Podcast Discoverability Tips for you! Grow your show! Podcasting tips for entrepreneurs. Ep. 148

Learn how to help your podcast be found by new listeners in the podcast apps. Use these podcast discoverability tips to grow your show. Follow along as I walk you through easy, step-by-step podcast SEO tips for beginners to help you increase your downloads and grow your audience. If you're podcasting and want to grow faster, I'll show you how in today's episode. 

Transcript

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Hi there. Welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk to you about podcast discoverability tips, really things that you can do to help your podcast grow, to help your audience find it easier. Now, if you don't have a podcast yet, and you are a business owner, I really want you. Think about adding one because with all the changes that we're seeing in the world and the shift away from some of the Google search and more people searching chat, GPT and other places, your website is not necessarily going to get the same amount of traffic that it always has. You are very likely, if you've not yet seen a drop in traffic, you probably are going to. For you, a podcast can be an amazing way to boost your discoverability and your online visibility, helping to bring in yet another audience into your world. It also can be a fantastic way of nurturing your audience. We're gonna talk more about that in next week's episode where we really look at. What exactly a podcast can do for you, because I do believe that for most small business owners, a podcast can make a big difference for you from a visibility, discoverability, and nurturing standpoint, meaning bringing people into your world and helping you make more money. So, let's just jump into today. Let's assume you have a podcast. If you don't yet have a podcast, go ahead and listen to this one because I do want you to create one. Alright. So you've got a podcast, maybe people aren't finding it. Maybe you're only getting 30, 40, 50 downloads per episode and you're kind of frustrated because it feels like you're putting the effort in. But you're not getting the reward. The reason you're not getting the reward is you are not helping the apps to understand what your podcast is about. You are not helping people to find it, so we need to do that. What I want you to understand is that SEO search engine optimization, the thing, same thing we talk about all the time for Google and Chat, GPT, and all of that also works amazingly well for podcasts. In fact, the podcast apps themselves are search engines. The thing that I love about podcast SEO is it's actually a lot easier than Google and it works a lot faster. I have personally seen episodes of mine start ranking high in the search results within. 24 hours. Whereas on Google, it's gonna take you months to get that traffic most of the time. But that visibility can be really quick with podcast apps. So I want you to like understand, most people don't know that podcast, SEO is even a thing that it works. And what I want you to understand as an online marketer, as a business owner, we can pretty much optimize for search. Anywhere that our ideal customer is spending time, we can optimize for search on Google Chat, GPT podcasts. You can even optimize for search on social media, making it easier to connect the right person with the content that you're creating for them. There's no point in creating content and not optimizing it because if you do that, you're just wasting your time and effort. So don't podcast without doing SEO. Don't write a blog without doing SEO. Don't have a website without doing SEO. I probably don't need to keep saying that, do I? So what I really want you to understand is how important. A search engine optimization is to your podcast's performance. So if you want your podcast to be discovered, you want new people to find you. You want to bring brand new people into your world, and you want your downloads to grow, you need to optimize your show. It's not super complicated. It doesn't take a long time. It's a very. Easy process. Once you understand how it works, you are going to choose keywords and you really wanna think about your ideal customer. Like what keywords would they use, how would they talk, what questions might they ask? And we're gonna use those in very specific places because most of the time when podcasts are not growing, I see the same handful of issues. And so let's talk about what those issues are, and then I want you to remember what I said about keywords. Keywords are gonna be very important for podcast, SEO. So. When podcasts are stagnant, when they don't grow, when they don't get listened to by new people, generally they're making some of these same simple prob problems, so, or mistakes. The first one is that their show title is cutesy, or it's vague, or. It just really doesn't say what it is. It doesn't tell you what the show is about. What you need to think about here is what is your ideal customer? What are they looking for? What do they wanna learn about? What are they searching about? And then if it's something where you are very niche specific and you can tie it to your niche, that would be an even better thing to do. So rather than. Naming something. Let's say you're talking about sourdough bread baking, rather than naming your podcast episode like, um, kitchen Love. That tells me nothing Kitchen love. What in the world is that about? I have no idea that that's about sourdough bread baking. But if you named your podcast Sourdough with Sarah, let's say your name's Sarah, and you create sourdough sourdough with Sarah or sourdough. Baking for beginners, something like that, that is super straightforward, that's going to help you sourdough. Baking for beginners is probably the best of those options because not only does it tell me it's sourdough baking, like sourdough bread, baking tips, but it's for beginners. So you really wanna think about your ideal customer. Who are they? What questions might they have? What are they interested in? You want them to really be able to see themselves and be like, oh yeah, I totally identify as that. I am a beginner and I want to learn how to make sourdough, or I really want to learn how to make sourdough. I've never done it before. I've definitely am a beginner. You want them to be able to see themselves in there. Don't be cutesy. Don't be vague, like it's gonna feel boring. There's a reason my podcast is called Simple Marketing and SEO. And it's online marketing tips for entrepreneurs. Hello. You are an entrepreneur. You are doing online marketing, and you'd like it to be simple and easy to understand, right? Okay. That's why that's the name of my show. The next thing that we wanna look at is episode titles, and we wanna