Search engines, specifically Google, are one of the most common ways that people find new podcasts. It is important for podcast growth that your podcast shows up when someone searches for it.
Get Your Podcast on Google Podcasts
You may notice that sometimes when you search on Google a podcast episode is ready to play in the search results. If you want that to be possible for your podcast you will need to get your podcast on the Google Podcasts app. Check out our guide here for how to get your podcast on Google Podcasts.
Search Engine Optimization
The term for getting your website or podcast to show up on Google is Search Engine Optimization ( aka SEO ). The goal is to optimize your content so that it shows up for the search terms you want it to.
Google populates its search results by using “crawlers”. These are little robots that “crawl” around the internet reading all of the websites that exist. Google populates it database with all of the pages it crawls. When someone searches for something they serve up the page they think would best answer the searchers question.
Podcast Transcripts
Google is in the early stages of doing the same thing they do for web pages for podcasts. Currently though crawlers have a hard time understanding the content your podcast audio files.
This is where providing a transcript with every podcast episode can help. If you provide a transcript with your podcast, Google has an easier time understanding the content of your podcast. When Google can understand the content of your podcast they can provide your podcast in search results for more search terms
How Do You Create A Podcast Transcript?
There are two ways to create a podcast. You can either type everything up manually, which depending on podcast type can be quite cumbersome. You would either write a script for your podcast prior to recording and use that as your transcript. Or after you are finished recording a podcast you would go back and write down everything that was said.
The other option is to use an AI software tool to transcribe your podcast automatically. At PodServe.fm we provide this service for any user. After you upload a podcast you can click a button and our AI tool will automatically create a podcast transcript of your podcast. You can learn more about PodServe.fm’s podcast transcribing options here.
If you don’t host with PodServe there are other standalone software tools that you can upload your audio to for ai transcription. otter/rev/descript just to name a few.
The benefit of AI transcripts is not only do they transcript all of the audio, they also provide timestamps for when it was said. When this is included in your podcast feed it gives podcast apps the option to add your transcript in real time.
Start A Blog For Your Podcast
Once you have your podcast on Google Podcasts and episodes transcribed, you can increase your chances of showing up in searches by starting a blog to accompany your podcast. The more high quality content that points back to your podcast, whether it be written or audio, the higher chance your podcast shows up in search
Here is a guide on how to start a blog that you can use to get started. A blog can be a great addition to your overall podcast brand. It can increase the chances people find you in search engines and from that increase the desire for someone to want to listen to your podcast.
A blog and a podcast work hand in hand to promote your content and if you have the time they can compliment each other very well.
Tie Your Podcast To Your Website
If you have a website or blog you can tell Google that your website's podcast belongs to you by adding this code to the <head> block of your homepage html:
<link type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate"
title="Your Podcast's Name" href="Your podcast's RSS url"/>
As Google crawls the internet it will automatically tie your podcast to your website. It increases the chances when someone searches for your blog or website, your podcast episodes will show up too.
It Takes Time
Search engine optimization is a marathon not a sprint. It will take a long time for your podcast to start showing up in search. Unfortunately most of the time you can't just create a podcast, put it on Google Podcasts app, transcribe it, create a blog, and automatically show up on all the search engines you would like. At times it can take years before you start showing up in Google. Once you do that it is a great source of free listeners and pays off for years in the future.
That means don't give up when things don't happen as fast as you would like. Eventually things will pick and you will be happy that you did.
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