Transcripts boost search engine placement

Every word in your podcast is content just like an article, or blog post, or tweet. Put those words to work and increase your search relevance.

Podcasts are increasing in popularity year over year. There’s a podcast for virtually every area of interest. That’s great for listeners, but it makes for a really competitive market for podcast creators.

One way that you can stand apart as a podcaster is by offering transcripts of your podcast episodes. Not only does this allow hearing-impaired people access to your content, but it’s also great SEO content for your website.

As a podcaster, you probably spend more time behind the microphone than you do at the keyboard.

"Creating transcripts for your podcasts is probably the easiest way to increase the written content on your website and improve your SEO."

What Is SEO?

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a marketing strategy in which you, the content creator, offer content in a way that makes it easier for search engines to find you. These strategies include using keywords that your audience is likely to use in their searches, structuring your website in a way that’s easy to navigate, and much more.

With a good SEO strategy in place, your website will be easier to find, easier to use, and you will draw in new people who might be interested in your content.

How Do Transcripts Help SEO?

Transcripts are great for SEO because they are rich with keywords that your audience might search for. If you host a true-crime podcast, they might search for “true crime,” “cold case,” or the names of people involved in the specific cases. If you have transcripts with these words in them, Google will see that your website is relevant to them and will rank you higher on the search engine results page (SERP).

Typically, businesses improve their SEO with blog posts. Podcasters have a unique opportunity to repurpose their audio and video content into written content, simply by publishing their transcripts!

You’ll get all the SEO benefits of a blog post without creating more work for yourself. And while this will cost you some money, it will save you time, improve your SEO, and draw in new fans. The benefits will outweigh the cost.

How Can You Improve Your SERP Ranking?

For the best benefits to SEO and SERP rankings, start creating podcasts with your transcripts in mind. You can find out what’s trending among your audience. Is there some new information that just came out that is of interest to them? Is there a new movie or show that they’re all buzzing about?

It may be worthwhile to break form every once in a while and do a show highlighting things that your audience is interested in. For instance, if your podcast reviews newly published books in the U.S., you might cover a book that was published many years ago if a movie adaptation is coming out soon. When someone searches for information on this new movie, they’ll find your podcast.

If you want to increase your visibility to your target audience with relatively no extra work on your end, transcribing your podcast episodes is a great option. It may cost a bit of money, but it will really help your SEO strategy in the long run.