Podcast SEO covers the work that helps people find a podcast through search: writing clear show and episode titles, publishing an episode page for each show with a summary and transcript, and keeping the RSS feed and directory listings accurate. Audio itself is hard for search engines to use, so the text around it does most of the work. Google Podcasts was shut down in 2024, and podcast listeners now mostly discover shows through YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other apps.
Episode pages
Each episode deserves its own page on your site. That page is what can rank in web search, earn links and be cited by AI systems.
- A descriptive title that says what the episode covers, not only the guest's name
- A written summary of the main points
- A full transcript, edited for readability
- Timestamps for key segments
- Links to resources and people mentioned
- The embedded player and links to listening apps
Platforms and feeds
Podcast apps search mostly on show title, episode titles, descriptions and author. Keep these specific and consistent. YouTube now hosts many podcasts, so publishing video or audio versions there brings YouTube SEO into play. Schema.org has types for podcast series and episodes, but support for them in Google results is limited and undocumented as a rich result, so treat that markup as optional.
Example
Making episodes searchable
Hypothetical company Mossgate hosts a podcast for finance leaders. Early episodes were titled with guest names only and had a one-line description. The team retitles new episodes around the topic discussed, publishes edited transcripts with headings, and links each episode page to related guides. The pages begin appearing for specific questions guests answered.
Common mistakes
Raw automated transcripts
Unedited machine transcripts are hard to read and can misspell names and terms. Edit them, at least for important episodes.
Hosting only on a podcast platform
Without pages on your own domain, the search value of episodes accrues to the platform instead of your site.
Questions
Google has experimented with podcast discovery in the past, but Google Podcasts was discontinued in 2024. Rely on text pages and transcripts for web search visibility.
Sources
