speaker-0: Hi, this is Beer is an SEO with Barry and Steve. I'm Barry. And we're to be talking about podcast SEO on this podcast. So if you're just starting out in podcasting or an experience podcast, I want to grow your audience. If you're independent, if you're part of a publishing group, this is the podcast for you. We're going to be talking in depth about how to optimize your podcast, how to increase your audience, how to increase engagement. And if you need a large audience to monetize your podcast.
speaker-1: I'm Steve.
speaker-0: But first, this is beers in SEO, so let's start by talking about beers. Steve, what are you drinking right now?
speaker-1: Well Barry, I've actually opted for an alcohol free one today, partly because we're recording this at 2pm in the afternoon and I've got a client to talk to after this podcast. I've gone for Wingman by Brewdog. I'm a bit lost when it comes to alcohol free beers. ⁓ I know I Guinness, the ⁓ free alcohol version, and Wingman. I'm desperate to find other versions of that. What about yourself? ⁓
speaker-0: I'm very aligned with you today. I also chose an alcohol-free beer. This is actually my favorite one. This is ⁓ Corona Zero. Because I like Corona in normal form and I decided to try their alcohol-free version. And I have to admit it is probably my favorite alcohol-free beer because it tastes almost identical to normal Corona. ⁓ And yeah, I just love this stuff. If it's on the menu and I have to drive or have another engagement later, this is my go-to alcohol-free beer.
speaker-1: Right, people, hope listeners don't think that we actually planned this one, but obviously we did not, honestly. It's just turned out that we've turned out of alcohol-free options. yes, here's to us and the fantastic topic that we'll be talking today.
speaker-0: Yeah, this really is your wheelhouse, isn't it, Steve? You've done a lot of podcast optimization when you were working at Global. And more importantly, very recently on your sub-stack, you wrote about podcast SEO. So let's start there. Can you talk us through that particular piece, which is very long and very detailed, and then I'll fire some questions your way after.
speaker-1: Yeah, no worries. So, ⁓ it very much, ⁓ came about from, ⁓ the fact from working with a couple of clients recently, ⁓ who've approached me around optimizing their, their podcasts and the podcasts are all already done and dusted. So it was a, ⁓ quite a typical optimization, question, which we often get in, in audience growth specialists will get this. Here's the product. Now, can you drive the audience to it? We've all been there. So I took a step back and, ⁓ kind of like looked at all aspects of podcast, ⁓ optimization and, ⁓ what I published on, ⁓ my sub stack publishing strategies.co.uk is basically how my brain works when it comes to optimizing this, this field. So what I've done is I've split, I've split podcasting into three aspects. ⁓ product people and promotion so And then I've tackled each of those aspects and so I just want to caveat that that it's you know There's lots of other kind of resources out there that are particularly from podcasters which I'd really encourage anyone to read because That have a slightly different take on you know the construction of your audio and What kind of guests to book in etc. It's as a just like the SEO community. There's a huge knowledge sharing ⁓ community out there on the podcasting and I will meet many of them this Thursday when I go to the podcast show ⁓ which is in London. So yeah, I've sort of looked at many different sort of like people I can talk to about that on many different aspects of podcasting. But okay, so the three aspects that I covered, product, people and promotion. So really Barry, what I'm talking about product is that you can't polish a turd, right? So if there's something fundamentally wrong with the way the podcast concept is conceived, it's gonna cause you issues further down the line. And what I've called out in my essay is basically there needs to be a goal setting piece of work done by the team who are launching that podcast. And fundamentally, it's got to be a bit more than can we drive more reach because ultimately vague goals are going to deliver vague deliverables in the end. you know, there can be a lot of money invested in podcasts. So it's good to kind of get clarity from the team on why we're launching this podcast now, who are the listeners and what needs are we satisfying? That's a kind of classic audience needs thing that we're all used to in audience ⁓ growth. And why should the audience want to listen to our podcast above our competitors, right? So, there's a lot of work just in that. I think also depending on your team, you know, to align teams internally. So all about product, ⁓ focus there. ⁓ what I would like, ⁓ you, the, I worked for a while in, ⁓ in working with UX teams and dev teams. And it's a classic user needs story of leading with the need. you know, as a so-and-so, I want to blah, blah, blah because of X, you know. