How To Identify Keywords For Your Podcast
Identifying valuable keywords for your overall show as well as each individual episode is critical for SEO. At the end of the day, you wouldn’t skip out on SEO for your website, so why should your podcast be any different?
In this article, we’ll go over how to identify top-performing keywords to enhance your show’s searchability.
Why are podcast keywords important?
Podcast SEO involves including relevant keywords in elements like episode titles, show descriptions, show notes, episode descriptions, and more. Podcast directories and search engines rely on this information to categorize and recommend content to users; therefore, crafting compelling yet relevant titles and descriptions is instrumental in making your podcast discoverable.
So if your podcast is about marketing podcasts, you may add “podcast marketing” as a keyword so that when someone searches for “podcast marketing” in Google, your show will (hopefully) come up!
Selecting your podcast keywords
When it comes to selecting keywords for each podcast episode, choose one to focus on. You can have others included that relate to it, but selecting a handful to try to rank for isn’t going to help your SEO.
Here are some selection tips:
- Choose a keyword that is relevant to the content in that episode
- Make sure that it has a decent search volume, not too small but also not too large so that you’ll have some trouble ranking for it (i.e. “podcast” would be a keyword that’s most likely too broad and competitive)
- Going off of the point above, select a keyword that helps you stand out in your niche. For example, instead of trying to rank for “business podcast” try and rank for a keyword more in line with your niche like “personal investing podcast” or “personal finance podcast”
- As we stated, only select one seed keyword and then possibly one or two more that are closely related
If you’re interested in leveling up your podcast SEO, we suggest downloading CoHost's Keyword Planner. The downloadable helps you seamlessly plan and monitor your keyword performance across various content pieces, accurately measuring your visibility and growth.
Keyword placement
This keyword should be used in numerous places, including:
- Episode title
- Throughout your description
- Show notes
- Transcription
- If you’re having the episode live on your website, add it to the meta titles and descriptions
With all of this being said, also be cautious not to keyword stuff. This is when you try to use the keyword within every sentence. This will actually hurt your SEO more than help it.
To learn more about podcast SEO best practices on listening apps and on your website, check out our full article that provides an in-depth run-through.
Keyword tools
Luckily there are plenty of SEO tools out there to help you select the right keyword for you, including:
- Google Ads Keyword Planner
- Wordstream
- Moz
- SEMRush
- Or, just open an incognito window on Google and start typing in the keywords you’re thinking of using to see what comes up/what exists when you search for it.
We also want to clarify that all of this keyword research is based on your ranking success when an individual is searching for your podcast in a search engine. So if your podcast is about marketing podcasts, you may add “podcast marketing” as a keyword so that when someone searches for “podcast marketing” in Google, your show will (hopefully) come up!