How Does The Search Algorithm Help You Get Found In Podcast Directories?

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works Today. Get ready to feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone, welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard and along with my co host and partner Tom Hazard, we are going to go over how you can use the algorithm to really get seen, heard and found in the podcast directories. So we're not talking social media algorithms here, we're talking about what's the algorithm in the podcast directories that you can tap into to make sure that you get seen, heard and found.

One of my favorite topics, Tracy, because I review tons of existing podcasts, I give these power appraisals where I review all the key factors of podcast listing your show identity and I can't tell you how many even shows that are well established and do have even some good following just don't even realize they're not being found by more of their ideal listeners organically within the listening apps for this particular reason. So it's kind of geek out on this. It's pretty fun for me.

I know you do. And this is the thing. This is the easiest win. I was just recording a podcast episode for as a guest on a show and I think he never expected me to say this particular thing, but this is the easiest win. We need to stop titling our episodes and shorting the descriptions of our episodes if we want to be seen, heard and found like that's it. It's so simple because there are only three things that are searchable in the podcast directory. Three basic things. It is the title of your show, the title of your episode, and the corresponding description. So it is show description and episode description. You've got a little bit of both that it's searching through. Now, of course there are categories and some of these other things, but they're not primary search criteria. And remember, every algorithm is set out there to be for a directory. Its purpose is to find something, right? It's the ultimate purpose of the algorithm. So it's got a criteria and a parameters of what it can search within title and descriptions. Those are the biggest power areas where you have the most characters and we're not number one, using them to their full character counts ever I see it all the time. And number two, we just short em. We decide we're going to be cool about this. And this is the number one area I see, especially with podcasters who are following an influencer model or who are doing that sort of entertainment style podcast. They think it's like TV shows. Like, and Tom, we talked about this the other day. It's like all the Friends episodes are labeled the one where.

Oh, the one with. Or the one where Rachel does this. So the one. Yeah, they all. And what if you ever look on your whatever service you might look at to watch them and you see a bunch of episodes, they're all truncated after the one with.

Yeah, but the reality is that's exactly what somebody's searching on, right? I want to watch the Friends episode where Joey did something stupid, right? Like, you know, whatever it is that you're looking for, if that's in the title, then it's searchable. But most episodes of most TV shows and of most podcasts, because they follow that serial entertainment model, is our like, cool, catchy, one word, three word phrases. Like, they think it's cool to just go like smart podcasting. Like that tells you anything about what we're talking about today. It doesn't talk about algorithm. It doesn't talk about getting, searching, getting found. Right. Our title of this episode is Algorithms how to get Seen, Heard and Found. How does the search algorithm help you get found in podcast directories? That's the title, that's the description. It's telling you exactly what you're going to get in the episode. If somebody says search algorithm, podcast directory, search algorithm, they're going to find our episode. It's going to come up number one. I'm pretty sure. And this is what is the issue. We are ghosting ourselves in our podcast episodes and in our shows because we're doing a terrible job of using the titles and descriptions. Now we can say that because thank goodness that potatoes the company that Tom and I own. Like, our job is to title and put the description so our clients don't have to actually have to do it, which is really helpful. But in today's world, if you are not doing that, that's what you're competing against. That's why our clients have an edge. Now we are sharing this with you because if everyone did it, it would be so much more valuable. We would have more and more at podcasting and going, wow, look at all this information. Look at all this power. And then they'd be doubling down on listening and then we all win.

Doesn't every podcast want to be found by more of their ideal listeners? I mean, I don't know any podcaster who does this with any level of seriousness that doesn't want to be heard. I mean, that's the whole point, really. Right. So it shocks me so much when I'm doing a power appraisal of a podcast and I find a description that's two sentences long. And I've had some that are literally like 10 words long. People sometimes just don't understand. I mean, it's understandable. Maybe they don't know what they don't know. Okay? But that description for the show is the single most critical part of your podcast listing, and I can't emphasize that enough. There are many important parts of your podcast brand and goals for your shows, but the description of your show, the single most important one. And I'm going to admit here, freely, openly, that the search functions in a lot of podcast apps sucks as far as search engines go. They're not Google. They're not going to say, oh, did you mean to type this when you typed that? Right. You know how Google does that? You misspell something. Oh, I'm giving you the search results for this, which is what I think you wanted. Is that right? No, they don't do that.

They are simple algorithms, Right?

Simple.

