Essential Podcast SEO Strategies To Boost Visibility and Growth
Writing
Starting a B2B podcast is a great way to promote your brand and message. It’s also a perfect way to network and connect with leaders in your industry, but it’s only a powerful tool if the right people are listening.
One strategy you can use to get your podcast in front of new listeners is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is the best way to boost your podcast’s visibility and traffic. In the podcast world, the acronym SEO is sometimes replaced with PVO, or Podcast Visibility Optimization.
Whatever you want to call it, we’re in the wild west right now with podcast SEO, reminiscent of the Google SEO days of the early and mid-2000s. At present, podcast keywords are king. Thankfully, there are some strategic digital marketing concepts you can follow to get your podcast to move up the ranking list in your business category or point of interest.
Spotify and Apple
When it comes to podcasting at the time of writing, in Q4 of 2022, Spotify and Apple Podcasts reign supreme as the two directories with the most traffic. There are differences between the two, but there are many similarities when it comes to strategies to increase your rankings on both platforms.
Name of Your Show
One of the most important choices you can make to increase your chances of ranking high in your industry is the name, or podcast title, of your show. You need to choose your name with your target search terms in mind.
When launching a B2B podcast, people will often come up with a clever name, sometimes industry specific, to call their podcast. Unfortunately, that’s not going to help your rankings.
One example is a show we produce at Content Allies, the Hospitality Leaders podcast. They came up with some clever names at first, like “Checking In” which is a term anyone in the hospitality business will recognize.
Unfortunately, nobody is searching podcast directories for “Checking In.” However, people are searching for “hospitality” and by becoming the Hospitality Leaders podcast, they now rank either at or near number one for the hospitality industry in both podcast directories.
Think about what people in your industry might be searching for. Another example is a company called Meridian Compensation Partners. They work with Fortune 500 companies as executive compensation consultants. We convinced them to use an obvious name for their podcast, the Executive Compensation podcast.
That may sound like a very niche topic, and it is. However, there is a good chance that someone searching for a podcast about executive compensation would be someone that ends up wanting to talk to them about consulting services. In this and many other cases, it’s not the number of listeners you attract that makes your podcast a success, it’s the number of right listeners that make your podcast a success.
In the case above, the podcast gets a lot of traffic from ranking number one for executive compensation. This traffic comes from hiring committees and other professionals who are involved in executive compensation packages on a regular basis.
Keywords in Subtitle
If you want to use a catchy name that you came up with because it matches your branding or is part of the personality of the podcast hosts, then think about using the right keywords in the subtitle. Using our Hospitality Leaders podcast as an example, their subtitle is “Interviews with hotel, event, and food service experts.”
Even if they had decided to go with the name, “Checking In,” the subtitle alone would have added important keywords to help boost their rankings for people searching for podcasts on hotels, events and food service. As it is, they rank for all those keywords in the B2B podcast space.
A real-world example is a podcast called Pearls on, Gloves off. This podcast is powered by Ironclad, which is a large legal contract lifecycle management company. The host, Mary O’Caroll, is somewhat famous in the world of legal operations. She started the legal operations function at Google at a time when legal ops barely existed.
Part of Mary’s personal brand is that she always wears pearls. So Pearls On, Gloves Off is a great name for a podcast that she is going to be hosting for anyone who is familiar with her personality.
However, it isn’t something that people are going to be searching for. In this case, we made sure to put ‘Legal Ops’ in the ‘about section’ or the podcast description to get those keywords into any relevant search queries.
Popularity
Self Promotion
This is the low-hanging fruit of building podcast popularity, but even though it is one of the best ways to get the word out about your podcast, a surprising number of people don’t follow through on it. There are many best practices to promote your podcast with little or no cost, other than time. Examples are:
Newsletters
Social Media
Guest Promotion
We have found that company newsletters are one of the most effective ways to promote your new B2B podcast. Most business owners already have an email list. That list has a certain percentage of subscribers who will be interested in your conversations with industry thought leaders. This presents a great opportunity to include every episode of your podcast, even if it means including several episodes in each newsletter. It’s a fantastic way to get the word out about your podcast to the right people.
Company blogs are also an effective way to promote your podcast, even if your podcast has its own home on the company website or its own podcast website. Blog posts can be written to repurpose the podcast content discussed on each new episode in a way to boost SEO visibility. Not only is it a good idea for podcast promotion, but it’s also a great opportunity to generate quality content. This can be in the form of a useful article for the website and can promote general traffic to all your web pages.