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, just having those principles just kind of adds clarity to that podcast because podcasts can be a whole variety of different ⁓ topics and coverage. And then you mix in who are we going to interview and ⁓ what platforms should we be on? And it all ⁓ becomes very busy, very, very quickly. So. That's kind of like briefly on the product side of it. The other side was ⁓ digging a little bit more into, what are the user needs? What are the people needs behind a podcast? And one thing which is always interesting that really distinguishes it from, you know, text is you really need to consider where the person may be consuming that audio. Is it at work? Is it commuting? Is it at home? What are they doing ⁓ at that time? ⁓ And what might, ⁓ why they might be coming to a podcast in the first place. And that's often because of the mood that that person is. So where they are situated and what their mood is at the time really dictates ⁓ how you might, what kind of podcast they might be interested in. So an example of that. People might just want that kind of relaxation or escapism. They might want to be in a learning educational sort of state of mind. ⁓ They might want to be in a productivity state of mind. So that's either they're doing something. Well, but they want the podcast to listen to as they're building something or, or working basically. So there's lots of different moods to consider. before you kind of like tackle, okay, what is the topic we're gonna do and how we're gonna approach it. And then lastly, because I've been talking for a long time here, is just around that promotional side of it. yeah, that's a lot to consider there. And I think from a podcast SEO point of view, I think the first thing that people talk about is around titles and descriptions. And... My, ⁓ in the essay, what I, talk about is really just like classic SEO. You'd need to understand how the platforms work and then work back to, ⁓ or actually work forward from that principle to what kind of content we're going to do. So you need to sort of like understand that, ⁓ you could almost say that podcast consumption is dominated, ⁓ by the likes of YouTube, Spotify, and, ⁓ Apple and, you know, ⁓ understanding how those work. They're all slightly different platforms. Apple, ⁓ will, it's kind of like, ⁓ there was a very, very good article, ⁓ released recently by pod SEO who compared, ⁓ podcasts or Apple to Spotify as very much like the difference between an album and just individual tracks. So with Apple. You can very much, lead a lot with the show, ⁓ title. So the show title and the, and the show description really carries a lot of weight in, in Apple, ⁓ along with artwork. Whereas in, in Spotify, it's a bit more taken on a case by case basis. Right. So, and it's really worth going into what Apple, there is an Apple sort of submission process and also a way of featuring that. to the editors, the human editors that are behind that platform to get yourself optimized. Whereas Spotify, again, it's less on the power of that show. It's by a case-by-case episodic ⁓ level. In both cases, titles and descriptions carry a lot of weight. So the way that I would approach that would be very much, again, you'll know this. what I'm about to say, Barry, but it's about primary and secondary keywords. What do I mean by that is understanding ⁓ what users are punching into various platforms. What are their questions? What is the problem that your podcast is trying to solve? then understand those primary and secondary keywords. Make sure those primary keywords are in the title. ⁓ And, ⁓ because you'd be surprised how many podcasts are, are witty. So they have witty titles. and that there's a, there's an argument for and against that, but in majority, just like anything, just like witty headlines on a news website, they're great. But really can you be witty, but also include the main entity or the main, ⁓ keyword topic, right? ⁓ so the same kind of like rules apply. ⁓ so yeah, there's a little bit there around sort of like optimizing titles and descriptions. ⁓ and, ⁓ you know, the obviously paid for media is also quite critical for pushing your real podcast. ⁓ absolutely. Sometimes people might think, ⁓ no, I've got to do this just by organic, but definitely paid, ⁓ paid for, ⁓ media help the initial boost of your podcast. ⁓ so yeah, so promotion. Definitely essential part of what you're ⁓ trying to do. that was, yeah. And so that was pretty much the cusp of it. Talking, I've been talking a long time here, Barry, but yeah. People, products and promotion.
speaker-0: And YouTube's algorithms, because YouTube of course being Google's platform, they apply to podcasts the same as they do to videos.
