Podcast Visibility Optimization Archives

Nov 14

How to Calculate the Impact of Podcast Visibility Optimization

By Alexis Hue Podcast Analytics, Podcast Cover Optimization, Podcast Visibility Optimization

Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO) helps increase your podcast’s reach by improving its position in search results on listening platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts. This article will walk you through simple steps to measure the impact of PVO on impressions and downloads so you can track your progress and calculate its ROI effectively.

What is Podcast Visibility Optimization?

Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO) focuses on boosting your podcast’s visibility across major audio platforms like Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, and Deezer. The goal? To get your podcast in front of more listeners by appearing at the top of relevant search queries.

How much of your audience is driven by search vs. – other activities such as social media or PR could easily be estimated by looking at your Spotify dashboard. In the example below, Search represents 30% of Impressions, a benchmark that most of our clients’ shows tend to exceed.

Podcast Visibility Optimization’s first impact: increased Search Impressions

As mentioned above, the goal of Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO) is to increase the visibility of a podcast on audio platforms’ internal search results.

The core objective of PVO is not just to rank highly for search queries but to ensure potential listeners are discovering your podcast. After all, there’s no point in having top-ranking positions if the podcast isn’t being shown to a significant number of users on platforms like Spotify.

If a podcast has a high ranking on several keywords but a low number of impressions, it likely means the search terms it’s optimized for have a low search volume. This would not translate to valuable discoverability and discovery for the podcast.

So, with PVO, it’s crucial to track Search Impressions. As outlined in our previous article, Spotify Impression Data: What It Means and How to Use It, the “search impressions” metric in Spotify analytics represents the number of times your podcast appeared in users’ search results

This helps gauge the podcast’s overall visibility and relevance within the platform’s search results. To date, only the Spotify for Podcasters dashboard provides this impression data, allowing podcasters to monitor the impact of their optimization efforts.

Spotify’s search impression metrics are a relatively new feature. Currently, Spotify provides data in a rolling 30-day format without options to export or view historical data. To track progress, you’ll need to regularly record these metrics manually. Although time-consuming, this helps gauge which PVO tactics are working and refine your strategy.

Podcast Visibility Optimization’s second impact: increased downloads

Like every online marketing funnel, more impressions translate directly into more downloads. Spotify for Creators (formerly Spotify for Podcasters) provides a clear visualization of your podcasts’ funnel.

On your dashboard, you will find two conversion rates:

People you reached to People who showed interest. We like to call it “seen to clicked”.
People who showed interest to People who streamed. We like to call it “clicked to downloaded”.

So, by simply applying the conversion rates to your increase in search impressions, you can estimate the number of extra downloads you won by improving your show’s visibility.

Here is an example:

Before Podcast Visibility Optimization:

Search Impressions: 500,000
“Seen to Clicked” Conversion Rate: 10%
“Clicked to Downloaded” Conversion Rate: 80%
Total Downloads: 500,000 x 10% x 80% = 40,000

After Podcast Visibility Optimization:

Search Impressions: 700,000
“Seen to Clicked” Conversion Rate: 10%
“Clicked to Downloaded” Conversion Rate: 80%
Total Downloads: 700,000 x 10% x 80% = 56,000

The difference in downloads is the impact of your PVO efforts: 56,000 – 40,000 = 16,000

In the example above, we have used 10% and 80% conversion rates, as many podcasts fluctuate around those numbers. However, conversion rates can vary greatly depending on your podcast’s topic, branding, and the specific search terms you are targeting, so please use yours.

Podcast Visibility Optimization + Podcast Cover Optimization = the winning combo

While Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO) is crucial for improving a podcast’s discoverability, optimizing another key element—the podcast cover art—is equally important.

Podcast Cover Optimization (PCO) focuses on enhancing the visual representation of your show to maximize the “seen to clicked” conversion rate. Your podcast may rank high in search results, but potential listeners may not click on it if the cover art doesn’t attract attention. Testing and optimizing cover art boosts the ‘seen to clicked’ rate, creating a strong synergy when combined with PVO strategies.

As outlined in our previous article on Podcast Cover Optimization, testing and optimizing your cover art is essential for boosting the “seen to clicked” conversion rate. This, combined with the impression-driving power of PVO, creates the winning combination to take your podcast’s performance to new heights.