Social media is another free and effective tool to promote your show. Creating engaging social posts with quote blocks, audiograms and video clips can take some time, but the payoff is worth it. If you and your team don’t have that kind of time, consider partnering with a full-service B2B podcasting agency.
In addition, you should tap into the promotion and social media marketing power of the guests on your podcast. Many business leaders are happy to promote their appearance on industry podcasts, whether they do it themselves or pass it on to their marketing team. This results in social media shares, which often get in front of your potential audience.
The key is to make it as easy as possible for them. Provide them with quote blocks, video clips, audiograms and other assets that they can use to promote their appearance. This can provide valuable links back to your podcast which in turn can boost Google search visibility.
Don’t be afraid to reach out to past guests, even if a significant amount of time has passed since their appearance on your podcast. If the subject matter is still relevant and you still have an active podcast, asking them to post about their appearance helps visibility and it is a great way to keep in touch with the industry leaders you’ve already had on your show.
SEO Tools
There are quite a few tools available to help you with keyword research and SEO strategy, like Semrush, SpyFu, Ahrefs, and Content Harmony. These tools were all created for traditional SEO and they all have some limitations when it comes to podcast SEO.
There is one phenomenal tool for podcasters called Voxalyze. It is a podcast-specific tool that is still very much in development, but it looks promising. It’s not as sophisticated as the more established SEO tools, but it lets you see data on keywords, traffic and ranking difficulty to help you shape your podcast growth strategy.
Other Popularity Strategies
Frequency - Make sure you are on a regular publishing schedule and stick to it. It doesn’t matter whether it is weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, as long as you are consistent. The search algorithms seem to reward shows with a consistent publishing schedule.
Ratings and Reviews - Ratings count when it comes to ranking at the top in your B2B podcast category and many people let this simple promotion tool pass them by. The easiest way to get a significant number of five-star ratings, especially for a new show, is to ask team members at your company to listen to your audio content and leave a rating and review. The same goes with friends and family. This simple request can result in dozens of great ratings, which can quickly boost your visibility.
You can also present podcast listeners with a call to action (CTA) to leave a 5-star review. The CTA can appear at the end of each podcast episode. Sometimes there are more pressing or valuable CTAs for the target audience of B2B podcasts, but if it makes sense, ask for those reviews. The possible demographic and geographic diversity you might see in those reviews could boost your visibility significantly.
Metadata
Some companies, especially enterprise companies with well-known brand names within their industry, can benefit from associating their name with their B2B podcast. One example, a podcast we produce at Content Allies, the Meta Business, Innovation and Technology podcast, is a great illustration of a strategic use of the business name in the podcast name. That show started as The Business, Innovation and Technology Podcast, Powered by Facebook. When they rebranded, they moved the new company name to the front, but it works either way. It is such a strong brand that they capitalize on the many podcast searches for the keywords Facebook and Meta.
Episode titles are an opportunity to boost your Google search results. Get specific about the subjects you discuss in the titles of your episodes. For example, if you have a podcast that focuses on car repair shops, don’t fall into the trap of naming your episode something like “A casual conversation with Joe Smith of Joe’s Auto Repair.” Instead, use specific keywords like, “Joe Smith talks about replacing transmissions, catalytic converters and the easy way to diagnose brake problems.”
Consistency and Patience are Key
The biggest factors you need to keep in mind when trying to increase your podcast rankings through SEO and PVO are consistency and patience. Consistency means publishing on a predictable schedule, but it also means being consistent with your messaging and with the keywords you are trying to rank for.
It is rare that any podcast will rank well for more than three to five specific keywords, so choose the words and phrases that are most important for your visibility and message. Use those keywords consistently when writing titles and podcast show notes and you will be rewarded.
Those rewards, in the form of high search rankings, may take more time than you care to wait. That is where patience comes into play. You probably won’t see dramatic results in your rankings for six months, or even a year or more. Remember, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Stick with it and it will work.
Have a topic you want to see us cover on the podcast? Write to our host at jake@contentallies.com
This episode is brought to you by Content Allies.
Content Allies helps B2B companies launch revenue-generating podcasts. From startups to Fortune 500s, we have helped some of the world's leading companies build and run profitable podcasts. Contact us for your free podcast consultation at ContentAllies.com