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Podcast Playbook: Helping Coaches & Advisors Convert Podcast Content into Clients
3 Overlooked SEO Changes to Make Your Podcast More Discoverable
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Most podcast growth comes down to two Spend your time or spend your money. Guest on other shows, run ads. Post endlessly on social media. These can work if you have unlimited hours or a big marketing budget. But what if you don't have those things? Here's my suggestion. Focus on podcast discoverability or making it easy for people to find your show inside of Apple, Apple, Spotify or other listening apps. And this is a very significant opportunity. Actually, a recent study found that 35% of podcast listeners discover new shows using the search function within their listening platform. Platforms are also starting to recommend podcasts on your home feed. Just like YouTube serves you up videos that you didn't know you needed. So if your show isn't optimized for discoverability, you're missing out on a wave of potential new listeners. So today I'll share three quick changes that you can make in under an hour to get your podcast showing up higher in the search and in front of the right audience. Let's dive in. Real quick before we dive into today's episode. If you want to improve your podcast, I recommend signing up for our email newsletter. Every other week I send an email deep diving into a reader or listener's question. Actually, today's episode about discoverability was inspired by one of those newsletters. I also share a helpful podcast resource and updates on events we're hosting, like our online community meetups. If this sounds interesting, you can sign up using the link in the show notes or@simplepodstudios.com newsletter. Okay, today's episode I promised three quick changes that you can make in under an hour to help your podcast show up higher in search. The goal is that after listening this, you'll spend the next hour putting these three actions into practice. So let's get started and first talk about point number one. And that is to add a title extension to your podcast name. I have seen it over and over again. One of the fastest ways to rank higher end podcast search is to change the name of your podcast to something that is more clear and direct for your podcast listener avatar. But I feel like that's easier said than done. Many shows are named after a larger brand. Maybe it's their business brand name or their social media Instagram account. Or it could be named after something that's really personal or creative for the host and they're really attached to it. Untangling either one of those things to more optimize your podcast name could be a big challenge. And let's be honest, changing your podcast name is a big deal. A full rebrand is going to take some serious thought. You're probably going to have to update your cover art. You're going to want to think through what that name is actually going to be so you don't have to change it again in six months. This is not something that you can or should do in less than an hour, but here's a simple fix. Keep the current name but add an extension. This will make your show more discoverable without having to completely start over. An example of ours is one of our clients shows was named the Best Interest. If I pause there and asked you to take a guess on what that show was about, you might have some guesses that are pretty close. The show name is actually really clever. It was this interesting combination of wordplay between compound interest, the popular personal finance term, and a quote from Benjamin Franklin which said an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. The problem was if you weren't in the know and didn't recognize that this wordplay was at store here, you would have no idea what the podcast was really about by just reading the name. And guess what? The podcast search engines also don't know what your your podcast is about by reading the name. So we asked the creator if we could add a title extension. We simply asked him who is this podcast for? And he gave us the answer that it's for people that are interested in personal finance and investing but have a long term view. So what did we do after we gained that information? We extended the title of the podcast so instead of the Best Interest, it was the Best interest colon Personal Finance for Long Term Investors. Now when people read that show, including the search engine, they had a better idea on who that show is actually for. Clearly it was a personal finance show and it was for people that thought of themselves as long term investors. And this really works for two separate reasons. First, by defining your audience and what they will get from your show, you're going to be adding in keywords that will help the search algorithm better understand who your show is for as well. So we added in personal finance, we also added in Long term investors. Those are both words that now that creator is ranking for within side of search. Another reason why this strategy works is that it converts more people who have come across your podcast in search and because they now better understand the value of their show after reading your title. So not only are title extensions going to help you with the search algorithm, it's also probably got to make it more clear for the potential listener who is looking for a new podcast to listen to so how can you put this into practice? First, walk through an easy formula which is simply who is your audience and what will they get from your podcast? Answer those two questions in the most niche way that you can and you can come up with probably somewhere between a 5 and 10 word title extension. A couple of examples might be career advice for busy professionals seeking work life balance, marketing insights for small business owners, or guided meditation for young mothers. All three of those examples could be added after a show name to give that show more clarity and help them rank better for search within side of those particular words. Once you've come up with your podcast title extension as well, all you need to simply do is go log into your hosting platform, find the name, the cert the field where your podcast name is, and add the extension after that. So it's gotta be in the exact same line as your podcast name. We simply use a colon or dash to separate the two. One thing to note is that some podcast listening platforms do have a character count for their title. I believe Apple is 255 characters, but I kind of like that restriction. If you're adding way more than 255 characters to your title, it's probably not clear and concise enough for this to really be an effective strategy. One more final reason why I love title extensions is it's also a great primer or warmup to the potential podcast rebrand. So our client, the best interest actually did end up fully rebranding his show to personal finance for long term investors. I think it was probably for the better in the long run, but the months leading up to that rebrand we used it as a title extension. It got his current audience familiar with that title. It started also helping him with inside of search and allowed him to get a feel for if he liked this title extension and this eventual podcast name enough to have it fully stick and be