By aligning your PVO and PCO tactics, you create a synergistic effect that amplifies the impact of each strategy. Potential listeners are more likely to discover your podcast through improved search visibility and more compelled to click and check out your content due to its visually appealing and professional presentation.

Implementing this PVO + PCO approach allows you to maximize your podcast’s discoverability and conversion potential, ultimately leading to more downloads.

Flaws to the model

It is important to note that while allowing a quick estimation of your PVO efforts, the model has a few limitations:

Keep in mind that this model relies only on Spotify data. You may need to extrapolate based on Spotify’s share of your total downloads to gauge impact across all platforms (like Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music). For example, if Spotify represents 50% of your downloads, you could multiply the extra downloads by two for an overall estimate.
The conversion rates are broad averages, including Search, Home, and Library impressions. The conversion rates for search are likely different than the average of all impressions. Furthermore, the “seen to clicked” and “clicked to downloaded” rates may be higher or lower if you rank on branded versus generic search terms.

Conclusion

Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO) is a powerful strategy for driving more listeners to your show. You can significantly increase your podcast’s discoverability and conversion potential by improving its rankings and visibility on major audio platforms.

While the PVO impact calculation provides a practical way to estimate the download benefits, the model has limitations, such as the need to extrapolate beyond Spotify data. However, the core premise remains true—improving your podcast’s visibility through PVO will directly translate into more impressions, clicks, and downloads.

Combining these PVO gains with optimized podcast cover art through a comprehensive PCO strategy will unlock an even more powerful one-two punch for podcast growth. By embracing PVO and PCO as complementary pillars of your marketing approach, you can maximize your show’s discoverability, conversion rates, and audience size.

The podcast landscape is crowded, but with the proper visibility optimization strategies, you can ensure your show rises to the top and reaches the listeners it deserves.

Jun 20

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Boost Your Podcast Visibility with Spotify Recommender

By Alexis Hue Podcast Analytics, Podcast Visibility Optimization

Spotify Recommender is a powerful tool designed to deliver personalized podcast recommendations based on user preferences and behaviors. Let’s examine how podcast publishers could use it to boost the visibility of their shows.

What is Spotify Recommender?

Spotify Recommender is a sophisticated system designed to deliver personalized music and podcast recommendations to users based on their preferences and behaviors. Its primary goal is to increase users’ time spent on the platform. The more time a user spends on the platform, the greater the retention for premium subscribers or the more ads served to free users.

By delivering personalized and contextually relevant recommendations, Spotify aims to keep users engaged and coming back to discover new content.

Just as Google Discover helps articles and videos find their audience by understanding user interests, Spotify Recommender ensures podcasts reach listeners most likely to enjoy them. This similarity is crucial for podcast publishers.

Both Spotify Recommender and Google Discover use algorithms and machine learning to analyze user interactions and provide tailored recommendations.

For Podcast publishers, Spotify Recommender is a great way to enhance their visibility and discoverability on Spotify.

How does Spotify Recommender work?

Spotify Recommender operates through a combination of collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and user profiling.

Collaborative filtering involves analyzing users’ listening habits to find patterns and similarities. For instance, if User A and User B both enjoy podcasts X and Y, and User B also likes podcast Z, Spotify may recommend podcast Z to User A. This approach uses a massive user-item interaction matrix, which helps understand the similarity between users and tracks.

Additionally, the system uses content-based filtering to assess the content of podcast episodes. By analyzing the metadata the publishers provide, Spotify can recommend podcasts with content similar to those a user already enjoys.

Finally, the Spotify Recommender system logs all user interactions, including follows, ratings, shares, listens, and completion rates, to build comprehensive user profiles. These profiles consider genre preferences, mood, and temporal listening patterns, providing contextually relevant recommendations.

What are the Similarities and Differences between Spotify Recommender and Google Discover?

Both Spotify Recommender and Google Discover are personalized content delivery systems, but they serve different types of content and utilize distinct methodologies.

Similarities:

Personalization: Both systems provide personalized content based on user preferences and behavior. They use machine learning algorithms to analyze user data and deliver relevant recommendations.
User Profiling: Both platforms build comprehensive profiles of their users based on interaction history, which helps in delivering tailored content.
Continuous Improvement: Both systems continuously update and refine their recommendations based on the latest user interactions and data.

