While podcasting alone can be a valuable resource for financial advisor marketing, when combined with your other SEO efforts, it can work in several ways to get your financial advisor website to the top of the organic search results. Whether you already have a podcast strategy or are in the beginning stages of thinking about one, here is how (and why) to get podcasts working for your SEO.
Keywords
It took a while, but in recent years Google finally started including podcasts in search results. This was a major source of interest for digital marketers looking for yet another way to increase their online presence and rank higher in relevant organic searches.
But like anything that has the potential to produce significant results, podcasting takes some serious work to get to the top of the financial advisor charts. Also, did I mention the extraordinary number of competitors with the same goals? Just about everyone knows the importance of being ranked on page one - 91.5% of Google users do not scroll to page 2. Only 4.8% scroll to page 2 and 1.1% to page 3. As with traditional website SEO, keywords are a fundamental part of the search engine process. This is how investors find advisors and financial information. Using the right keywords in the right places at the right times can make or break your overall podcast SEO success.
Here are some tips for using the right keywords in your financial advisor podcasts.
Use Targeted Keywords Wherever You Can.
Title and Description
The title of your podcast episode is not only how your listeners will know what your episode is about but also lets Google know what the episode is about. It may be tempting to include the same keywords over and over in multiple episode titles, but Google is smarter than that.
Imagine that you’re watching a television series on a streaming service, and you take a look at the next few episodes and they all basically say the same thing. Are you going to want to hit play? The same goes for podcast episodes.
While they all may be in the same general vein of financial advisor content, each episode should have a clear, compelling, and specific theme. After all, as a search engine, Google’s primary objective is to deliver the most relevant and timely results to the search queries by its users. This is Google’s core value proposition.
Throughout the Episode Dialogue
Whether you’re using a pre-written script or talking points when recording a podcast, be sure to include the main keywords from your episode title and description throughout. This helps validate your keyword strategy and gives your financial advisor podcast more credibility with Google, especially when this practice is used over time and for multiple episodes. Google will identify you as a player if you do it right.
Take Time to Produce a Transcription
While Google does have the capabilities to analyze a podcast’s audio for search ranking purposes, there are benefits to uploading a text transcript of each of your financial advisor podcast episodes. One benefit is that it provides Google with a clear representation of all keywords and content used throughout the podcast episode and leaves nothing to interpretation by Google bots.
Once you have transcribed your podcast audio, you can also use this to create podcast show notes. These notes describe things that happened throughout the episode, and can also be a place for additional tools, such as links or references that are mentioned in the episode. More than an episode summary, show notes are usually in a different location from summaries and offer more detailed information about the episode. Show notes can also be a place to reference previous episodes for more overall listeners.
Publish Your Podcasts on Popular Hosting Sites
There are many places listeners can access podcasts, with some of the more popular platforms being Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher for example. These 3rd-party platforms host millions of podcast episodes in a central location such as an app or website and have their own search engines.
This is another reason why SEO is so important for your financial advisor podcast’s overall success. While there are many hosting services, it will serve financial advisors well to research to find the most accessible and relevant hosting sites for their content.
Create A Dedicated Place for Your Podcasts
While the podcast platforms mentioned above are important places to list your podcasts, they shouldn’t be the only place. For SEO purposes, having a page (or even a dedicated website) for your podcast can give listeners a central location to easily access all your episodes.
At a minimum, creating a page on your website that’s dedicated to just your podcasts can help protect your content if any (or all) of the podcast hosting services choose to stop hosting your content. That’s because these podcast hosting services can remove your content at any time with no explanation or notice.
While unlikely, it’s a best practice to already have a database of your podcast content in one easily accessed location so listeners (and Google) can find you. Sure, you will always have the recordings floating around somewhere should the copies on 3rd party sites disappear, but this way you don’t have to scramble to get your content organized and online.
Cross-Promote on All Digital Channels
If this sounds like a broken record, that’s because the importance of cross-promotion cannot be overstated. Imagine building a house with many doors, but never using them. That’s the equivalent of building a strong digital marketing presence within many platforms and channels, but never connecting them.
Utilize all these connections when promoting podcast content. The possibilities are limitless, but some examples include creating a blog post to promote each podcast episode or a social media post sharing a link to your podcast with an episode description every time a new episode comes online.
Quality is Always First
While all the above methods are effective ways of leveraging podcasts to increase your financial advisor website SEO, it’s imperative to not lose sight of the most critical aspect of any digital marketing efforts - the quality of your content. Without high-quality content—from your website to social media, videos, blogs, and everything in between—your SEO efforts will be all but wasted. Before venturing into yet another SEO endeavor, be sure you have solid plans for creating content that will be useful, timely, relevant, and important for your target audience.
If you don’t have the time to dedicate to curating a full content calendar, consider partnering with a digital marketing agency that can handle the specifics of financial advisor podcasting and work with you to put your best digital foot forward.
