How can Podcasting as a Small Business improve your SEO?

Written by admin

April 10, 2023

Podcasting can help with your SEO – Read on to see how straightforward it is

Oftentimes, the things that we do in marketing our business have tangible effects on other areas of our business. One that is particularly important is when we have a marketing initiative that can pull double duty and help us secure better search engine results pages in Google and other search engines. As an SEO company (and full service Marketing Agency for Small Businesses) we’re constantly looking for opportunities to find synergy between marketing initiatives. These synergies will help build individual and independent channels of marketing, while also having wider ranging effects.

This article is intended to give a basic primer on the concept of improving your search engine optimization for your core brand or small business through podcasting for small businesses.

In this article you should learn several things that will help you to improve your overall SEO strategy while embarking on the new journey of small business podcasting. 

We offer SEO services, as well as small business podcasting support services as independent offerings to our Small Business clients. However, this article is meant to be a bit more mainstream and should provide some interesting insights and important tips to businesses who may not have the budget or the inclination to engage with us as a service provider.

 

What are the basic ways that small business podcasting can help with SEO

 

Below is a bullet point list of ways that SEO can be enhanced by consistently podcasting or producing audio meant for potential clients about your small business.

  • Having a bulk amount of content on your website, while not historically contributing directly to search engine optimization for a given page, will have an overall net positive effect on your total SEO footprint
  • As you begin to utilize podcasting as a marketing channel for your small business, you’ll also begin to brainstorm ideas that connect more fully with your audience which will lead to better keyword research and more opportunities uncovered for content purposes
  • As you begin to vocalize ideas on your podcast or other audio tracks you begin to refine your offering as a small business and that helps when reviewing and auditing your existing content, which can improve serps
  • Your ‘closing’ methods and customer pitches become more refined as well as you begin to talk more about your business and try to showcase benefits for the listening audience without being overly salesy
  • You’ll begin to establish credibility with content that never existed before, which will help when people do their due diligence after hearing about your company –  you’ll essentially begin to look bigger than you are 
  • The actual content you’re producing will have SEO potential, including the content you’re producing in audio format, which will also be able to be repurposed for video content, and a transcript of which can be used for written on page content
  • Even if you don’t transcribe the audio content, using some optimized formatting on the page that holds the audio track or video will improve embedded SEO markers and eventually lead to a trickle flow of clients to that specific post or page 
  • Part of the issue when you work with an agency or other website dev and specifically those that are involved with SEO for your website is that there’s never enough content to optimize unless you’re constantly creating content –  in this case you’ll have a constant, consistent flow of media and other optimizable content 

What follows is a moderate exploration of each of the above bullet points to give some context about how each of these SEO concepts will actually be able to impact your small business digital footprint, in regards to podcasting. 

 

How bulk content can contribute positively to SEO results

 

While the idea of bulk content doesn’t have a direct correlation to your success in an on-page format from an SEO perspective,the sheer presence of extra content on your website and the ability to internally link from that bulk content will have a positive impact on your serps. 

When referring to content as bulk content that doesn’t necessarily mean that it cannot be optimized on a per page level or a per post level, or that it is somehow inferior to other content. Over time Google and other search engine algorithms trickle in traffic on those Landing spots.

Additionally, these are excellent places to structure an internal linking campaign because there is a lot of credibility in the flow and organic structure of an audio track and the transcription of that audio track, as long as the subject matter expert is confident in what they’re saying.

Essentially, as you create more podcast content, even if you’re not using written transcriptions to show the details hard-coded onto the page and easily crawlable for the search engine algorithms, you’re still able to benefit from the presence of some basic formatting and the original content inclusion –  more on that later. 

 

Uncovering proper keywords that pertain to your audience, and understanding avenues for new content creation by prioritizing small business podcasting 

 

When you begin podcasting as a small business what you’ll start to see is that your mind opens up into ways that you can further explore topics. For instance, as you begin to talk about one topic even in the stream of consciousness, you’ll begin to think of ways that you can address the same concept with more of a deep dive or for a specific customer sub segment. This can lead to extremely high conversion rates for specific segments of your customer population or upsells for existing clientele that you didn’t otherwise uncover prior to the podcasting segment. 

This is incredibly important because as you become reinvigorated about marketing, and talk about your business you don’t get bogged down with the idea of creating content. Instead, you feel like you’re providing value in creating content and the content flows much more easily.

As you find deeper rabbit holes to dive down, you begin to recognize more clients that are positioned to convert more easily, and you begin to be placed in SERPs that are more focused on the intent you really want to be delivering on. 

How your other existing content can be improved as you start refining your service offering by listening to yourself talk about it on your small business podcast 

 

This is especially true if you’ve been engaged in the past with an agency that isn’t well versed in your specific Market segment. If your agency is providing more generic type SEO services, this will give you an opportunity to audit their performance, as well as redefine what your goals are as a small business. This will allow you to have better focused goals on what you want to accomplish from a content creation perspective.

As you hear yourself talking about something you probably know more about than most people in the world, as a subject matter expert, or a business owner, you’ll begin scrutinizing the existing content on the internet that is public facing about your small business.

This self auditing concept is perhaps one of the most important ancillary benefits of using podcasting for small businesses. This is because auditing and reevaluation periodically, can lead to not only incremental progress on search engine optimization but can improve focus, which can lead to better total revenue.

