Podcast Content Syndication For Show Notes — Series Introduction

Do you have a podcast? Then you're doing “content syndication” already, at least for your podcast audio. But what about podcast content syndication for show notes and web content?

And while you’ve probably heard of "content syndication", do you know what it is and how to use it for your show and website? Most people understand "content syndication" as the process of distributing your audio as widely as possible.

But why stop there? Why not also distribute your show notes and web content too!

The concept is simple, but the benefits are often not clearly understood. This isn't just about traffic or even subscribers. It's about increasing your podcast website's rank and visibility in Google search results.

So subscribe on YouTube or to Season 2 of “The Podcast Growth Show” and join us to learn more about podcast content syndication! And sign up  for our email list below so we can keep you updated on all things related to podcasts and content syndication!

Podcast Content Syndication For Show Notes — Table Of Contents

• Introduction To Podcast Content Syndication [00:00]
• Content Syndication Method Quick Overview [03:14]
• Content Syndication ROI Case Studies [05:30]
• What's Next In The Series [09:48]

An Introduction To The New Series

I'd like to introduce our new video series, and incidentally also season 2 of “The Podcast Growth Show” podcast. In this series and season where we'll be talking about content syndication as a method for podcast and web growth.

In this first episode, I want to give a brief introduction to the series overall. And we'll focus on the benefits, ROI and outcomes with a couple of case studies. And then in the next upcoming videos, we'll dive a little deeper into how and why it works and is so effective. So with that said, let's get started.

If you have a podcast, you’re syndicating already

Now, you may not know it, but if you have a podcast, you already do content syndication by distributing your audio as widely into as many platforms as possible.

So why not also take it to the next level and do this for your show notes and website content? The concept is simple, but the benefits are often not clearly understood. This isn't just about traffic or even subscribers, this is about increasing your podcast website's rank and visibility in the search result pages with Google.

Have a look at this chart from Edison research, it kind of makes my point. The most popular discovery platform for podcasts is not Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Social media, but internet search. And so the lesson is this:

Google search is what really matters for podcast discovery

Ranking factors for your podcast or business website

Let’s think about what the ranking factors are. What contributes to your podcast or business website being visible, what's involved in that?

Domain Authority of your podcast website

Some of you may know about domain authority, and that is a industry standard term for how much power your site carries in the search engines. And mostly that's influenced by age, but there are a lot of  things that you as a podcast or a business owner can do to improve this over time.

Inbound Links

Inbound links, for example, are one of the most important factors to have your website rank in the search results. For example, remember to ask your guests to write about your interview on their own site, and this creates a “backlink” for your own site. But, as we will explore in this series, there are far better and faster ways to get high quality backlinks from our podcast content syndication for show notes methodology.

Podcast content syndication for show notes as long form content

First of all,  long form content is also something that Google values. So with SEO optimized show notes for example, this longer form content tends to rank a lot more quickly and a lot higher in the search results overall.

Low bounce rate drives engagement

Then having engagement on your website and the low bounce rate for your audience is also a critical factor. It means your show notes need to be good enough to get people to read them, to stick around, and to explore more content or other related episodes on your site.

Social Media signals

And then social media and actual traffic also contributes. So these are just some of the factors that contribute to the overall visibility of your site.

And what I'm saying here, my point is that podcast content syndication for show notes that we'll be talking about in this video series, addresses all of these ranking factors resulting from a syndication strategy that doesn't limit itself to just your audio, but also widely syndicates your show notes articles.

Content Syndication Method Quick Overview

The methodology and our whole systems usually start with some form of SEO research. We provide this as a podcast content marketing service for the “Done For You” entrepreneurs too busy to do this all themselves, but it can also be learned by DIY podcasters.

SEO Research is a starting point

It is important to know how people search, what they type into a search engine. How are they likely trying to find the topic of your episode or of your subject matter or of your guests subject matter?

Click Worthy Episode Titles

And that's an important piece of knowledge and that informs creating and crafting click where the episode titles as well. I mean, obviously, if you see a boring title or a title that's non-descriptive, people won't click on it, so... Or will open it.

