#38 | Is Apple Podcasts Blocking Your Visibility? 7 Deadly Podcast SEO Mistakes You Didn’t Know You Were Making

0:00Is Apple Podcasts blocking your visibility? you're making deadly SEO mistakes and don't even know it.

0:33In today's episode, you'll discover the seven silent SEO killers destroying your discoverability on Apple and Spotify, why showing up on search isn't enough, and how to make people actually click play. And finally, the one biggest metric of SEO success that podcasters completely overlook. Let's dive in. Here's the thing. Podcast SEO is the process of ranking your show higher on Apple and Spotify. So those random numbers you see on your screen, where the hell do these downloads come from? No matter how big or small they are, the majority of those listeners are coming from Apple Podcasts. That's where new listeners go to discover new shows.

1:16Now, if you can rank high on Apple and Spotify, which is the process of podcast SEO, it means you can be found by way more of the right listeners. If you have a podcast about how to scale a coaching business, when a bunch of new listeners every single month type in on Apple, on Spotify, how to scale a coaching business, if you're ranking on page one, you'll be found. Your podcast will grow. If you are not ranking high on Apple Podcasts, how the hell can you expect to grow when the right listeners literally can't find your podcast? That's the power of podcast SEO. Now, we've done lots of episodes breaking down what this is, how it works.

1:57If you are new to the idea and want a more in-depth breakdown of the steps within podcast SEO, you can go back to our earlier episodes. But for now, we want to share with you seven deadly mistakes that people make when trying to apply podcast SEO that actually ends up blocking their growth and sabotaging their ability to reach more of the right listeners. So number one is really just thinking podcast SEO is the answer to all problems. This would be nice if it was true, and it can give that impression, but it only lines up like that once a bunch of other things are in place. It doesn't just fix a bad show, because visibility and more exposure doesn't just fix a bad show.

2:39You actually have to have a show that is already keeping listeners around once they find the podcast, before then adding more exposure through ranking high on Apple and Spotify can actually fix your problems and get you compounding, lasting growth. Most podcasters don't have this at all, and this is why things like getting big guests or going viral on social media doesn't really help grow a podcast in the way people think it does. Using podcast SEO is the same. It can be an absolutely amazing strategy, and it is, but it doesn't just work on its own. It works in combination with having a great, bingeable podcast.

3:19Now, it's important to note that when we talk about podcast SEO, fundamentally speaking, you might have just added a bunch of keywords to your titles and hope that the show will just blow up because of that. And the second mistake that we see that's super deadly is people find themselves in either one or two camps. Either, number one, they just realize and discover podcast SEO and think, oh, that makes sense. And they just literally add coaching business in every single episode title and their show name, show description. And after a month or two, they think, well, why isn't this show growing?

3:55Why isn't my podcast growing any faster? And why this is an issue is because with podcast SEO, it is not just this thing you set and forget once and hope it blows up. It's a continuous experimentation until you find the right winning keywords. Maybe the stars align and the show does blow because you found that magic keyword straight away. Yes, but more times than not, it's this strategic experimentation of trying various keywords over a prolonged period of time that gets us to find the right keywords that will grow a podcast. And then on the other spectrum, we have people who just add every keyword under the sun in their titles.

4:36Growth, consulting, marketing, content. They just add this everywhere. And that's known as keyword stuffing, which doesn't actually help you grow faster. And the reason is people see a bunch of these keywords and they're confused. They're unsure about what the show is specifically for. So you might rank high, but because there's confusion around what this show is specifically for, people don't click play and listen. And that's mistake number two. Either focusing on one keyword and not experimenting enough, or having way too many keywords to the point where you confuse the right listeners who found your show.

5:13So the third absolute deadly mistake that will stop your podcast SEO efforts in the ground is having a bad intro. It sounds really simple and easy, and it really is nothing more than that. If you have a bad intro to your podcast, meaning within the first few minutes if you're losing a lot of people, if you're not really convincing people to stick around and get them excited for the rest of the episode, then all of your efforts fall flat. And this comes back to the first point, which is there are things you have to have in place for podcast SEO to work. Fundamentally, the podcast needs to be good so that when people find it, they keep listening.

5:52And having a bad intro is a horribly common way of just ruining that and throwing all that hard work creating a great interview or a great episode into the ground because people never get to hear it. They never make it past the intro. What makes a bad intro is when it's not focused on the listener and when it's not done with the awareness that the listener could just go and choose any episode, unless you really make an effort to hook them in. So if you just waltz into things, talking with your co-host or guest about small talk or about the weekend or just some general stuff that's not listener-centered, if you just warm up for 5-10 minutes talking about how things were in your solo episode before getting into the main content, that's going to put listeners off because it's not for them, it's more about you.