speaker-1: Oh, that's yeah, I really, right. So basically what you're asking there is essentially should all podcasts be on video, right? So they're different metrics. They're different metrics, but there's no reason why your podcast should be on video, but it helps because there's a massive audience there, right? And it's a big discussion in audio circles at the moment because what we're finding is that over the last two years, there's been a lot of podcasts that have, are now delivering video versions ⁓ of their productions using tools like Riverside, which we use. But sometimes that is of the detriment to the audio listener. So yeah, so there's a kind of like a bit of a pushback on video. to say, well, video's all very well, but don't make the audio listener feel like a second class ⁓ citizen there. Make sure ⁓ you cater for each platform. So there's a lot of money. Video is expensive. And my kind of opinion on that is all video, video's worth it, but bad video is just really bad video. And so it's definitely from... working with brands in video, do not do it if the video quality is going to be bad. That's extremely, it's gonna be extremely damaging to your brand. yeah, video, ⁓ particularly YouTube, a great platform over, you're out data from the API, there's more than 50 metrics. definitely more than 50 plus metrics that you can gain access from YouTube. So they're all really good ways of understanding how your podcast is performing. Like I say, ⁓ some companies will go all in on video and some won't. Others will take a halfway house where they don't, for instance, upload the whole ⁓ video of the podcast. They'll just choose short segments. ⁓ the key moments basically, which obviously with tools like Riverside and others, can easily sort of like auto clip, et cetera. So there's different strategies, ⁓ for it. ⁓ there is also, podcast platforms are taking advantage of the HLC video format, which, which for instance, allows you, ⁓ to toggle between video and audio when you, when you're accessing that video. So it's quite. It's a useful thing for the user. there's sort of like, the argument goes that there's better streaming format for video. So yeah, it's definitely the hot topic of the day. I think for us as fledgling podcasters, Barry, the advantage of YouTube is that it just gives you more data about your podcast. And as we all know, it's... really critical to hook in the audience within that first 30 seconds ⁓ or slightly longer for podcasts. though that YouTube is just another way to get more metrics about your audience, ⁓ particularly around retention. there's nothing more brutal and honest than looking at your retention data and seeing a drop off at a certain point where you might be talking about something you think is incredibly interesting. but there's a drop off there, right? So that's just hardcore information, lots of feedback to come back and say, okay, we now need to re-edit the script or re-think about the topics that we're covering. lots to talk about in that area.
speaker-0: Yeah, I suppose it's very humbling to see the data and understand that people are dropping off when you are having a fantastic rant about a specific topic. Which you've never done before. Me? I'd never rant, Steve. I'm always so composed and calm. ⁓ I do like the fact that you can use the Shorx to sort of ⁓ highlight specific sentences, specific areas, and see it as an extra distribution channel. You mentioned metrics a few times already, and my question then is...
speaker-1: which you've never done before,
speaker-0: What do you think are the most important metrics to look at and take on board when it comes to podcast optimization?
speaker-1: I, well, ⁓ it's, it's interesting. So, ⁓ there are downloads, but they're not always available, ⁓ depending on where you're hosting your podcasts. now they're, the thing about downloads is that it is a metric that's been used in the past to, ⁓ to flag up with advertisers and being seen as a success, ⁓ metric. ⁓ but a download is not a play. Right. So it, and, and with the fact that. podcast can be auto downloaded onto into your ⁓ podcast ⁓ app, whatever you whatever platform you're using. It's kind of like ⁓ a false ⁓ sense of how popular your podcasts are. So it's definitely useful metric to have if you can get it. I tried to get it from Riverside, but it doesn't seem to be available for some technical reason, which I need to investigate. But I'm sure experts like James Cridland will be able to tell me who I'm seeing in a couple of days time. yeah, so downloads, but also duration, any form of engagement. So Apple will look at engagement in the form of if you are listening more than 20 minutes or 40 % of your podcast. whatever that is. And then Spotify will look at more than 60 seconds. That's what it. looks at as engagement. ⁓ Again, you've got some like dirty data that can be involved in some of the metrics that you get back because Apple will class a play anytime you click the play button. So you might play, pause it, play, pause, play, et cetera. That's going to contribute to the overall number. So, yeah, so. So any form of engagement. then it's quite difficult to find like demographic data. Obviously you're going to find that more in platforms like YouTube, cetera. But the way around that would be surveys, newsletters, social media, right? So there are always understanding more of your audience because at the moment that's quite limited. So you have to be quite proactive, like using quizzes. to build up that audience, particularly if you were to launch your own website to support your podcast, that's all ways of sort of finding out more about your audience. another metric would be followers. They're all healthy signs. that's going down, you can have all the engagement in the world, but if that's going down, that's something to be mindful of. Now there are... tools that can help you out there. So ⁓ what I've been using over the last couple of months, I've been using ⁓ like ⁓ keyword ⁓ tracking tools that you can use, which will ⁓ you upload your, or you enter your podcast by ⁓ RSS feed, identify a number of different competitors, and then it will track the keywords that you put in against how your competitors. So, you know, this is all familiar landscape with anyone that's in SEO. ⁓ you know, I think it's only part of the, of the story. ⁓ the, is a huge amount of audience that will be searching for podcasts in the, ⁓ in the podcast stores. So you do want to be optimizing for that, but a huge amount of, audiences will also be coming in obviously by social media or through PR marketing opportunities. But. On the whole, I think those kind of tools are useful because it gets you to think about what are the keywords that you are optimizing for. ⁓ And also if just like any kind of like SEO project, if you're having to scratch your head on actually what are the topics and what are the keywords that we are talking about for the last 40 minutes on this podcast, then that's probably an indication that it's not very focused. ⁓ so yeah, I think, and to know and to be aware of your competitors, there's loads of competitors, ⁓ from clients that I've worked with that I was not aware of before. And again, just like in classic SEO, they are not the kind of competitors that you think are, ⁓ or the client thinks, is, ⁓ you know, you can track your, what your client thinks is that is the competitors. But who is actually ranking for SEO or content marketing fight and do exactly what we've been doing for many years. Learn and listen from your competitors, take notes, ⁓ and, ⁓ and use that information to optimize your own podcast.
