Podcast Discoverability: 3 Search Keys To Get More Show Views

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works.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. 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 Tom Hazard, your host and today I am going to share with you my top three keys to podcast discoverability. That is podcast search, discoverability in particular. Okay, so I'm going to just, just quickly tell you what they are and then I'm gonna dive into each and I'm gonna give you a little fair warning in advance. I love this stuff. I geek out on it and oftentimes it really conflicts with a podcaster's brand vision and identity or beliefs. And I'm gonna share why in a minute and but in any case, the three things are the unique brand name dilemma. That's the first one I'm gonna, that's what I'm calling it. The second one is the unex end minds of the author field which is another part of your podcast listing. The third is the most ill considered part of your podcast identity that's holding you back from being found. Those are the three things I'm going to cover today.

And let's start with number one, the unique or brand name dilemma. Now look, I love brand names. I mean my business, I mean my show's called Feed you'd brand. Our company brand name is Potatoise. Although it's not our company name, that's our brand name. We do business as Potitize. It's our domain name for our website and that's a made up word. And yeah, sometimes when I say potatoes some people might think how do I spell that? And that's a downside of having a unique brand name. Especially when it's a made up word or a word that's a combination of other words and you have to live with that. And there's pros and cons of having unique brand name when it comes to your podcast listing. If your show and again we're talking about discoverability, making sure your show gets found by more of your ideal listeners. When you are really looking at your podcast listing from a discoverability perspective, you really want to pay attention if you have a unique name. Now I'm going to use two examples. One is of A relatively new customer of Poditides. And one is a prospect I met with recently where I was reminded of this with both of their names. And one of them had a podcast audit with where I review the podcast and we do this as a company for lots of people. Yeah, shameless little plug here. But it's completely free and there's no obligation. But you have an existing podcast and you want to get an audit of your podcast to make sure you're optimized for discoverability and learn many of the other pitfalls that may be holding you back from being discovered. Because I'm only sharing the top three today and there's really about a dozen different points that you really need to make sure are optimized to make sure you're found by your ideal listeners. You can go to poditize.com audit and sign up for a free audit. So what have you got to lose? You might as well do it. We provide a lot of value on that audit for free. So back to the unique or brand name dilemma. Example number one is a new customer. I love this podcast. I think especially for women in business, women entrepreneurs, it's a great show. The show's called Her C Suite Radio. And when you have a name like that that is unique and Her C Suite Radio, clearly this podcast is intended for women, which is great. You know who your audience is. That's wonderful. But this name, when I first saw it, it is a words that are combined. Her C Suite is one word. H, E, R, the letter C. S, U, I, T, E. And the C Suite being the corporate executive positions in an office. Your, your vice presidents, your officers, your president, VP of marketing, VP of business development, VP of operations, whatever. The C Suite, it's intended for top executives that are women. Wonderful brand name. The first time I had only heard the name, I hadn't seen it written and I didn't know it was one word. And guess what happens when I search her space. C Suite. The show doesn't come up. It's a show does not exist in the podcast listening apps, in the podcast ecosystem, and even on Google now, the podcast search engines, the search bars within your favorite listening app. I don't care if it's Spotify, Apple, iHeart, you know, any of them. They're bad search engines. I'm just gonna straight out say it, okay. These are not the most sophisticated search engines. It's not. Not like it's Google or even Yahoo or Bing or something. The vast majority of searches in a browser Internet happen on Google anyway. But Even Google isn't always going to put these two together. But that really is secondary, because when people decide they want to listen to a podcast, they're going to go to their favorite listening app and they're going to search. And if you've only heard the name of a show and you haven't seen it, and you don't know that there's a unique spelling or a unique combination of words that are one word, this will harm your discoverability. Now, there is a workaround for this, okay? And a lot of people don't like this.

Especially when this is a conflict between brand and discoverability. Your brand experts, your brand consultants, your brand gurus are always going to tell you your brand is paramount and it should always be displayed the same way everywhere it exists. So if your brand is her C suite radio, which is her, and then I think it's a capital C, but it's still all one word and then suite. But of course, the search engines don't care about capitals. You just type her C suite as one word and you would find this show. But they will tell you everywhere that brand name exists. You need to reinforce that brand. It should be the same way everywhere. You can do that if you want. You can be true to your brand, have it be the same way everywhere, and have very few people find you unless they've seen your name written and know, oh, it's one word, type it in one word. It's not very intuitive for people when they're searching to do her C suite as one word, her space C suite is probably going to happen nine times out of 10, and nine of those people out of 10, your podcast is not going to come up in that search. And I looked at that myself with this one, tested it many times over, and it's absolutely true. Now, by the time many of you are listening to this episode, I hope it's been fixed. Because there is a solution to make sure it comes up whether somebody types it as one word or two words. And you have to be willing to accept that maybe not in the name the title field of your podcast, which is the name of your show. I would agree. I would display your name there as one word the way it's intended to be, because that's only one part of your podcast listing. And while the search bar searches through the title field, it also searches through the author field. It also searches through the description field of your show. So my recommendation would be you've got to spell it incorrectly, break your brand guidelines, your brand rules, and upset your Brand consultant. And if you're a marketing expert, you have the belief it has to be the same everywhere. I'm going to tell you you need to suspend this belief and make an exception and bury somewhere in the description of your show the incorrect spelling or presentation of the name of your show. Because you want to be found by people that have heard about your show, say, oh, yeah, I want to listen to that podcast. And they go to their podcast app to type in your name to go listen, and they can't find the darn podcast. That doesn't help you and it doesn't help them. So I'm going to really recommend all of you podcasters, especially do it yourselfers out there. You have a unique name. That's wonderful. Have that name, promote that name every which way. But then I'm going to say you need to have one foot in the brand identity camp and one foot in the discoverability camp and make sure you have your name written both ways. And hey, maybe you have a name that's hard to know just from hearing it, how it's spelled. Maybe there's three different ways people might commonly do it. You better have those three different ways it's spelled within the description of your podcast if you want to be found today. I'm all about discoverability. That's all I care about right now. Okay? So take that with a grain of salt. Some of you will. But I'm here to help you be found today. And that's what we're going to do.

