Tracy Hazzard breaks down how podcast directories actually search: they look at show name, author name, and description. Use your 4,000-character description to pack in keywords and clear messaging, put searchable names in the author field, and skip the keyword-stuffing.
Show name, author name, and description (copyright field sometimes indexed).
4,000 characters.
We know you're new to this podcasting thing, so we want to make sure that you have the details that those of us have been podcasting for so long and have helped thousands of shows launch have the same information. So the most important thing is your listing optimization. And why is it important? Your podcast listing is how it shows up on the listening apps. Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts. Anywhere you might be listed in a directory, there's a search engine involved. And basically in the podcasting industry, they suck. And I'm not sugarcoating that because it's true. They only search on three your show name, your author name, and your description. It does also search the copyright field, but, you know, not everybody fills that out and sometimes that's different. But three main fields that you are in complete control over, and it is crazy how little people pay attention to that. So the things that you can do is make sure your show name is something compelling and exciting, and it doesn't have to be specifically in its niche. Lots of people do catchy names and everything, but they have to know the show name in order to type it in and find you. So that's not the best way for people to find you if they're looking for you specifically. Your author name needs to show up. Don't put your name in the title. That's just a waste of space and time. Put it in the author name. Don't let networks take your space and put their name in there. Don't put your company name. Put the name that people are going to search on. Put that in the author name. And if you want to add it, you can always have more than one author. So you can put your name and your company name. So that's possible too. But the description is the number one thing that people don't do that is going to get your show found and listened to, and that is that you have 4,000 characters to use and be able to optimize that listing. So using the keywords, using the things that people really want to know to be able to find your show and find value from your show. Let's. Let's not be keyword cramming. Let's not be playing dirty practices with this, because it just doesn't work at the end of the day, because when someone sees that, they're going to go, this show is just trying to hack the system and scam me. So do make it something that is valuable. Reads well. It doesn't need to be amazing. It's not the most amazing profile you've ever read. It just needs to work in lots of different ways to talk about what you're going to talk about. We have a tip and a program that we use. We're going to share that in the link to this email that you saw and on this website page that you're on. We're going to have a link for our description exercise, which we teach all our clients and we do with them and for them. So that way you'll be able to optimize this description and have it turn out really well to make sure that you show up, your listings optimized, and you get c seen, heard, found, and rewarded by having more listeners.