speaker-0: Yeah, you just touched on a very important point about having focus in the podcast. It's not just a meandering conversation that touches on a hundred different things, which maybe we have been a little bit guilty of in the early days of our podcast. And now we're trying to be a bit more focused with this podcast as a great example of that. There's a trend that I see in news and media in general and also in podcasting where it becomes an influencer-led endeavor. We have talked about influencer media, influencer journalism before. I think that's probably a topic we want to dig into in more detail in later podcast. ⁓ But we see the same happening in podcasts. A lot of them are influencer-led, personality-led, if you will. and some of the biggest podcasts being very much focused on a specific person who is either the interviewer or the main narrator of the podcast. Do you think that is a critical element of a podcast success or is it not really necessary as long as the content of the podcast itself is really, really good?
speaker-1: ⁓ I think it is a sensible, Avenue, particularly if you're launching into the world of YouTube, because YouTube is all about cross collaboration. ⁓ it's not essential. It depends. I would go back to your goals and work out what it is. What, who's your target audience? How are they most likely to become more engaged with you? What kind of information do they want from you? ⁓ do you think that you're gonna add more value to your offering by introducing a guest than happy days? ⁓ know, sometimes ⁓ clients ⁓ might indicate, well, you we've had a lot of success on a podcast, the audience seems to not be there. And when you kind of look at the spikes, it's because they've had a ⁓ celebrity guest on, right? ⁓ so yeah, it's kind of like it's all to, it does add value to the conversation and. know, for instance, we could, for instance, Barry, we could invite Taylor Swift on our, on our podcast, right? I we're, I, we'd probably get an absolutely massive audience from that, but are the people that came to watch that or listen to it, are they likely to, ⁓ to use us as SEO, ⁓ consultants? Probably not. Right. So, ⁓ You know, it's a classic case between sort of like reach or conversions. What, are you aiming for? So yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not necessarily not essential part of things, but, ⁓ used correctly. can really, ⁓ drive the audience to your podcast.
speaker-0: Yeah, I've discovered a few podcasts because they had a guest on that I was already following either social media or of their own podcast. then because they were a guest on another podcast, it exposed me to that podcast. And then I looked through the episodes and thought, hey, this is actually really interesting one. I'm going to subscribe to this podcast as well. Yeah. The collaboration, the cross pollination and cross promotion is very, very important. So basically we need more celebrity guests, Steve. need to see you to come. ⁓
speaker-1: Yes, need to have celebrity guests that are either interested in beer or SEO, Yeah. We'll probably get more in the former.
speaker-0: Yeah, probably. We'll have to think about that. I see a lot of publishers, especially ones that I work with, also put podcasts behind their subscription paywall. As in, you only get access to a podcast if you also are a paying subscriber. And I have seen one particular publisher even experiment with a podcast-only subscription, where they have a hard-paywalled website, but you don't need to pay for the website to get access to the podcast. It's a separate subscription, cheaper subscription option. What do you think about that? We're going to talk about monetization a little bit more, but I want to tackle the paywall first because that is something that I think is becoming more more common.