And it's not even searching. And it's what I have found consistently over time is that for the most part now, Spotify runs a little bit differently because Spotify weighs its shows at the front of the list. So they're essentially cheating the algorithm by putting their own shows first, no matter how they rank or rate.

Oh, and in the search results.

In the search results, yep. So you're really getting paid results first, which you just don't realize, and it's not disclosed. Spotify's answer to that is, will you pay for the app? So you downloaded our app, you agreed to our terms and conditions, and that's what we determined to do. So they don't think they're doing anything that's unethical. I think that's not what a search engine is for. And I think you should disclose that when the show is not really at the top.

Right? I mean, Google gives you paid results, and you know, they're paid, they're at the top. It's noted that way. And then you get the organic results. Apple's search function doesn't do that. They only kind of paid things that are featured if. If you're browsing through categories or top Podcasts. But when you are searching, you're getting a legitimate organic search result. And here's the big tip, folks. You get 4,000 characters, not words. Okay? I want to make sure. Oh my gosh. Who can write a 4,000 word description? No, it's not a blog post here. A 4000 character limit for the description in the podcast ecosystem. And for those of you that are on anchor, or the former anchor, I think it's now somebody bought them, but they're only giving you 600 characters. And I don't know why they do that, because the entire system is capable of and allows you to have 4,000 characters. And guess what? When you get 4,000 characters for your description, you want to use all of them. Even though you may think, well, I don't care. I just wanted to say two sentence description for my show. I don't need more than that. Yes, you do.

I want you to clarify what you're saying there. So you're saying 4,000 characters for the show description.

Correct.

What is the episode description? Is it the same?

I believe it's the Same, yes. Same 4,000 characters. Look, I do believe every show to take full advantage of the organic discoverability available to them. In all, the listening apps should have really long, engaging titles and descriptions of both your show and your episodes. However, I'm also going to be real here with you all and let you know that the show description is probably 20 times more important than the episode descriptions. Now, Tracy may disagree with me on this, but I'm going to tell you why I believe this.

I don't disagree with you.

You don't disagree, okay, because most listening apps prioritize results of shows that match up with your search before episodes. And in some of them, when you look at the search results, especially on your phone, but even on desktop versions of the apps, the show results are up. The episode results are below the fold, like way below. That's an old newspaper term, right? You have to scroll down in your phone or on the website to get to the episode results, and a lot of people overlook them. They don't even realize they're there. Or they're not looking for an episode result, they're looking for a show they can subscribe to. So they're more interested in the show results. So far more important that your show listing be.

That is the part where I disagree with you, Tom, and here's why. So if you are a heavy podcast listener, you will be searching for a topic. You'll likely know you're searching for an episode and you're looking down to it like I want to find out about how to do something, but I don't want a whole entire show. I just want to know how to do this one thing. It's kind of like trying to find a how to video or something like that. You'll skip down to the episode section. So anyone who's really a long time podcast listener knows that that's how it's organized there. But here's also what happens if you're a binge listener, if you're a heavy subscriber to podcasts, if you're a longtime listener of podcasts, you also know that the charts are useless and you won't use the chart to make any decisions. There are lots of advisors out there and podcast gurus who go, and I'm putting air quotes in there, Podcast gurus who will tell you that the charts matter. But a real listener knows that they don't. They know that there are a lot of things in the charts that shouldn't be there. There are a lot of things in the charts that like especially in the Spotify charts that Spotify put there and they're not any good. And there are a lot of things in the charts that have pod faded and are no longer accurate information. So they know to skip down to where the shows are and they know to do that. That being said though, if I'm like trying to look for the latest serial murder that's come up, I want to see what's new. I will look at the charts for that. So you want to play in both places. And so if you're going to exist in the podcast directories, searchability is a much more and pervasive ability for you to get seen then charts. Then if you want to be seen in the directories in the other way, the only three things you have in your favor are downloads, plays and play through those things are the biggest factors there. Number of subscribers, number of reviews come down on the list. But they're down on the list because you could have a ton of subscribers but nobody actually listens to it. It's weighted in their algorithms of how that happened.

