The #1 Mistake Podcasters Make With SEO Ep. 132

Are you making the #1 Podcast SEO mistake that most podcasters make? If so, this is why your podcast isn't growing. Find out what it is, how to fix it, and get more downloads for your show. Podcast SEO is powerful and will help grow your show faster than any other podcast growth strategy. SEO should be the foundation of your podcast content plan. Let me show you how to use it to increase your visibility. 

Transcript

Shure MV7: 0:32

Hi, and welcome back to the simple SEO podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Lindteigen, and I'm so glad to have you here with me today. So are you unknowingly making the biggest podcast SEO mistake? The number one mistake that I see podcasters make is not doing SEO at all. It may be that they don't realize that it's even something they can do or they don't know how. They're intimidated. They're afraid it's hard, like Google, SEO can be. But what I want you to know is that waiting to do SEO on your podcast is hurting your growth and your downloads the same as waiting to do SEO on your blog or your website is hurting you. It's the same thing in podcasting. So. My friend, if you have a podcast or you're planning on launching a podcast and you're not thinking about SEO, you are making a huge mistake, and I want you to understand how important this is. It's also the same with your blog or your website. I want you to really understand that. SEO or search engine optimization, it's about visibility. It's not a little something that we add on at the end. It's something that we do in our foundation so that we can grow. So what I want you to understand that's really important is that SEO impacts your. Podcast or websites ability to be found by the right people. So when we're specific about podcasting, let's just talk for a minute about your name. This is one of the things that I see a lot of questions about. And that's, how do I name my podcast? What do I name my podcast? And what I always say is that it's really important to be clear, not clever or cute. When we are thinking about naming our show, we want to name it for growth. We want people to be able to find it in the podcast apps, which means we need to use keywords. Keywords are just simply the words that your ideal customer would use. So I have a friend who has a beautiful podcast. She originally named it a conversation with a friend or a friend in your ear, something like that. It was sweet. It was cute, but it really didn't tell us anything about the content on that show. And while we all want to have a friend, we all want to have someone to listen to us or to talk to us. It didn't help her ideal customer find her because what she was actually talking about in that podcast was menopause and change of life and becoming an empty nester and all the things that happen to women as they enter that. Second phase of their life where their children are grown and they're starting to leave the nest, they're going away to college, they're getting jobs. But somebody who saw a friend in their ear in the podcast app wasn't going to make that connection. So because of that, she was missing out on potential listeners and growth for her podcast. So. I said, I love you. I want this to succeed. Your name is too cute. You've got to make it something easier to find. So you, my friend, if you're in a situation like that and you have a podcast or you're thinking about a podcast and you're like, this name is so creative, this is so fun. I want you to change it, and I know it feels boring. Mine is simple. SEO, I mean, come on. It definitely feels like a boring name, but it also tells you exactly what it is. It is SEO strategies that are simple. They're good for people who've tried it before, who've run into issues. They're good for beginners. I also talk about online marketing, podcasting course creators, coaches, solopreneurs, et cetera. Like if you are. As somebody who's an SEO professional, an expert who's been in the industry for 20 years like me, you're probably not listening to this podcast because it's not designed for you, and the name tells you that you're looking for the expert conversations. I want you to think about that yourself as you're naming your podcast or as you're thinking, oh, I wonder if I need to change my podcast name. So that's the first thing I want you to think about and to know and understand, is that well optimized podcast name using keywords is really important to your growth. Now, the next things that we wanna do is make sure that you are optimizing your show notes for Google. So rather than just publishing standard show notes or a transcript, I want you to actually. Optimize those following Google, SEO best practices, because again, that's gonna be for Google, it's not gonna be for the podcast app. And when we do podcast, SEO, the SEO, we do on our show, our title, our descriptions, our episodes, et cetera. That's all for the podcast app so that we show up in the app. The SEO that we do on the blog post or the show notes page on our website, we do following Google best practices. So make sure you're using the correct SEO best practices based on which part of your podcast you are optimizing. So create that optimized show notes blog post page, and use your beginner's guide to SEO to optimize that. Make sure you follow the checklist. You've