speaker-1: Yes, and, yeah, I mean, if you could talk about two brands in the UK, see the economist, ⁓ do that, they have a free podcast called the intelligence and then they have, ⁓ several other podcasts behind their paywall. and I think introduced, ⁓ announced today, ⁓ sky have now in their sky insider, ⁓ podcast, what they, ⁓ I think if I can, if I can remember. there is additional cost to access ⁓ exclusive episodes on the back of that. So it's about different ways of widening or to encourage subscribers. I think it's a great value add basically, because depend, if you take The Economist, that's access to additional ⁓ experts, right? So you're paying for The Economist to understand the economy and international politics. ⁓ So yeah, and it's just that they've got a hard paywall there. It's just another reason to go there as opposed to a close competitor like the FT, et cetera. ⁓ So yeah, so quite often it can be a competitive positioning ⁓ and ultimately it's another way of forging that close relationship with a client. It's not text, it's a person talking to you and You know, the key in audio, it's all about, um, uh, it's all about establishing that, relationship with the, with the listener. Um, I worked in, um, with, uh, news podcasts in the past. And one of the things that they, they would talk about when they had a number of, uh, quite dry political things to discuss, it would be, but we need to be warm, you know, here. So it's all about creating that warm, environment when you're dropping sort of quite. harsh news ⁓ stories or ⁓ the latest ⁓ from Westminster. Yeah, so it's definitely a well worth strategy to invest in.
speaker-0: Yeah, and on the topic of monetization, I think there's a bit of a misconception that you need huge audiences to make a podcast profitable. Is that actually true? Do you need a very large audience to make money off of a podcast?
speaker-1: you need a well-targeted ⁓ audience. So you can make money just by, ⁓ with ads inserted into ⁓ audio, which are obviously monetized by CPMs. You need a large volume ⁓ of listeners to make a decent wedge of money on that. I was very fortunate. ⁓ last week to attend the Flashes and Flames monetizing B2B conference and podcast was a core ⁓ conversation there. we had two excellent ⁓ podcasters ⁓ from the media voices, Esther and Peter Houston. And we talked about monetizing podcasts in there. definitely, you know, it's definitely on everybody wants to know how can I make money from this? But the, particular interests in, in B2B, I would definitely encourage anyone who's thinking of, starting a podcast or, or thinking about how to monetize it. Definitely look to the world of B2B because these are often very niche podcasts. and some of their volumes will be very low. So it could be like 200 downloads, ⁓ for a podcast, but they are monetizing it and driving a fair bit of revenue. And the reason they're able to do that is because they definitely know their audience ⁓ and they are providing that information that the maybe high level decision makers want. So the advertisers know that and that's why they're interested. But you still need to do a fair bit of work in attracting those advertisers. So, you know, obviously do all the work that we've spoken about today about ⁓ about driving up audience to your podcast. So obviously video is part of that. Social media, newsletters, surveys, build that audience up. But also really understand your audience and super serve them. ⁓ When you are in that kind of like mode of ⁓ needing to or positioning yourself to advertisers, packaging your podcasts ⁓ as a series, talking about a particular topic often helps. ⁓ You you're going to be talking about a particular topic which is adjacent to what the advertisers is interested in and it's an exclusive opportunity for them. So it's also a nice way to frame it for the users, right? If you've got like six episodes talking about AI or a particular topic, it's a nice... I think users understand and would appreciate the deep dive on that particular topic. Yeah, so, and then, you know, it all depends, like I mentioned before, about what the object of that podcast. You might, monetizing it might not be the ultimate solution for you because we'd probably class this podcast, Barry, as a professional services podcast where the ultimate goal apart from us having a great time, having a nice chat, is, you know, one very valuable output of that is to generate leads from it. you know, you might, if that's the ultimate value from it, then that you might clash if you've got like an advertiser involved, because you might think that actually that might put other potential leads, ⁓ you know, might. ⁓ make them less interested in getting in contact with us. Anyway, I'm thinking and talking at the same time, which is never a good idea, but I can't blame the beer. So yeah, there's different, there's definitely money there. I would definitely look at the B2B world because they are exceptionally good at monetizing very niche ⁓ topics.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think if it helps if you have a very specialized audience that is valuable to specific B2B niches because it makes it easier to monetize and ⁓ very attractive for advertisers to go on. And on the topic of leads as the core value of a podcast, the same probably with both our sub-stacks. My sub-stack has over 12,000 subscribers. I've gotten quite a few offers of sponsorship and I've turned them all down primarily because I don't want... create a perception of any sort of commercial attachment to any particular tool set, a provider or whatever it is, which is why I've always said no to sponsorship opportunities, because I want to maintain independence and be able to give advice without any sort of perception of a commercial connection to a tool provider or CMS or whatever it is.
