Podcasting is a great way to grow your readership and viewership, but only if you can connect with new audiences. Over 3 billion searches take place on Google on a daily basis, and if you want to rank your podcast higher in the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) results and reach a wider audience, it is important to optimize your podcast transcription for SEO. Podcast transcription helps boost SEO and increase your reach on search engines.
A podcast is a method of delivering audio and video-based content which can be viewed on various devices. However, podcasts are more than just audio content when transcribed. A podcast is an effective marketing tool as it increases accessibility and helps people with hearing impairment and non-English speakers to enjoy the content just like any other listener. When you make the podcast transcript accessible, the search engine bots can crawl the content and index it.
This increases the web traffic to your podcast. Once the podcast is transcribed, it can also be repurposed to create other content such as blogs, social media posts, and infographics. So, transcribing a podcast makes the podcast even more engaging and interesting. Here are some tips to optimize your podcast transcripts for search engines.
- Optimize the title of your podcast: Many marketers focus on optimizing the podcast transcript but ignore the title. The podcast title should be optimized with relevant keywords so that it grabs the attention of the audience.
- Podcast transcripts need not be verbatim: Podcasts are often transcribed into a verbatim format which includes all filler words like “er,” “ugh,” etc. and other background sounds. Verbatim transcription is a sign of good transcription. But the transcript cannot be posted as it is. Some of the paragraphs may be too long with reiterated statements or contain some vague ideas. Readers do not want to waste their time reading such long paragraphs. So, you need to edit those paragraphs and get to the point quickly. Make sure that the podcast is edited very well, make necessary changes, and optimise the podcast for search engines.
- Use relevant keywords in your transcript: The right way to optimize your podcast transcript is by adding relevant keywords. So, do some research, figure out what those keywords are, and find out whether your website is already ranking for some of those keywords, or whether you have new keywords that you want those pages or those posts to be ranking for. To get to the top of search engines, the transcript should have relevant and targeted keywords.
- Add images to your content: Add interesting and relevant images to your podcast transcript. Use competitive snapshots, look for websites that are ranking for the keywords you are targeting, and identify the competitors who have those answer boxes and those featured snippets. Also, consider what the people also ask about features are for those keywords.
- Optimize your content: The next step is to get the transcribed content onto your site as brand-new content, as a blog, or as a page to go with the podcast. You can improve your evergreen content that is not performing well with your optimized transcript. The next step to optimize your content is to add keywords to your metadata, H1 tags, images alt tags and also add any relevant schema.
- Make sure that the page is indexed in Search Console: Once your content is ready, go to Search Console to index that page. Whether it’s a new page or an existing page, either way, drop that URL in there, make sure Google is crawling it, and if it is a new page, make sure it is in your sitemap.
Podcasts have become a great source of content for both audiences and creators. Transcription of your podcast gives you a new way to share your content with people who might not be interested in listening to an audio file but are still interested in what you have to say. By transcribing and optimizing your podcasts with the help of a digital transcription agency, you can reach out to a wider audience and engage with them. This can help Google rank your page higher in search results when someone searches for those terms online. It enables you to gain more visibility, reach out to a wider audience, and share the content better.
