Optimizing for audio podcasts

Podcasts are a popular medium these days, as a great, relatively low-cost way to engage with your audience. You can make a podcast about every subject imaginable: science, health, arts & culture, family life, news and technology, to name but a few possibilities.

At Yoast, for example, the Yoast academy team releases an internal podcast every Monday to get everyone up to speed on developments in the academy. Since this podcast is for Yoast employees only, it won’t show up in the search engines. But if you’re making a livelihood with your podcasts, you’ll definitely want your podcasts to rank well.

Optimizing your site’s pages for podcasts can be a bit tricky because the bulk of your content will be audio content, which Google can’t listen to. Some general SEO rules still apply, for example, the title of your podcast should be clear and engaging: write titles you’re proud of! And, as always, make sure that your site is user-friendly. But is there anything else you can do to optimize your site for podcasts?

Steve Eisenberg emailed us his question on podcast SEO:

I was wondering if you have some advice on the best way to optimize for audio podcasts using Yoast SEO or another tool.

Watch the video or read the transcript for the answer!

Podcast SEO

“Well, you can use Yoast SEO just fine, but you’re going to need something else, which I don’t necessarily think you’ll like. You’ll need a transcript. This is the same for videos as it is for audio podcasts.

You will need a full transcript because Google really only is good at optimizing and finding content in text. It doesn’t necessarily always find stuff that you’ve spoken about. So, if you have a full transcript, then you can optimize like any other page. Good luck!” 

Read more: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

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