What phase of podcaster needs keyword research?
- Aspiring podcasters: validate your idea to figure out if there’s an audience who would to listen to your podcast
- Solo podcasters: come up with ideas of what your audience might be interested in that you can explain to them
- Interview podcaster: grow your audience, so you can attract quality guests.
There’s a key step that might be missing from your podcast workflow: keyword research.
Benefits of podcast keyword research
Keyword research has two benefits for podcasters:
- Create content people want to hear, and
- Gain new curious listeners, and
- Establish your authority by showing up in Google
Business owners can use podcasts to build trust with their audiences. By adding an extra layer of SEO to their plan, they also establish their authority and earn new listeners.
Unfortunately, podcasting tools (like Apple podcasts or Spotify) aren’t transparent with their data. There isn’t a keyword research software that provides specific podcast search terms.
But we can assume that if people are searching for it on Google, they might listen to a podcast about it. And they could find your show notes, listen to your podcast on that page and become a subscriber. So it is possible to expand your audience by using Google. So how does this work exactly?
Keyword research for aspiring podcasters
If you’re validating topics & audience interest, use a tool like Google Trends.
Most tools share what people have searched over some unknown period of time.
Google Trends shows with you whether more people are looking for it now than they were five years ago. So you can confirm that your topic will hopefully be interesting to people for the long term.
Keyword research for solo podcasts
If you speak solo to your podcast audience, coming up with new ideas can be difficult.When you started you may had plenty of ideas … but eventually you might run out. If that sounds like you, then I would suggest you check out Google Search Console.
Google Search Console displays all ranking search terms for your website, including podcast show notes. There may be sneaky clues that are tangentially related to content that you’ve already created, but you haven’t specifically done a podcast episode about it. So that can be a great place to get new content ideas. And your rank can climb quickly, because you’re already showing up in those search results
Keyword research for interview podcasts
If you’re interviewing a guest, it can be hard to predict exactly what you’re going to be talking about. You’re leaning on their expertise instead of coming into it with a full agenda.
So instead of using keyword research to validate your ideas, or come up with new episode ideas … do the keyword research after you’ve recorded the episode!
Review what you’ve talked about with that guest and then go do some keyword research on those topics. Now your podcast can rank for a greater breadth of topics.
I know sometimes when I’m a guest on podcast, people expect me to talk only about SEO … then we talk about content strategy and conversion rate optimization and chocolate. (I will always talk about chocolate.)
So the interviewer will tie in different keywords than they expected! Now they can include keywords about content strategy that they wouldn’t have expected.
Integrating keywords into your podcast episodes & show notes
Okay, so I have the podcast ready. I know that these are the keywords that I’m targeting. Where do I put that information?
Keyword placement in your podcast title
The first is the way that the episode shows up in the podcast recording devices. Every single place where people can listen to podcasts is a search engine. So Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, they are all search engines.
By including keywords in your episode title, individual episodes can show up for people looking for a topic.
When you’re writing your episode title, write something catchy that people want to open … but also clear about what’s discussed.That way if people are looking through iTunes for a specific topic, they can find one episode and then subscribe to hear more.
If you do interviews, include the name of your guest in the episode title. People searching your guests name can find your podcast episode. Then they can listen to back episodes and subscribe!
Keywords in your show notes
The next place I want you to think about including your keywords is your show notes on your website. The primary audience for your podcast show notes are your listeners! Include information for listeners who want to go deeper.
But your show notes also can show up in search results for the topics that you’re talking about in the episode. Optimizing your show notes follows the same process as your blog posts.
As you’re actually writing your show notes, sprinkle your keyword in these places:
- page heading
- subheadings
- body text
- image alt text
- podcast transcript (if they show up naturally!)
Keywords in your search engine results
Your results on the search page has three parts — SEO Title, permalink, and meta description — and your keyword can go into all three of them:
SEO Title: When you’re building out your show notes, include your keyword in the SEO title. (On WordPress, this is in your SEO plugin. In Squarespace, Shopify, etc there’s an SEO tab on the page settings.)
Permalink: Ideally, include your keyword in the permalink slug (like youramazingpodcast.com/keyword). I know some podcasters like to be able to say, “youramazingpodcast.com/62” in the recording. If that’s your format, that’s okay. But ideally, I’d like to see your keyword in there.
Meta description: Include a little preview of your podcast in that meta description. Uou can include a keyword in there too.