speaker-1: Your free bird.
speaker-0: Yeah, also because I swear a lot and that tends to turn people down a little bit. ⁓ That was really, really good. I'm going to drop another question on you that you're not prepared for because I want to know the answer. What are your top three favorite podcasts?
speaker-1: Um, so I'm a bit of a news junkie, so I will fill my ears with, um, think it's Sam and Annie's, uh, podcast on, uh, which is Sky News, uh, podcast. So that's like a very brief 20 minutes into, uh, into what's going on in the world. Uh, the news agents and the rest is politics. So I'm, uh, guilty of, uh, long distance running in the morning. So, uh, normally the rest is. The rest is politics is probably about an hour, which is probably does it for me. What about you, Barry?
speaker-0: ⁓ Yeah, I like the pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. They sort of give a bit of an overview of the state of politics and tech industry in particular. really quite like that. I'm a rugby mad fan. So I have quite a few rugby podcasts. My favorite of them is probably for the love of rugby with Dan and Ben. quite like what they're doing. And then I've got some other podcasts that make me feel very intellectual on philosophy and history and stuff. it really tends to vary on the... kind of topic of the podcast. So it's not really a specific podcast, it's more about specific topics and I hop between several different podcasts on that front.
speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ it's it's interesting. there's also one that is audiophile the audiophiles with james, james, ⁓ jami ladle, ⁓ electronic music artist, and that's sometimes about two and half hours, ⁓ long And I think that's also key in podcasts sometimes people say what is the ultimate length of the podcast that you should aim for and I really do think it depends on what that podcast is because I'm quite happy to for him to update me about the, how he is in his own, ⁓ electric world of making electronic music. He's got a great legacy. it's always interesting to hear about him in the studio and then he introduces a guest and it's, I would say it's a very informal chat. ⁓ and I'm absolutely fine to have that while some running or what I'm doing something else in the house. And I really don't care if it's like two hours. So yeah, podcasts are great.
speaker-0: Absolutely. I listen to two-hour, three-hour podcasts sometimes if it's a very good conversation on a topic I'm interested in. I think the length is less important as the value of the conversation itself.
speaker-1: Yeah, also sometimes people, mean, there is a, sometimes there's, there is a, there is a general rule, which means actually there's just, it's a rubbish rule really, but, um, is that the more frequent your podcasts, the shorter they can be and the more infrequent they can be longer. Um, I would love to see example publishers that do that, but really, I really don't care if I, if I, into a podcast, I don't care what length it is. I'll just ultimately, I want more of it. So it's probably more on the longer podcast, but I would not mind a particular podcast that did 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 50 minutes or longer. So yeah, once I think once you're hooked, you're hooked. I think all the podcast audiences are very loyal. ⁓ And once you're in, I really don't think many people go in and edit their libraries. ⁓ yeah. Hopefully,
speaker-0: No, exactly. It's very rare. I unsubscribe from a podcast, so I have too many to listen to. This was great, by the way, Steve. This is really, really valuable. I learned a lot because this really is your wheelhouse, and this is very fascinating for me. ⁓ I hope our audience also picked up a few tips and tricks for their own podcasts. If you want to read more about podcasts or about Steve's general insight into the world of publishing, I highly recommend his sub stack. I will add it to the show notes. It's on publishingstrategies.co.uk. I also want to give a little bit of a shout out to the News and Editorial SEO Summit, which Steve was also a speaker at and I'm one of the co-founders of with John Cihata. We have a three-day program in October and on day three we also have a session on podcasts from the amazing Sarah McDowell. So if you want to learn more about podcasts, that is also an option. And as always, we'd love for you to review and rate our podcast, give us some feedback. Hit that subscribe button. Send us suggestions, ideas for guests and future topics and whatever else you want us to tackle. Nothing else remains but to thank you very much for listening and we'll hear you and see you at the next one.
speaker-1: Cheers guys.
speaker-1: I'm Steve.
speaker-0: But first, this is beers in SEO, so let's start by talking about beers. Steve, what are you drinking right now?