a part of his rebrand. All right, point number two is to rearrange your episode title format. This is a super quick easy win that you don't have to put a lot of thought into. A podcast title might include a couple of different elements. Clearly there is the episode title itself, what the episode is going to be about. Sometimes there are sub series or different kind of podcast episodes with inside of your feed that people like to differentiate between solo or series or guest. Sometimes people like to include the guest name and their brand title and a lot of people also include episode numbers. This is always a hot debate whether to include episode numbers or not. I personally like episode numbers I think it makes it easier for me to share and reference episodes and for potential listeners to find those episodes with inside of their podcast players. I just don't think they belong at the front of podcast episodes. So what I mean by this is let's say that you have a episode called how to lead a Team with Confidence, and It is the 12th episode of your podcast. So whenever you are writing out the title for that podcast episode, you're going to write out the word episode and then a space and then the numbers 1 and 2 for 12, and then a colon and then another space, and then you're going to add in your title, which is how to lead a team with Confidence. The problem with this is that search engines will give more weight to the first words in your title. So leading with episode 12 space, waste a ton of valuable space and doesn't help anyone find your episode. You actually waste. What is that, 12 characters there? That's a lot of valuable real estate and the most important real estate of an episode title. So a better format would be to rearrange the episode name and the episode number. So Instead of episode 12, colon, how to lead with confidence, it would be how to lead a team with confidence and a colon or a slash, and then I like to shorten. I never use the full word. I might just put an E there or just drop episode out entirely and just put 12. So it'd be how to Lead a Team with confidence, episode 12, E12, or just the word or the number 12 there. Why this works is that now the keywords that people are actually searching for, which is probably lead or team or confidence, are more front and center and they're carrying more weight. And the words that. That don't mean anything in terms of the search engine, like episode and 12 are near the back, and they are out of the way. Our third and final point here is to add key problem solved to your podcast description. Your podcast description is prime real estate for search, and most podcasters treat it like an afterthought. There are way too many times that I open up a podcast feed and I read the podcast description, and it's one or two sentences about the host and this kind of, like, vague idea of what the show is about. It could be something as simple as, like, welcome to the ABC Show. I'm your host, Justin Peters, and in this podcast, we talk with business owners to uncover their biggest struggles. That podcast description lacks a lot of specificity. Probably the only keywords in there which might be business owners and problems are very hard keywords to rank for, but inside a podcast search. So my suggestion, instead of keeping it short, add more to your podcast description and be even more specific. And one of my favorite ways to do that is by spelling out three to five problems that your podcast will solve for its listeners or the transformation that listeners can expect by consuming your podcast content. Not only is this going to help potential listeners quickly see why they should tune into your show, but it's also going to add key rich context that podcast engines love. So how to do this? You can still lead off with that with a short premise and the key value that your podcast is going to deliver to a podcast listener. I love doing this in two to three sentences so that people can quickly get an idea of what your podcast is about. Then I would add some context about the host and logistics, such as the publishing frequency or any kind of routine episode topics or segments that they can expect in the show. And then the last thing that I would include in your podcast description is a section with these five bullets. And I will typically start this section in a podcast description with a sentence like we'll cover topics like and then dot, dot, dot. And then I start to include the bullets after that. So let's assume that I am working with a LinkedIn expert on his podcast. He works with companies and individuals to help them get more from LinkedIn. So we might sit and strategize what are some of the core problems or transformation that your ideal listener is going to go through or experience. And then I would turn those into bullet points for him. And these bullet points will be very keyword rich so that the podcast search algorithm also knows the types of episode topics that I cover in this podcast. So a few examples might be how to transform your LinkedIn profile into a client magnet. The types of posts that spark real conversation and get reach simple strategies for growing a high quality network on LinkedIn, turning likes and comments into leads and clients, and showing up authentically on LinkedIn without feeling overly corporate. So if you go back and read through some of these bullets, I'm going to add LinkedIn and into my podcast search at least four more times, which is probably one of the key words that I'm trying to rank for with Inside Podcast Search. I also have a couple of other strong words like simple strategies. Growing a high quality network, leads and clients. This is clearly a show for business owners that are using LinkedIn to try to grow leads and clients. And now by adding this to your description, you make it more clear who the show is for, why people should subscribe and honestly listen to the podcast itself and you give the search engines more context in words to work with. So as we're finishing up this episode, those are my three quick changes that you can make to help your podcast show up higher in search. To recap, they are Number one, add a title extension to your podcast name, number two, rearrange your episode title format and number three add key problem solve to your podcast description and what I love about podcast Discoverability is that many of these updates are one time efforts. You only have to spend the next hour making these changes and they're going to keep working for you long after that. I've honestly seen shows grow and simply by focusing on discoverability and getting clear with their podcast messaging. That said, our fastest growing clients combine Discoverability with earned media and paid ads. But Discoverability is probably the best place to start since it takes a little bit of time and really no money. And once you get that dialed in, you can shift your focus and build on the other two. After that, if you still have questions about discoverability, feel free to reach out to me@justinimpleplepodstudios.com that's justinimpleplepod. Or if you're on our email newsletter that's linked in the Show Notes, you can always just hit reply on any of those emails. We've got some great episodes coming up, so make sure to hit the Follow button so you don't miss out on them. Until then, happy podcasting.