Differences:

Type of Content: Spotify Recommender focuses on music and podcasts, while Google Discover provides a wide range of content, including articles, videos, and news.
Recommendation Basis: Spotify uses a combination of collaborative filtering and content-based filtering, emphasizing user interactions with audio content. Google Discover, on the other hand, relies heavily on user interests and engagement with various types of web content.
Visual Emphasis: Google Discover strongly emphasizes visual content, requiring high-quality images and videos to engage users. While valuing visual elements, Spotify focuses more on audio features and user listening patterns.

What Should Podcast Publishers Do to Leverage Spotify Recommender?

Create High-Quality Content: Your podcasts must offer high-quality, engaging content. That’s the key to retention and what will trigger users to listen to more episodes, follow, share, and leave excellent ratings. Avoid clickbait titles, as they can lead to negative user feedback and lower your content’s visibility in recommendations.
Optimize Podcast Metadata: Ensure that your podcast metadata is complete and accurate. You have five levels to optimize: show title, publisher name, show description, episode title, and episode description. It also helps if you provide additional context and information.
Grow your Podcasts’ Authority: Spotify will always promote shows with high authority. To boost your authority, you need to increase your number of followers, have excellent ratings, a reasonable completion rate, etc. This should already be part of your Podcast Visibility Optimization efforts.
Leverage the Host Recommendation Feature: Take advantage of Spotify’s Host Recommendation feature by indicating which podcasts you would recommend. The Spotify Recommender uses this data in its algorithm, and your recommendations will also appear on the “More like this” tab on your podcast.

To do this, log in to Spotify for Podcasters, pick a show, head over to the “Details” tab, and look for the Host Recommendation section.

Then, look for the show you want to recommend or type its name: Spotify will provide suggestions. To expand your reach and audience base further, you may also want to collaborate with other publishers to set up cross-recommendations.

Publish Fresh Content: Regularly publish new episodes to keep your podcast feed active. Consistent content updates can help maintain listener interest and engagement. Refresh evergreen content periodically to keep it relevant and discoverable. Highlighting past popular episodes can also attract attention from users who may have missed them initially.

Following these simple tactics, podcast publishers can effectively leverage Spotify’s recommender system to enhance their content’s visibility, attract more listeners, and ultimately grow their audience.

How to track your podcasts’ performance in Spotify Recommender

Good news for podcast publishers: You can monitor your podcast’s performance in Spotify Recommender! You need to use Spotify for Podcasters, which gives you plenty of valuable insights, including streams, listeners, and impressions.

Spotify Impressions are divided into three categories:

Home: Recommendations, recently played shows, and podcast previews
Library: Saved shows or episodes and user-created playlists
Search: Listener search, top podcast charts, and editorial recommendations

So, by monitoring your impressions in the Home category, you can somehow see how your podcasts’ perform within Spotify Recommender.

Is it perfect? Clearly not, as Impressions Data has some current limitations, but it should indicate whether your efforts are boosting impressions within Spotify Recommender.

Conclusion

Spotify Recommender provides an effective way for podcast publishers to boost the visibility of their content. Publishers can attract new listeners by understanding how the algorithm works and then focusing on high-quality content, optimizing metadata, leveraging host recommendations, and publishing regularly.

May 13

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How to leverage Spotify’s Impression Data to boost your Podcast Visibility Optimization game

By Alexis Hue Podcast Visibility Optimization

In the rapidly evolving world of podcasting, success hinges not only on creating engaging content but also on understanding and leveraging the right tools to amplify visibility across major platforms like Spotify. With the latest update to Spotify for Podcasters, a new metric has emerged that is setting new benchmarks in the industry: impressions.
This data-oriented addition to the analytics offered by Spotify marks a crucial step for audio publishers aiming to boost their reach and grow their audience. Podcasting is slowly but surely getting closer to being as data-driven as the web and app ecosystems.

What are Podcast Impressions? Why does it matter?

Impressions are defined as the number of times your podcast cover art and metadata appear in Spotify’s search results, on the homepage, or within a user’s library. This metric is extremely valuable because it gives a preliminary gauge of your podcast’s reach before a listener presses play.

Impressions are often considered currency in the online world, and maximizing impressions is key to maximizing the reach of your content. As we like to say at Audiotiq, “To be heard, your content first needs to be seen.” Impressions measure how often your content is seen—not heard but seen within the listening apps.

