Episode 065 - Are Podcasts Still Worth It For My Business_ Simple SEO-Friendly Answers For Beginners
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Welcome to SEO Day Studio with your hosts, the Findability Queen, Denise Millet, and the entrepreneur whisperer, Kim White. This is a space to hear the questions that fellow entrepreneurs have about SEO and get them answered. So many discussions involving techy topics like SEO are loaded with jargon and unnecessary complexity, so much so that anyone outside the tech industry has difficulty getting to the real meaning inside the information.
Denise believes that every entrepreneur can benefit from search engines once they hear how they work in a clear and straightforward way. She is on a mission to help entrepreneurs get the content they spend hours creating included in search engines, so when their customers search online, they're findable because she believes if they can't find you, they can't do business with you.
So stay tuned. The fun starts now.
Welcome back to the SEO Day podcast studio, where we help new business builders get found online without drowning in tech talk. I'm Kim White, and I'm here with the beautiful Findability Queen and SEO guide, Denise Millet. Hi, Denise.
Hi, Kim. Thank you so much for being here with me.
I appreciate you.
Oh, I appreciate you letting me come and play with, in your world, we'll call it. So today we're tackling a big question a lot of people are asking right now: are podcasts still worth it for my business? If you're thinking about starting a podcast or already have one, and you're wondering whether it's really helping, this episode is for you.
Denise, before I get into the questions, what's your short answer? Are podcasts still worth it?
Now, are you saying short answer because I usually give long answers? Fine. The short answer is yes, podcasts can absolutely still be worth it, in my humble opinion, especially if you connect them to your website and SEO instead of treating them like a separate hobby.
They help you build trust with people. You spend more time in, with you in their ears. They give you reusable content you can turn into blogs, emails, posts, and- When you pair each episode with a page on your website, they can help people discover you through search as well.
Love your answer, and I'm gonna say I agree, Denise.
Question number one: If I'm short on time, why would I choose podcasting over blogging or let's say YouTube?
Hmm. Well, you have to look at your strengths and your situation first. If you're more comfortable talking than writing or being on camera, then podcasting might be the easiest way for you to show up consistently.
And, podcast listeners tend to spend longer with each piece of content, which builds a deeper relationship and can make them more likely to take the next step with you. So those are two really important things, and then you can turn those episodes into written show notes on your website.
You're not choosing podcast versus SEO, you're using your podcast to feed your SEO. So those are my reasons.
Great answer. So question number two: How does a podcast actually help my website show up more in search results?
Okay, so the audio alone doesn't, but what you do with it in your site does.
Because the platforms that host podcasts don't always let search go inside and read each episode, so they know that the podcasts themselves exist, but they may not have access to the episodes. So if you give each episode a page on your website with a clear title and a summary, it creates a new piece of content that the search engines can understand and put in their catalog.
then using keywords in your headings and phrases in those show notes and summaries helps search engines match your episodes to the questions people are asking, right? And then linking those episode pages to your services, your offers, your blog, or other content creates the internal linking in your site that shows that you have authority in your topic pretty much.
Love it. So what's the simplest way to turn one podcast episode into content for my website? Ooh,
ooh, this is easy one. You create a simple template, seriously. it's what I do. So you write a clear, descriptive title on the episode page that sounds like something your listener would type into search, not just, episode 12.
Actually put something that they're looking for and that describes what you've just done the episode about, and then add a short paragraph, like with three to five bullet points to what you cover using regular language that includes your main keyword phrases in a natural way. You know, as the teacher said, "Use it in a sentence."
Well, use it in a real sentence, right? And then embed the audio player, in the page so that they can actually play the audio on the website page, right? And then you want a call to action. Tell them where to go next. Tell them the next link to something, like in a blog, like the next thing they could listen to about this, or an offer, or sign up for my email list, or something like that.
always have action on there.
Or a quiz somebody has that's called, DIY SEO Quiz. I'm just saying.
Exactly. Just like that.
Well, let's take a minute to hear a word from our sponsor today.
