How to Know if SEO is Actually Helping Your Podcast Grow
“How will I know if SEO is actually helping the podcast grow?”
I joke that I live in my Instagram DMs, but… I really do! And I get to answer questions like this one from Anne about my Podcast SEO Download:
“How will I know if SEO is actually helping the podcast? How will I know it’s working?”
Which brings me to today’s episode. I’m sharing the bonus lesson I just recorded to include in the Podcast SEO Download.
You can actually hear what the teachings are like, you can take a look at your own podcast, & you’ll be able to use this practice—whether you’ve already downloaded & implemented the podcast SEO tips OR I’ve done podcast optimization for some of your episodes.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
What metrics to track
Where to find these data points
What you can glean from Spotify for Podcasters & Apple Podcasts Connect
How frequently to track your podcast metrics
What results Brittany’s clients have seen after optimizing their podcasts for SEO
Tune in, take notes, save this episode for later, & know I’m cheering you on on your SEO journey!
Mentioned Resources:
It’s $37 & the video version of this Bonus lesson is included!
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Hello and welcome back to the Basic B Podcast. I'm your host Brittany Herzberg, the strategist and coach who you can count on to show you exactly how SEO can easily bring in new leads without you needing to chase people around Instagram. Although, as you know, I joke about living in my DMs, I really do live there and I have some really amazing conversations like the one I had just recently with Anne and she was curious about the podcast SEO download, wanted to know what was included, how she could use it, if it made sense to use it with clients, that kind of thing. But the most interesting question she asked was this. How will I know if SEO is actually helping the podcast? How do I know if it's working? Which brings me to today's episode. I'm sharing the bonus lesson I've just included with the podcast SEO download so you can actually hear what the teachings are like. You can take a look at your own podcast as I'm talking about these different things and you'll be able to use this practice whether you've already downloaded and implemented the podcast SEO tips or maybe I've done podcast optimization for some of your episodes. A good starting point is the metrics. What metrics do you need to check? What's a good number and how frequently should you be looking at these metrics? Podcast SEO is unique, especially with how quickly it works. I've had clients see some dramatic growth within just days of optimizing some episodes. How did I know that? Well, with Courtney's podcast, I could see her downloads increased by 16% just two days after we optimized 10 episodes. It's important that you keep track of these notes as you're doing these things because then you can have statistics like this to look back on. While it's certainly not everything, you do want to look at the download numbers because that tells you if more people are finding your show. If you see a massive spike in downloads, that can indicate new followers. More on that shortly. This is why you want to push people to follow your show even more than you push reviews. Reviews are super helpful, do not get me wrong, but they're a bigger ask. Following a show takes like three seconds and it can have a huge immediate impact on your podcast. It's less important initially for you to see a certain number of downloads and more important that you see your 7 day or your 30 day download average go up in number. Another wild statistic for Courtney's show is that she had one episode that saw a 40% increase in downloads over the course of just about a month after we optimized the episode. It was an older episode and we did not touch the title. We only added tags in buzzsprout to that show. Note so one change and that one change resulted in a huge, huge spike in downloads because that show was being served up in podcast player searches. So hot tip there. Do not skip out on the power of podcast tags. I need you to hear me. No matter what the podcast host or players or anyone is telling you, it works. And I have proof. So downloads are the easiest indicator of podcast SEO working for your show. Another thing you want to look for is something called your consumption rate. This indicates how much of the episode people are listening to. You want it to be at least 50%, but it's even better if it's 60% or higher. The episodes with higher consumption rates are going to tell you which shows, guests or topics people are really enjoying listening to. You can take that information as hey, you want to be publishing more podcasts like this? It's a good idea to check out the consumption rate, which you can do in your Apple Podcasts Connect Dashboard before making any changes to episodes while you're in your Apple Podcasts Connect Dashboard. Don't try to say that fast. You want to take a look at that follower count I mentioned. This is another key metric to keep an eye on. You'll want to encourage people to follow your show, something I am admittedly not the best at with my own podcast. So hey, make sure you take a second right now to follow the basic new podcast on your favorite podcast player. Subtle plug there. Looking at my Apple Podcasts Connect Dashboard, I can see that my follower count has grown by more than 360% in the last year, which is nuts. I definitely have more Apple podcast followers than Spotify followers, and I have found that to be pretty typical with most podcasts that I work on. Spotify also shows your follower count. My Spotify followers have increased by 13% in the last month, for example, during the summer, which is typically a lower or slower time for podcasts in general. This is the kind of stuff you really want to be thinking to yourself as you're checking out your data. What time of year is it? Is