March 10, 2025 • 30 mins
Hit play now and start optimizing your podcast for growth!
Want more listeners to discover your podcast? It’s time to harness the power of Podcast SEO! In this episode, we break down how to optimize your podcast for search engines and major directories like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
What You’ll Learn:
✔️ The key differences between Podcast SEO and traditional SEO
✔️ How to find and use the right keywords for your episodes
✔️ Best practices for writing SEO-friendly show titles and descriptions
✔️ The importance of transcripts, a podcast website, and structured data
✔️ How to leverage reviews, engagement, and link-building for better visibility
Plus, we’ll share expert insights from SEO pros and proven strategies to boost your podcast’s ranking and attract new listeners. Whether you're just starting or looking to refine your SEO approach, this episode is packed with actionable tips!
Maximize Your Podcast’s Reach with SEO Strategies!
1. Understand Podcast SEO Basics
A. How Podcast SEO Differs from Traditional SEO
Audio vs. text: Traditional SEO relies heavily on text-based content. For podcast SEO, you must create written assets—titles, show notes, descriptions, transcripts—that search engines and podcast directories can crawl.
Platform-specific algorithms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other directories use their own algorithms and ranking factors. Optimizing for each platform is just as critical as optimizing for Google.
Pro Tip (from Semrush): Treat each podcast episode like a web page, with its own optimized metadata and unique URL, so that search engines can better discover and rank each episode.
B. Why Visibility Matters
Attracting new listeners: People searching for topics in your niche can find you via Google or podcast directories—if you’ve optimized well.
Building authority: High visibility and quality content help establish you as a trustworthy voice in your field.
2. Keyword Research for Podcasts
A. Identifying Relevant Keywords
Brainstorm topics: Think about your niche, audience pain points, and trending issues in your industry.
Leverage SEO tools: Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, or Keywords Everywhere can help you find relevant and high-traffic keyword phrases.
Check competitor podcasts: Search for competing podcasts in your field; note what titles and descriptions they use, and see which keywords keep appearing.
Search Engine Journal Insight: Don’t forget “long-tail” keywords or questions (“how to start a food blog podcast,” for example). These more specific queries can attract highly targeted listeners who are looking for exactly what you offer.
B. Where & How to Integrate Keywords
Show title: If your podcast is niche-specific, include a broad keyword (e.g., “The Digital Marketing Masters Podcast”).
Episode titles: Craft specific, keyword-rich episode titles to appeal to searchers (e.g., “SEO Tips for Small Businesses”).
Show notes & descriptions: Summaries that include secondary or related keywords help platforms understand your content’s context.
3. Optimize Podcast Titles & Descriptions
A. Podcast Title
Keep it authentic and concise: Aim for a clear, descriptive title. Don’t keyword-stuff.
Front-load keywords: Placing your main keyword near the beginning can boost visibility in search results.
Branding: Balance discoverability with branding. Make sure the title is recognizable and easy to remember.
B. Episode Descriptions (Show Notes)
Short, SEO-friendly synopsis: Use the first 1–2 sentences to highlight the episode’s main focus with relevant keywords.
Include timestamps or bullet points: This helps both users and algorithms identify crucial segments of your episode.
Add relevant links: Link to guests’ websites or your own related blog posts for additional context (and backlink opportunities if they share your content).
Semrush Note: Including “chapter markers” or “episode sections” ca...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
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,
(00:22):
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
(00:44):
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
(01:06):
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
(01:26):
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
(01:47):
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,
(02:08):
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
(02:29):
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,
(02:51):
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
(03:11):
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,
(03:32):
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.
(03:53):
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,
(04:13):
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.
(04:34):
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.
(04:57):
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,
(05:20):
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
(05:40):
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
(06:02):
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.
(06:25):
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,
(06:48):
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?
(07:09):
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
(07:31):
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
(07:54):
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,
(08:14):
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
(08:34):
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
(08:57):
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
(09:19):
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,
(09:42):
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
(10:04):
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,
(10:26):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:07):
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
(11:28):
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,
(11:49):
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
(12:10):
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
(12:31):
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
(12:52):
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
(13:12):
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,
(13:32):
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.
(13:54):
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.
(14:14):
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
(14:37):
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.
(14:57):
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,
(15:18):
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
(15:39):
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
(16:00):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:43):
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
(17:03):
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,
(17:24):
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
(17:44):
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
(18:05):
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,
(18:26):
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,
(18:47):
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
(19:08):
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
(19:30):
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.
(19:50):
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,
(20:10):
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,
(20:31):
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
(20:53):
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
(21:15):
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
(21:35):
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.
(21:57):
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
(22:18):
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.
(22:38):
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.
(23:01):
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.
(23:22):
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
(23:43):
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,
(24:04):
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.
(24:25):
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
(24:46):
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
(25:07):
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,
(25:28):
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.
(25:49):
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
(26:09):
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.
(26:30):
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.
(26:51):
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
(27:11):
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
(27:33):
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
(27:54):
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
(28:15):
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.
(28:36):
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.
(28:58):
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
(29:20):
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,
(29:40):
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
(30:01):
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
(30:24):
podcast. Visit blueberry.com.
That's Blueberry without the e's. We couldn't afford
the e's.
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,
(00:22):
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
(00:44):
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
(01:06):
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
(01:26):
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
(01:47):
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,
(02:08):
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
(02:29):
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,
(02:51):
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
(03:11):
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,
(03:32):
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.
(03:53):
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,
(04:13):
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.
(04:34):
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.
(04:57):
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,
(05:20):
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
(05:40):
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
(06:02):
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.
(06:25):
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,
(06:48):
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?
(07:09):
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
(07:31):
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
(07:54):
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,
(08:14):
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
(08:34):
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
(08:57):
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
(09:19):
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,
(09:42):
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
(10:04):
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,
(10:26):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:07):
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
(11:28):
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,
(11:49):
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
(12:10):
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
(12:31):
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
(12:52):
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
(13:12):
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,
(13:32):
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.
(13:54):
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.
(14:14):
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
(14:37):
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.
(14:57):
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,
(15:18):
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
(15:39):
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
(16:00):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:43):
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
(17:03):
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,
(17:24):
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
(17:44):
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
(18:05):
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,
(18:26):
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,
(18:47):
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
(19:08):
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
(19:30):
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.
(19:50):
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,
(20:10):
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,
(20:31):
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
(20:53):
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
(21:15):
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
(21:35):
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.
(21:57):
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
(22:18):
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.
(22:38):
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.
(23:01):
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.
(23:22):
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
(23:43):
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,
(24:04):
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.
(24:25):
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
(24:46):
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
(25:07):
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,
(25:28):
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.
(25:49):
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
(26:09):
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.
(26:30):
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.
(26:51):
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
(27:11):
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
(27:33):
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
(27:54):
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
(28:15):
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.
(28:36):
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.
(28:58):
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
(29:20):
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,
(29:40):
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
(30:01):
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
(30:24):
podcast. Visit blueberry.com.
That's Blueberry without the e's. We couldn't afford
the e's.
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