How to increase your podcast discoverability with smart speakers

The use of smart speakers has grown dramatically over the last year, rising alongside podcasting’s boom. It’s an opportunity for podcasters to reach a potentially new and growing audience through convenience and amazing content. However, you’ve got to make sure your podcast is leveraging that technology and can be found on all types of smart speakers first.

Before we get too far in, let’s discuss what a smart speaker actually is, who is using them, and what started the boom in the first place.

What is a smart speaker?

To put it simply, a smart speaker is just a speaker with a smart assistant. No matter your flavor of smart assistant — Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, or Siri from Apple — they have many of the same functions. They allow users to complete simple tasks like search online, set a timer, or control smart devices hands-free. When combined with a speaker, a smart assistant becomes great for listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks.

Who is using smart speakers?

Edison Research’s recent Infinite Dial study showed smart speaker ownership has grown five-fold over the last few years, increasing from just 7% of homes owning one in 2017 to 35% in the third quarter of 2020. Though not completely classified the same way, vehicle in-dash entertainment systems are becoming glorified smart speakers with the addition of Apple Carplay and Android Auto. As of 2020, 45% of people polled had listened to audio via their cell phones in their vehicles, further extending the reach of smart speaker functionality.

As we discussed on the Q’d Up Podcast on Podcasting episode with Jason Fields of Voicify, the coronavirus pandemic is largely to thank for the dramatic rise of smart speaker ownership and use. With people home far more often during the pandemic, they had more free time to experiment with their smart assistants. Ultimately, as people began to play with their smart speakers and smart assistants more, they found more uses for the technology in their daily lives and began making them an essential part of their in-home tech.

With an estimated 94 million people expected to own at least one smart speaker in 2021, it’s safe to say they’re not going anywhere. It’s clearly an area podcasters should look to if they want to get in early.

The smart speaker and digital audio connection

Much like the growth of smart speakers, podcasting and audiobook listening saw a massive boom in 2020 as well.

Apple Podcasts has officially passed the 2 million podcast mark and that growth is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. While the supply of podcasts is growing rapidly, demand is climbing right alongside it. According to Edison Research, 24% of the U.S. population (12-plus years old) are now weekly podcast listeners and that’s expected to rise to 28% in 2021; a massive jump from just 10% in 2015.

Audiobooks are taking advantage of the smart speaker boom as well. Audiobook sales increased 16% in the United States last year while audiobooks generated over $1.2 billion in revenue, an increase of 25% from 2017.

In total, 62% of the U.S. population is expected to listen to some form of online audio this week. But how can podcasters tap into that growing market?

How to prepare your podcast for smart speakers

It doesn’t take much of a logical leap for podcasters to realize they need to be ready for an explosion in voice search. Here are some voice search best practices you can start implementing in your podcast now to be ready:

Use SEO keywords in every episode

As smart speaker use has grown, companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have been quick to include video and audio as potential search results. That means those companies are automatically transcribing and indexing things like podcasts for their search engines. That means a chance for podcasters to dramatically increase their discoverability through search engine optimization.

First and foremost is doing proper SEO keyword research to find relevant keywords for your podcast episodes. In addition to the usual research needed on keywords, consideration also needs to be given to the spoken aspect of keywords selected for voice-targeted searches. Are your keywords easy to pronounce, or could digital assistants misunderstand the voice search? Is there a shorter, easier to understand approach to the title of your podcast? All of these are questions worth considering and testing out on your own smart devices.

The power of podcast show notes

While voice search is quickly improving, it’s still in its infancy. That means you need to help search engines out a little bit right now.

In addition to using SEO keywords during your podcast, you should be including them in written form too. When doing any podcast marketing, we here at Q’d Up ensure the keyword is used in the title of the podcast episode and throughout that episode’s show notes. That helps point search engines in the right direction and dramatically boosts your discoverability via search.

Clean up episode-level data

Far too often, we see podcasts with little to no description and other important fields left blank. Though it can be easy to ignore this part when putting your podcast on your hosting platform of choice, it’s the easiest way to undo all the hard work you’ve put in up to this point.

Make sure you’re including your detailed show notes and podcast description, the podcast author, and podcast category for each and every episode so smart speakers can understand how your episodes are connected to the keywords people will be looking for.

Create a specific page for every episode

Just like traditional websites, you want to get the right content to the search user as quickly as possible. While it’s great to have a search bar on your podcast homepage, it’s better to get users to the most specific answer for their search as possible. Creating separate pages on your website for each episode gives search engines a great place for people to land. Individual pages provide specific answers to their questions.

Get started with Q’d Up!

We are on the cusp of voice searching being commonplace in millions of households across the world. In order to reach these new audiences, it’s critical you’re ready to be found.

Need some help? Q’d Up will partner with you to prepare your podcast for the coming growth in the voice search and smart speaker world. Improve your podcast awareness and grow your audience with Q’d Up. Contact us today and get started.