Episode 066 - Turn Your Podcast Into Searchable Website Traffic _For Beginning Entrepreneurs_
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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 fun 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 your findability queen and your SEO guide, Denise Millet. Hi, Denise.
Hi, Kim. So glad you're here with me today. Thank you.
I love being here, I just want to say.
And if you're already... If you've already started a podcast or you're thinking about launching one, you might be wondering, "Is this actually helping people find my website, or is it just something people listen to and then forget?" Well, today we're talking about how to turn your podcast into real searchable website traffic.
Denise, before I get into the questions, what's the big idea behind using a podcast to bring people to your site?
Okay. I like that. The big idea is that your podcast shouldn't live only in the podcast apps or platforms. When you give each- Episode a home on your website. You write a clear summary, you link back to it, you turn the episodes into SEO assets that search engines can see, not just audio files.
And that means you have more chances for people to discover you through search engines, and more people landing on your site where they can actually take the next step with you.
I love it. So if they find you, they can pay you for what you're doing. I just want to mention that,
so. Absolutely.
Question number one: what's the simplest way to turn a podcast episode into SEO-friendly show notes or a blog post on my website?
Great. Think of a simple, repeatable layout. That's what we advise a lot of people to do when they're creating their content. You don't need it to be this in-depth thing. You just need to have... Do the same thing for each episode, because the consistency is going to help you get it done, too. Give the episode its own page with a clear, descriptive title that reflects what it's really about, not just, the episode number, which I hate when people waste those characters on episode 12, right?
Then just write a short intro paragraph with three to five bullet points about what you cover using regular language, using a keyword, which is what your people type in search to look for the answer that you're giving them in the podcast episode, right? And then you want to put the techie term, embed the player for the audio on the page.
And a lot of website builders have this. You just create a section for audio, and you tell it what the... Link it to the, where you host the podcast, and they'll play it when someone sees it there. And then you have to have a call to action at the end of everything. You have to tell them what to do next, if it's go to the next episode, if it's go to an offer, if it's sign up to your email list.
What is the thing you want them to do to get more from you?
Love it. So question number two: how detailed do my show notes need to be for Google to care about them? And do I need full transcripts as a beginner?
Hmm. Okay. Let's be honest, you could start simple and build up later. You don't have to have this huge plan from day one because it's going to change based on what you see people get out of it when you see your views and things.
So first, just focus on what we just talked about, the title, the summary paragraph, some bullet points, and that enough gives the search engine useful things to figure out what it is. And then
Oh gosh, Kim. So I guess what I'm thinking about is the headings and titles you use on a webpage, the formatting. So the things that you actually call a heading and a subheading. When you put those into the text, it gives an importance to a search engine to know that is important. So let's say you have a podcast episode and you talk about three things.
Having a subheading for each one of the three kind of gives an outline for search engines to know those three things are important, and those three things could be , related to what people are searching for. So that helps the formatting. the transcript question. So I always include a full transcript on the page of every episode because there are people that read, and there are people that listen, and there are people that skim.
And sometimes you don't know what they're going to want to do. But I figure if I put the text out there, that a search engine's reading that too and might catch some of the text and add that to its assessment of what my page is about. So I always put it there. But I think you could do that when you can and when you have a way to get a transcript
So I want to speak really quickly to those listeners who are new online business builders, and they haven't started a podcast.
We don't want you to be intimidated by all the different things that you can do. We want you to be excited for all the things you can do. Right. Because that one podcast can do so many wonderful things for your business. But don't be intimidated. Podcasts usually have show notes. They can have transcripts.
They can have, different pieces that you use them for. So I just want to make sure that we're not leaving anyone behind who is considering podcasting, 'cause it's wonderful.
And let's be honest, if you create a webpage- Mm-hmm ... and you only do the beginning part with the title and the description and the subheadings for now, and the player, obviously you have to have the player if it's for your podcast episode.
But if you do those four things, and you go back later and add things on, that's perfectly acceptable and actually helpful for you to actually update the page and make it fresh later. So do what you can in the beginning is the answer I guess we should have said first.
No, I just appreciate you, Denise, 'cause you know how I am.
We're always going to slow our roll for the beginners because I think we should. So question number three: Which parts of my episode matter most for search, and how should I use them? Like title, description, timestamps, quotes, and the list goes on and on.
Okay. So maybe we'll go back to what we were talking about in the last, is prioritize what gives us the biggest payoff with the least extra effort, right?
So-
Mm-hmm ...
you have a title for your episode, so you're almost... You're close with your keywords in it hopefully. And a description. You're going to have a description and a few bullet points. A time... All these things. So in the light of what we were just talking about, I feel like I'm going to talk about a lot of things that don't matter. So you can do a lot of things, but your title, your description, the way you put subheadings and headings in tell a search engine the most about what the episode's about.