Number two, unexpected landmines in the author field of your podcast listing. So common mistakes I see in the author field are people put the title of their podcast in the author field and they're duplicating. You have the title of their podcast in the title field and in the author field. That's a silly mistake in my opinion. I don't really know why people do that, except maybe they're rushing and they don't know any better. But the author field is intended to be who is the host of the show. Now, there are some exceptions where a podcast is a company podcast and there may not even be one host. There may be many different hosts contributing. We supported a podcast years ago that the company reorganized and they stopped the podcast. But it was for Popular Mechanics magazine, called the most Useful. And they had a lot of different editors of the magazine contributing and being hosts. And they'd each record a segment and you'd have multiple hosts. And there are situations where you might say this is the author is Popular Mechanics. And in that case, if your brand is that big, a nationally known name, by all means put that brand name as the author field. If it's appropriate and you don't want to list the names of six or seven contributors in the author field, you can do that. But I often see a lot of new podcasts, unknown brands, not mean unknown nationally. Maybe you're known locally or known somewhat in your niche, but it's a company podcast. So they say this employee who's the host isn't the owner, it's the company name. And they'll put the company name in the author field. I think it's not always the best decision to do that because the impression it makes that, oh, this is going to be corporate, it's not personal enough, it's not authentic enough. I do think putting a person name as the host in that author field in most cases would serve people better. But you can certainly put the company name. But if you're going to do that, you better put the host's name or names within the description as well. So that somebody says, hey, I think Tom Hazard has a podcast. I don't remember the name, but I think he is a show. I think he hosts a podcast. They're going to search on the name. You want to make sure that name is in the show listing somewhere so that the podcast is discovered, is found. But here's the big landmark, here's the one which is only going to apply to a portion of you podcasters out there. It's all of you that are co hosts or even some of you that might have three or four hosts or contributors to the show. There often are mistakes made listing those multiple people and making sure that they can be found. The most common mistake, which again is this is going to be unique and applies to only a subset. But I am one because I've experienced it and I do see it in show audits that come across my or that I meet with people. And that's when you have a husband and wife co host or a brother and sister co host. And I've seen both that have the same last name. Most people would because they think it reads better, it's less formal. So Tracy and I host this podcast feed you'd brand and in the beginning we put Tom and with an ampersand, the and symbol Tracy Hazzard. What do you think happened if anybody searched Tom Hazard in that situation? Tom was separated by an ampersand and Tracy's name way far away from Hazard. I was a ghost. No one could find me I wasn't discoverable. And I see this with co hosts that are husband and wife all the time. It's usually the wife's name is first, ladies first. A lot of the times, some people think. And so they'll have her first name and his first name and last name. That is her last name also. And she is not discoverable. You type her first name and last name together, it's nowhere to be found. So my tip and strong recommendation is don't worry about how it appears that you think it's redundant. Oh, we're writing Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard. You're repeating the hazard. That's really unnecessary in the modern world in 2023 of discoverability. You can't do that. You have to. Somebody says, oh, I know Tracy Hazzard. She has a podcast right now. Tom Hazard, he has a podcast. They're going to search on your first name and last name together. So you need, say, Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard or vice versa for discoverability. So that is the big hidden landmine of the author field. Now, again, you can try to.

