104. How to Make Your Podcast More Discoverable with Simple SEO Tweaks (POP: Side HustlHER)

Growing your podcast takes multiple different types of efforts. In today's episode, I chat with Carli and we explore how to effectively use SEO to increase the visibility of her podcast. Tune in for valuable tips on positioning and attracting your ideal audience!

Check out the Podcast Growth Collective: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/collective

Listen to The Side HustlHER Podcast: www.thesidehustlherpodcast.com
Connect with Carli on Instagram or Threads: @carlidorlynn

Want to make your podcast POP? Schedule a free call with me at www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/pop

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Take the quiz to find out what you need to focus on for podcast growth: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/quiz

Transcript

Julia Levine:

Hey hey and welcome back! 

Today, I have another POP episode for you - I’ve reviewed someone’s podcast and have created a podcast optimization plan to make their podcast POP!

If you’re a current or aspiring podcaster, listen in as a fly on the wall for our conversation - I guarantee that you’ll find something of value in this episode that you can apply to your current or future podcast. 

Inside the Podcast Growth Collective, there’s a ton of information about podcast content, SEO, marketing, and more. Plus, you get direct access to me for all of your questions! Doors are opening soon, so make sure to head over to ThePodcastTeacher.com/collective and check it out. 

For today’s POP call, I’m chatting with Carli, host of The Side Hustler podcast. Carli is a messaging and marketing expert, so she’s already doing some amazing things with her podcast. During our conversation, we went deep into podcast SEO for her show, so that her ideal listener can easily find her in a search. 

If that sounds like something you want too, keep listening! 

Julia Levine:
Hey, Carly, and welcome to the show.

Carli LeBlanc:
Yes. I'm so excited. Thank you so much, Julia, for having me.

Julia Levine:
Wonderful to connect with you, and I'd love to just kick off this conversation by having you describe what your show is about and who it is for.

Carli LeBlanc:
Yeah. So I am a host of the Side Hustler podcast, which is basically the podcast for business and marketing tips for women entrepreneurs who also have a nine to five. So we talk about marketing, business, how to balance family while building a business and having a full time job. So yeah.

Julia Levine:
And if we were to fast forward six months or a year into the future, your podcast is, quote, unquote, doing really well. Paint that picture for me and tell me what does that look like for you? What is this dream, this goal that we are working toward with the podcast?

Carli LeBlanc:
Yeah. I love that question. So, I have a couple, actually. So one of them is obviously to monetize the platform. I do want to kind of, like, maximize my brand partnership way of making money because I actually started my content creation journey of, like, working with, fashion and beauty brands. But now that I've become an entrepreneur, I've really loved, like, being able to partner with other businesses, and being able to market, like, you know, different software, things that I use in my business. So I could definitely see my podcast being able to be monetized in the, stream of, like, brand partnerships and sponsorships. But then also to, like, cultivate a community of women entrepreneurs that work nine to fives and just being able to have a community where, you know, people can connect and bounce ideas off of and really just help each other build, their businesses while balancing their their jobs.

Carli LeBlanc:
I do have a business that I have here locally in Houston where I basically help people, shoot content for their businesses. But as of right now, I'm currently just servicing, like, the Houston area. Eventually, that could possibly be another opportunity, but more so, like, within my main goals that I wanna focus on is brand partnerships and then building community.

Julia Levine:
Okay. Wonderful. And what do you feel is standing in the way of that? Like, what needs to happen between now and six months or a year from now in order to make that come

Carli LeBlanc:
true? Oh, that's a good question. I think like positioning, because I've been on social media for a while and I think that my majority of my, my life span of being online has been more so geared towards, like, influencer, mom, content creator. And so, like, right now, I'm in a place of trying to, like, pivot my audience from just being, like, influencer based to now, like, trying to focus on women entrepreneurs. And so I feel like that's been, like, the biggest hurdle is, like, trying to attract those people, but then also, like, making sure that my messaging is in alignment with what they're looking for.

Julia Levine:
Okay. Gotcha. And in terms of, like, tangible things that we can, you know, kind of iron out in our fifteen minute conversation here today from a podcasting angle, I'm reading between the lines. I'm inferring that kind of your goal is to just increase the size of your audience.

Carli LeBlanc:
Yeah.