So if you can get those right at the beginning, those matter most.
Mm.
If you have quotes that you know that you hung a label on to use in your episode script with your guest or whatever, definitely put those in the notes. If you have a setup like we do in this podcast where we have five questions every episode, it's very easy to have those five questions with the time on them that I can find easily in the notes.
And that's easy, so do what's easy is probably the best answer I want to give.
I love it. Well, let's take a minute to hear from our sponsor for today, Denise.
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 can bring more traffic to your online business. Let's get back into our questions. Question number four: How should I structure my website so podcast listeners can easily find related episodes and even my offers?
Okay, imagine your website is like a simple library, not just like a pile of links that sit in a menu, right?
Create a main podcast or an episodes page that lists all of the episodes with a link to an individual page for each episode. actually, that's what Kajabi does for us. So it creates a main page, and then it has a separate page for each episode where it has the player and the notes and all those things.
But on the main page, it just has the image, the cover art, and a little bit of the text on it so people can click through. So it's your podcast, its own little library, right? then your offers. If you have offers like services, then you should have a services page or a resources page, if you have a store, if you do products, right?
You can also, on your individual podcast episodes, connect the offers that relate to the subject matter of that episode, and that's going to help people find the next step with you based on the subject that you already started with. So you start the conversation, then you give the next way to continue the conversation, if that's an offer or a giveaway or a call or whatever it is, right?
Did you have anything to add to that, Kim?
I just think it's very sexy to add them there, because anything you talk about in your podcast, if someone's listening and they go to look at whatever it is, they're a very viable candidate for wanting to buy your offer. If they're there, you need to give them the easy button, which is what Denise talks about.
Give them the easy button to get from your podcast episode to the thing you want them to buy. Or even your freebie, your email list, your anything.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
So that, that's my two cents, Denise, and I'm going to go on to question number five.
Excellent two cents. Love it.
Maybe one and a half. Yeah. How do I know if turning my podcast into SEO content is actually working?
Hmm.
I'm going to say you're going to watch for signs. There is no hard and fast way to know for sure, 'cause obviously we can't track people who download podcasts on one place and listen to them who come here. We don't have all the numbers. But we can look for trends, and we can look for simple signs. So if you're watching your page views and how many times your websites get visited, if it increases slowly over time after you perform this change of adding your episodes, then you can infer that may be having an impact.
Mm-hmm. You can also check through what people send you. So if you are talking to people on LinkedIn or in a live somewhere and you're having a conversation, someone mentions your podcast episodes, or they mention your show notes, or, mention they got your download, that's a good s- that's also evidence.
And DMs in Instagram where you might have posts about your episodes. I mean, you have to put it all together like it's a, a science experiment, I guess, basically, where you try different things and you watch the trends. Just try to remember that it's a slow-going thing. This is not an overnight answer.
It's a long game. It's never a short game here. You can look for the trends early. You could take a base- baseline when you start, and then watch it at intervals over time, but you have to set your expectations not to look for, crazy spikes, right?
However, I do want to interject, Denise, that some of the people you have taught this to, I mean, have hit their 100,000 and 200,000 visitors, and we have one we know for sure has hit over four million visitors.
And it does come from all the things that you're talking about doing, working together to get all that traffic on there. So I love this.
Thank you.
Denise, for the listener who's thinking, "I like the idea of my podcast and my website working together, but I'm still not sure what I really need to understand about SEO if I want to do it myself," what's a good next step?
Well, for me, it's why I created my do it yourself SEO quiz for people who are trying to understand if they can take this stuff on themselves. it tells them what they actually need to know, what they know now versus what they have to learn, what they'd have to become aware of, and for the most part, they'd probably be surprised how much they do know.
It's about being confident, and it's only seven quick questions. It hands answers, short things. So it's really easy to do.
I have taken it, y'all, and I'm still here, so don't be afraid. Go and click the link. It's in the show notes. But if you're building a new business and you want to understand what you need to know to do SEO on your own, go take Denise's SEO quiz.
I don't know how much simpler I can say that, Denise.
Yeah, just give yourself a few minutes. Answer honestly. It's only between you. It doesn't go anywhere else, and let your results guide your next steps. So it'll show you which pieces deserve your attention now, which ones you can wait till later, and, just give you a handle on what you're ready for.
Love it. Well, 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 joining us today on 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.
And I'm going to say it is. But we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you, Kim. Bye, everybody.
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. Follow the show so you can hear when new episodes get released and stay in the know about SEO. Until next time
