How to seo your podcast for more traffic - smooth business podcast

🚀 Just dropped a new podcast episode where I dive deep into the world of SEO for podcasters! 🎙️
I had such a great time chatting about how podcasters can turn their shows into powerful SEO assets, beyond just uploading to iTunes or Spotify.

I broke down:
 ✨ Why your website is your #1 SEO asset (and why you should always publish your episodes there)
✨ How to use keywords + show notes to get more visibility on Google
✨ The truth about backlinks (and how being a podcast guest can skyrocket your SEO)
✨ Why long-tail keywords = more intent + less competition
✨ Easy strategies to repurpose your podcast into content that ranks

If you’ve ever wondered how to get your podcast found by more listeners—or how to turn episodes into traffic-driving machines—this episode is packed with practical, step-by-step tips you can start using right away.

Had an awesome time sharing my process and dropping SEO secrets that podcasters can actually use. 🔑

Check it out and let me know what you think!
 👉 #SEO #Podcasting #DigitalMarketing #ContentStrategy #SEOtips #PodcastSEO

Transcript

0:03

Hey guys. so you've probably heard me talk about creating content using your podcast. And one of the best ways to create content is obviously on your website. And for one of the purposes is creating SEO. And I find that a lot of podcasters, and you probably find this too, Brandon, is that they don't necessarily understand the whole concept of SEO. So of course, welcome Brandon Leieboitz. with SEO optimizers. And so we're going to talk about SEO. Yeah. Thank you for having me on today. You betcha. So for those, maybe that, I mean we're in the business so we can'kind of understand some of these terms, but some podcasters are a little new to, you know, online digital marketing and all those nuances. So can you explain for new podcasters what SEO is? Mhm. The SEO is search engine optimization, which means optimizing websites for search engines, which usually is Google. Google kind of runs everything. So when you search on Google, there's ads at the top, those are all paid ads, but right below the ads are there organic listings, the free listings. So SEO is getting you those free listings on Google, but it doesn't necessarily have to be Google. It could be any website with a search engine. So it could be on Amazon, it could be on Yelp, it could be on social media to be on podcasting platform. So anywh, there's a search feature, there's ways to optimize and try to get more of that free traffic. Yeah, absolutely. And the name of the game is to get more attention for people, finding ways for people to find you. Right. And obviously work with you and so forth. Now we were mentioned earlier that a lot of podcasters don't necessarily publish their content from a podcast on their website. They use like their host or like Libn for example, or just itunes and so forth. would you, how important would you say it is to publish on your website and why? Well, your website is yours, so you own it. So yeah, that's the main reason is you get full control. Everything else, you're just renting space off other website and they could take you down anytime or they could do all these things, but with your website you own that forever. So that's why you want to put everything on your website because then you get full control and you could send people to your website. Instead of sending people to Spotify link and helping Spotify get more traffic, now you're helping website get more traffic, which is the biggest thing you want to promote yourself. all these third Party sites are just ways to hopefully get people to go to your website. Like, social media is just a way that people to hopefully go to your website. All that stuff. You just want to drive traffic to your website ca because that's yours, and you get full control there. I agree. And to me, it's like there's so much real estate on a website for converting a listener to a lead, you know, the sidebar, call to actions and so forth. So to me, it's like it's double duty. M. Yep. But at least you get that full control. And that's. I know. I love that. So when we say, because I've actually had this with. With new clients, and I'm like. And I do podcast leverage audits, and I've said, I'm like, oh, like you need to publish your podcast on your website. And it surprised me that they didn't quite know what that meant. And for me, I kind of say it like, kind of like a blog post, but for the podcast. So how would you frame it and what would you recommend? Pretty much what you said. It's just each episode of your blog should be its own episode of your podcast should be its own blog or its own page. But essentially can just think of it as like a blog and just adding new blog posts. And it's a way to keep your website updated with fresh content as well, because Google likes content. So Y pages for each one also lets you target different keywords and hopefully get you more traffic and visibility on Google doing SEO. Because, yeah, the more pages you have, the more keywords you could target, the more opportunities you have to rank and the more visibility you're going to be able to get it. That's true. And I want to touch upon two, few things. One, show notes and then also keywords. so when, when you're creating a post or blog post or whatever you want to call it for your podcast episode, like, what do you need on that page in order to help with your rankings? the main thing is text. Google can't read images or videos or understand audio yet. They're trying to, but I know they rely on text, so the more text you have, the better. So embedding the audio or the video of the podcast is great, but then you have to have some text that supports it, either a summary, summarizing it. If it's a long podcast, like an hour long podcast, you can just summarize it, have little timestamps for the different sections. But if it's like 10 