keep it pretty good, but always check it on cast feed validator and other validators, to make sure you don't have any errors that cause you to not go out on a certain platform. So if you're really, really dedicated, you can optimize across the directories. This is kinda what we were talking about before of when you

are submitting. Just make sure you're including the correct information and really just paying attention and using the same keywords across all directories. And encourage reviews and user engagement. Now ratings and reviews don't necessarily help you in the ratings on Apple, but it gives you social proof. Yeah. Someone lands on your Apple listing and you got a whole bunch of good reviews, that just makes them more apt to wanna listen. But It Yeah. It doesn't help you in the ranking.

Yes. It's good for SEO on the Internet. Yeah. You know? But it it's not gonna transfer over into podcast apps. Right. Yes. So alongside that is promote externally. You know? It's not just about your website or, within your podcast show in someone's phone. Blog about other podcasts, about your own episodes, repurpose your content on whatever platforms that you're on. Mhmm. Yeah. Shorts seem to be a big thing now. Are you doing Shorts, Facebook, whatever they call them.

Reels. Reels. There we go. And Instagram reels and that kind of stuff. It it you know, that that's kinda neat. So if you have a, you know, a clip you can use and, you know, whatever graphics, of course, our PAI system, the AI system will generate those for you. So go check that out. Yep. And definitely track your performance using, you know, your host analytics for the podcast, Google Analytics for the website, search console just to see what you're doing.

Definitely, you know, keep track of things. And last but not least, refine and repeat. That's just that's just the nature of having a podcast, refine what you're doing,

tweak underperforming titles, descriptions, show notes, change the way that you're doing your show. Just, you know, make sure that you're still staying relevant with the audience that you have. Right. Well, hey. I think that brings us to the end of our list. We're gonna have extensive show notes over at podcastinsider.com. Thanks for listening, and thanks for being out with me, Mackenzie. Of course. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.

And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com for more information, to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. Check out our latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's Blueberry without the e's. We couldn't afford the e's.