Podcasting makes sense. By adding premium audio content on your blog, you become more than just another site on your niche. Since blogging has exploded like crazy, you need all the edge you could get. However, because podcasts are usually audio content, search engine spiders can’t crawl them as easily as they do blogs. Is it even possible to make your podcasts search engine friendly?
Fortunately, the answer is yes, and here’s how:
1. Name that tune – Think of a good keyword-rich title for your show.
2. Future-proof today - MP3 files have ID3 tags which you can embed with relevant keywords. These include title, artist/author, comments and URL fields. Only a few search engines can read the ID3 tags now, but in the future, this will likely be a standard search parameter.
3. Summarize – Write a synopsis of each podcast show and blog about it. As with basic SEO practice, important keywords should be as high up in the blog post as possible.
4. Transcribe – While we wait for the ideal future when search engines can understand audio, right now the work has to be done manually. Find a good transcription service provider. Divide the transcript up into sections, and give each of them related keyword-rich titles. If it’s a long interview, you can put each section on a separate page.
5. Directories - Submit your podcast site to specialized podcast directories and search engines such as audio.weblogs.com.
6. Publicize – Be sure to let people know that you have a podcast. Not everybody has one, which makes you especially linkworthy than a run-of-the-mill blog.
7. Reach out – You may love hearing your voice, but it’s always best to give your show some variety. From time to time, it wouldn’t hurt to do an interview, particularly if you can convince people who already some street cred in your niche. Don’t worry, though, they would usually jump at the opportunity to be featured. It’s mutually beneficial.
Try these out. Once you get going, I’m sure you’ll come up with your own creative strategies.
