With millions of podcasts available online, finding a way to make yours stand out from the mass can be challenging. There are dozens of ways to differentiate your show and crush your goals growing your podcast. Beyond having a dedicated podcast website, a well-constructed podcast description are a great way to improve your online visibility and help attract new listeners to your show.
Podcast descriptions aren’t much different from a synopsis that you find on the back of a book or the summary of a movie or TV show. It’s a short paragraph, well-summarized and exciting piece of info that people glance through when checking out your podcast. This is often the trigger that encourages people to start listening to your show or skip to the next available podcast.
People tend to be quite picky before committing their free time to your show, so a good description is key to get their appropriate attention. In this post, we’ll learn how to write a good podcast description and optimize them to bring new listeners, maximize SEO efficiency, and make it attractive for people to click on that play or subscribe button!
What is a Podcast Description?
Podcast descriptions are the show summary used to tell your audience about your podcast as a whole, not just for a single episode. It must describe key elements like a background about the show, the show’s schedule, tone, and anything that can make your podcast more attractive to the target audience.
Descriptions are often confused with podcast show notes, which are the descriptions that accompany every single episode of your podcast and serve as a summary of the content of that specific episode. Descriptions, on the other hand, can help new listeners find you through search engines, podcast platforms/directories and allow your audience to find their new favorite shows.
The Importance of a Well-made Podcast Description
We’ve talked a lot about Podcast SEO. It’s how your show can appear better on platform pages (like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts etc.) and on search engines like Google. Ranking high in those types of results is key to get a lot of traffic at the top of your funnel, and this would eventually mean more potential listeners to your show.
We all know that a Podcast Title/Name is important. Artwork is a key eye-catcher as well. The final component that attracts the attention of the viewers is the description, so keeping it on point is super important to both rank higher on any platform, and also convince users to actually start listening to your show.
How to Write a Podcast Description
The most important thing to keep in mind is that your description is the face of your podcast. It will show on every podcast platform, and probably on your podcast website as well if you choose to. It should be clear, simple to understand, straight to the point, and talk about the show as a whole, the topics you may discuss, and the hosts.
There are no real rules on how long your description can or should be, but we recommend to keep it quite short (2-5 short paragraphs).
We also recommend you include a link to your website in the podcast description, so people who are really interested could click on your link and read more on the website or get more info there. It’s also a cool little SEO trick to bring more backlinks to your own domain.
If you’re still unsure how to continue with your podcast descriptions, we’d recommend you write down your 10 favorite podcasts, read through their descriptions, and see what you can learn and share about your own show. This type of inspiration can help you nail the perfect description for your show.
Optimizing Your Podcast Description
Optimizing your description can help increase visibility and engagement of potential listeners once they start reading about your show. It can be smart to keep the description short and make sure you’re really catching the attention of your audience.
So, why should you keep your show descriptions short at all? There are a couple of reasons. First, on many platforms (including Apple Podcasts), there’s a character/word limiter that would hide any excess text behind a “Read More” button. You’ll want the core of your content to be delivered above the fold and without being cut off with a “Read More” button.
Furthermore, many readers would just want to quickly understand what your podcast is all about. Giving them a solid, brief summary is key to capture their attention.
Another aspect you’ll want to optimize is the keywords in the description. When people are searching for shows on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify, they sometimes just type a broad subject or a few keywords in the search box. The results are based on various algorithms that take the podcast name/title, authors, descriptions episodes and more.
If you want your show to rank well in the relevant search results, don’t forget to plan accordingly. Include the 2-4 most important keywords as part of your description. Remember – stuffing a bunch of keywords would be probably worthless or even harm your ranking on some platforms. It’s always smart to include some keywords but only if it makes sense and is not over used.
Podcast Description Examples & Templates
If you’re wondering what a good podcast description looks like, here are a few examples of high quality descriptions. Let’s go over a few successful podcasts and see how they structure their descriptions.
Today in Digital Marketing
Tod from the Today in Digital Marketing podcast has done such a great job with the podcast’s description. Here’s why –
- It’s very short, but describes everything one would need to get a solid background about the show.
- It presents the host (Tod Maffin)
- Outlines what the podcast is all about (Digital marketing and social media)
- Provides the format and release schedule (Every weekday, fast-paced 8-minute show)
- Highlights the “typical” listeners (senior marketers)
- A touch about popularity (thousands of daily listeners)
- Link to the podcast’s website.
The CMO Podcast
The folks behind the The CMO Podcast did a really good job here as well. It’s a description with 4 or 5 sentences. They keep it on point while delivering the “vibe” of the show, the main topics, and bring the listeners a great background on what to expect from the host and from the show itself.
There’s value in short descriptions. Users may overlook the show if descriptions get too long or wordy. Keeping your podcast bio short is a great way to please those listeners.
Using your Podcast Website to Increase Visibility
Having a full podcast website is a very effective way to leverage your podcast descriptions. It can increase your podcast’s visibility and discoverability. You can link to your site directly from the podcast’s description. Having your own website on your own domain can bring even more traffic from organic sources. You can even increase engagement with your current fan-base, and establish a brand behind your show.
How Podcastpage.io Can Help Your Podcast
Podcastpage.io goes above and beyond to make your life easier as a podcaster. The platform takes care of many long and tedious tasks linked to creating a podcast site. It’ll help you create a full website, importing episodes continuously, sharing your existing episodes on social media, and much more.
With Podcastpage, you can create an entire website in less than a minute. You don’t need any pre-existing experience or knowledge around websites or coding.
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