The phrase “Content is King” has become a cliche, but it doesn’t take into account the emergence of countless new types of content.
People consume information in various ways. Some prefer long articles, while others prefer videos or audio. Audio content gained its popularity with the invention of radio and was the ultimate way to consume information for a long time, including through paid advertising.
Today, podcasts are like regularly updated radio shows, and there are several platforms to upload them, including Spotify. Google has created its own platform for podcast creators and listeners, which can be efficiently linked to website promotion efforts on Google. To understand the details, let’s start from the beginning.
How are promoting a website on Google and podcasts related?
Starting and managing a podcast is worth considering, especially since the competition in the field is relatively low. There are over a billion blogs in the world, equating to one blog per every seven people, while there are only about 700,000 podcast units, meaning one podcast for every 10,000 people.
This indicates that podcasts offer an effective way to achieve organic traffic to your website through Google. By creating valuable and interesting content in your field and promoting it, you can achieve organic growth of podcast followers. Additionally, producing a podcast is inexpensive, requiring only one good microphone and basic audio editing software.
The way to bring organic traffic is through podcasting.
In 2019, Google recognised the fast-growing podcast industry and saw an opportunity to integrate it into their search engine.
They wanted users to continue using Google for audio information, so they made a tailored change to the search engine and algorithms, enabling indexing and ranking of podcasts.
Depending on the search term’s specificity, Google can even pull information from certain transcripts, demonstrating the mechanism’s ability to automatically transcribe audio.
While this technology has been used by Google for many years, it is also used on YouTube to transcribe videos. However, merely recording content and uploading it to relevant platforms is insufficient to drive traffic and effectively promote the site on Google. To optimise your podcast in accordance with all the known rules, follow these important tips.
Optimising your podcast according to SEO rules begins with selecting the right topic.
Just like a random piece of content won’t help promote your website on Google, creating a podcast without proper research won’t be effective either. The first step in creating a podcast, like any content, is to conduct thorough research on what’s important, interesting, and relevant in your field. You can use various tools like Google Trends, news searches, and specialised services for this purpose.
Once you’ve found a relevant topic to discuss, the next step is keyword research. It’s important to mention the search term at least once during your podcast, assuming Google transcribes the audio. This will help your podcast rank higher in search results. Therefore, like content writing, your podcast content should be optimized for SEO.
This can also contribute to effective paid promotion efforts as working efficiently in the organic and paid domains will always yield optimal results.
7 tips for podcasting optimisation
- Don’t overdo it with the search term – there’s no need to repeat the search term excessively throughout the podcast. Simply mention it naturally and in context.
- Chapter titles containing the search term may lead to better results – invest the required effort in researching search terms and ensure they are included in the most appropriate chapter titles. This can greatly contribute to Google promotion results.
- Question-based chapter titles receive special emphasis – people like to ask questions, and through voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant, there is a high chance that your podcast will appear as an answer to a question in case of a relevant search.
- Provide long and accurate descriptions – in general, optimization for podcast promotion on Google or for self-promotion is always similar and requires high-quality descriptions. When it comes to specific content types, it is advisable to provide detailed descriptions of both the podcast itself and each chapter. Consider every detail that can be helpful to listeners in understanding what your podcast is about and why they should join in regularly.
- Ensure consistent data across all platforms – podcast details are stored in RSS feeds that are transferred to all platforms. Ensure that the data is identical everywhere it appears so that all listeners on all platforms can easily access and listen to your podcast.
- Graphic design won’t hurt either – even though it is an audio format, a branded image is crucial for branding, content connection, and more. One general image can serve as a framework for all chapter images. Your logo, specific font, color choices – all these will be inseparable from the listening experience of your podcast, so give it special thought.
- Make your audio files accessible to Google bots – as mentioned, Google scans and interprets what is said in your podcasts, and this can work to your advantage. However, to do so, Google bots must have access to your MP3 files. Therefore, ensure that the MP3 files are located in your RSS feed.
Using Google Podcast Manager’s excellent tools
Google has recognized the great potential of podcast platforms and has organised them accordingly, giving us a lot to experiment with. All of these tools are conveniently aggregated in a service called Google Podcast Manager.
For example, you can see the number of times your podcast has appeared to users and how many times they clicked on it when it appeared in search results, and more. The system for podcast creators is a fairly new add-on that was announced in October 2020.
Other important features include:
- You can see what’s working, second by second: you can see the listening process of your followers and know when they start listening and at what point in the podcast they choose to quit.
- Learning about listening habits: the manager shows the different devices through which listeners connect to your podcast: smartphones, smart speakers, or computers.
- You can claim ownership of your podcast and ensure that it appears correctly in Google search results for all its topics and also in Google’s podcast app.
Every good data analysis feature is beneficial for website promotion efforts in Google, as it allows you to better understand your readers/listeners/customers, so it’s worth signing up for the service early on to receive all this interesting statistical information.
Regarding content, the experts behind the scenes are knowledgeable, so if there’s a specific podcast interface that provides important and valuable information for website promoters, we should simply acknowledge and utilize it. Generating a multitude of content pages and promoting them through Google’s tried and true promotion methods can still succeed, despite the highly competitive environment.
Another option is to create a high-quality podcast that will receive a high rating and stream quality organic traffic to our site. Both options are good, and if this is your thing, you can definitely consider the second option, which is also relatively cost-effective.