minutes, then maybe you could transcribe it, but I know after 20, 30 minutes, transcript is going to be really long and might be a little too much. But the more text, the better. Google feeds off text. So if you're writing 100 words on your page, that's great. If you write 400, even better. If you write 1,000, even better. So the more text, the happier Google is going to be. As long as it's original. Can'ty copy page to another? Totally. Is there a like a a word count that is like ideal? Like you shouldn't go this short or you shouldn't go this long or like any guidelines that are specific? Yeah. The best way is to take the keyword that you want to rank for. So if you're trying to rank for whatever it is, Leadership podcast. You could throw that into Google. See who'on that first page of Google. Open up all the websites. On that first page of Google. Skip over the ads. The ads aren't doing SEO, but open up all the websites. Yeah. And you can see how much text each page has and average it out. If you see all the websites have 100 words, then you probably just need 150 words. Everyone has 2,000 words. You probably need 2,000 and 100 words. But it just comes down to how much your competitors have. It's not really one size fits all because imagine you have a website and someone asks what's two plus two? You don't need to write 2,000 words about that. But if someone's saying, how do I fix a flat tire on my car? Maybe write a couple thousand words about that. So y. It just depends on the context of what their question, what they're searching for and how much needs to be there. Because it's not really a one size fits all. A lot of people sayay, that's good to know. Yeah, yeah, that's a great tip. I've never actually done that, Brandon, where it's like see what actually comes up and what is on their pages so that you can compare and yeah, I've never thought about it that way. And so there are so many different kinds of show notes. Do you have a preference on like what is right, what is wrong? Like does it matter if it's bullets? Does it matter if you have the timestamps? I know some people love or hate transcripts. as long as you're adding text, it doesn't matter. Yeah, it just depends on how much time you have if you want to do transcripts or timestamps or bullet Points. But you need to add text. If you're not adding any text. Yeah. It's going to be really tough for this Google or anyone to understand what that page is about or what that podcast is about for sure. And then like for me, I also think about it like who's going to read it? Like is it easy to read? Is it easy to scam? Like just to kind of like look at those factors as well besides Google. because I know when I go to show notes pages and I see transcripts, like my eyes just glaze over. But if I see like captions or quotes or headlines or it's, it's categorized or organized, then I'm like, okay, I can like I like to scim. That's just my preference. No, it's much easier for humans. So you gott get that balance for people. And for Google forah they need all that tax for people. We don't want to just see a big block of attack. So you gott to break it up, make it easy to read and digest and not just have a big chunk of a thousand words. Nobody wants to see that. I know. You got to think about the user experience too, right. M such a big part of it. I know. So ah, I've even had to train my team on this. It's like finding keywords. I find like people get so hung up on that they just take like part of the title and they use that as a keyword. But it like that's, that's not going to work either. So like, can you explain kind of like the logic or how people should think about keywords and then we'll kind of dive into like what tools to use. Keywords are just what you think people are searching. So you got to take a step back and think if you're looking for your product, service or episode or whatever it is that you're promoting, what would you be search, where would you go, what platforms would you be using and what would you be searching? And it's kind of tough, but got to just take a step back and pretend you've never heard of your productct or service. Yeah. Just come with a clean slate, which is tough for a lot of people, but you can just go into Google and search for your keywords and see these on that first page of Google. Yeah. Again, just look at the organic skip over the ads and you could look at the blue clickable link. That's called the SEO title tag and that's where everyone's putting their keywords. So you could quickly research Competitors see what they're doing, because if they're that first page of Google, they're doing something right. So, yeah, look at keywords, get ideas, and then try to figure out which ones are relevant, which ones are not relevant, and then incorporate them into your website. But first, you want to do the keyword research and use tools to make sure that people actually search for these keywords. So there's a ton of different tools out there, but a free one is the Google Keyword Planner. It will show you how many people search for that keyword every single month. So you can see, is this a good keyword or sh. Use a synonym or a plural or singular version? Because those are major differences in the search volume. Yeah. How are the rules of how many letters or words should be in that keyword? Because I know some people like to keep it short and succinct. Some people go longer on the keyword phrase. Like, does it matter? I, should always do longer. Never do one or two word keywords. Those are really broad, generic keywords that have no intent behind them and are hyper competitive. Whereas keywords that are two or more words, less people are going to be using it, but there's intent behind it and less competition. Like, if you're just trying to. If you selling tennis shoes and you want to rank for, like, tennis shoes or men's shoes, that's okay. But what does that keyword mean? It can mean a ton of