speaker-1: Well Barry, I've actually opted for an alcohol free one today, partly because we're recording this at 2pm in the afternoon and I've got a client to talk to after this podcast. I've gone for Wingman by Brewdog. I'm a bit lost when it comes to alcohol free beers. ⁓ I know I Guinness, the ⁓ free alcohol version, and Wingman. I'm desperate to find other versions of that. What about yourself? ⁓
speaker-0: I'm very aligned with you today. I also chose an alcohol-free beer. This is actually my favorite one. This is ⁓ Corona Zero. Because I like Corona in normal form and I decided to try their alcohol-free version. And I have to admit it is probably my favorite alcohol-free beer because it tastes almost identical to normal Corona. ⁓ And yeah, I just love this stuff. If it's on the menu and I have to drive or have another engagement later, this is my go-to alcohol-free beer.
speaker-1: Right, people, hope listeners don't think that we actually planned this one, but obviously we did not, honestly. It's just turned out that we've turned out of alcohol-free options. yes, here's to us and the fantastic topic that we'll be talking today.
speaker-0: Yeah, this really is your wheelhouse, isn't it, Steve? You've done a lot of podcast optimization when you were working at Global. And more importantly, very recently on your sub-stack, you wrote about podcast SEO. So let's start there. Can you talk us through that particular piece, which is very long and very detailed, and then I'll fire some questions your way after.
speaker-1: Yeah, no worries. So, ⁓ it very much, ⁓ came about from, ⁓ the fact from working with a couple of clients recently, ⁓ who've approached me around optimizing their, their podcasts and the podcasts are all already done and dusted. So it was a, ⁓ quite a typical optimization, question, which we often get in, in audience growth specialists will get this. Here's the product. Now, can you drive the audience to it? We've all been there. So I took a step back and, ⁓ kind of like looked at all aspects of podcast, ⁓ optimization and, ⁓ what I published on, ⁓ my sub stack publishing strategies.co.uk is basically how my brain works when it comes to optimizing this, this field. So what I've done is I've split, I've split podcasting into three aspects. ⁓ product people and promotion so And then I've tackled each of those aspects and so I just want to caveat that that it's you know There's lots of other kind of resources out there that are particularly from podcasters which I'd really encourage anyone to read because That have a slightly different take on you know the construction of your audio and What kind of guests to book in etc. It's as a just like the SEO community. There's a huge knowledge sharing ⁓ community out there on the podcasting and I will meet many of them this Thursday when I go to the podcast show ⁓ which is in London. So yeah, I've sort of looked at many different sort of like people I can talk to about that on many different aspects of podcasting. But okay, so the three aspects that I covered, product, people and promotion. So really Barry, what I'm talking about product is that you can't polish a turd, right? So if there's something fundamentally wrong with the way the podcast concept is conceived, it's gonna cause you issues further down the line. And what I've called out in my essay is basically there needs to be a goal setting piece of work done by the team who are launching that podcast. And fundamentally, it's got to be a bit more than can we drive more reach because ultimately vague goals are going to deliver vague deliverables in the end. you know, there can be a lot of money invested in podcasts. So it's good to kind of get clarity from the team on why we're launching this podcast now, who are the listeners and what needs are we satisfying? That's a kind of classic audience needs thing that we're all used to in audience ⁓ growth. And why should the audience want to listen to our podcast above our competitors, right? So, there's a lot of work just in that. I think also depending on your team, you know, to align teams internally. So all about product, ⁓ focus there. ⁓ what I would like, ⁓ you, the, I worked for a while in, ⁓ in working with UX teams and dev teams. And it's a classic user needs story of leading with the need. you know, as a so-and-so, I want to blah, blah, blah because of X, you know. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, just having those principles just kind of adds clarity to that podcast because podcasts can be a whole variety of different ⁓ topics and coverage. And then you mix in who are we going to interview and ⁓ what platforms should we be on? And it all ⁓ becomes very busy, very, very quickly. So. That's kind of like briefly on the product side of it. The other side was ⁓ digging a little bit more into, what are the user needs? What are the people needs behind a podcast? And one thing which is always interesting that really distinguishes it from, you know, text is you really need to consider where the person may be consuming that audio. Is it at work? Is it commuting? Is it at home? What are they doing ⁓ at that time? ⁓ And what might, ⁓ why they might be coming to a podcast in the first place. And that's often because of the mood that that person is. So where they are situated and what their mood is at the time really dictates ⁓ how you might, what kind of podcast they might be interested in. So an example of that. People might just want