Furthermore, Spotify’s data allows podcasters to understand how users discover their shows on Spotify. This information is extremely valuable for determining where to focus your marketing/growth efforts.

If your search results are not predominant, it’s probably time to give Podcast Visibility Optimization. Just like with new marketing data, being among the first to leverage it and take action will give you an incredible edge against your competitors. Just like what we noticed in the early days of what is now called the mobile app industry.

Where to find the new Podcast Impressions dashboard?

Step 1: Log into Spotify for Podcasters
Step 2: Pick the podcast you want to look at
Step 3: Check your total impression data

Step 4: Click on the audience tab to get more details

There, you will find the two interesting charts next to each other:

Impressions by day for the last 30 days (line chart)
Impression by source for the last 30 days (bar chart)

Why are Spotify Impressions important for Podcast Visibility Optimization?

First of all, Spotify Impressions data validates the importance of Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO). During our workshops with clients, all were surprised by the predominance of “Spotify Search” in impressions. This emphasizes the need to work on optimizing the show’s visibility.

To summarize, PVO consists in both optimizing the visibility of your shows within the listening platforms AND the conversion from “seen the assets” to “pressed listen”. If you want to dig deeper, we have created the first and most complete framework for Podcast Visibility Optimization.

Spotify impression data gives you a good idea of how you perform in terms of overall visibility within the platform. To get into the details at a keyword level and optimize your ranking, you can then rely on your Audiotiq dashboards.

When it comes to conversion, you get a conversion rate by dividing the downloads on Spotify by the number of impressions. From there, you can work on optimizing the conversion rate by modifying some of your show’s assets. The biggest levers are the cover art and the titles (show and episode).

What can publishers now implement and measure? What kind of results can they expect?

The Spotify impression data that is available opens many doors. First, it enables publishers to finally track the visibility of their show within the platform and understand how users discover their shows via the Home, Search, Library, or other Spotify features.

Spotify Home: When a user is on the homepage of her Spotify app (web or mobile), and Podcasts are recommended, either because the user has subscribed or the Spotify recommender engine believes the show will be of interest
Spotify Search: When the show appears on search queries from users
Spotify Library: When the show appears on the user’s library because the user is following your show
Spotify feature: When Spotify promotes your show,

With that information, you can track and improve your show’s visibility. If your search numbers are going up, this means your PVO (link) efforts are paying off.

Second, the Spotify impression data allows you to derive additional metrics to conduct tests.

The main metric is the Click-Through Rate (CTR), i.e., the ratio of users clicking on your assets to users seeing your assets. The higher the CTR, the better; it means you convert users to listeners. Many factors have an impact on the CTR:

– Your Metadata (show or episode title, publisher name, first few words of the description)

– Your Cover Art (show or episode)

Most smart publishers use this data to test different cover art and determine which one offers the best CTR. Here are examples that the team at RTBF is currently conducting:

At Audiotiq, we have seen podcasts double their CTR (admittedly from a low base) while most enjoy a 20% to 30% increase. Competent A/B testing of a well-designed cover art still remains the best way to discover the best design to maximize your audience.

How to A/B test the cover art of your podcast?

First, let’s define A/B testing. A/B testing compares the performance of two versions (A and B) of a cover art to identify the one that performs better. It’s a method that helps you make decisions based on real data rather than just guessing. A/B tests are extremely common in the online world (web and mobile), where publishers test pretty much anything: website/app layouts, email subject lines, button text, colors…etc.

To A/B test your cover art, you need to create two different versions while all other parameters remain the same. This means your metadata will not change while you test your cover art. Then, you will show these two versions to two similarly-sized audiences and analyze which one performed better.

You can test those two simultaneously in the web and app worlds by directing traffic to two different pages. However, within Spotify and other listening platforms, you can’t. This means you need to run the two cover art one after the other, which is not ideal.

We recommend you run it over a long enough period of time to have a large enough sample size for the test to have any significance. You will find plenty of A/B test significance calculators online, such as this one from Convertize.

Depending on your show’s impressions, this could be a few days, weeks, or months. Keep in mind the seasonality that impacts listeners’ behavior: impressions tend to decline during summer breaks, and the listeners’ appetite for sports or new habits is typically higher in January.

The most advanced publishers keep testing: A vs. B, then the winner vs. C, then the winner vs. D….etc.

What are the current limitations of the Spotify Impressions data?

