Ep 104: Why SEO is So Important in Podcasting | How to Implement Your Own SEO Strategy

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Hello there and welcome back to another episode of Lazy Girls Guide to Podcasting with Me, Verity.

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It's great to have you here.

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If you are new to the podcast, welcome.

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It is great to see you.

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You are not new and then thanks for coming back.

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If you are not already subscribed, whichever platform you are watching and or listening to this on, please make sure that you hit that subscription so that you know about every new episode.

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Today in this episode we are going to be talking about podcasting sessions and what that means for your podcast.

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of September and Christmas of: 2024

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I briefly explained this in a couple of the September episodes.

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I'm not going to go into any detail with it.

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th September and Christmas: 2024

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I was not checking my stats, I was not promoting and that's a really key part of this episode as well.

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I was not prom promoting anything on socials.

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I had no content that was pre prepared in terms of I've done episodes before about how I can bulk create content for social media and then it's just ready to go and it's all, you know, kind of streamlined through a planner.

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I did none of that.

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There was nothing promoting the podcast whatsoever.

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But yesterday I sat down, I was like, right, I'm getting back into the podcasting again.

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I sat down, I outlined quite a few different episode ideas and started researching for them and putting together different details of how these episodes were going to were going to look.

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Obviously as part of this I went on to Captivate because Captivate is my hosting platform.

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One of the amazing features of Captivate is that they've got this episode planner section so that you can just have everything together.

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You don't have to have like, you know, some stuff on Google Docs or some stuff on Word and then some stuff in your hosting platform and just like stuff everywhere.

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I love it because they've got this feature, episode Planning.

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You can put all of your notes in there, all of your ideas and then when you're ready you just hit the button that says Convert to episode Episode and it literally does that for you.

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It takes it from the episode planning section into your episode section and then you can upload your audio.

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Just make sure that everything is perfect from the show, notes, point of view, etc, add in a few more details.

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Done.

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But whilst I was in there, obviously I started looking at my stats.

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I did not expect to see anything interesting.

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I expected there to be like, no downloads whatsoever in the last a quarter of a year, just over a quarter of a year that I have not put out new content.

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I was absolutely amazed to see that despite no promotion whatsoever, the podcast had still got nearly 2,000 downloads in the last three months for a variety of episodes as well, for a big variety of episodes, some of them going quite far back in the catalog.

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And that really, really surprised and shocked me.

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And then I thought, well, actually, there's a logical explanation to this, and it's podcasting SEO.

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I I put so much effort into the SEO of both the titles for the episodes and also in the into the show notes that I write for Lazy girls Guided podcasting.

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First of all, if you're thinking Verity, what the heck is SEO?

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SEO, Search engine optimization.

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So it's all about keywords, basically.

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So whenever I'm putting together an episode, what I'm always thinking of is, what is it that my audience is searching for?

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What is it that my audience need an answer to?

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And then I make sure that that keyword is in the title of my episode.

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So I'm going to give you the example of I can't remember which episode number it is, but I'll have it linked in the show notes below.

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One of the podcast episodes that I had earlier or in the back catalog is how to start a podcast.

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That is something that people are searching for.

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People go onto Google, people go into Apple podcasts, go into Spotify and use the exact keyword how to start a podcast.

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It would be very easy to use a completely different title for that episode.

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I could call it podcasting 101.

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How to get yourself heard on the airwaves, how to blow your voice up.

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You know, I could do call it all these things, but nobody is searching for those terms.

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People are looking exactly for how to start a podcast.

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And then in the show notes, not only have I used the keyword again, how to start a podcast, but I'm also including other keywords that I've covered in the episode.

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But things like what to name your podcast and you know, how to write show notes, all of these different keywords are in the show notes.

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So then if somebody were to search for a keyword that's in the show notes but not the episode title, that episode is still going to come up.

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And because it's got a title that links so closely to what somebody else was searching for, they're like, oh, this is going to be relevant to me.

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So I'm going to Listen to this.

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So what you really need to do when coming up with your episode titles and show notes is thinking, what are these search terms that people are looking for?

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Because it's only then are you going to be creating content which has got SEO keywords in it that are then going to show up when people are searching for different key terms in YouTube, in Google, in any podcast hosting platform.

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So you might be then thinking, well, how do I come up with those different keywords?

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I start with thinking, you know, well, if I was interested in this particular topic or I wanted more information on this topic, what would I be searching for?

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And then what I do is I take that idea, such as how to start a podcast or how to write podcast show notes, how to increase my podcast downloads, and I go to Google and I will type that question into Google and I will see what kind of content comes up.

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I'll look at the different questions that Google will give me.

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I'll look at the different articles, the different YouTube videos, the different podcast episodes.

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I look at what comes up and then I can start to figure out like, well, actually, is that the keyword that I want to go after, or is there a different keyword?

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And then the other thing I start to do is I look at the content and I think, well, where are the gaps?

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Where can I fill in the gaps?

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Is it that there's loads of background information, but there's not a 1, 2, 3, you know, how, how to do something, or is it that there's loads of how to's but there's not a lot of explanation and people actually want the explanation?

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So what is that gap that my content can be filling?

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The main platforms that I'm using, I've already mentioned Google, I've already mentioned YouTube.

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And the reason is, is because Google and YouTube are the biggest search engines globally.

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If I'm putting keywords into there, I can then see the content that's coming up and it gives me good ideas as to which keywords to hone into.

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I also sometimes use something called Answer the Public.

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I don't tend to use that very much.

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I know a lot of content creators absolutely rave about it.

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I find it useful.

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But I.

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It's not my favorite platform to use.

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I prefer to use Google and YouTube.