different things. It doesn't mean they're looking to buy. But if someone searches for men's tennis shoes. Nike size 10 color white. It's a long keyword. Not many people are going to be using it, but they know exactly what they want, what size, what col brand, so they're ready to make a purchase. Whereas someone just searching for tennis shoes. What does that mean? Too many different things. I know. Or tennis shoes for teenagers, or like, whatever it may be. But I love the word that you used, and that was intent. I know when I was training my team, I was like, you know, don't just look at the title that our clients give us. Like, what is the focus of the article? What is the intent behind the article? And then because there's so many, like, angles you can go at, and then to do the search on all those different types, often, sometimes it's quite surprising. You're like, oh, I think this keyword is going to work. And then you're like, oh, no one searches for that. All right. It's just. Yeah, it's. You have to look at the data. Ye Yep. You got look at data. It's all there for you. Just tap into it. So the Google Keyword Planner, it's free and all that data? Yeah, I use signed, up for Uberuggest, Neil Patel's tool. it's super easy to use. I know there's others like ah, Semrush, I think. I don't know. There's a ton of other tools that you can pay for. Do you use some of those? Yeah, but they take all their data from the Google Keyword Planner and just make it look. So it's all from the Google Keyword Planner, all their data, every website y in keyword research and show new numbers, they're all pulling up from Google Keyword Planner or at least 99% of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's from Google. So they're just taking that data and making it look nice into different graphs and charts. But it's all from that Keyword Planner which is 100% free. All those tools that you mentioned are like 100 them expensive, which they work, but it just depends on your budget. And if you're trying to do SEO full time, then buy a tool. If you're just doing it part time or. Yeah, I don't think you really need to buy those tools or buy for like one month and then cancel it. Yeah, that's great to know. Mine thankfully was a good deal. I just paid for the year and I have my whole team use it, so ah, yeah, it was so much easier. now when you're searching for like in those planners and looking at a keyword, like say I did a podcast episode on how to pitch to be on more shows. And so when you're searching those terms like what are you looking for? Like is there. Yeah'll I'll let you kind of explain it. I'm looking for just keywords that are long tail keywords that don't have a lot of search volume. I mean that have a decent amount of search volume. So if it has 0 monthly searches, maybe it's not the best keyword. No, but I always take everything with a grain of salt because sometimes I'll see keywords that have zero searches. I'm like, I search for that keyword all the time, so I don't know why it's showing zero. Oh, interesting. And sometimes zero click search keywords are actually better because there's no competition for them and people still search. I mean nowadays I think half the searches are new that Google sees every single day. That they've never seen before. researchar. That's the biggest one. And misspellings and things like that. Yeah, totally. Is there because like if I search something and there's like, I don't know, 50,000 searches a month on that thing, like is, should I go for something lower? Because like how do you, I guess what I'm asking is how do you know if it's highly competitive and it's worth using or not using? you just take that keyword and search it in Google. So I don't really look at the search volume and say, oh, this has 50,000. This is a great keyword. I look at that and say, all right, let me search in Google, see who's on that first page of Google. And if it's a bunch of big corporations, then maybe I'll skip that keyword. Un. I'm a corporation. But if you're a small medium sized business, then you want to see small, medium sized websites appear. If it's just big, big sites and that's TR you're competing with, it's not competing against Google's, competing against those 10 websites on that first page of Google. Yeah, that's true. I never thought of looking at that way. Like if it's people that are kind of like the same type of business as you, then you have a hope and hack to help rank for it. But if you're, you know, battling Coca Cola, then you kind of have no hope in ranking for whatever that keywordd is. Yep, yep. We got to just search and actually see who's on that first page. That helps out a lot. Yeah, I never thought of looking it that way. I always kind of. Yeah, it's funny how like someone else just has to reframe it differently and it's like, oh, I never thought of looking at it that way. U. do you look at any like competitor, competitor analysis at all? Like to see what they're ranking for or what they're doing? Is that useful at all? Oh, that's all I do is look at the competitors. Because whoever'on that first page of Google, they're doing something right. So. Right. Get their strategaggies and incorporate it into your own website. Look at their keywords, look at their backlinks, look at everything that they've done. Because it's all transparent if you look in the right places. Yeah. What do you find easier? Right. Making the content and then kind of like re jigging it for the keyword or do you create content based on keywords do you know what I'm saying? It's like a little bit of both. Okay. Just depends. Yeah. Each way. Yeah, yeah. Because I know sometimes I've created podcasts and I like my solo episodes and I've searched for specific keywords to see how I can frame that episode. It's harder when you're guesting on a show or they're guesting on yours. But yeah. Have you ever like, for a podcast or would it be useful to see other