Ok, ok. Click bait. Fine. But Google’s AI is kind of listening, in that it is creating transcripts of your show for Google search and indexing your show notes to make sure it’s serving up search results that answer questions we humans ask.
This is a good news, bad news kind of thing. Good news is, if you’ve been doing things the right way recording great content with coresponding great show notes (rather than trying to exploit potential SEO holes in the search engines’ algorithms) you’re probably in luck! Google is now including expanded podcasts content within search results. Yeah. That’s kind of a big deal. We all knew this was coming at some point, based on previous moves from the search giant, but it seems to be officially official now.
(Go ahead, we’ll wait while you search for your podcast, or if your lucky a topic you have covered in your show)
Ok, now that the (vanity) searching is done, let’s get down to what it means for podcasters and how you can leverage Google podcast search results to build your podcast audience.
First: for your podcast to show up in search results for a particular search query, your site authority matters. Meaning, does Google think your podcast website is an authority on the topic you want it to? If yes, awesome. If no… well, you’ve got some work to do. But, that work is generally easier to do if it’s on your own website, versus some other podcast hosting platform’s website. Because there are almost certainly spammers on that shared domain, dragging your podcast rankings down into the gutter with them. And The Google knows. So, what’s a podcaster to do? Own your brand and build it the right way on your own website. Blubrry Podcast Hosting is one of the most flexible podcast hosting platforms on the market, and has plenty of built-in SEO tools to help you rise to the top.
Second: include a link to your transcript file of every episode you publish. Sorry, not sorry: there’s simply no excuse for not having a transcript of your podcast episodes. Two reasons: it’s easy & free, and Google will use it as well as the one they create. For the easy & free part, Blubrry has partnered with Audioburst to enable free transcription and social sharing opportunities for all of our hosting customers. It really is that simple. Check out the details here. For the “Google wants it” part, Google’s AI is creating and looking for transcripts and comparing them to your podcast show notes (among other more secret things) to determine how relevant your episode is for a given search query. Give it what it wants, because it’s trying to give your potential audience what they want: great, fresh, relevant content.
Third, and we’ve been beating this proverbial horse dead into the ground for a while now, but you should have excellent show notes. Period. The end. Just do it. Google reads them. Your audience reads them. It’s helps both our forthcoming robot overlords and your audience get more detail about your shows.
Be sure to stay tuned over the coming weeks and months as Google continues to roll out more podcast-related items. They’re attempting to make finding great podcasts as easy as finding great websites, and if you want to ride that wave, you’ve got to play along.