Another day, another Google update! As the leading Austin SEO Company, our SEO experts are constantly reading and updating themselves on the latest search engine updates from Core Algorithm changes to podcast and image changes inside search engine! The latest Google search engine updates with optimizing podcasts! 

Have you ever listened to a podcast? Our Austin SEO Company asked fellow employees this question and a couple of employees have never listened to a podcast! 

Podcasts have been around for quite some time, but it seems that in the last couple of years podcasts have skyrocketed in popularity. With that being said, if you have an interest, hobby or are curious about something there is most likely  a podcast out there for you. It is estimated that 44 percent of Americans listen to podcasts! 

Source/ Source 

As this continues in popularity all around the world, should your business be creating a weekly or daily podcast? 

There are several benefits to podcasts from creating brand awareness and being established as an expert in an industry to boosting your website traffic. 

The benefits of podcasts 

Brand awareness

A podcast can help grow a business’s brand awareness in the same notion that social media helps to create brand awareness. A person who continuously returns to your social media outlets for expert advice needs to revisit your platforms at least seven times. This helps to create a connection between your business and the consumer. 

Increase audience 

If your podcast is speaking directly to your target audience, it will only help to grow brand awareness and your following. If a podcast is optimized for search engine results and distributed across social media channels, more than likely, it will show up in search engines. 

Boosts SEO 

The latest Google update now ranks podcasts that are optimized for search engine results in the first couple of search queries. Now a business is competing against images and podcasts for a first page ranking!

With this new update Google states, “when you’re searching for a podcast about a topic on Google, we’ll show you playbale episode in search result alongside web pages, news, images and videos.”

 Google will use the content of the podcast to know where to rank its search engine. This means Google is now indexing the podcast itself. 

This means if someone is to search “true crime podcasts,” this will show all of the relevant and popular podcasts, but the update will make it so a searcher can just search “true crime” and a list of trending and popular podcasts will appear. This does not mean that the traditional ways of optimizing a podcast is dead. 

With this being stated, it is more important than ever before to optimize a podcast for SEO purposes! The easiest thing to do is create your podcast but let an Austin SEO Company optimize it for search results. 

This is how a podcast can be optimized for search: 

• Keywords

• Transcribe the podcast

• Add a headline, text and meta description

• Share it to social

• Have a great podcast every loves! 

It is apparent that podcasts continue to rise in popularity and are going to be an SEO and digital marketing tool of the future. With this new Google update, this could help out those searching to expand their podcasts or for businesses to break into a new marketing strategy.