And that's true not just on the web, but that's true also on most podcasts listening platforms. When you're scrolling through what new episodes are there, episode titles are super important.

Long-form SEO-optimized show notes via transcripts

These are augmented mind you, it's not enough to simply paste or copy paste the transcript on the bottom, but we carefully optimize these with headings, images, quotables, tables of contents that we make these look like authority articles, which then appear to Google as index worthy and as worthy to feature in the search rankings. So I'll go over the rest of these rather quickly.

The focus of this content series will be on syndication, not technical SEO

We follow pretty standard formulas for technical optimization of show notes, for example these include headings and images and alt-tags. There are a number of different SEO techniques we often talk about elsewhere on this blog. And we even have courses around that.

But where we are going to be focusing in this series is this idea of multichannel syndication and link building, as well as sort of social influencer marketing campaigns that are building and sending social signals to Google.

Content Syndication ROI Case Studies

So for the rest of this video, just as an introduction, let me just illustrate with a case study. Here's a podcast called “Deeper Dating” and this was a screenshot from about a year after launch.

So he's had 190,000 downloads in that time. And the question that I like to ask most podcasters is:

A podcast with 190,000 downloads, how many of those downloads do you think actually resulted in visits to the website? What %?

Because most people I asked this, say between five and 10%.

Getting people to visit your podcast’s website is hard, right?

We think that getting people to come from your podcast listening experience to go and visit your website is hard. Most people think so. And I think that's caused people to undervalue how important it is that you get those visits.

Now, here's the answer: a 138% download to web visits ratio

It's not 5% or 25, 50. If you thought 75, you'd be wrong. What if I told you it was 138%? And you're probably going, "What? That doesn't even make sense."

Flipping the script

Because what happens is that people actually search for the content. So for example, “sexual attraction” is something that he did an episode about. People searching for this typed that into a search engine and his episode came up on page one of the search results, the topic of this podcast. And then when they go and open those pages, they see that, “oh, look, there's a podcast here!” They discover it.

It's exactly the other way around. That's what we mean by flipping the script. So he's had 261,000 page views and people are visiting his website during this time because of the SEO optimized show notes that are showing up in the search results and that are driving traffic to his website. And this was a snapshot from a year. Two years into the journey he has had 500,000 website visits for about 450,000 or so downloads. So my point is, is that that ratio sort of keeps going. And the amount of traffic and the amount of signups and the amount of subscribers that he's getting is a result of that.

The ROI of SEO optimized show notes and website visits

And there's some real value here. It's also something that people often don't consider. There's an ROI. He's ranking in this time. It was a brand new website with zero domain authority. That's also something that people who know. If you've had a website for 10 years, it's a little easier to get into the search results, where then with a brand new one. This was a brand new one.

And he now, a year after, ranked for about 177 keywords. And that translated into about 2,000 clicks a month. These numbers are per month. And if you had to pay Google AdWords for the traffic, for the clicks, you would have to pay $2,000+ a month. So he's getting $2,000 a month of free traffic to the site. And now , after 2 years, the numbers are even more impressive.

And there are lots of other examples like this. And then you're saying, "Well, so what? What about all this traffic?" Well, if your web strategy is good, then what happens is, is that it has a knock on effect.

So not only Deeper Dating getting $2,000 plus a month in free traffic, the host is growing their email list. They are selling out all of his workshop, group coaching intensives, no more Facebook ads and paying for that.

No more sales webinars are necessary because they are getting all of the monetization strategy for his subject matter from organic traffic via Google. And so that's what the value is that we're talking about here.

What's Next In The Series

So that's to introduce this series. I hope it arouses some curiosity, and in the coming few episodes we're going to be diving next into what podcast content syndication for show notes is, and how it works exactly. And we'll dive a little bit deeper into this form of content marketing and why it works so brilliantly.

Where to find us

In the meantime, if you like this, please subscribe to our Podcast Growth Channel on YouTube. Also, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter with under @polymash and on Instagram @polymashdesign. Love to hear back with any questions that you have. Feel free to leave a comment below.