podcasts that are similar to yours and see what they're doing? Like, is there a way to do that even? M. Mhm. No, definitely. You could just search on like itunes for business podcasts. If you're a business podcast or whatever the keyword is and you can see what other people are using for their titles, descriptions for their closed captions, all that stuff. And just do that competitive analysis because you got, look at the competitors, see what they're doing. Yeah. That's who you're competing with. Yeah. It'll give you lots of ideas too, right? Mhm. Now I know one of the things that, you know, a lot of SEO companies and yourself, and I've heard you on other podcasts, is talking about like backlinks. And so can you explain like what they are, how they work, and how a podcaster who's guesting or hosting can use that to their advantage? So backlinks are clickable links from other websites at point to yours. So if you're reading an article, let's say on the nework times.com and in there it says Brandon Leibboitz and you click on that and it goes to my website. I'd be getting a backlink from the New York timess.com. so the more websites that have clickable links at point to yours, the more trust Google gives to you. It's like a popularity contest. It's like that website is voting for you, saying we trust you, we believe that you are who you say you are. Because Google just doesn't trust any website. So you have to build that trust up. And the way to build trust is through getting backlinks, getting those other websites to mention you. So then really guesting on other people's podcasts, you're naturally creating all those links to your sites, your social media platforms and all that stuff. And that helps build trust. Am I getting that right? Ye. But you don't want to send backlinks to your social media because o yeah, sorry, I m media. So yeah, yeah, you always Want to send everything back to your website? Because if you're like, hey, check me out on Facebook and it's that clickable link to Facebook, then you're helping Facebook rank higher on Google. Yeah, yeah, no thanks. You want yourself to rank higher. You don't want to help Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or Twitter, any, any these. You, want to get your traffic to your website. That makes total sense. Now, I obviously have a business and a podcast. Is it worthwhile to try to have keywords that are like, just my name or like, how would I even go about that, or doesn it t matter? It just depends if you want to brand your name. Like, my name is Brandon Liebowit, so there's not too many of me. So it's pretty easy for me to rank for my keyword. If your name is like John Smith or like Tom Cruise, where you have a name that's a celebrity, then you might want to start branding yourself. But it just comes down to the competition. So I would search in Google, see who shows up. And if you're not appearing, then maybe you want to start putting your name in a little bit more. But if you're already dominating and ranking for all your name variations, then I won't worry about it too much, but just depends on how unique your name is. If your name is unique, you're good to go. If it's kind of popular and more generic, then it's going toa be a lot more work to get you up there. Yeah, for sure. And I don't know, out there, but it's like everyone Googles their name at some point. For me, there's another Lindseay Phillips, but she spells it slightly wrong. And she's famous for like making flip flops. She makes really like she has like a shoe brand, but other than that there's just me and her. So I'm like, whoew? That's good. That makes it easier. Much, much easier. I know, right? So funny. what else is I going to ask you? oh, so you mentioned, that Google only wants text. So does it matter about like embedding the YouTube version of the podcast anywhere, or does it really not factor in? I would embed the video on YouTube as many places possible. Because if you want rank higher on YouTube, Ah, yes. Part of YouTube's algorithm is not backlinks, but embedds. So the more websites embed your video, it's like you're building backlinks to that YouTube. Okay, so I should be giving, my podcast Hosts or guests. The the YouTube link to embed on their site. M ye, yeah. The more places you embed that YouTube, the higher going to rank on YouTube. So sweet deal. Yeah. Everyone wants more visibility on YouTube. YouTube's a of the top three most popular websites out there, so that it is. Oh my. Its search capacity is like a wholeher separate beast. And Google owns YouTube as well. Yeah, Another reason why Google'is s going to push YouTube forever as much as they can. Yeah, that makes sense. So I know it's important to put our podcast episodes on like quote unquote blog posts. Is it important to have a web page that's like about the podcast? or does that even. Does it matter? I mean usually you should put like an about us, contact us. Like a normal website would have all that privacy policy, terms of service. So you want to make your website look real and a real website would have all that stuff. Yeah, it sentence or two about you. But at least you have something there. But I mean like a PA Like I obviously have the about about me but like is it important to have a page that's about your podcast show in general to help rank for your show name or does is is that important? Well, you can incorporate it into the about me page with you have it all on that one. About. Yeah, yeah, us. Yeah, I want to have multiple about us. It's going to confuse people. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. now I know like for me in my WordPress the back end of it, I have SEO Yoast, which is a plugin and tool that helps me with the keywords and so forth. I know there are other tools. Are there any that you recommend and any tips to help SEO? That post, I mean just depends on what platform. If you're on Shopify, they're not going to have all the same plugins. I think Shopify, if you're on Squarespace or Wix and these are all third party tools, it's just what you do with them. Just installing a plugin or a tool, it's going to do nothing really until you do it or use it. So it's all about how you use it, how you put those keywords in it and all, how you do the keyword research, how you incorporate them into your content. But I don't look at those tools too much with what they're telling you to recommend because these tools are just third party tools. They don't know Google'out them. They're just telling you to do stuff that used to work but doesn't necessarily work nowadays. So I don't look at what they're telling you. I just take it with the grain of salt and say, okay, this is good to look at, but I don't trust half thatuff. Okay, that's good to know. So when you are creating that blog post, like I know, you're supposed to put that pepper, that keyword itself into the text throughout, you know, and have it in the title. So what kind of guidelines should we be looking at besides just putting the keyword in the keyword box? There's obviously steps that you need to optimize that post itself. Besides having a lot of text, like, are there things that we should and shouldn't do? you should definitely write for people. Don't worry about putting keywords in there. If your keywords don't pop up in there, then you're probably not writing about that topic. So write for people. Don't worry too much about Google, because nowadays that's not how you should write. Maybe five, ten years ago you write for Google, now you write for people. But the title is the most important place to put the keywords title. 60 characters after that, most platforms will cut it off. And yeah, that's as many keywords as possible without repeating yourself. And that's title for a blog post, a podcast, an article, a video. It doesn't matter any title for anything online. The most important thing is put those keywords in the title, then the content should support it. If the content doesn't support it, then probably got to figure out I'm not writing about the right topic. Let me rewrite this. Because those keywords should naturally just emerge. You don't need to just throw them in there. To throw them in there. That, yeah, for sure way to do it. Which used to work, but doesn't work as well. I know and I remember some people used to actually put the keyword in it, but put it in white text so it's like it's kind of there, but like it's not native to the content. And they thought they could like pull one over Google's eyes. Do you ever hear or heard of that? Yeah. M. No. Google sees all those trick. You can put like font size.001 and then match the color to the background. Yeah, yeah, but Google will see that. I know it's smarter. And how important is the meta description and do you have any tips for that? So m. There's the SEO title tag, which is that blue clickable link in Google that 60 characters that's the most important place to put your keywords. Then that black text underneath that blue clickable link in Google is called the meta description. It's a 160 characters and that should just be like two or three senses that describe what that page is about. What the call to action. Most people don't put a call to action, say like shop now or learn more or call today for a free consultation or whatever it is. But God, put something in there to differentiate yourself. Unfortunately half the time you put a meta description in there, Google's going to just put their own. So yeah, they don't look at what you put anymore. Unfortunately. No. And it won't make sense. I know. It's so hard to keep within the 160 characters. I'll tell you. Ye just two or three sentences. I know. Yeah. Which summarizes. Yeah. Ah, it makes total sense. U any other tips to help podcasters, before we close up? I just say be consistent with it. If you can maybe get like a schedule once a week, once a month, but just have some schedule for people that helps out and cross promote on your social media channels. But ultly send all the traffic back to your website because you should just send people one link. Be like here's where my podcast is. It's on my website. Don't give them 20 different places to go on Spotify. I radio and it gets too confusing. Less is better. Yeah, I love that. That totally helps because I have seen a lot of people put a whole bunch of links, in a post and I'm like, which one do I need to click? And I always default to the website because I like to see the image and I like to see the other stuff and u I actually listen to podcasts on people's websites. I don't listen in itunes or Spotify or. I know that may be weird, but it's what I do wr with that. Nothing wrong at all. So everyone's got the preference and you're just. Those websites get more visibility. So that's doing that. Totally. So helping people's SEO, you're defitely doing a little work, helping them out for sure. Awesome. And so obviously you help entrepreneurs with SEO and their websites. So tell us a little bit more about your business and then where people can find you. Yeah. So for everyone that wants to learn more, I actually creates special gift for them. They go to my website at seoopimizers.com do that's EO O P T I M M I Z Eash R S.com gift and they can find that gift there, along with a bunch of classes I've done over the years that shows, step by step, how to do a lot of stuff that we talked about, all there for free. And also they want to book some time on my calendar for free website analysis. I'm happy to check out the website from an SEO point of view and let them know what's working, what's not working, and think could book some time on my calendar there as well. Perfect. All right. I appreciate your tips, and SEO can feel so daunting. for a lot of new podcasters and entrepreneurs out there. So, Yeah, thanks for breaking it down. Yeah. Thank you for having me on today. All right, see you guys. Bye.