This episode is brought to you by the Findability Queen, Denise Millet. Visit her YouTube channel, youtube.com/@findabilityqueen, for her collection of short videos answering questions about findability and SEO for entrepreneurs every day.
We're back talking about how podcasts are important for entrepreneurs to use as a marketing tool, and we're so glad you're here with us today. But let's get back into our questions. Question number four: how can I tell if my podcast is bringing in the right listeners who might actually become clients or customers?
Interesting. well, just clarity. You're looking for connections. You're not looking for counts of something or download counts, because a download doesn't tell you who downloaded it. You're never gonna know that, right? So first you ask, new subscribers or new leads or people you talk to how they found you.
And listen for answers like your podcast, or, "I caught your episode about this," or, "I saw a clip of that episode." And that tells you that those people are listening. pay attention to replies to your emails or, if you get instant messages or where they comment in things. If you're on LinkedIn and they talk about a topic that you were talking about and it comes up in conversation, that's really the only way you're going to know.
And then
I guess You could extrapolate this from offers that you include in your show notes. If you see an uptick of interest in clicking on those offers, if you have page views from those. So if you were to have, let's say, a page for a workshop, and you released a podcast episode that talked about that topic, and that was the next step in it, and you were to see page views go up over a week, then you could extrapolate that as a possibility, and then maybe layer on more content to see if it continues or to see if it was a one-off.
you'd have to do testing, and experimenting is basically what I'm going to say.
Love it. Well, question number five: What metrics should I pay attention to so I know whether to keep investing in my podcast, 'cause it is a time investment, without getting obsessed with analytics?
Right. Look, you can keep this light and still be smart about it.
So you look for, as we were talking about, that general upward trend in downloads or visits to the pages for each episode on your website, and you want to... It's not whether a single episode breaks the record, right? It's really a consistent growth over time, I think, is my opinion. And then check which episodes are your top performers, and those topics are clues for what your audience wants more of.
And I guess the last thing would be watch your website and your email list for signs that podcast list- podcast listeners are signing up. So, how can I say this? If you have, a blog post or, an episode talking about... Let's say talking about blogging, like I do, right? And you happen to have a series that goes out over a period of time talking about certain things, and you notice that over a couple weeks you get more signups onto your email list.
I'm saying you're doing experiments to see what increases after you do certain things and watching it over time. But it's not like you're watching statistics on a platform. It's something you check in every week and see where you stand and then see if what you did the previous week had any effect on it
Great answer, Denise.
So Denise, for the listener who's thinking, "I like the idea of podcasting as part of my SEO and content strategy, but I'm still not sure what I really need to understand about SEO if I want to do this myself," what's a good next step?
A great next step is what I created as my SEO quiz. It's for new business owners, entrepreneurs, who want to understand what they actually need to know about SEO, see which parts they can confidently do on their own, and find where they're missing simple, beginner-friendly things they can learn.
Answer seven short questions, and the quiz gives you a clear result about where you stand and what things you might look into, where you should head next, so you don't waste time trying to think you have to do everything at once, 'cause you really don't have to. so if you're building a new business, this is something that you want to understand if you can do and invest time in.
Well, I've taken Denise's SEO quiz, and I think you should, too. You can find the link in the show notes.
Give yourself a few minutes. Answer honestly. Let your results guide your next steps. If the quiz will show you each of the SEO pieces that need your attention and which ones you can safely move to a list for later, while you keep building your podcast and your business.
Denise, thanks for showing us how podcasts can still be worth it when we connect them to our website and SEO, and thank you, sweet listener, for listening to the SEO Day podcast. If this episode helped you, share it with another new business builder who's wondering if starting or continuing a podcast is really worth the effort.
We'll see you on the next episode.
Until next time.
Thank you for joining Denise and Kim in the SEO Day studio for today's discussion. If you would like one of your SEO questions answered in a future episode, head on over to denisemillet.com/questions to let us know. The link is also in the show notes. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the SEO Day podcast.
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