got everything done in the right way there. Then the other thing that you wanna really think about. Is using your keyword research ideas using your blog post. So last week we talked about how to create a keyword list for your website. You can take that keyword list and use it to help with your blog post titles. As well as your podcast episode titles. Now remember, there may be a slight difference between the keyword that you target in Google versus the keyword that you target in the podcast app, because generally speaking, you can rank for more competitive keywords in the podcast app. Like I rank really well for the word SEO in the podcast app. But there's no way in the world that I'm gonna rank for SEO on Google because we've talked about it before. SEO is probably the single most competitive niche because everybody who's creating SEO content, who's targeting SEO is an SEO expert, and most of the ones who rank are the tools because they create huge amounts of content. I am never gonna rank for the word SEO on Google, and I'm okay with that, but I do rank for it in the podcast app, and that's what I want you to understand. Like you may have different keywords based on which side of it you are working on. If you wanna learn really how to figure all of this out, join me in simple podcast, SEO to really figure out how to optimize your podcast. And then simple, SEO content is the one that's gonna teach you what content to create and how to optimize it for your website and your blog. So we really wanna make sure that we're doing that. So we're making sure that we have a good keyword friendly name for our podcast. We are also optimizing our podcast show notes page so that we can rank in Google. And then the third thing I want you to do, I. Is to make sure that you're using keywords in your episode titles and descriptions so that it's easy for people to find your episodes in the podcast app. So for example, rather than creating an episode and calling it my favorite Easy Meal Hacks, you would call it How to Meal Prep for Beginners because. There probably isn't much search volume for Easy Meal hacks, but meal prep for beginners is going to be a keyword people are gonna be searching for. So you really wanna think about that. What are the words that your audience is using and make sure that you are using them. So what I want you to really understand, you're gonna wanna use your keywords naturally. You're gonna use them in your show name, your big keyword, whatever your core idea of your podcast is. Then you're going to want to use your Google keywords, which are probably going to be more long tail. Long tail means they're like four or five, six words, all in a phrase. You're going to use those for your podcast show notes, blog post page. If you want to potentially have your podcast referenced in chat, GPT, and in AI search, which you should, this is where everything is going. Then you're going to wanna make sure that you're formatting your show notes page for AI inclusion. So you wanna make sure you're doing that. You also wanna make sure you are brainstorming your content ideas, using keywords in your titles and your descriptions so that you really make it easy for your audience to find you. Remember, a search engine optimization is all about visibility. It's not about tip. It's not about tricks and hacks and things like that. It's about making it easier for the search engines to understand your content so that they're more likely to show it to the people you're creating it for. It is that connection point between who you are trying to write for and the content that you're creating and your business. And so when you're creating. A content that is going to help your ideal customer that drives traffic to your podcast or your website. You are then able to grow your business because you're being very strategic and I want you to be strategic in the content that you create because that is what is going to make the difference for you, my friend. This will allow you to be less re. Reliant upon social media because if you can get more people downloading your podcast, listening, joining in each week, and more people finding your website or your blog because of the Google SEO that you're doing on your show notes page, you don't have to be on the content creation hamster wheel on the social media side all the time because your business will still grow. So if you need. Either of those freebies, the Beginner's Guide to SEO, that's gonna help with the Google for the show notes page, or the Beginner's Guide to podcast, SEO. Those are both on my website, on the freebies tab, etched marketing.com/freebies. If you're ready to have me walk you through how to do this, then I invite you to join me in either simple podcast, SEO, where you're gonna learn how to do this. It's a self-paced course. It's a small one. It's quick, it's easy. It's gonna walk you through what to do to help your podcast grow. And then if you're ready to really tackle this and learn and understand and grow that website traffic, that's where simple SEO content comes in. So join me in that class. You'll learn what to do for your website, your blog, your overall content strategy, like that's where we really get into the content strategy for Google and ai both. Alright, that is it for today. I will see you back here next week. Bye for now.