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So the important reason as to why I'm talking about SEO for this episode and for podcast SEO is, as I said, I have not put in any effort into creating new episodes or promoting my episodes in the last three months.

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But the way that these episodes have been found is through SEO.

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It's through search engine optimization.

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It's through the keywords that I have been using in my episode titles and in my show notes as well.

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In my podcast description.

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Everything is really richly filled with keywords and I play with those keywords as well.

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I change keywords in my podcast description every so often.

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Let's put a new keyword in there.

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Let's run with it for a few months.

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Has that increased my views or my listens?

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I have focused so heavily on SEO for Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting right from the beginning, it's never been an afterthought.

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I've always thought of SEO more than I've thought of a social media strategy.

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In some ways you could argue that is a social media.

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Well, it's a media strategy.

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It's marketing strategy, isn't it?

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I've always preferred to focus on SEO over social media promotion.

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And I think for me this has actually the last few months and yeah, okay, you could turn around and go, well, nearly 2,000 downloads is not very much.

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But actually to me, I think that's really significant for a small independent podcaster.

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I think this just goes to show just how important SEO is.

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So if you're thinking, well, actually I want to implement some SEO strategies in my podcast.

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I've got five tips for you here.

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So the first one, use really clear keyword rich episode titles.

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You can change around and play around with your episode titles as well.

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But I would say try and think, exactly what is it the audience is searching for and have that in your title or have some keywords in your title.

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Don't keyword stuff.

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Don't go overboard.

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You don't need massive long titles.

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But just think what is it that somebody's going to look at that title and think, that is the episode for me, something I'm searching for.

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Number two is write your show notes, which again have got searchable terms in it and not just absolute nonsense.

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So you see some show notes where people are like, this is a complete waste of my time not bothering to put anything in my show notes.

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Think about the different keywords.

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Is there a variation of that keyword?

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So if I give you an example for this episode, SEO is a keyword that I will have somewhere in the show notes podcasting SEO as well.

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But then it's not just those terms because people who don't know about SEO are not going to be searching for SEO.

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So then I need to start thinking about keywords in terms of how do I get my podcast found in Google, how do I get my podcast found on YouTube?

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How do I name my episode titles?

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How do I write my show notes?

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I've got to think of these different keywords as well to put into the show notes.

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So it's not just what do I think people will be searching for who know about this topic, but what are people who don't know about this topic but still need the answer to the information that I'm providing in this episode, how are they going to find this information as well?

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So it's just thinking of that variation of keywords.

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Tip number three is thinking about those evergreen content topics.

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So what I mean by this is it's creating content that it doesn't matter if it came out 12 months ago or if it came out three months ago, it is continuing to be relevant.

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So information about how to start a podcast, how to write show notes, how to name your podcast.

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Yes.

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Okay, fine.

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I might talk about tech that changes.

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I did an episode which was way back at the beginning and it's on YouTube and I get comments all the time of actually, you reviewed this.

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It's not exactly the same anymore.

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They don't have exactly the same features.

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The pricing plans change.

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Yeah, okay.

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Some things move on.

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Some things are not going to be evergreen.

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But then there are going to be other bits.

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The content is the same, it's evergreen.

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So like I said, you can film it two years ago and it will still be relevant today.

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Those kind of topics are brilliant for SEO because people are always going to be searching for those terms or those similar terms.

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Tip number four is all about using the right tools in order to help you search for keywords.

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So as I said, I like to use Google.

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I will type a keyword into Google.

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I have a look at what comes up, you know, when it comes up with the different drop downs of other, you know, people have also asked this, have a look at those.

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Those are keywords.

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Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and it comes up in gray.

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Different search terms that are similar.

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Those again are keywords that people are searching for.

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Use that information.

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I do exactly the same on YouTube and as I said, sometimes I use answer the public as well.

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And tip number five, this is specific to when you are writing your episode titles for your podcast.

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Be specific with your SEO keywords.

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Don't try and be clever unless your audience is really engaged and understand your pun titles or your in joke kind of titles.

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Nobody else is going to get them because nobody else is going to be searching for a pun or nobody else is going to be searching for an in joke.

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Nobody else is going to be searching for something which is just so random that only a select group of people get it.

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So if you want your podcast episodes to be found by a wider group of people, have titles that are easily searchable and that somebody is going to look at the title and go, this is the episode for me.

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Not necessarily this is the podcast, but this is the episode for me.

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Maybe someone will listen to a couple of episodes and think, yeah, this is actually the podcast for me.

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I'm going to subscribe.

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That is how you are going to draw people in.

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So to summarize those five tips, use clear keywords in your episode titles and show notes.

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Write show notes which have got searchable terms in them.

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Focus on evergreen content topics.

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Make sure you are using different platforms that you are comfortable using to do your keyword research, such as Google, YouTube, answer the public.

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And my fifth tip is making sure that you are using clear episode titles for your podcast.

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Nothing that's overly clever, overly funny that people are just not going to not going to understand.

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The point that I want to get across with this episode is just how important SEO is for podcasting and also for podcast titles and podcast show notes.

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It doesn't have to be overly complicated.

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There's actually a course called Stupid Simple SEO which is incredible.

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I took it about three years ago, but on saying that it's not outdated, he has only just updated it for this year.

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So I'll link that down in the show notes if you're interested in having a go at Stupid simple SEO because it is a brilliant, brilliant course.

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It gave me so many ideas and so much knowledge as to how to do good keyword research.

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It's written more from the point of blogging, but if you just replace the idea of a blog post with a podcast episode, exactly the same concepts and I use these for every single episode.

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The important thing about SEO, particularly when it comes to podcasting, just have a go.

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Just have fun with it.

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Have a go and never underestimate the power of SEO.

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Hope that you have found this useful and I will see you next episode.