Podcast SEO: How to Rank and Make Your Show Search-Friendly

Every podcast host wants more listeners. So how do you get them?

Sure, you could pay for ads and apply other marketing tactics. But that’s expensive and a short-term mindset. 

The best long-term way to get lots of new listeners for the lifetime of your show is through podcast SEO. 

This doesn’t happen by accident. It’s on you to make sure your podcast is discoverable and search-friendly, which is exactly what I’ll teach you below. 

What is Podcast SEO?

Podcast SEO refers to any strategy aimed at increasing a podcast’s organic visibility through podcast platforms and/or traditional web searches. 

SEO stands for search engine optimization. While it’s traditionally associated with websites taking steps to improve ranking positions via search engines, the exact same principles can be applied to podcasts.

Ultimately, the goal of podcast SEO is to get more organic listeners to your podcast by boosting your discoverability. 

The point of emphasis for this practice is organic. SEO refers strictly to non-paid traffic, meaning you’re not running ads for your position, and you’re not paying for clicks. 

How Does SEO For Podcasts Work?

Every podcast show and episode is packaged with metadata. These elements tell podcast directories and search engines what the content is about.

Search engines aren’t great at analyzing audio in the same way that they do for text. So you’ll need to primarily focus on optimizing your metadata to tell different search engines, “Hey, this is what my show is about. Make sure you display this result when someone searches for it!”

You need to apply podcast SEO to every episode for this strategy to work—not just once for your entire show.

Similar to traditional SEO, clicks and traffic tend to compound exponentially. If a podcast app displays an episode for a related search and tons of people listen to that episode, they’re more likely to display other episodes from your show in the future. 

The Importance of Podcast SEO

There are plenty of ways for people to find new podcasts—but not all of them are free. 

Unlike using podcast advertising to promote your podcast, SEO ensures your podcast is discoverable even after you stop paying for ads. 

You’ll have to put in some time and effort initially to make your show search-friendly. But once you’re ranking for related keywords, you’ll acquire all of those new listeners for free. 

30% of people search the internet to discover new podcasts, and 40% search for podcasts on their preferred podcast app directory (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.). 

Without podcast SEO, you’ll have to rely on either paid ads or other marketing methods to acquire new listeners. It’s much easier to just appear in the research results when someone is browsing for your show topics. 

How to Make Your Podcast Rank For Organic Searches

Whenever I write a new blog post, I always like to see how other experts are covering the topic before sharing my opinion. I don’t want to steal anyone’s thunder or just repeat the same stuff you can find anywhere else.

That said, I was blown away by how complicated so many articles were on this topic. So rather than giving you a formula that will take hundreds of hours to implement, I decided to focus on the essentials.

If you just prioritize the four things below, good things will happen, and your show will get organic clicks. 

Optimize For the Right Channels

Every podcast directory is going to use a slightly different algorithm to rank shows. So you can’t just blindly apply the same strategy across the board and assume it will work.

If your podcast is only available on a single directory, then this will be a bit easier for you (and I’ll cover the platform-specific requirements later on). But if your podcast is on multiple apps, like Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify, you’ll need to take different steps for each one.

It’s also worth noting that your general website SEO strategy doesn’t apply to your podcast. 

You can still attract clicks to your site, which is useful if you have a dedicated page for each podcast episode. But your web traffic doesn’t impact how Apple or Spotify ranks shows. 

YouTube is the exception since those videos will rank in organic Google searches. 

Conduct Keyword Research

Keyword research is crucial for podcast SEO. When you figure out what people are searching for, you can sprinkle those keywords throughout your metadata.

• Podcast title
• Episode title
• Episode description
• Show notes
• Author

You can use keyword research tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush for this stuff. Google Trends is another useful resource to keep in your back pocket. 

Look at search volume and competition for relevant keywords, and try to strike a balance between something that’s topical but has a lower level of competitors. 

Just make sure you don’t lose sight of your audience. The quality of your show shouldn’t have to be sacrificed for SEO purposes. 

I strongly recommend that you try to create evergreen content when you’re recording podcast episodes. This is huge for SEO purposes, as it ensures older episodes are still discoverable and search-friendly. But if you have episodes focused on the 2024 election, that’s quickly going to become yesterday’s news. 

