Hi there. Welcome to the simple SEO podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Lindteigen and I'm so excited to have you here with me today. So today I want to talk about a different type of SEO. Normally on this podcast, we talk all about Google SEO, but I want to talk about podcast SEO. So if you're a podcaster. You have a podcast, your thinking about having a podcast or you're open to the idea. You're intrigued by the idea of having a podcast. Let's talk about how you can increase your podcast downloads for free. Using podcast, SEO. So today we're going to talk about three ways that you can increase your podcast downloads. So I've been doing this over the course of the last six months and my podcast downloads have increased by five X. So if you're new here, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. You probably found me through apple podcasts app or through searching for something like SEO, keywords, SEO for coaches. SEO for podcasts, something like that probably brought you here to me today or recently. And I'm so glad to have you here and I want to help you learn how to do the same thing. With your podcast, if you don't have a podcast yet. You might want to think about adding one because not only is it really fun, it's a great way to connect with your audience, but it also can be a really powerful tool for your business. So just think about that for a minute. All right. So let's talk about. How we can use SEO and some of what we normally do for Google to grow our show, to grow our podcast downloads. So what I want you to think about first and foremost is your ideal customer. Your ideal listener, who are they? What are they interested in? What do they want to know about? And I want you to make sure that your creating content for your podcast, your show. Has content that there is an audience for, so I want you to really keep focused on them. It's the same as when we talk about creating content for your blog. There's no point in recording a podcast episode that no one is interested in. Or no one is going to listen to, because if there's no interest in it, It's not going to help you connect. It's not going to get people to like and know and trust you. It's not going to help you grow your business. And it's just going to feel like you're talking out there into the void, and you're wondering if anybody is listening and if you're talking about things that no one's interested in. No one's listening. It's the same as ranking for something in Google, where there is no audience, it doesn't help you because nobody's searching for it. So, how do you figure out what topics to talk about? It's gonna be very similar to what we do on our blog. I want you to choose four content, topic, pillars, four areas that you talk about, and I want you to make sure that there's an audience for those categories. Make sure that people are interested in it. So. You need to really know your ideal customer and their questions and their pain points and their concerns. And how you help them so that you can determine what you're going to focus on, what your categories are. Then I want you to do a little bit of keyword research just to make sure. There's some interest in what I'm thinking about. Writing on, you can use your same Google keyword research tools for your podcast. SEO keyword research. We don't have separate podcast, SEO, keyword research tools. We just use the same Google one. So use whichever one you're comfortable with. We don't have specific podcast, SEO, keyword search data or volume at this point in time. But what I'm going to tell you. As you can use the search volume and the data from Google SEO that you would normally use for your website or your blog to help you figure out what to use in your podcast names or what kind of content to create for your podcast. So you want to look for something with search volume. You want to make sure there's interest in it. Now the interesting thing with podcast SEO. SEO is we don't have to worry quite as much about competition. The way that we do on Google SEO. So you can go after some of those bigger keywords, which is kind of fun and it's exciting. It can help you to reach more people in a way that we can't through Google today. So you're going to make sure you've got an audience for your content. You're going to make sure people are interested in what you're talking about. That's the first way that you're going to start to grow your show is just to make sure that you're creating something with value that has an audience. You have people who are interested in it. The next thing you're going to do. And you're probably going to be surprised that I'm going to tell you this is important to growing your show. But that's to publish consistently. You need to make sure that you are releasing a new podcast episode. Each week or every other week, whatever your cadence is that you've determined. Because think about it. Podcasting is something, people listen on the go, they listen in the car, they listen during their run or their walk. They listen during their commute, maybe while they're doing chores or working around the house. So you want to find a way to be fit into their routine. So if you release a podcast, haphazardly, you drop a new episode when you feel like it, or you get inspiration. You're not going to end up in their routine. You want to be able to tell your listeners. And there's a new episode every Tuesday. Get ready that way they know. Hey, that new episode comes out on Tuesdays. I'm going to make a point of listening to it. I want to hear it. You listen to my podcast, you know, there's a new episode every Tuesday. And you get an episode, even though I'm on vacation or I'm out or it's summer break because I batch my content. I recorded ahead of time. Like. Full transparency. I'm recording this on June 4th. You're going to listen to it in mid July, but the only way that I can make sure that you have podcast episodes to listen to every Tuesday is to make sure. That I do my part by batching them. I was not expecting to record today, but we're on summer break. My kid is home with