Content Marketing and SEO Tips for Podcasters
Google has recently started crawling audio material and including podcasts in search results. Strategically implementing content marketing and SEO strategies can help your audience get found and listened to - and help build your business and your brand. Here are my top SEO and podcast marketing, many learned from my podcast production colleague Jason, Director of Phizzy Studios.
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EQUIPMENT
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Use a USB Mic: A high-quality microphone improves the audio quality of your podcast - which is very important to listeners and sponsors! Here is the mic Jason suggests you use is: BLUE Yeti USB Microphone, Midnight, Mic Only (988-000101)
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Plug In Your Headphones: Plug your headphones into your computer even if you're not using them and you're recording with a built-in mic on your computer and don't need headphones. This eliminates the echo.
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Use a Tripod Mic: A microphone with a built-in tripod gives you high sound quality and lets you rotate the mic for a wide angle of vertical adjustment. The tripod mic Jason suggests you use is the MV88+ video kit.
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2-Way Lavalier Mic: Often live podcast interviews are conducted in a busy location, such as a restaurant or a special event. A 2-way lavalier mic will help get the guest's voice louder than the background noise. Jason recommends the PoP voice Premium 16 Feet Dual-Head Lavalier Microphone.
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Tip: Jason suggests you record background noise for 3 -5 seconds, then begin the interview. This will let them get a reading on the sound and digitally minimize the background noise to optimize the audio quality of the podcast.
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Phone Interviews: If you're interviewing a podcast guest over the phone, you'll get the best audio quality both the host and the guest wearing earbuds and using a mic - it will help eliminate noises.
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SEO
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Create a unique podcast page for each episode for show notes. Show notes provide viewers with links and resources discussed in the podcast and additional information that might want to know. The episode show notes page is another opportunity for your podcast to be discovered via Search, so follow SEO and content marketing best practices including:
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use keywords and phrases
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minimum of 300 words per page
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images, videos and user-friendly formatting
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Tip: Show Notes are a great deliverable to podcast sponsors to show you are promoting them!
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Transcribe Your Podcast: A transcription of your podcast is an easy way to create copy for your episode show notes. If you create your podcast without a script, there are tools to help you transcribe your audio. Rev.com and other paid on-demand transcription services can quickly convert your audio or video to text.
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Tip: If your video is on YouTube, you can use their free transcribe tool. You'll have to edit for errors and typos... but it is free!
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Reviews Matter: Ask your audience to subscribe, rate and review your podcast. The more listens and subscribers and the more high reviews and ratings, the easier it is for your podcast to rank and be found. If you have podcast sponsors or advertisers, numbers matter! The more listeners you have, the more money you can make!
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Tip: Every episode, ask listeners to subscribe and review. Not all the podcast listening platforms allow reviews, but many do - including Apple Podcasts!
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Be Consistent: Listeners like to know when the podcast will be available - such as every Thursday at 10am. If possible, post new episodes on a consistent schedule. But if it's not possible to have a regular podcast schedule, post when you can and then promote, Promote, PROMOTE new episodes on social media!
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ANALYTICS
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Podcast analytics help you know what content your listeners do - and don't! - like!
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A podcast host like Libsyn or Podbean can publish, distribute and syndicate your podcast to your preferred podcast players (like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn or Stitcher)
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Podcast hosts will keep track of all downloads from all your podcast players, so you can easily know how many people downloaded or listened to your podcast.
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Tip: If you want to monetize your podcast, most sponsors or advertisers will want to know how many listeners and downloads you have per episode, and where they are listening.
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