Instead of putting both first names with the last name in the author field, you could add it to the description. But there is a speed to searchability and some hierarchy to searchability. And the search and listening apps do search the title first, the author field second, and the descriptions third. And they are going through all of them. So you can put it there. But I still recommend for maximum searchability, it should be the full name in the author field. Okay, so now to the single most ill considered part of your podcast identity, your podcast listing that's holding you back from being found. Many of you, especially do it yourself. Podcasters, overlook this, spend very little time on it. It is the description of your show, not each episode, the overall show, the show listing. Can't tell you how many of these I see come across in an audit. And they have literally a one sentence description. The description field is the single most important part of your show's listing and identity, especially when it comes to discoverability. And it is not because I expect people to read through your entire description. I don't. I expect people to read no more than the first sentence, maybe two, before they decide. Yeah, that's for me. I'm going to click and give it a try or they're going to pass. Nope, not for me. I'm moving on. That's not the point. This description field, along with the title field and the author field, to me it's the most important part. But those are the three most Important. The description is the most important part because a lot of people don't know who you are who are searching for podcasts right now as you're listening to my voice on this podcast, there are people who've decided, yeah, they want to listen to a podcast. They're in their favorite listening app and they're searching right now. And they likely don't know who you are, don't know you have a podcast, they don't know the name of your podcast, but what do they know? They know what their needs are, they know what they want to listen to, they know what they want to learn, and they're searching on those needs. The only place that these search bars within the listening apps have to search through to match up their search with your show is that show description. This description. You better use every word that they give you, every character available to you to write a description from a perspective of searchability and discoverability. Less from a perspective of writing a nice article, you get no points from your English composition teacher for writing a wonderful, well written description that should be on the back cover of a book, let's say. No, nothing. It does not help you get discovered that the search algorithm does not care that you use proper grammar, proper English, spell things properly. All about matching up people's searches with shows that are in alignment with what they searched on. So hyper keyword phrase loaded everything that people are. You think that people might search on that. You think your show should come up in that search? You want in that description. Now here's another really big tip. I think a lot of you DIY podcasters who started out on a bootstrap budget, maybe you just launched your podcast or maybe you did it years ago. Cause I find shows that are many years old that have this problem and they wonder why more people aren't listening to their show. It's an awareness problem, a discoverability problem. And big part of it is there are platforms and I'm going to call out one of them because it's really the worst offender and that's Anchor. Anchor as of the time I'm recording this anyway and maybe after they hear this episode they're going to change it. But it's the pretty big ship over there, it's Spotify, who owns Anchor. And I don't think they move too quickly. They limit the number of characters in your Description to about 600, I believe at 6 or 6 50, I forget the actual number. So you only have 600ish characters to work with for your description. However, on other platforms including potitize, you get 4000 characters. Why is that? That's the maximum that the whole podcast ecosystem allows. There's a whole system that's been created to deliver podcasts to listeners. And a 4000 character, not word, but character amount is the limit for your description. And boy, as a podcaster, you better use all of them or very darn close. I want to see 3900 plus characters being used because otherwise you're just not putting out the maximum amount of contact, of words, of phrases that these apps have to match up searches with your show. That's the big one. And can't people always wonder, yeah, I've been podcasting for over a year. I've got 50 episodes and I think I have maybe about 30 or 40 downloads per episode. I'm not getting a lot of listeners organically through the podcast system. When I see that they have a two sentence description, they're really wondering why. And I'm like, here's your biggest one now. And you know what? It's such an easy thing to fix. You can rewrite your description, you can record your way to it and transcribe it, just change it up, use the maximum number of characters, there are nuances to what should be in there and go sign up for an audit@potatoes.com audit if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of that. But put something in there, be searchable on something, and within a week that's all going to be indexed. Whatever you update in your show listing will have been scanned by those listening apps and it will start to figure into the search. And you should get more listeners within a week. And if you look at your analytics month over month, you should see an increase in listenership just by doing this last thing I'm telling you with the description.

There you go. That's it. So I told you I was going to geek out a little here. I love this stuff. I love discoverability. The brand gurus don't love this. And we just have to agree to disagree on that. My job in this podcast, helping you as a podcaster get discovered, is all about search. And you got to play to the algorithms and the bots, because what does it matter if you have this wonderful piece of writing that contains no real valuable search terms for your topic? What does that matter if no one's going to find your show? You want your show to come up in searches. And especially if you're in a crowded subject matter. Let's say marketing, one of the most popular marketing, one of the most crowded, popular, what do you call them, categories of podcasts out there? Tons of content, which is wonderful. And there's tons of content, tons of shows there because there's millions of people that want to listen to subject matter in that category. So another one I did an audit with has a podcast name called Clear Brand. Maybe it was Academy or something like that. I'm going from memory, but Clear Brand was one word and if you didn't type it as one word, it didn't come up. Now, I did an audit with this show and I told them the same thing. And so I hope by the time you search this comes out, they've updated their description and they have clear space brand in their description somewhere because they're not going to change it in their title. That's the name of the show. That's great. I think Clear Brand marketing. Maybe it was, but. But then if you just make some adjustments and you add the incorrect spelling, the off brand presentation, you're going to be found. And the end of the day, isn't that really why we're putting out our content and podcasts, so other people can listen and enjoy it and benefit from it? Maybe want to get more from us, maybe want to work with us. If you're podcasting in business in any way, I hope you're wanting to be heard by more and more people. That's what everything I'm sharing with you today is designed to do. That's it. I'm not going to belabor it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hope you enjoyed it. I'll be back again with another hopefully very useful, interesting topic for you next time. This has been Tom Hazard on feed.

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