Julia Levine:
Okay. So that's definitely where my strength lies in helping you grow your podcast audience specifically. Yeah. And so when I take a look at a podcast and someone is looking to increase their downloads, expand their reach, grow their audience, There are three areas that I typically evaluate, and those three areas are content, SEO, and marketing. And so given that you work in content creation and marketing, it comes as no surprise that I think you are doing really well in both of those areas. I really don't have any strong constructive criticism for marketing And I'm not your ideal client, your ideal listener. So perhaps there's a little bit of fine tuning there.

Carli LeBlanc:
Mhmm.

Julia Levine:
But I think it's very clear what your content is and who your content is for from an outsider's perspective.

Carli LeBlanc:
Love that. Love that. Okay. That's my feedback.

Julia Levine:
And so that brings us to the third thing, which is SEO. Mhmm. And so I had a whole plan mapped out for you last week. And then I checked back this morning and I saw that you made a whole bunch of changes to your podcast. So Yes. Give me a little bit of a curve

Carli LeBlanc:
ball there. Oh, man. Oh, man.

Julia Levine:
I don't know if that's

Carli LeBlanc:
a good thing or not, but I'm constantly, like, studying. And so, like, I'm always, like, on my toes, like, okay, let's do this. Let's move some things around, but I'm I'm I'm all ears. So whatever you have for me, I would love to hear, you know, as far as the changes that have been made or what you initially saw.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. So all of your changes were, like, spot on. And so just for, you know, those people listening that weren't for me to what your podcast was before and and where it is now, You know, you ex added a subtitle or a title extension to the name of your podcast. Mhmm. You also updated your cover art. You updated your show description. Looks like you also moved hosts from Spotify to buzzsprout as well. So all of those things get my stamp of approval.

Julia Levine:
And so. I wanna dive in just a little bit. You did so many awesome things that were in my main list of suggestions. So now we're just kind of fine tuning those changes. So the first thing I wanna talk about is your subtitle. Okay. And so you added on a bunch of words to the end of the Side Hustler podcast

Carli LeBlanc:
Mhmm.

Julia Levine:
The title of your show to increase the chances that you're showing up in the search results for specific keywords.

Carli LeBlanc:
Mhmm.

Julia Levine:
Now I am making the assumption that you would like to show up in the search results for the term side hustle. Is that correct? Correct. Mhmm. Okay. So right now, that is not happening because of the creative way that you're spelling side hustle side hustler. Mhmm. And so the very first thing that I would do is put that into the subtitle that you created. So your subtitle now, the side hustler podcast, business and marketing strategies for entrepreneurs with nine to fives.

Julia Levine:
Mhmm. Super clear. You have great keywords, business, marketing, entrepreneurs, nine to five, like all of those are wonderful. Mhmm. Side hustle is not in there though.

Carli LeBlanc:
Yeah.

Julia Levine:
So because of the creative spelling, it's not coming up right now when we search side hustle and the podcast players are a bit finicky in that way. Their search is very particular. So I would recommend making it, the side hustler podcast, side hustle, business and marketing strategies for entrepreneurs with nine to fives. I love that. I know it's kind of redundant, but I think that that's going to be your best chance of showing up for that keyword.

Carli LeBlanc:
I love that. I love that. And I honestly, I I'm glad that she mentioned that because I, I was thinking, I mean, of course I like the creative aspect of the name because I do feel like it stands out, but then I also understand that with having that creative name, it does minimize my SEO efforts. And so and then I was also trying to figure out a way to integrate the word into the extension of the title. So I like that you, you know, had already had an idea. So that way, I didn't

Julia Levine:
have to think of it. My pleasure. And just so you know, I did strategically put it at the beginning because the words closer to the beginning are more heavily weighted. And so, like, we could have tacked it on to the end, but that would not be as impactful. Mhmm. So it was intentional to put it as the first word in your subtitle, your title extension.

Carli LeBlanc:
I love that.

Julia Levine:
And the other thing I would do with your title is I would take out the word podcast from the text, from the text entry. So I noticed that you don't have the word the in the text entry for the official name of the podcast. So you just have side hustler podcast. There's no the Mhmm. In in the official title of record. So just take out that word podcast as well because that's hurting your SEO a bit and it's unnecessary. Okay. So then it would just be side hustler, side hustle business and marketing strategies for entrepreneurs with nine to fives.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay. Perfect. And would you say that I should also remove it from the channel art as well, or it doesn't? Okay.