No complete funnel view

Imagine being able to see the full user flow from impression to start and streams: this would have been a true killer feature for any podcast market. Matching streams with search impression data would have been the simplest, most reliable way to measure the impact of PVO.

Streams and downloads are not the same event, but calculating your stream/download ratio would have been the only extra step required to get a clear number of downloads.

Limited time range

Spotify only shows the last 30 days of data, and there’s currently no way to recover historical data. Our tip: set a weekly reminder in your calendar and save the data on a spreadsheet.

No data export

With the current version of the dashboard, you have to save the data manually in a separate spreadsheet… Since you can’t export the data, this implies copying and pasting, which is always error-prone. Let’s hope someone at Spotify corrects this: it would make everyone’s life so much easier.

Conclusion

While not perfect, the Spotify impression data is a significant improvement for any publisher serious about understanding and growing its audience. It allows you to understand how listeners discover your podcasts and highlights the levers, such as PVO, you could pull to grow your audience. And if you need help making the most of the dashboard, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Mar 16

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What is Podcast Visibility Optimization? Why is it important?

By Alexis Hue Podcast Visibility Optimization

What is Podcast Visibility Optimization?

Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO) is the process of improving the visibility of a given podcast on audio platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube (if you publish your podcast there), Deezer,….etc, so that their search engines show it as a top result for given search queries.

Search within the listening platforms is paramount to podcast discovery. Users on their preferred platform seek audio content for immediate consumption with a single tap or click. In contrast, social media users encounter more friction, requiring multiple taps before accessing content, assuming they are ready (e.g., wearing AirPods/earbuds)

Surveys indicate that 30% to 50% of podcast downloads originate from on-platform discovery.

PVO improves podcast visibility on given search queries within the audio platforms.

Why is Podcast Visibility Optimization important?

At Audiotiq, we emphasize that “to be heard, you must first be seen.” Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO) enhances a podcast’s visibility, ensuring it ranks higher on relevant search queries. A successful PVO campaign leads to increased podcast discovery, driving more downloads.

Like how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) boosts website visibility and traffic, PVO plays a crucial role in growing a podcast’s audience. In a landscape with more than 2 million podcasts, visibility is essential. After investing time in designing, recording, producing, and editing your podcast, it would be a shame if your content goes unnoticed.

What does Podcast Visibility Optimization consist of?

Like SEO, Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO) depends on proper indexation, content strategy, and manipulation of audio platforms’ algorithms.

PVO is the science of presenting your show and episodes in a way that increases the likelihood of your podcast being among the top results when users search for relevant keywords.

While we have developed a comprehensive overview of the PVO levers, the Podcast Visibility Optimization Stack, to simplify, PVO relies on optimizing two main levers:

Podcast Metadata:

Show Name
Author or Publisher Name
Show Description
Episode Names
Episode Descriptions

Podcast Authority:

Number of downloads/streams
Number of subscribers
Ratings & Reviews
Completion rate
Binge listening
…etc

Podcast Visibility Optimization is an ongoing task since rankings evolve and new shows/episodes are continuously released.

Mar 14

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The Podcast Visibility Optimization Stack (2024 Edition)

By Alexis Hue Podcast Visibility Optimization

The Podcast Visibility Optimization Stack is a cheat sheet for podcast producers and marketers who want to understand better the levers they can pull to improve the visibility of their audio content on podcast platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, etc.).

PVO (Podcast Visibility Optimization ) has plenty of similarities with both SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and ASO (App Store Optimization) but is a different science due to the sheer nature of podcasting and the listening platforms.

By simplifying PVO to “SEO for podcasts,” the danger is to focus mostly on keyword optimization. Leading podcast marketers have realized that the conversion rate (from seeing the details of your podcast to clicking/tapping the icon to start listening) is just as important.

When considering PVO holistically, one needs to consider it a complex and interconnected system of elements that influence its two main goals: increasing visibility and conversion.

For example, ratings and reviews impact a show’s visibility on a given search query and the conversion from “seeing” to “clicking”.

This article details the various elements of the Podcast Visibility Optimization Stack and shares examples of tactics to leverage.

Let’s dive in.

Before jumping to the various elements to optimize, let’s quickly summarize how the listening platforms’ search algorithms work.

