Tom Hazzard explains why episode numbers in podcast titles create problems: listening apps show their own numbering anyway, numbers waste title space and hurt SEO, and they tell listeners nothing about what the episode contains. Put numbers in descriptions or spoken intros instead.
Should I add episode numbers to my episode titles? That's a very good question. And if you ask 10 different people in with experience in podcasting, you probably get 10 different answers. So I want to be upfront about that. I'm going to give you Tom Hazard's opinion, and I think it's the general opinion of all of us here at Potatoes that we do not recommend that you put episode numbers in your episode titles. In fact, Apple has come out and with their recommendation on this, and in fact, they tell everyone in the podcast industry that they do not want you to put episode numbers in your episode titles. They actually are saying, don't do it, please don't do it. Now they stop short of forcing you to not do it. There's a lot of old podcasts that are still out on their platform that have been doing it for a long time and they're not going to take those shows down. But I'm just going to share with you why we do not recommend that you put episode numbers in your episode titles. A lot of listening apps will put their own numbers by in the. In your list of episodes in their app. And some people start with a trailer episode or episode zero, and then they call their actually second episode episode one. And that throws off and creates a mismatch of the numbers between what you're putting in the title of your episode and the numbers that are being put in the app in their lineup of all your episodes. They're just counting from the very first one and to the end. There also in recent years has been the introduction of the idea of a bonus episode or an episode trailer, meaning here's what's coming up on the next episode is actually a separate little published podcast episode, separate from the actual episode people are getting. And here you can see where episode numbering gets complicated and can be thrown off with a bonus episode or some other kind of, you know, little trailer in between episodes and, you know, podcast. Here's what's coming up next, you know, and then the other thing is that it generally is not good for, for SEO for the title of your episode, both within the listening apps and also within, you know, Google looking for episodes on, you know, through websites and web apps. So there are many reasons why episode numbers are not really in your best interest. Now, for instance, think of this. You always put the episode number at the front and then the title. A lot of listening apps, when they're showing your whole list, they don't give a lot of space for the title. It gets cut off. And if you're putting an episode number at the beginning now that's, you know, potentially four or five more characters. If you're putting EP and then a number, or even more if you're putting episode two, episode ten, spelling out the word episode, you fill up all that space with an episode number, not leaving any space for what's the good reason why me as a listener, why I would want to listen to this? What's this episode about? People want to just see in the title, what's new? What's this one about? What's in it for me? And the episode number tells them nothing. So it takes up an unneeded space. Apps can confuse people because the app will say it's this number and your episode will say it's another because they get out of alignment.
And the only reason that I can see why some people would like to have an episode number is actually when they're referencing an older episode in a new episode, they may say, hey, for more on this topic, go listen to episode 37 of my podc. That'd be the only reason why, why it might make sense. However, we believe a better practice is again, just to have the title of the episode speak for itself from a subject matter perspective. What's in it for the listener? And if you want to reference another episode, by all means, do it and say, you know what, we have another episode on this topic and we've got the link to that episode in the description of this episode, you know, so right within the description in the listening app, you can have a link to another episode or a reference to its title or whatever you want. So there are better ways to deal with the things that episode number do. Now, perfectly fine to talk about episode numbers. You can in the description, you can have the episode number and you know, if it's meaningful to your credibility as a podcaster, to say, hey, everyone, welcome to the show. This is episode number 325. You can certainly talk about that. We just don't recommend you put that episode number in the actual title of the episode. But again, this is Tom's opinion, dare I say the opinion of Poditize as a company as a whole. And it is a choice. If you really want to do it, you can do it. We just really don't recommend it. And that's why.
