Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What is search engine optimization?
According to Lexico, search engine optimization is defined as, “The process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”
Statistics show that 51% of website traffic comes through organic search, so making sure that your podcasts are optimized for search engines can be critically important to your podcast’s success.
How can having my podcasts transcribed help me with search engine optimization?
Search engines cannot index audios and videos beyond their titles and text descriptions. This limits the amount of information provided to search engines and will limit the number of search terms that your podcasts will show up for and how high in the search results it will end up.
Remember the part of the definition above that said, “…ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.”? Well, providing text transcripts of your podcasts will provide the search engines with text to crawl, which will give them access to far more content and information than just the title and description of your podcast. This can increase the chances of your podcast showing up higher in the search results, as well as being listed for more search terms.
Increased Accessibility and Choice
Providing more accessibility and choice is always a good thing when trying to gain more loyal followers, and you will be doing just that by providing transcripts of your podcasts. Offering transcripts of your podcasts can give your audience a more user-friendly experience and can increase your audience reach, audience loyalty and number of followers.
By providing a transcript of your podcasts, you are not only offering accessibility for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. You will also be offering more choices for potential audience members who may still prefer/need to read your podcasts instead of listen to them. There can be various other personal and/or technical reasons for this. They may simply prefer to read rather than listen. Maybe they’ve just come across your podcast, but they are in a public place and do not have headphones, or perhaps they do not have audio on their current device. Providing a transcript provides an additional option for them that will make it possible for them to access your podcasts as well.
Also, don’t forget those who do not speak the language that is spoken in your podcast. A transcript can allow them to copy the text into a translation tool and read it in their own language.
Social Media and Sharing
Having text transcripts of your podcasts will allow you and others to easily share excerpts of your podcasts on social media platforms and other blogs.
Blogging
If you have a blog or are considering starting one that is related to your podcast, having your podcasts transcribed will make it easier for you to create a blog and use the transcripts of your podcasts to add content to your blog.
In summary
Providing a transcript of your podcasts can improve accessibility, shareability, provide marketing materials and increase your online visibility.