Looking to optimize your podcast on Google with SEO? Google is slowly beginning to rank a number of different media sources including video content, ebooks, podcasts, and more. One of the features that was added in 2017 and amended recently was their rich results for podcasts. Podcast search results show up in a card carousel format above most search engine results page(SERP). If you have a podcast you definitely want to listen up!
This is a search that appears not just in chrome but across any browser, the Google podcast app, the Google search app, Google home and within content actions in Google assistant. You can even pull up this list in android auto.
How to Index your podcast:
If you’ve got a podcast and you’re wondering how you can publish content into google play, the process is pretty straightforward. Having a website that links to your RSS feed and building an RSS feed for your podcast is step numero uno.
Follow the episode-level requirements to begin with and then create a full RSS feed for your podcast. Once you have the RSS feed, you will have a document that will be ready to expand as you publish new episodes.
When you launch the website for your podcast, it’s time to link the RSS feed from the homepage so that it is easily indexed and accessible by Google.
Make sure that your website isn’t blocking any crawlers or users with a password or robots.txt. There are sometimes features on the backend of a site where you check the box if you do not want the crawlers to index the content. Every platform is different. Google yours and make sure you are squared away. Any barrier that prevents someone from accessing your website can also prevent a search engine crawler from accessing your page.
Can I rank my podcast using SEO?
Proper optimization techniques are possible with a podcast. There’s always an opportunity to optimize your podcast. The products themselves are optimized for organic search with the content you are producing. If you are not producing enough content for Google to crawl, index, and rank then you are not going to come up for crap. Simple as that!
For example, if you have a podcast about NFL football then make sure that you are using NFL or football in the title of the episode. This is the simplest way to put it, but obviously it takes a better understanding of SEO or hiring a professional SEO company to help you rank it. Adding a proper index for your podcast or for the full title of your podcast can be helpful for the ranking process.
Making sure that you are following the right format for your podcast pages can also be important. Looking into the structure of the data can be an excellent way to make sure that the queries you are submitting are going to be properly structured.
The best SEO practices for your podcast:
If you are interested in ranking your page more readily you will need to focus on the fundamentals of your podcast and the nature of indexing it. Here are some of the best practices for your podcast:
- Build a dedicated website: Start with a dedicated website for your podcast that’s updated with every episode through an RSS feed.
- Don’t block your content: make sure that there’s no gates or passwords to access your content
- Have a unique page for every episode: If you can write a short content blurb and have a unique page for every episode, it’s possible to index your content much more easily. Google will be able to pick up on the content blurb and rank your episode as it pertains to what the searcher is looking to discover.
- Focus on keywords: keywords that you use in your URL, the title and even the description of the episode can all be helpful for ranking your podcast. Focus on the meta-description and title tags for keywords as well. If you leave this blank you’ll be nowhere to be found. Straight up!
- Don’t title your episodes the same: The title tag and the episode title should never have the same name. Make sure that your indexing every episode with a unique title.
- Build a summary, introduction and about me: If you can have a summary introduction for your podcast and even some information about you as an author, this is something else that can rank your page well.
- Consider transcription: If you have the time, consider transcribing your episodes and keep those on the page. Every word that you enter into the podcast can be indexed this way.
- Submit every podcast to Google play and consider indexing your podcast on other directories. With more directories involved, you Or greater shot at indexing your episodes in search engine results.
If you are serious about podcasting and want to optimize your podcast, it’s very important to get your message heard by properly indexing your page and your podcast. Use some of these top SEO techniques to see greater success with your podcasting career. If you found this article helpful please click share below!!