But discoverability though, what we're really talking about to be found in the search algorithm really comes down to keyword phrases. Anything that you believe your listeners needs are desires are challenges that they are absolutely need to be within that description and or episode descriptions. Look, I never said don't write good episode descriptions. I just believe the majority of searches are people looking for shows more than episodes. But episode descriptions and titles are very important, too. And when someone has decided they want to listen to a podcast in your topic area, in your genre, this is how they're going to find you. I had a show I reviewed yesterday that's about cyber security, and it's a really big corporation doing this show with some incredible experts. They have incredible guests, and they have put cyber security or anything even anywhere in the neighborhood of cyber security is nowhere in the title of this show whatsoever. And their description was three sentences long. Cyber security as a word was in there twice. But none of the other related terms or phrases people would be searching on about cybersecurity were in that description. It was maybe 250 characters long of a description. So that show is a ghost in searches on the search in the listening apps. Anybody searching on cyber security isn't even going to know that show exists because it's not going to come up in the search results. And that's such a shame. You put such effort into your show. You're recording these episodes. You have wonderful guests, you have wisdom to share with the world, people that will listen to you, love you and want to work with you, engage with you in some way, and they're not finding you. So that's why this is so important, right?

And here's the great news. This is fixable. This is the best part about podcasting, right? It's a flexible media type. So if you go and retitle your episodes and you have to do that at the hosting level, if you go and update your show description, your episode descriptions, you update all of that within 24 hours, it is going to be on every directory updated. You can do this. You can fix this and fix this easily.

That new description may take up to a week or so before that app crawls through your whole description and starts associating more searches with it. So give it a week before it really starts coming up in more searches. But look at the numbers. Month over month. Can't measure this in days or even weeks. You want to assess growth over the long term, but month over month, you should see more plays of your episodes, more downloads of your episodes. Just by doing this one thing, you'll pick up new listeners is the point.

All right? And I want to just reference one thing for you social media influencers who are now podcasting for you social media influencers who are now podcasting, who are used to these short little descriptions with hashtags and all kinds of stuff, do not do that in your description. It doesn't work. It's not searchable. There's no hashtag library. It just doesn't do you any good. In fact, a lot of real podcast listeners look at that and go, they're not serious podcasters. They're social media who are just, like, dabbling in podcasting. There's a lot of skepticism about that crossover, so don't make it so obvious. And that's where you come from. And that's the model of it. It is the number one reason why we see 250 words or less, because they copy and paste their description from their YouTube channel. And which is silly, because your YouTube channel actually has more characters, too.

Yeah, that's true. Nothing wrong with YouTube. About half of podcasters, at least in our experience, are putting out their shows as videos on YouTube. And you absolutely should. And there's a whole nother audience there and a lot of other value there. But really what we're talking about today mostly is just unique to the podcast listening apps. And there are lots of other ways your show will be found through Google searches and other things that happen, too, and those are better searches engines. But those are things we've talked about in other episodes, and we'll continue to talk about in other episodes, about maximizing your podcast getting absolutely the greatest exposure out of every episode. This goes far beyond the listening apps. And if you have not heard us talk about that, then you can go check it out and search on those topics@politize.com in the feed your brand area. And there's a really good search function within our blogs that you can just keyword phrase search, and you'll find some of those.

I mean, hey, look, I wish the podcast directories had better algorithms. I wish they were something we could hack and get them to give us boosts like Instagram or something like that. But they aren't. They're simplified algorithms. We need to understand how they work, and we need to play within that field if we want to get seen, heard, and found. It's just simply that.

All right, well, I hope I didn't overemphasize it to the point of being annoying, but this is just so important. I hope it makes sense. Go look at a lot of other podcast listings and check them out and see.

You know what, Tom? Don't. This is where people go wrong. Because this is what I hear on the other side of this. They were like, I copied this popular podcast that was done in 2018, and in 2018, we only had 600 characters. We didn't have 4,000 to use. And so this is the problem when you follow a popular show that is most likely built by a network, it's done wrong. Every iHeart show has. Doesn't use 4000 characters. Every single iHeart show doesn't do it. Every Spotify show doesn't.

But Iheart and Spotify, as companies, have much bigger marketing budgets and are spending money in different ways to raise awareness for their shows. They're not relying on organic search like most independent podcasters are. And what I was actually gonna say, Tracy, is look at some other podcast listings and see how bad they are. I wasn't actually saying look at them as shining examples of what to model because there are just so many that are not optimized.

Don't model, please.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, I'm so glad you all are here with us. Remember, you can check us out live every single week on YouTube, on Twitter, and on Facebook, LinkedIn. And LinkedIn as well. Yeah, we're in all those places at once. And then, of course, if you're a client of ours, you can ask questions now, because that's where we're going to. We're going to hop off and we're going to address our questions and do group mentorship.

All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next time. Spend time with Tracy Hazard on feed.

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