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SEO for Podcast Hosting: A Journey to Become a Top Rated Podcast

Author :- TickleLife Editorial Team May 15, 2022, 11:49 a.m.
SEO for Podcast Hosting: A Journey to Become a Top Rated Podcast

As you burn the midnight oil, straining your eyes, glaring at your smart gadget's screen to explore the different ways to leverage and scale your podcast, don't forget about SEO. 

Well, SEO has now turned into a household term. But, you have to understand its intricacies to optimize your podcast and turn it into a top-rated podcast. Remember, there is no magic portion or short-cut available to excel in SEO. 

Search Engine Optimization is a way to bring organic traffic to your podcast. For that purpose, you have to work on both on-page SEO and off-page SEO. 

On-page SEO refers to incorporating keywords, writing high-quality content, adding meta tags, titles, keywords, etc. And off-page SEO includes backlinks and social media. It is something that requires a lot of leg work.

Anyway, if you are busy and would like to skim through some essential pointers while working on your podcast's SEO, here they are:

  1. Prioritize the search intent as it is crucial for Google's current Multitask Unified Model or MUM.
  2. Don't forget to optimize your content for voice search, as most people depend upon this technology nowadays. Here, including long-tail keywords in your transcription can be highly beneficial.
  3. Ensure that your platform is mobile-friendly. It is because Google has shifted to a mobile-first indexing format.

Now, look at some ways to improve SEO in detail.

Focus on Keywords While Creating Your Podcast

Creating podcast with the right SEO

Keywords can bring relevance to your podcast episode and enhance its chances of being featured in the search engine. 

Since search engines like Google have started indexing audio content, it can benefit you further by improving your ranking. 

To achieve that, you have to start by finding your target audience. It means you have to look into who searches for your type of content or services online. As of now, you can use different platforms to find these pieces of information, which will help paint a picture of your target audience.

Besides, using tools is an excellent way to explore hyper-relevant search terms. Although most strategists suggest using Google Keyword Planner, it won't be the best tool, especially if you are a creator from the sexual well-being industry. 

From our personal experience, we have found that Google Keyword Planner doesn't provide any data related to sexual well-being or wellness. Besides, you can only find value ranges with this tool.

Anyhow, here are two other tools that can help improve your podcast's SEO.

  1. UberSuggest: It is a decent and affordable tool that can provide keywords ranging from head terms to long-tail phrases. It can offer a lot of suggestions as related keywords. You can also use this tool to look into your competitors.
  2. SEM Rush: With over 20 billion keywords, SEM Rush has a robust filtering feature where you can find data as per search intent metrics. Here, you can discover related keywords, their competition, and their difficulty too.

Apart from these tools, other keyword planners are also there. They can help find your target audience and what they search for too.

Perform Your Research

While creating one of the top-rated podcasts for the sexual well-being industry, you have to prioritize your keywords. While using a tool, you can find thousands of keywords. But, it isn't possible to work on all of them, especially while creating a podcast. 

Therefore, you have to take the necessary steps to shortlist the keywords. For that purpose, you have to maximize your research and analyze different factors associated with the keywords. Mainly, they include the search volume and competition. You can then decide on those relevant keywords that can enhance your chances of ranking.

Another thing that you can do is keyword mapping. Through this, you can assign keywords to specific pages, which is a great way to reduce keyword gaps.

Based on the strategy you employ to improve keyword ranking, you have to analyze if they are working or not from time to time.

Ensure Keywords are in the Correct Place

You have to ensure that you have not just found the keywords for your target audience. Instead, you are using them correctly in different sections. They include:

  1. Headings: You can have your keywords in the different heading tags such as H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.,
  2. Content: In a podcast, you can have keywords in the transcription. Here, you can incorporate synonyms and also LSI keywords to improve ranking.
  3. Images: When it comes to images, keywords can be present in the image file name and alt text. Regarding alt text, you can have them for the thumbnail or other images on your podcast page. It is a minor factor to help improve ranking. Besides, it is best to have high-quality images as it can improve the chances of bringing people to your podcast. Along with the alt text, having a file name related to the image can enhance user-friendliness.
  4. URL: Studies show that having keywords in the URL is an excellent way to improve CTR. Although it isn't an official factor, it can increase credibility.

Bring in Transcription

Transcripts are a great way to optimize your podcast. Here, you can bring relevant keywords to the content and improve it for SEO. However, ensure that you are not keyword stuffing as it can impact your podcast adversely.

When you have audio content, transcription is an excellent way to improve your chances of receiving backlinks from authoritative websites. 

Backlinks are essential as they play an integral role in enhancing off-page SEO and building your platform's domain and page authorities. These factors are crucial for ranking your podcast on the search engine result page.

Besides, transcripts increase searchability, and many people prefer to read while listening to podcasts. Therefore, including transcripts can do good for adult SEO and your audience.

Include Metadata

Metadata refers to the information used to describe your webpage content. In simple terms, it is the summary of your content. There are different types of metadata available, and they are as follows:

  1. Descriptive metadata, which includes title, author, subject, etc.,
  2. Rights such as copyrights, licenses
  3. Technical metadata, including file size, type, and other data
  4. Preservation metadata, such as an item's place hierarchy
  5. Markup language helps with navigation and includes name, date, paragraph, etc.,

When you provide metadata, it increases the chances of discoverability. If you already have a podcast that is live on a website, don't worry. You can still update them from your podcast hosting service or RSS feed. Here, you can make changes to the title tag, description tag, etc.,

These are some ways by which you can enhance your podcast's SEO and increase growth.

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