it generally a slower season for you? Have you been sharing lots of rerun episodes? That kind of thing? One thing I really love about Spotify specifically is that it'll tell you how many people found your show from a Spotify search. I mean, hats off to Spotify for that one. I just looked at my Dashboard and in the last month, 598 people have found the basic Bee podcast via Spotify search. Just to give you some other numbers to compare it to some context for that, 375 people found me from their Spotify home and 205 listeners found me in their Spotify library. So it's pretty darn great to have 598 people finding me in Spotify search. Moving on. Madison initially had me optimize 10 podcast episodes, and when she saw people coming to her site and specifically signing up for her membership, she knew immediately that the podcast was working to drive more people to the membership. How did she know that? Because there's a specific code she has podcast listeners use at checkout to give them a discount on the membership. Now, because she could see the drastic improvement in such a short period of time from the tiny tweaks we made, I think it was just a matter of weeks again, maybe like three or four weeks that she saw this because she saw the drastic improvement in such a short amount of time from those tiny tweaks we were making. I'm now the full time podcast show note and blog post writer for her podcast. It's a great idea for you to set something up like this. Whether you have a discount code for a product or a UTM link that you use when people visit a certain page from a podcast show note, this will give you easy to follow data showing you that your podcast is driving people to your product, your program, or a website page. Going back to podcast downloads for a second, you can check this for the show as a whole and you can look at individual episodes. When I optimize 10 episodes for a podcaster, for example, I'm going to make a note of the number of downloads for that episode before I make changes. And I'm going to go in there about one to two weeks after making any changes to note the number of downloads. At that point I'm also going to be doing the same thing for the show as a whole. Gonna make note of the number of downloads for the podcast as a whole before making changes and then go back and check that a couple weeks after making changes. The only changes I make when I'm going back to optimize a podcast episode are the title and the tags. That's it. I'm not touching the notes, I'm not touching anything else. And we've seen some insane results very quickly just from doing those one to two changes. Like I mentioned earlier with Courtney's show, and I'm making a Note of this, because I want you to know that you can play around with it, you can test it. You don't have to do anything dramatic. Even if you get the podcast SEO download and you're like, okay, I just want to play around with the titles and the tags, maybe for older episodes to see if it's quote unquote worth it. You can do that. Whether it's your show or whether you're taking this information and playing around with a client's show, you can do that. I have not seen any show, any episodes. I'm thinking in my brain as I'm saying this out loud, but I have not seen anything where it has had either a non existent impact or a negative impact on the show, meaning downloads have dropped or anything like that. I have only seen stuff increase. I've only seen positive things happen. I wanted to make sure I clarified that about downloads. Check for the show as a whole and certainly if you're optimizing specific episodes, go check those individual download numbers. When it comes to frequency of checking the data for a podcast, I'm up in my statistics for my show each week. Every time I'm going in to set up my next episode to publish, I'm taking a look at the overall download numbers. I'm looking at the seven day, the 30 day and the all time numbers. And I'm looking at the most popular episodes. I'm checking my follower count and consumption rate, usually monthly, at least quarterly. Maybe you, for example, say, okay, I'm going to implement SEO for my podcast over the next three months and I'll come back to check the numbers out after that. You can totally do that and I would highly encourage you to check it after one month. Because when I say podcast SEO works fast, I mean it works fast. Improvements in a matter of days or weeks kind of fast. You may even find that your website traffic increases by implementing podcast SEO. This happened to my client Ray. We started optimizing her show notes as a whole and individual episodes for SEO. And within a month her podcast downloads increased by more than 110%. And two months after that her website traffic saw an 85% increase. So it took a little bit longer for her website traffic to feel the impact, but it happens. And that's without her having any SEO website optimization on her site as a whole. Magical things can happen. When you embrace and begin to implement SEO for your podcast or even your clients podcasts, it does not take much effort or time, in addition to what you're already doing to publish your regular episodes, but the payoff, the benefits, the impact to your business can be huge. If you thought of additional things you'd like me to clarify after hearing this episode, we reach out. You can obviously find me on Instagram. I'm over there at brittneyherzberg. If you've purchased the Podcast SEO download already, you can reply to the email you initially got with the link to download. And if you haven't gotten the podcast SEO download yet, what in the world are you waiting for? It's super low ticket and the impact it can have on your show. And your business is just wild. The links to everything will be below in the show notes. Or you can go to brittanyherzberg.com and look for the podcast SEO download in the SEO shop. That's it for now friend. Until next time. I'm cheering you on on your SEO journey.