Make Sure the Category is Relevant

This is another example of how you’ll find slight variations depending on where your podcast is available. For example, Apple Podcasts lets you choose up to two categories per show—one primary category and a secondary category. You can also add relevant subcategories for each.

There are over 100 Apple Podcast categories, whereas Spotify is closer to 50, and YouTube has even fewer.

The point is to make due with what you have. I recommend using as many categories, subcategories, or genres as possible for each episode—as long as they’re actually relevant to your show. 

It will backfire if you’re categorizing something incorrectly just for the sake of getting clicks. 

Transcribe Your Episodes

There are several key benefits of transcribing every podcast episode. 

First, remember how I said that search engines don’t do a great job of analyzing audio content? Well, this problem disappears when you submit your transcript. This really tells the platform what your show is about, even if you do a poor job explaining it in the description.

I also like to throw my podcast episodes on my website.

It’s an excuse for something new to get published, and I include the transcription as a blog post along with the audio file. This can help people land on your page via organic web search searches and then eventually open that episode through their preferred podcast platform. 

Podcast SEO for Spotify

Spotify has over 6+ million podcasts and over 40 million people in the US alone listen to at least one episode per month on this platform.

Here are some specific tactics you can leverage for your Spotify SEO strategy: 

• Create and maintain a “show page” (essentially a landing page for your podcast).
• Keep this page up to date and continue to fine-tune it with relevant information and keywords.
• Spotify recommends using the first 20 words of your show descriptions to hook listeners.
• Get straight to the point, and don’t repeat basic information like the episode title or generic description of your show.
• Releasing new episodes on a consistent schedule is better for Spotify’s algorithm. 

Podcast SEO for Apple Podcasts

Apple’s algorithm and search results are slightly different. To succeed here, focus on the following:

• Take advantage of the multiple categories and sub-category opportunities that are available. 
• Structure your metadata in season and episode number format.
• Keywords in your publisher and author field will also impact SEO.
• Show descriptions can be longer and more detailed than other platforms. 
• Try to optimize for “listen now” recommendations. 

You can also check out my guide on Apple Podcasts Connect for more information on managing your show. 

Podcast SEO for YouTube

Uploading your podcasts to YouTube kills two birds with one stone because you can get organic clicks from different search engines. You’ll obviously have people searching for podcasts directly on Google, but those episodes can also rank on organic Google searches.

• Make custom thumbnail images to improve click-through rates within the results.
• Create topic-specific playlists related to groups of episodes.
• Apply other video SEO tactics (like timestamp tags).
• Try to entice people to leave comments to increase engagement, which simultaneously boosts performance in YouTube’s algorithm. 
• Clip the best parts of your podcasts and create YouTube Shorts to try and reach new audiences. 

I have another guide that dives deeper into YouTube optimization tactics that you can also apply to your YouTube podcast SEO. 

Podcast SEO for Google Search

Generally speaking, podcast episodes probably won’t appear in a Google search for basic keywords. Some could have a chance if you add “podcast” to the search term, but again, these are more likely to bring up YouTube videos or landing pages than specific episodes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. 

With this in mind, you can still take steps to make your podcast search-friendly for Google.

• Create a dedicated website for your podcast (or at least a landing page on your existing site).
• In addition to podcasting, publish blog posts that drive traffic to your site (read my guide on podcasting vs. blogging to learn more).
• Publish a new page or blog post for each new episode that includes the episode transcription.
• Manipulate those transcripts to make them search-friendly, like adding H2s, images, and other things to help that content rank. 
• Use schema markup specifically for podcasts. 

Basically, you can just apply general SEO strategies here, knowing that the traffic will go to your site—which may ultimately help people discover your podcast.

Final Thoughts

Unless you’ve already got a big name and massive following, getting people to find your podcast isn’t always easy. 

That’s why you can’t afford to ignore SEO. This is the best long-term way to get your episodes in front of as many people as possible without having to pay for ads.

If you need help with your podcast marketing strategy, I’d be happy to help. Just contact my team here at McDougall Interactive for a free consultation.