To make it overly simple, the platforms rely on two elements to rank your show on a given search query:

The Podcast Metadata
The Podcast Authority

Podcast Metadata is the data that describes your show. Not the content of your episodes, but how you describe them.
Podcast Authority is an index – proprietary to each platform – that evaluates the authority or strength of a podcast. The various elements the platforms are taking into account are:

Number of subscribers
Number of downloads/listens
Reviews & Ratings
Completion rate
Binge listening
Velocity
Freshness of content
etc.

Now, let’s review the practical details and see how to optimize the visibility of your audio content.

1. Show and Episode Assets

Impact on increasing visibility: high
Impact on increasing conversion: medium

The number one way for podcast listeners to discover new content is by going straight to the search bar of their listening app. This is a behavior inherited from the web and mobile worlds, where approximately half the websites or mobile apps are discovered via a search query. Listeners could be searching for generic keywords (“news”, “football”, “meditation”), sometimes with typos (“nwes”, “fotabll”, “meditaiton”) or branded ones (“New York Times”, “Joe Rogan”).

Podcast producers need to remember that search is at the bottom of the conversion funnel: users want something and know what they are looking for.

The goal with PVO is ultimately to attract new listeners that will then be retained. One of podcast publishers’ main levers and a massively untackled opportunity is keyword optimization.

By optimizing their position on the right keywords, publishers can rank high or keywords relevant to their content. They can ensure that people looking for that kind of content see their show or specific episodes.

Therefore, the goal is for a podcast to rank as high as possible on keywords with high search volume that are relevant to the podcast. High search volume means that the topic is highly searched by potential listeners. In other words, there is demand for it.

Podcast publishers also need to consider the difficulty of the keywords they decide to optimize. A good example here is news. It will require a tremendous effort and massive podcast authority for a show to outrank The Daily on the search query “news”.

While a search query on the web interface of Google shows 10 results on its first page, podcast apps tend to show less, and Spotify even mixes podcasts with playlists. Therefore producers should focus on getting their content ranked in the top 3 to 5 positions. To achieve this, the process is:

Identify the high-volume, relevant keywords and search terms that users would type in their apps’ search bar. Ideally, also identify those with a low level of competition.
Integrate those keywords in the podcast’s assets: show name, artist name, short and long descriptions, episode title, and episode description. The presence of a given keyword in those different places doesn’t have the same weight. A keyword in the show title obviously has more weight than in the episode description.
Analyze the impact of the changes and iterate. Keyword optimization is a continuous process. To continuously rank high on important keywords, publishers need to keep optimizing as search trends and the ranking algorithms of Apple, Spotify, and other platforms evolve. Not to mention that competition may also be trying to get that first spot on those lucrative keywords.

Our training sessions and workshops cover extensively how to pick the right keywords and the optimization process.

2. Podcast Followers and Subscribers

Impact on increasing visibility: high
Impact on increasing conversion: low (indirect)

The latest Apple Podcasts and Spotify search algorithm updates increased the importance of the follower (or subscribers) count. A high follower count indicates that a show interests listeners, so they don’t want to miss an episode release. That interest reinforces a podcast’s authority, pushing it up the ranking for the keywords used in its assets.

It also has an indirect and low impact on conversion as it generates extra – automated – downloads for every new episode published, depending on the subscription settings of the subscriber.

3. Ratings and Reviews

Impact on increasing visibility: high
Impact on increasing conversion: medium

In addition to increasing visibility, the number of reviews and average ratings significantly impact conversion. Apple Podcasts, like most platforms, lets users rate podcasts from 1 to 5 stars. However, the process of leaving a review is cumbersome, and not many users will go that far. Therefore, it is another strong authority signal sent to the platforms.

Positive ratings and great reviews are part of a virtuous circle: the more positive ratings you get, the more visibility our podcast gets, the more conversion, and ultimately the more users….who then generate more positive ratings.

Several studies in the mobile ecosystem have shown the importance of ratings, and so far, there is no reason to believe that this is different for podcasts. Below is one from Apptentive (now Alchemer), where the numbers speak for themselves.

4. Episode Formats and Lengths

Impact on increasing visibility: medium
Impact on increasing conversion: medium

The length of a podcast has a psychological impact on users. Those who discovered your podcast after a search query and have a 20-minute window to listen may not be ready yet to listen to a 60-minute episode.

Even if users could drop out at any time, it feels like a long commitment, especially at a time when attention spans are constantly decreasing.