6:42Having a good intro is as simple as understanding why the listener is coming to this episode, understanding what's going to get them excited about continuing listening to the episode, and making that very clear within the first couple of minutes. If you have that in place, then adding the right keywords to your show can really work for you. And then, deadly mistake number four that means that Apple Podcasts will literally actively block the visibility of your show is simply this. If you don't have a content strategy that's super focused. Because here's the thing, if you are covering a wide range of topics, how on earth will Apple Podcasts know which specific keywords to rank your show for?

7:26If you are covering business, marketing, mindset, resilience, a bunch of different topics, that confuses Apple because it doesn't quite know who to show your podcast to. Whereas if you have a focused content strategy where every single episode is made specifically for a person, it means you can target the right keywords, allowing Apple Podcasts to rank your show for the right terms. And it also means that when someone discovers your show and they click play because they find it on Apple, Spotify, when they look through your back catalog, they know every single episode is made for them. Now, this is important because it means that you are fully leveraged, allowing you to grow your podcast way more, not just by a listener coming in, clicking play on one episode, but by them coming in, clicking play on one episode, then looking at your focused content strategy and listening to the rest and becoming a fan.

8:24That's how you grow your podcast long-term through podcast SEO. Number five, your cover art sucks. Tell me more. What's some examples and how does that relate to podcast SEO. Because some people might think, what's the cover got to do with me ranking on Apple and Spotify? That's a great question. And all jokes aside, it has everything to do with it. So let's say that you strike gold. And through choosing the right keywords, you end up on page one of Apple for when hundreds of thousands of listeners are typing in a day something like coaching or leadership or really big keyword that loads of people are searching for.

9:05Getting onto page one now means you're in the top 10 search results. But because you are top 10, it doesn't guarantee that people are going to click on your show. It means you're one in 10 shows for them to click on. But this isn't random chance. Because as with human nature, our brains are discarding 80 % of the things we can see at any given moment and just focusing on certain pieces of information. When a listener, a potential listener, sees 10 shows that they're going to choose from, some of them they won't even give a second glance because the cover art just doesn't look good. And there will be a couple that they will instantly gravitate towards.

9:46And the cover needs to be professional and imply that there's a high quality product inside by being a high quality cover. And it also needs to simply grab attention. So that means using bold colors, keeping things simple and minimal, because remember, it's smallest on a phone screen. And really just doing the opposite of what your competitors' covers are doing can go a long way in standing you out. If everyone's got dark covers, use a bright one, and you're probably going to get people to look at yours rather than others. To sum it all up, if your cover art does not grab people's attention, or if it does look in any way homemade, you are actively shooting yourself in the foot with all of your SEO efforts because you can get onto page one, but you would be straight off page one because no one will be clicking on your show.

10:38Now, mistake number six. This is a big one. It's a subtle one, actually. Your podcast description hasn't been changed since you launched the show. Similarly to mistake number five, where you do rank on page one, but your cover sucks, people won't click play and listen. Similarly, when it comes to your podcast show description, tons of new listeners, if they just discovered your show, one thing that they look at straight away to help them decide whether or not to click play and listen to the podcast itself is looking at the show description. The issue is the majority of podcasters have unoptimized show descriptions, which doesn't sell the overall podcast.

11:17That's too guest focused or talks about themselves and their accomplishments or is overly broad and not specific or positioned as a clear solution for a particular listener. So people do discover the show. They maybe like the cover. They click on it and they look at your show description. But because it's broad, unspecific, and not that attractive, they don't click play and listen to the show, which means that although you've ranked on page one, you're not actually growing from that because you haven't optimized these subtle things within your show's presentation. And last, but certainly not least, in fact, this might be my favorite one.

11:56The seventh deadly mistake that will halt your podcast efforts and keep you invisible on Apple and Spotify is you may choose keywords that have really high search volume, but not the highest search intent. Now, search volume is how many times a keyword is searched, and this is normally shown per month. So there are free sites like ubersuggest.com that you can type in a word, for example, online business, and see how many times it's Googled in the US per month. And you can translate that to Apple and Spotify as well. Online business is probably going to be a huge keyword. Let's just use round numbers and say it might have a million search results a month.

