Ep 108: How Can Fearne Cotton Get Away with This?? - Why SEO-Rich Titles Matter More for Indie Podcasters

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Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting with Me, Verity.

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If this is the first time listening to the podcast, welcome.

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But also welcome.

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It is great to have you back here.

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In today's episode.

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I have gone and done the thing that I said in the last episode not to do and I have given you a very click baity title which is how is Ferd Cotton getting away with this?

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Now bear with me on this one because I promise it is going to make sense and hopefully by the end of the episode you'll be like, oh, okay, I see where she was going with this title, but I want to talk about Happy Place Podcast which is hosted by the one and only fans Burn Cotton.

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Happy Place, according to Listen Notes is ranked as one of the top 0.01% podcasts globally.

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It has a listener score of 75.

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So you get the point.

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This is a huge podcast at this stage.

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Again, according to Listen Notes, only third of listeners to Happy Place Podcast are in the uk.

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And that is important in my opinion.

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But because Fern Cotton herself is a UK based celebrity, she is uk, I believe she's from London actually.

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But you get my point.

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She is from the UK.

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So for her to have only: 3738

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Just over 60% of her listeners are outside of the United Kingdom, outside of Great Britain.

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So to me that demonstrates just how far reaching her fame is and also the culture that has been created or the brand that is created around Happy Place Podcast and also the whole Happy Place movement.

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I also want to preface and say this is not a hate on Fearne Cotton whatsoever.

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I love Fearne Cotton.

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She is a few years older than me.

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I remember her getting her first presenting job on.

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I want to say it was like digging it or something like that.

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Anyway, it was way back in the day when she was just in her mid teens and so she is somebody who I have very much grown up with.

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I have seen her go from children's TV to adult presenting gigs when she did Children in Need when she's been on Radio 1, seen her create this whole Happy Place Podcast and Happy Place movement.

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So as I said, this is no hate on Fern Cotton whatsoever.

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But it does raise some interesting points around how celebrities are able to run their podcasts versus how indie podcasters are able to run their podcast and get their podcast episodes noticed.

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So with that, let's dive into what we are actually talking about in this podcast episode, which is all around episode titles.

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Because until season 22 of Fearne Cotton's Happy Place podcast, you will have noticed if you're a listener to the show or even if you just go onto Apple Podcasts now and scroll through.

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Until season 22, Happy Place podcasts only had in their title a name of the person who was being interviewed.

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So for example, if Dawn French was being interviewed, the title of that episode was just Dawn French.

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There was no explanation as to what the podcast title, the actual podcast episode was about that was in the show notes, but it wasn't in the actual podcast title.

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And from season 22 onwards, what I have noticed is that the episode titles have shifted to still include the person who's being interviewed, but there is now more of a description within that title as to what is being talked about.

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But as I said, until season 22, and this is a couple of hundred episodes at this point, there is predominantly just the person who's being interviewed as their name as the episode title.

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So I guess the question is, why is it that Fearne Cotton can get away with producing a couple of hundred episodes of her podcast and just having the name of the guest in those episode titles and still bringing in thousands and thousands of listeners?

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Because remember, she is in the top 0.01% of podcasts globally.

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So how can she bring in thousands and thousands and thousands of listeners with just one name in the episode title?

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You could argue there's almost a lack of SEO that is being utilized there.

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And it's almost against nearly every episode that I have talked when I've talked about episode titles and having SEO rich keywords in all of your episode titles.

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So how can she get away with this?

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And the one thing that I keep coming back to is we have to remember that Fearn Cotton, and not just Fearne, but celebrities like Fern Cotton have been building their base of fans for years at this point.

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And I mean, absolutely years.

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What we've also got to remember is that Happy Place podcast is part of a wiser Happy Place movement where Fearne has got books, she runs retreats.

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I don't know if retreats is quite the right word, but festivals in person events is basically what I'm saying.

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So there is an entire movement and People coming to the podcast know what they're getting either because they are part of the Happy Place movement.

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Maybe they have been to one of the festivals.

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Maybe they have read some of Fearne's books or looked at her content online around Happy Place.

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Maybe like me, they have followed Fearne's career for years or been aware of Fearne's career for years.