make sure that they are searchable, not just fun. So sometimes we'll see show titles, things like, let's chat about growth. Cool. Except that tells me nothing as a listener. So if I see that in the podcast app, I probably am not gonna listen to that unless it's an episode that it's a show that I'm already listening to. And remember, we're talking about discoverability. We want new people to find your show and listen to it. So a better name for that would be something like, let's chat about business growth as a new life coach. Now, if I'm a new life coach and I see that and I'm like searching for business tips or life coach business tips, something like that, and it pops up and I'm like, oh, business growth for a new life coach, yes, I need that. And then I'm more likely to listen to it. The next thing that we see, or that I see are episode descriptions that are not descriptive. You're so worried about giving away what's in the show that you say nothing, or you use so much unnecessary fluff that again, you say nothing. Don't worry about giving away too much. I mean, don't give the spoilers, don't say exactly what's going on. But be descriptive and make it helpful. Think about it, if you were the person reading this description, would you want to listen to the show? Would you want to invest your time based on that description? Would it help that one person, that best ideal customer that you have? The other issue that I see, and this I see more often than not with podcasting, and it's something we really wanna think about, especially when we're podcasting for business. We're not just podcasting for the heck of it. We are podcasting for business, which means we need to be strategic, we need to have very clear content pillars. We need to be. Consistent in what we're creating, what we're talking about, so that when somebody comes in and they listen, and let's say they see that post on business growth for new life coaches, they should be able to expect that next week's episode is also going to be out. About business, and it's probably going to be about life coaches depending on what angle your actual podcast is. Now, if I come in, because I'm interested in business growth tips for new life coaches, and next week's episode is from your sourdough bread baking. Podcast, but you've got it here. Like you're talking about all sorts of different things. I am not interested in sourdough bread baking. I'm interested in business tips. And so now why am I listening to this podcast? I'm probably not going to, so we really want to think about. Being consistent and choosing those content pillars. I always tell my students, choose four, especially if we're gonna do weekly content, four content pillars. That helps you create content on a weekly basis, touching on different areas that tie back to your business. The other thing you wanna think about, because you're doing this for your business, you want to make sure that you are generating interest traffic leads. And ultimately sales from the right people. So if you are laying out your plan for your content, make sure you think about how this ties to your products or services. You want to make sure that you are keeping your one ideal customer in mind and thinking about them and what information do they need and what questions do they have and how do you help them because they are the person that you are creating this post. Four, this podcast, episode four. So I want you to make sure that you are doing that and you're really focusing on them and you are tying back to your business. So make sure your episodes make sense and align with your products and services. Otherwise, you are gonna create a podcast that is a hobby, and if you have a business and you want it to generate leads, that's going to be very important. Another tip. For you from a discoverability standpoint is keep your episodes short and sweet, the sweet spot for discoverability, for new listeners, right in that 10 to 15 minute range because it's not too much of a commitment. That's why my episodes are all short. I very seldom hit the 20 minute mark and it is deliberate because I want new people to be able to find my show, look at it, and be like. Yeah, I see myself in that title. Yes, I'm interested in learning that. And oh, it's 12 minutes. That's good. I'm willing to give somebody 12 minutes. I will give her a try. Do that because it's easier to commit to 10, 12, 15 minutes than it is to commit to 30, 45, 60. So keep'em short and sweet when you're looking to really be discovered in the apps, it does help. And then if you're curious like what you can look at, how you can kind of do a quick review of your podcast, just take a look at your last couple of episodes. What are they titled? Do they make sense? Do they align with your content? Do they align with your products and services, et cetera? If you really wanna learn how to do this, and I highly encourage you to do it, because having a podcast is one of the best things I've done for my business, and I believe very strongly that it could be fantastic for your business too. Especially like we talked about. We're in what people are terming a trust recession. People need more engagement with our content. They need to get to know us and like us and trust us and all of that. And your podcast can be an amazing nurturing tool to help you with that. What I want you to do. Is take simple podcast, SEO. It is a self-study course. It's only$297, so it's a very low price point. It's a low investment, but it's going to walk you through how to do this and it's gonna show you what to do from a podcast art standpoint. Podcast titles, names. Episodes, how to plan your content. If you don't yet have a podcast, there's even a bonus in there that's like a Kickstarter to walk you through, like the tech stack, how do I record and what do I use and how do you map it out, and how do you start a podcast? All of that. You don't need a big, giant involved, expensive podcasting course. Okay? There's a reason that I made it.$297. It really doesn't need to be super big and involved. But let me walk you through that and teach you exactly what I've done to turn my podcast into a top 10% podcast. It is continuing to grow, and my downloads grow every single month quite significantly. So let me teach you how to turn your podcast into a fantastic visibility and nurturing tool for your business. Just take that class real quick. It'll be super easy. Go to et marketing.com/enroll and you will find that. Podcast course, and like I said, it's self-study. You don't need a support group for that one. It's, it's pretty straightforward. I'll explain it to you. You'll be able to figure it out and get your podcast discovered faster. Alright, that's it for today. I will see you back here next week. Bye for now.