How this works in a real world scenario is essentially: hearing yourself speak naturally about a topic, and then wondering if your messaging on your digital footprint and your website and your social media profiles matches that same enthusiasm Focus experience and in-depth knowledge. This evaluation process can help improve your content across the board.

 

Improving the conciseness and the directness of your pitch through the basic experience of podcasting 

 

As you begin to try to focus the audio content you’re recording whether in a podcast format, another long form audio format, or even in short form audio or video formats, you’ll start to understand that some of the ways you’re pitching clients online may not be as natural sounding or direct as you’d like it to be.

Again, having a way to audit your existing content, pitches, sales closes, and on-page sales copy will have an immediate and dramatic impact on your conversions, in addition to the success of your seo efforts. 

 

How podcasting can help you establish more credibility as an expert in your field 

 

You’ll have a lot more content that makes you look like a credible business partner to those customers who haven’t converted yet when you push out confident audio content and put it in public on your website or on other third-party websites (like social profiles, or in guest posts). 

Here’s a cold hard fact about your competitors: They aren’t doing podcast content. And this means that for everyone who’s already inclined to listen to long format audio content in your niche or Small Business Industrial segment, you’re the expert. This can mean you will see traction early on, and build a rapid following if you do it right.

You’re essentially creating a ‘blue ocean’ or a ‘moat’ around your service offering or products, because most businesses that might be exploring a podcast or other long format audio or video content probably are not direct competitors in your space – they’re likely to be bigger and more nationally, or regionally focused for customer acquisition. 

Nothing inspires confidence more than being able to answer questions on the fly. That’s why moderators are so effective in positioning brands through interview-style audio or video content. A moderator ‘tee’s up’ a question that the client didn’t know they had, until they heard it in your podcast. And when they hear it, you’re the one providing the answer: instant credibility.

While you don’t necessarily need to have a moderator to tee up questions and answers for you, it does make touching on difficult topics or talking about a direct, conversion relationship, much easier. It comes across much more genuinely and it allows a buffer between you and the end user who would be providing the conversion for you –  your ideal consumer.

 

Using podcast content after it’s been recorded as Direct Search Engine Optimization Content 

 

Having audio and long form content allows you to cut the final episode of your podcast or audio track into potentially hundreds of useful clips, to be used in certain areas of your website like frequently asked questions, or on product pages or services to help increase your conversion capacity.

You can repurpose long format audio content as video content and utilize video hosting websites like YouTube for public-facing audience potential. You could alternatively use the content for internal purposes, using a service like Vimeo, BrightCove, Wistia, etc. 

Additionally, The actual content you’re producing on the fly in a podcast or even in a scripted podcast format, has legitimate value from a search engine optimization perspective. Especially when you start thinking about how many words can be spoken over the course of 25, 35, or 45 minutes, or more.

A single podcast session of 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes, which is not overly long for a lot of audience listeners in certain Market segments, can produce thousands and thousands of words 

It’s important to realize the value of having thousands of words of content on a specific topic within a specific industry, and then having multiple podcasts that have the same value spread across your entire website or digital footprint. It can be extremely valuable to have 100,000+ ‘surplus’ words that are focused on a specific topic that a specific customer might have in your given industry. 

 

Structure matters on page with SEO 

 

Even if you don’t decide to transcribe your audio or podcast, you can still add a couple of heading tags which will allow you to give a focus to the on-page content and will ideally produce search engine ranking placements and have a positive impact on the on-site and off-site potential for the given page on your website. 

Adding just an H1, H2, and H3 could have a dramatic impact on your internal structure and hierarchy as it relates to keyword searches, internal linking and the basic value of the page. Considering that search algorithms will become more innovative and capable, they will eventually be able to crawl content other than written word, or coded language, more effectively,  and this will contribute to better SERP’s.

Even a single paragraph or a few well crafted sentences will have a dramatic impact on whether a page could rank in your given industry on a particular topic, or search query. In some long tail examples, or in some Industries where search traffic is not as competitive, you may be ranking within hours or days of placing only a few structured pieces of content on a page that’s attached to a long format audio or video piece derived from your small business podcasting efforts. 

 

Small business podcasting can give you an opportunity to increase the volume of content you’re producing as an entity 

 

The biggest problem most agencies have with small businesses is that it’s hard to convince small businesses to spend the time and the effort to create world-class content for themselves.

Because world class content is not cheap and experts are not cheap, it’s very difficult for small businesses to thrive in an ever-growing competitive space of search engine optimization for small businesses.

This is particularly true when you’re going against giants like Walmart, Amazon or other established brands that have native SEO coming from bulk content, marketplace optimization and tons of sellers, and reviews, and Web 2.0 interfacing.

When you’re able to produce audio content; especially in a long format way, which can be repurposed as other content you begin to be able to produce the level of content and the volume of content that any agency partner would be able to utilize properly, to help you build your SEO and other parts of your digital footprint. 

In the end, consistency still matters. Quality content still matters. Sometimes writing is hard to do, depending on your skill set and your industry, or the way you prefer to close sales. Sometimes the natural ability to speak about what you do as a small business, can be utilized better. This is why we write articles about improving SEO through other marketing channels, like podcasting for small businesses.

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