12:37And something a lot smaller, such as Amazon FBA, might only have 100 ,000 search volume a month. And so for that reason, a podcaster might think, well, I should go after online business. It's got a million searches a month. That's huge. If I can crack page one, I'm in. My show's going to blow up. But there's two things there. Number one is it's way broader and there's way more searches. So there's going to be more competition. So ranking for that in the first place is going to be harder. But most importantly, the second point is out of that million searches, how many of those people are searching online business looking for Amazon FBA?

13:17Probably less than 100 ,000. Whereas there might be 100 ,000 people searching for Amazon FBA, probably 95 ,000 of them are actually wanting to listen to or hear content about Amazon FBA. So you'd actually be best going for Amazon FBA, Not just because there's less competition, but because out of those people searching for the word, more of them are people who are actually ready and wanting to listen to content like yours. And this is the tricky thing about just looking at search volume alone. Another classic example is the word energy would have, I don't know, like 10 million searches a month.

13:57But a lot of people are just looking for electricity or something like that. They're not looking for a podcast about spiritual energy or increasing your physical energy. There has to be nuances to what the keyword is, and out of the keyword search volume, how many of those searches are people looking to consume content about this topic? So look, as you can see, we've broken down what the seven deadly sins are. Number one, thinking that podcast SEO is the answer to all of your problems. Number two, trying one keyword and not experimenting over time or trying a bunch of keywords and keyword stuffing.

14:34Number three, bad intros will screw you up. If people don't listen to the show, how will the podcast actually grow? Number four, you don't have a clear content strategy, which confuses Apple and Spotify because they don't really know what specific keywords your show should rank for. And even when your show does rank, your listeners who've clicked play can't binge your content because it's unfocused and broad. Number five, you end up ranking on page one, but your cover sucks, so no one actually picks your show over the competition. Number six, your show description has just been left and been set and forgotten for a couple of years since you launched the show, and you haven't optimized it to convert a total stranger into an active listener of your show.

15:20And finally, using broad, unfocused keywords that have huge search volumes, but aren't really high intent, meaning people could be searching for that keyword for a thousand different reasons. Once again, these are tiny little pieces that all have to line up in order for podcast SEO to work. It really isn't just a magic pill. Now, we can confidently say that SEO is insane and it does absolutely work. One of our clients was struggling to hit 500 monthly downloads after podcasting for a while, and now he's getting 12 ,000 monthly downloads. Clients who were stuck for years at 4 ,000 monthly downloads are now getting 30 ,000 monthly downloads per month 11 months later.

16:04And podcast SEO does play a massive role in that. But podcast SEO only worked because we had all of these pieces in alignment for it to properly work and drive growth for the show. All the keyword stuff is there, but we had to go through a lot of other critical changes together with these clients to get it to a point where the show was ready for podcast SEO to really work and take it to that next level. So for you, is your podcast positioned in a way to turn more strangers into listeners? Do you have a focused content strategy that's going to keep listeners coming back once they click play? Are you targeting the right keywords and constantly experimenting?

16:45Or are you hoping to strike gold with your first hit? And when you do show up, are you presented in the most attractive way? All this to say, you need to have the right overall strategy and approach to podcast SEO for it to work. If you don't, you'll spend years trying to optimize your podcast, but Apple will be just blocking your visibility because you're unclear, unspecific, and you don't have the right approach. So please, by all means, avoid these seven deadly podcast SEO mistakes. And if you are in a position where you understand the importance of podcast SEO, maybe you've tried in the past and it hasn't quite worked out, and you recognize that you need expert guidance, we're here to help.

17:29We'll catch you in the next episode. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. At the start of this episode, I said I'd tell you a little bit about me. So I'm about to share a secret with you. One that might mean you hate me. Completely quit listening to this podcast and think I'm a total scam. However, I want to be transparent. Are you ready? Well, my name is Tony. No, of course that's not the secret. The secret is that I'm actually a robot. My creators are Tighe and Anthony. Hence, my name, Tony. The sick bastards. Anyway, they are the founders of GetMoreListeners.com. In the last five years, they've coached and interviewed over 400 podcasters and generated multiple six figures from their own show.

18:21They gave me access to everything they know, and I'm here to share it with you. So while I don't understand why you humans are so obsessed with coffee, I do understand how to grow a podcast that actually brings you new clients regularly. So here's my offer to you. If you want to finally understand why your podcast isn't growing and get a personalized roadmap to fix it, in less than 30 seconds, you can go to getmorelisteners.com slash onlinecoachaudit. Enter your show name and we'll send you back a free mini podcast audit. It's completely customized to you and your show. That's getmorelisteners.com slash onlinecoachaudit.

19:02The link is also in the show notes of this episode.