Julia Levine:
No. Okay. So the, the robots for the search index, they're not searching the cover art. And so it doesn't matter what's on the cover art in terms of the or podcast, but you just don't want them in the official text title field, so that they don't impact your search.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay. Cool.

Julia Levine:
And so kind of on the the same lines of your cover, I would not change anything about it. So even though we're tweaking the text to add side hustle into the text field so that you show up in the search results, you don't need to change it on the cover art because when someone looks at it visually, they're seeing side hustler business and marketing strategies for entrepreneurs with nine to fives. It's very clear. It's very straightforward. The text is a nice size. It's readable. Everything. Everything is wonderful.

Julia Levine:
I don't have any changes for you on the cover art.

Carli LeBlanc:
Awesome. Awesome. That's good feedback. I'm excited.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. So along those same lines, we want to get that phrase side hustle in as many places and as many times as we can. Okay. So what I would love for you to do for the artist's name, so that's your name, I would love for you to put Carly LeBlanc and then have side hustle marketing strategist or something to that effect, getting the word side hustle in there.

Carli LeBlanc:
That's good. Okay.

Julia Levine:
Awesome. And then, again, continuing on with the SEO efforts is putting that side hustle word, that keyword, that phrase into every single episode title.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay.

Julia Levine:
And then you can also put it in your episode descriptions as well. That's not as impactful. So if it's, you know, well, this is a lot of work. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with all the places I have to put this. Prioritize the title over the description. But ideally, you want it in both for every single episode.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay. So, say, for instance, if I'm doing, like, a, episode on, like, how to market your business or your local business, it would be like how to market your local side hustle or something like that.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. What I do sometimes is if it doesn't really naturally fit into the title, you could do something like how to market your local business, side hustle tips, something like that. It's kind of like just a little tagline almost on the end. Sometimes it's easy to work it into the title and that's ideal, But when that doesn't happen, you can kinda just tack it on there.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay. And, like, when you would say, like, adding side hustle tips at the end, would you do, like, that little, like, long, long line and then quit side hustle tips, or would you put it in parentheses, or does it even matter?

Julia Levine:
It doesn't matter. I'm partial to the vertical line just because I like it visually, but it really doesn't matter.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay. Perfect. No. I love the little bird one. I'm like, I never know what to call it, but whenever I

Julia Levine:
say, like, the lone one Oh, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. The divider line.

Carli LeBlanc:
Yeah. The divider line. That's the good one. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. I love that. Wonderful.

Julia Levine:
Okay. We talked about getting it into your subtitle. We talked about putting it in the artist name, the podcast creator name. We talked about getting it into your episode titles and your episode descriptions. Mhmm. And just FYI, you can go back and change old episode titles and descriptions to throw that in there. Okay. And since you don't have a ton of episodes yet, that would be fairly easy to do, so I would probably recommend doing that.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay. Yep. I can do that.

Julia Levine:
And then the other place that we really look at for SEO is your show description. And so your show description is knocking it out of the park. Your show description is so, so awesome. You've got all the important information in there. It's in a great format. You've got great, searchable questions in there as well. You've got calls to action. Everything is wonderful.

Julia Levine:
The only thing that I would suggest that you do is just tighten up the first sentence. So when someone is not yet subscribed to your podcast, they're not yet following it. In apple, they only see about the first hundred and forty ish give or take how thick the letters are. Okay. They only see approximately the first hundred and forty characters of your description.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay.

Julia Levine:
And so right now, that part of yours says the Side Hustler podcast is the go to show for women entrepreneurs, side hustlers, and small business owners who want to market their businesses, and then it trails off.

Carli LeBlanc:
Mhmm.

Julia Levine:
So that's what yours says right now. And so kind of similar to how you would never start a social media reel by saying like, hi. How you doing today? Like, you always get straight to the point.