So when producing and editing an episode, publishers should consider options such as 1×60 minutes, 2×30 minutes, 3×20 minutes, 4×15 minutes, the full (long version) next to a “best of” or “summary” version…etc. This will impact the conversion rate.

This is what we call the “salami tactic”: taking one piece of content and slicing it into as many slices as possible. Someone wanting a short version will find what she wants; the same goes for someone wanting an extended version.

Some radio stations are increasingly using this tactic, as it allows them to top the chart (“the most downloaded sports podcast in France,” for example) and gain the attention of the advertisers as subscribers often have shows on auto downloads.

More downloads mean more ads sold. Now, let’s be honest: Most of those downloads will not be listened to, but that’s a different topic.

5. Platform Distribution

Impact on increasing visibility: medium
Impact on increasing conversion: none

Imagine a customer walking into a grocery store and looking for something to drink: she will pick whatever is available on the shelves. The same applies to podcasts: to be heard your content needs to be in the listeners’ favorite listening platforms.

Today – excluding some specific exclusives – most shows are on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. But what about Amazon Music, Deezer, Pocket Casts, Gaana, Podeo,…etc?

And let’s not forget YouTube, which now also ingests RSS feeds and seems to be growing in popularity with younger audiences listening (!) to podcasts.

6. Category Ranking and Recommendations

Impact on increasing visibility: high
Impact on increasing conversion: none

Potential listeners are not only searching for content; they may also be browsing the platforms and various categories, checking the latest hottest thing, or simply letting the platform recommend what to listen to next. So having a strategy to be either visible in the relevant categories or be recommended is important to grow an audience.

There are plenty of tips and tricks for reaching the top of the Apple Podcasts categories with a small budget. If that interests you, reach out—we help plenty of publishers with this.

The importance of the Spotify Recommender has significantly increased in recent years. And to no one’s surprise, the data Spotify uses to recommend are quality content, metadata, authority and the Host Recommendation feature.

If you want to explore the topic further, we have a complete article on how to boost your visibility with Spotify Recommender.

7. Show and episodes cover arts

Impact on increasing visibility: none
Impact on increasing conversion: high

As the saying goes, “Never judge a book by its cover.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to podcasts. When searching for content around a given topic, potential listeners will be presented with a list of shows, and the cover art occupies the most space on the screen. Listeners will often decide which one to click/tap simply by judging the cover art.

It is, therefore, paramount to optimize podcast cover art. Art is always a question of perception and taste, and we know too well that there are sometimes imperatives, such as showing the face of the anchorman/woman on the cover (even if most won’t recognize him/her), but we recommend to at least:

Think mobile first (ie small screens)
Have your cover art easy to read and grasp in a split second
Test if before launching

The section on the cover art is often one of the most discussed and debated in our training sessions. Data has proven that optimizing a cover art could increase your conversion (from “seeing” to “clicking and listening”) by more than 10%.

8. Black Hat Optimization

Impact on increasing visibility: it depends
Impact on increasing conversion: it depends

Black hat Podcast Visibility Optimization (PVO), just like black hat SEO – a practice against search engine guidelines used to get a site ranking higher in search results could deliver substantial results in terms of visibility and conversion.

The challenge is that the platforms have different guidelines that are kept necessarily vague as the technology and ecosystem evolve. It is, therefore, not always easy to know when you are crossing the line.

What is clearly within the guidelines is named white hat, what is clearly against black hat, and the big blurry space in between grey hat. Some of the tactics we are aware of in the podcast world are and our classification of it

Incentivized or paid reviews & ratings – black
Own reviews & ratings – light grey
Negative reviews on competition – dark grey
“Burst campaigns” –light grey to grey
Bot download or streaming – black
Incentivized downloads/search – grey
Keyword stuffing – grey
Using fake brand names – black

To sum it up

As detailed above, there are plenty of levers to pull when it comes to Podcast Visibility Optimization Plenty. None of them is extremely demanding, but a coordinated approach is necessary to maximize the impact of PVO efforts and reach higher rankings.

We have trained many teams at organizations such as the BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, RTBF, RTL, and Europe 1 on Podcast Visibility Optimization and are supporting them in their ongoing efforts.

If you think you need help maximizing the visibility of your content within the listening platforms, get in touch: we will be happy to help!

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