What is Podcast Transcription and Why You Need One
Here's the scenario:
You’ve launched your podcast and you’ve been producing episodes every week for the past 6 months. As new episodes are released, you see the subscriber count increase as well. This proves your theory, “If you build it, they will come.”
But after a while, you see that the podcast downloads and listens start to plateau. There’s also little to no change in engagement in social media. The same people are interacting and responding to your podcast.
This got you thinking, “Where’s my tribe at? What I am doing wrong?”
You haphazardly concluded that your podcast has poor content that’s why it’s not reaching your target audience.
You start to feel that you’re about to fail in the one thing that you want to do in life.
Before you throw in the towel, we have two words for you: Podcast Transcription.
What is Podcast Transcription?
Podcast transcription is the process of turning podcast audio into readable text form. Having a transcription of your podcast episodes gives an added convenience to your podcast listeners because they can read along as they listen. This also gives them the opportunity to read the content of your podcast in its entirety if they missed out on something important.
Sometimes, even with a regular podcast schedule, people are not always available to listen to a podcast when it goes live. With a podcast transcript available, they can read through the text.
Further, those who have listened to your podcast may also want to refer back to some of the golden nuggets you’ve dropped and may want to share them with their social media followers. If you have a text version of your audio content, then it’s a lot easier to share and distribute on various social media platforms.
A-ha!
So, one of the reasons why your podcast is not getting traction from people you are hoping to reach is you’re not providing more opportunities to be “seen” on the internet. Announcing your podcast on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram is a good start but it’s not enough.
By having a podcast transcript, you can increase your podcast’s discoverability in search engines. It makes your podcast more searchable and more algorithm friendly.
How Does Google Index Podcasts?
This may be hard to believe, but Google did not (and could not) index audio content until 2019. They now figured out how to scan audio files and index them for relevance based on how people search for topics or use keywords.
This means that you can now use search engine optimization best practices for your podcast.
For instance, if you search for “freelancers podcast” on Google, the search result looks like this:
There’s a Podcast section where the most relevant Google podcast shows up on top of the results.
So how do you get on that very cushy position on page 1 of Google?
By using Podcast transcription and Podcast Show Notes.
What is Podcast Show Notes?
Podcast show notes serve as a brief summary of the podcast episode. They can be presented in bullet points or in short sentences that are easy to understand. They essentially tell your potential listeners what they can expect from the episode.
It’s important to have a hook so that they will be compelled to listen to your podcast. And if your listeners like the podcast episode, they are likely to subscribe to your podcast.
What is Podcast Audio Transcripts?
Podcast transcripts are the text version of your podcast episodes. They are exactly the same in content. Everything that was said and discussed on your podcast is transcribed verbatim.
Podcast show notes and podcast transcriptions are the text content that will make it much easier for Google to index your podcast. As Google perfects the system of indexing podcasts and other audio content, having podcast transcripts puts you ahead of the game because you are already optimizing your podcast and making it more relevant not just for your audience but for the Google algorithm as well.
Put Keywords Where They Matter
Podcast transcripts in their raw form are not optimized for Google or search engines. Understandably so because they are just the text version of what was said in the podcast episode. It would be awkward if you’re constantly spitting out random keywords during a discussion or an interview.
That’s why you need to optimize your podcast description and show notes and put relevant keywords in places in sections where Google finds them.
You must include keywords in the following sections:
Title of the podcast
Title of the content post (if you have a blog)
Title of the podcast episode
Images used to promote the podcast (i.e., keywords in the file name)
First paragraph, middle, and end of the post.
Keywords are necessary to match the right content to the people who are searching for certain topics. This applies even to podcasts. So if your podcast content ranks in some of the long-tail keywords for podcast topics, your podcast will appear on the first page of Google and this will drive traffic to your podcast.
If you have a podcast and need a little bit of help navigating the optimization process, we can help you with creating podcast transcription and product show notes. Just contact us and we’ll make things happen.
