Building a loyal audience is the goal of any online media creator. To do this requires a steady stream of new listeners to your content. Search engine traffic is powerful since the visitors are targeted and you incur no cost to bring each one to your site. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of practices for raising the rank of your site and web pages in the search engines for relevant keywords.

Podcasting requires some specific “best practices” to increase the search exposure of your audio, video and RSS content. Here are five tips that are sure to increase your traffic.

1. Accompany Audio and Video Content with Text

Search engines look at the content of your site to decide which keywords are relevant to your content and which phrases you will be listed for. Currently, search engines such as Google don’t index audio. That means they have no idea what is said in the audio or video files it find on your sit. For this reason it’s extremely important to include text content that can be indexed and listed in search results.

Including “show notes” is one obvious way you can do this. Each episode should have its own post on the blog with a description of the content that includes relevant search keywords. An easy way to get the entire content of each episode indexed is to post a transcript to your site as well. You can find a transcriptionist on Elance or you can also give CastingWords a try.

2. Use Complete and Keyword-Rich Data in Your Feed

Podcast directories such as iTunes and the Zune Marketplace are search engines, too. Including complete and strategic metadata (i.e. information about your show such as the author, title, category, etc.) in your feed increases the exposure you get in these directories. These directories look at the keywords in your title, author and description fields to determine which search phrases to list you for. Choose high volume and strategic search phrases to include in these fields.

3. Use a Blogging Platform to Publish Your Content and Feed

Using a blog to publish your podcast offers numerous promotional advantages. Search engines like indexing and listing blogs because they regularly provide fresh content. Also, the structure blog-based sites (i.e. the link architecture) makes it easy for the search spiders to quickly find and index all of your content. Each piece of content is given its own permanent URL that can be used in the search listings.

Using a blog to publish your podcast not only makes your site more search-engine friendly, it also just makes it easier to publish your feed and maintain your show. The platform that I use for all of my podcasts and those I set up for clients is WordPress.

4. Submit to the Most Popular Podcast and Blog Directories

Submitting your show to be listed in podcast and blog directories offers multiple benefits. First, these are also search engines with “eye balls” looking for new content on a daily basis. Each one is a potential source of new audience members. Second, these directories usually include a link back to your web site. Such backlinks help boost the “authority” of your site (an important criteria for favorable search listing). A link back to your site is like a vote for the quality of the content.

Recently I implemented promotional strategies for a clients brand new podcast. Within a few days they were listed for one of their primary search phrases on the first page of Google not once but four times. Not only did their primary site appear but also their listing in three other podcast directories. This was reinforced by complete, keyword-rich metadata in the feed that used by the directories to create a listing for the show.

5. Use Keywords in Your Post Titles

Getting ranked in the search engines is all about your content being seen as relevant and authoritative for given keywords. You can reinforce the relevancy of your content to a given phrase by using that phrase in specific ways on a page. For example, a search engine will often look at the title and headings when determining which phrases a page is relevant to. Using your targeted keyword phrase in the title of a post/page helps to reinforce the relevancy of that post/page to that phrase.

Conclusion

Regular efforts to search engine optimize your podcast and site will bring significant ROI when it comes to audience growth. SEO should be a regular part of your marketing efforts. There’s a lot more to SEO that is worth looking into, but these five tips will get you well on your way.

What is your experience with podcasting and SEO? Do you have any tips to share?