me this week. He's not in camp and I had a friend say, does he want to come over and play and go swimming with my kids this morning? And you better believe. I took advantage of having a quiet house where I could record and get these batched and not have to try to squeeze it in over the next two weeks while he's at camp. So yes. I was happy to make sure he got a ride over there to his friend's house. And he is happy as a clam this morning playing and I'm recording the podcast so that I don't have to stress out and worry. In July and be like, oh my gosh, there's nothing. So make sure you're planning ahead. You're publishing regularly. You're batching. You're doing all of this. To stay on top of things because pod fade is one of the biggest issues that we see a lot of people. Start out strong. They released five episodes, 10 episodes, 12 episodes, and then they kind of fall off because they feel like it hasn't built up yet. They're not getting enough downloads. They thought it would happen faster than this. And then there's no motivation to do it. And my friends, I want you to understand it takes a little while. To grow an audience and to build that connection with people. And you are going to feel like you're podcasting to nobody at first. But unless you keep doing it and you keep optimizing and you keep making sure that you're creating the right type episodes. You're not going to grow. So if you want to grow, make sure you're consistent. Okay. Same as your blog, my friends. Just be consistent, put out your episode or your content once a week. You don't really have to do more than that. You can always test it out and see, I did a test for a while and I did two episodes a week in Q4, starting to do a bit of SEO on those episodes. And in Q1 of 2024, I went to one episode a week, very optimized, very well optimized, following best practices. And I actually tripled my downloads in Q1 with one episode a week versus Q4 with two episodes a week. So more downloads, less work. That's why I'm saying podcast. SEO is amazing and super powerful and will help you grow your show. Faster and easier than a lot of other things. Now, the third thing I want to talk about is something you can actually do for your podcast, SEO. And that is to use. Keywords in your episode titles. So when you're brainstorming your podcast, you're planning out your content. You've already chosen your ideas, your categories that you're going to write about. Or you're going to record on and talk about on your podcast. I want you to also. Look for keywords that you can use as episode titles or in episode titles. And you want to use that keyword at the beginning of the episode title, simply because you want to think about this. Okay. When people are looking to listen to a podcast, they're generally doing it on their phone, which means they're not going to see the whole title. So if you have a keyword, that's going to be intriguing to them. In the beginning of the title, that's going to make them more likely to listen to it when they find it now, using the keyword in the title is going to make it more likely for someone to find your episode when they're searching for something new to listen to in the apple podcast app or the Spotify podcast app, using that key word is going to help you show up. If you're looking at apple podcasts, which is the one that. I focus on because apple podcasts does get the majority of podcast. Uh, traffic the same way that we look at Google. When we talk about the websites or your blogs. In apple podcasts, you have three potential places to rank. You can rank in top results, shows and episodes, and your podcast episodes can show up in both top results and episodes, or your show can rank in the show section. So you have lots of potential visibility when you're using podcast SEO. And one of the things that you can do is to use your keywords in your episode, title. There's other things that you can do, and I'm going to teach that I'm actually working on the. Finishing touches the final touches on simple podcast, SEO. It's a brand new course. I'm hoping to launch it in July. Like I said, I'm recording in June, so we'll see, because it's summer break and I have a nine-year-old and he's home with me half the time, this summer and in camp half the time. So it's just going to depend, but my goal is to get that out to you as soon as possible. So. As soon as it's available, I will let you know, in the interim you can get my three-step podcast, download growth plan. That is available on the freebies tab on the website, etched marketing.com forward slash freebies request a copy of that. And then as soon as simple podcast, SEO is available. You will be the first to know I have recorded the class. Like the class itself is ready to go. It's just getting all the other assets together. The sales page, the free trainings. Anyone who's a course. Creator knows that just getting the course itself done is like half the battle. There's a lot more that goes into actually getting it ready and getting it out there to your audience. And. Summer break with a kid at home is challenging because I'm not working full time. I'm working part-time in the summer. He's in camp two weeks out of the month and at home with me two weeks out of the month. And those months, those weeks that he's home with me. I'm only working two to three hours a day. So I'm, I'm doing as much as I can, but I don't have the same number of hours that I'm used to. So working on that for you for right now, grab the freebie. Again, that's a three-step podcast. Download growth plan. You can get that from the freebies tab@thewebsiteedgemarketing.com forward slash freebies. And you'll be the first to know when simple podcast SEO is ready for enrollment. And that course is amazing. It's going to walk you through exactly what to do on your podcast so that you can get the same type results that I've gotten using search engine optimization for apple podcasts and grow your show to. All right, that's it for now. I will be back here next Tuesday with another Google SEO training. All right, I'll see you soon. Bye for now.