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Maybe they have listened to one episode and you get the kind of vibe of the Happy Place episodes quite quickly.

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So from that point of view, you could argue that actually Fearne Cotton doesn't need to put SEO rich keywords in her episode titles because people know what they are getting from that podcast.

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They know Fearne's interview style because it has been happening for decades.

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At this point I'm making the woman sound really old.

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She's not.

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Like I said, she's only a few years older than me.

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But people know her interview style.

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People know what Happy Place is about and they know the kind of content that they are getting.

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So regardless of if they are coming and listening to an episode from Dawn French or anybody else, the point is they know what they are likely going to get from that episode.

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Also, Fearne Cotton, as I said, is a huge TV and celebrity personality in her own right.

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So a lot of people are gonna listen to those episodes regardless, regardless of who she is necessarily interviewing.

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But the difference between that and indie podcasters is that indie podcasters like myself, like thousands of other indie podcasters, we don't have a pre existing audience, we don't have a pre existing brand.

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And you might be like, but Verity, I've got a couple of thousand followers on whichever social media platform and that's great, but that is not the equivocable of a career in whatever you have been doing.

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And it is not the same as building an entire movement and having millions of followers across different social media platforms as Fern Cotton does and as many other celebrities do as well.

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So to come back to the question of how is Fern Cotton getting away with this?

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Well, she's kind of getting away with it and I use that in adverted commas because getting away with sounds like it's quite a negative thing.

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But I would say she's getting away with using until season 22 just using her guest names within the episode titles because she has built this entire movement which is Happy Place.

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And she is also well known globally for her interview style and for herself as a personality as well.

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She's really active in particularly the mental health field.

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She's done documentaries in the past she is very upfront about talking about a range of topics.

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And as I said, people know what they're getting from when they are listening to Fern Cotton interviewing somebody.

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Unfortunately, as indie podcasters, we don't quite have that luxury.

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Which is why I emphasize that it is so important that when you are creating your episode titles for your podcast to include SEO Rich keywords, to be using these keywords that people are searching for that are going to bring them into your episode.

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So rather than just saying whoever you interviewed, what are they getting from that episode?

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So rather than saying episode 43 Verisi Songgone, it would be episode 43, how to start a podcast for free with Verity Songgone.

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People know what they're getting then from that episode.

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It's about being specific.

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It's about your audience understanding the benefit through listening to that episode.

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And it might be about tweaking for future titles, it might be about playing around for titles as well that particularly entice your audience.

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But to recap, if you are an indie podcaster, in my opinion, it's really, really important to be using SEO rich titles.

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And if you're not 100% sure what SEO is, then I'm going to refer you back to, first of all, episode 104, why SEO is so important in podcasting.

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And also episode 107, how to rank your podcast in good Google.

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Because both of those episodes really, really help with understanding SEO and how to implement good SEO strategies within your podcast to make it be found by your ideal listeners.

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And both of those are going to be linked down in the show notes for you to listen to after this episode.

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Building an audience takes time.

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We have to remember that.

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And not everybody is going to reach hundreds of thousands of listeners on their podcast.

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And that's fine.

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Some people are happy with 5, 10, 20 listeners.

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There's nothing wrong with that.

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But the point is that if you want your content found by the right people, by the right audience, we need to consider how you're going to bring those people into your podcast in the first place.

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So to recap my top tips for creating SEO Rich titles, First of all, listen to episodes 104 and 107, because they're really going to help you nail SEO for your podcast.

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Next, think about the benefit of your audience listening to that particular episode, because that is going to help you craft a title which is really going to hook somebody in.

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Be specific in your podcast title as well, so people know exactly what they're getting from listening to your episode.

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Research those SEO keywords which are going to help people find your content when they are searching on different platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.

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And also don't be afraid to trial and error different strategies for creating good titles as well.

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Is it that you put a keyword at the beginning at the end?

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Do you put the name of the person you're interviewing at the beginning or the end of the title?

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Try and play around with a few different formats and see what works for your podcast and also for your audience.

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I would love it if you could share this episode with your podcasting buddies, particularly if you think that it will help them to craft better SEO rich titles which is going to help get their content found by their ideal listener.

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

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Happy podcasting.