Carli LeBlanc:
Straight to the point.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. We wanna do that same thing here. Okay. And so the Side Hustler podcast is the go to show. That's all

Carli LeBlanc:
Close.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. This isn't the most attractive sentence, but I came up with something like market your side hustle with confidence, helping women entrepreneurs grow their businesses while working full time without the overwhelm. I love that. So that still might get cut off a little bit. But you're getting that key information, market your side hustle, and the key audience there, women entrepreneurs, you're getting that kind of front and center.

Carli LeBlanc:
Mhmm. Okay.

Julia Levine:
Love that. And you can obviously workshop that. That's just kind of an example to show you the kind of thing that we're going for. We're trying to get punchier in the beginning, get straight to the point to maximize that limited characters, that's going to show up in the preview.

Carli LeBlanc:
Yeah. No. I love that. This is good. This is really good.

Julia Levine:
Wonderful. So that's that's what I have for you today. Like I said, I look at content marketing and SEO. So, you know, you're really knocking it out of the park in those other two areas and SEO after those revamps last week. You know, you're doing really well in that area too. Just a few minor tweaks to really take it up, you know, as high as it can possibly be, maximize it.

Carli LeBlanc:
Yeah. No. That's really good. And, so as far as content, because this has been something that I found myself struggling with. At the beginning, I was doing a lot of solo episodes, and then I kind of, like, during the holidays and, like, trying to get back in gear, I was, like, you know, capitalizing on a lot of guest episodes. And so as far as, like, how to balance out, the content that is going, on the podcast with also keeping in mind the goals that I have, would you say, like, what would be a good breakdown of, like, the content? So what I'm thinking is is, like, if there's four weeks in a month, then maybe two of those weeks be solo episodes and then two be, like, guest episodes. I wanna try to incorporate coaching too, but I don't really have people that will probably be interested in that just yet, because I'm still kind of pivoting my audience. So would you say, like, it being, like, fifty fifty would be a good, like, breakdown of the content that goes on the podcast?

Julia Levine:
So for my audience, my general rule of thumb is a three to one content ratio, three solo episodes for every guest interview.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay.

Julia Levine:
And the reason for that is because when you're doing a guest episode, you are basically endorsing that other person. You're shining the spotlight on them. You are essentially encouraging your listeners to go check out them and their business and their services and that kind of thing. And there's a time and a place for that, particularly if that guest is providing additional value to your audience Right. That you yourself are not best equipped to deliver. And so having guests is perfectly appropriate. You just have to be conscious of the fact that you're taking the spotlight away from yourself and shining it on someone else. Mhmm.

Julia Levine:
And depending on the ultimate goals for your podcast, that could hurt you more or less depending on what your goals are. So if your current goals are primarily brand partnerships and, you know, you may get into affiliate marketing, that type of thing, then guest interviews probably aren't going to hurt you very much and they could be advantageous Mhmm. Creating those relationships. You could have someone on that you have a partnership with that you're referring business to. And so it makes sense that you're shining the spotlight on them and sending them business because you guys are partners. But if you are going more the route of you want people to come to you for your product services, content creation, coaching, that type of thing Mhmm. Then you need to kind of hit the pause button and think, what am I doing here with these guest interviews? Is this really the best choice that I'm making right now? So it kinda depends on where you are and where you are going, but my general rule of thumb is three to one.

Carli LeBlanc:
Okay. I love that. I love that.

Julia Levine:
Thank you. My pleasure. And so as we're wrapping up here today, I would just love to give you the opportunity if there's someone out there who is a female entrepreneur, side hustler, she's working that nine to five, and she's looking for some resources. How can she connect with you?

Carli LeBlanc:
Yeah. So I'm primarily on either Instagram or threads. I really love threads. So, but on both platforms, you can follow me at carlidorlin. It's c a r l I d o r l y n n. Wonderful. And we'll put it in the notes for you.

Julia Levine:
So, Carly, it was so lovely chatting with you, and definitely keep me posted. Alright?

Carli LeBlanc:
Of course. Thank you so much again, Julia. This was so helpful.

Julia Levine:
Alright, that’s all for today! If you have a side hustle, be sure to check out Carli’s show: The Side Hustler Podcast. 

And if you’d like support to get more podcast listeners, leads, and sales, be sure to check out the Podcast Growth Collective for podcast education and direct access to me. You can learn more at thepodcastteacher.com/collective. 

Until next time, happy podcasting!