Once you’ve produced some quality podcast episodes, you’ll want to optimize them for SEO. It'll help avid listeners find you naturally in organic search results. The alternative would leave all your hard work producing captivating content going unnoticed.

If you’re unsure how to optimize your episodes for SEO, the following article will give you some useful tips.

✴ Use keywords to your advantage

Carefully chosen keywords are the key ingredient for good SEO. Begin by choosing a short keyword that summarizes the content for each of your episodes. If you’re struggling to find the right keywords, you can use services such as Google Search Console. This will help you discover keywords that you aren’t already using but have high search volumes.

Once you’ve selected the most relevant keywords for each episode, you need to naturally implement them into different areas of your content. This includes:

Meta descriptions
Categories
Tags
Transcripts
Image filenames
Episode recaps

You should only aim to include keywords that relate to the subject matter of your episodes. Additionally, avoid using irrelevant keywords as clickbait because it will do more harm than good to your ranking in search engine results.

✴ Create a blog post for each episode

Organic content is one of the best methods of increasing website traffic. Create a short blog post about each episode on your website. It should summarize the content of an episode without giving too much away, to entice readers to find out more. Within your blog post, you’ll need to include your chosen keywords as necessary. Just be careful not to fall into the trap of keyword stuffing as search engines will pick up on this and penalize you.

Every blog post should have its own dedicated page on your website, which will allow you to customize the URL. Implement your chosen keywords into the URL of the page, using hyphens to separate the words. When people type those words into search engines, there is a better chance they’ll be presented with your blog post, helping you attract more podcast listeners naturally.

✴ Optimize the speed of your website

While keywords are extremely important for SEO, the speed of your website plays a vital role as well. The faster your website loads, the better the performance, which translates to improved rankings in search engine results.

✴Choose a good website host

Ensure that your website host delivers a reliable service. Consider how much traffic they can handle and how stable their servers are.

✴ Use a podcast hosting service

It’s better to host your podcast on a podcast hosting service rather than on your own website. The latter will cause your website to slow down considerably. Website visitors can still find your podcast through your website but it will just be uploaded to a dedicated hosting service instead.

✴ Optimize your page code

Try to simplify your website’s code. If you’re unfamiliar with coding, enlist the help of a professional. Some website hosts may even be able to assist you with this.

✴Use smaller image files

Large image files will negatively impact loading speeds. As a result, your website images must be the smallest file size possible, without visibly compromising quality. To do this, compress your images to reduce the file sizes. Many online tools will allow you to do this easily for free.

✴ Declutter your pages

Remove any unnecessary clutter in the form of images, animations, and text to optimize the loading speed of your site. When you deliver all the necessary information in a concise way the benefits are wide-ranging. Compression software will once again be useful for reducing the file size of various website elements.

✴ Use internal links

Internal links are an effective way of getting people to visit more than just one of your web pages and the same approach can be applied to podcast episodes. Leave a link that takes the listener to the next available episode. You can also include links to other suggested episodes, to encourage them to consume more of your content.

Internal links will also help search engine bots crawl your website, helping your podcast rank higher in organic results. It’s important to evenly distribute these links throughout your site so that there isn't a big disparity in the level of authority between your different pages.

✴ Use social media

Active social media engagement will increase your search engine rankings by boosting the profile of your content. Share your podcast episodes on all popular platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Google+ if possible.

Google+ is often overlooked, however, it plays an important role in Google’s search engine results – providing that you have an active following there. On sites like Twitter and Instagram, using relevant hashtags can help extend your reach and encourage more people to engage with your content.

It’s also a good idea to strategically add share buttons for your site visitors’ convenience, as it will drive additional exposure through sharing over time.

✴ Gain some extra backlinks

Backlinks from high-authority websites will improve your SEO. Most podcasts will already have backlinks from podcast directories so this alone won’t be enough to make a notable impact on your rankings.

Some proactiveness will be required. Collaborating with other podcasters who can leave backlinks to your website is just one good idea. It is something a few more guest appearances would easily achieve.

Outreach to high-authority sites where your content would add value is another option. Create a list of companies you’d be interested in establishing a mutually beneficial connection with and send them all a message. You’d be surprised at some of the positive responses you receive.

✴ Maintain your ranking

When you reach one of the top positions in search engine results, you’ll want to maintain your spot after all the hard work you’d have put in to get there. Each new podcast episode needs to follow a structured format using the same SEO techniques as those detailed above. Also, incorporate emotive language and calls-to-action to attract more clicks and keep your content in front of your audience.

✴ Recap

As can be seen, optimizing your episodes for SEO involves a lot of moving parts. First, choose the best keywords for each episode and naturally implement them as needed. Thereafter, cater to other aspects such as website speed, internal links, and backlinks. When your content makes its ascent to the top, the job will not be done. You’ll want to put the work in to ensure you maintain your position and benefit from the extra traffic that higher rankings bring.

Feeling like a marketing pro? Check out these other strategies for growing your podcast.

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How To Optimize Your Episodes For SEO