that kind of relaxation or escapism. They might want to be in a learning educational sort of state of mind. ⁓ They might want to be in a productivity state of mind. So that's either they're doing something. Well, but they want the podcast to listen to as they're building something or, or working basically. So there's lots of different moods to consider. before you kind of like tackle, okay, what is the topic we're gonna do and how we're gonna approach it. And then lastly, because I've been talking for a long time here, is just around that promotional side of it. yeah, that's a lot to consider there. And I think from a podcast SEO point of view, I think the first thing that people talk about is around titles and descriptions. And... My, ⁓ in the essay, what I, talk about is really just like classic SEO. You'd need to understand how the platforms work and then work back to, ⁓ or actually work forward from that principle to what kind of content we're going to do. So you need to sort of like understand that, ⁓ you could almost say that podcast consumption is dominated, ⁓ by the likes of YouTube, Spotify, and, ⁓ Apple and, you know, ⁓ understanding how those work. They're all slightly different platforms. Apple, ⁓ will, it's kind of like, ⁓ there was a very, very good article, ⁓ released recently by pod SEO who compared, ⁓ podcasts or Apple to Spotify as very much like the difference between an album and just individual tracks. So with Apple. You can very much, lead a lot with the show, ⁓ title. So the show title and the, and the show description really carries a lot of weight in, in Apple, ⁓ along with artwork. Whereas in, in Spotify, it's a bit more taken on a case by case basis. Right. So, and it's really worth going into what Apple, there is an Apple sort of submission process and also a way of featuring that. to the editors, the human editors that are behind that platform to get yourself optimized. Whereas Spotify, again, it's less on the power of that show. It's by a case-by-case episodic ⁓ level. In both cases, titles and descriptions carry a lot of weight. So the way that I would approach that would be very much, again, you'll know this. what I'm about to say, Barry, but it's about primary and secondary keywords. What do I mean by that is understanding ⁓ what users are punching into various platforms. What are their questions? What is the problem that your podcast is trying to solve? then understand those primary and secondary keywords. Make sure those primary keywords are in the title. ⁓ And, ⁓ because you'd be surprised how many podcasts are, are witty. So they have witty titles. and that there's a, there's an argument for and against that, but in majority, just like anything, just like witty headlines on a news website, they're great. But really can you be witty, but also include the main entity or the main, ⁓ keyword topic, right? ⁓ so the same kind of like rules apply. ⁓ so yeah, there's a little bit there around sort of like optimizing titles and descriptions. ⁓ and, ⁓ you know, the obviously paid for media is also quite critical for pushing your real podcast. ⁓ absolutely. Sometimes people might think, ⁓ no, I've got to do this just by organic, but definitely paid, ⁓ paid for, ⁓ media help the initial boost of your podcast. ⁓ so yeah, so promotion. Definitely essential part of what you're ⁓ trying to do. that was, yeah. And so that was pretty much the cusp of it. Talking, I've been talking a long time here, Barry, but yeah. People, products and promotion.
speaker-0: And YouTube's algorithms, because YouTube of course being Google's platform, they apply to podcasts the same as they do to videos.
speaker-1: Oh, that's yeah, I really, right. So basically what you're asking there is essentially should all podcasts be on video, right? So they're different metrics. They're different metrics, but there's no reason why your podcast should be on video, but it helps because there's a massive audience there, right? And it's a big discussion in audio circles at the moment because what we're finding is that over the last two years, there's been a lot of podcasts that have, are now delivering video versions ⁓ of their productions using tools like Riverside, which we use. But sometimes that is of the detriment to the audio listener. So yeah, so there's a kind of like a bit of a pushback on video. to say, well, video's all very well, but don't make the audio listener feel like a second class ⁓ citizen there. Make sure ⁓ you cater for each platform. So there's a lot of money. Video is expensive. And my kind of opinion on that is all video, video's worth it, but bad video is just really bad video. And so it's definitely from... working with brands in video, do not do it if the video quality is going to be bad. That's extremely, it's gonna be extremely damaging to your brand. yeah, video, ⁓ particularly YouTube, a great platform over, you're out data from the API, there's more than 50 metrics. definitely more than 50 plus metrics that you can gain access from YouTube. So they're all really good ways of understanding how your podcast is performing. Like I say, ⁓ some companies will go all in on video and some won't. Others will take a halfway house where they don't, for instance, upload the whole ⁓ video of the podcast. They'll just choose short segments. ⁓ the key moments basically, which obviously with tools like Riverside and others, can easily sort of like auto clip, et cetera. So there's different strategies, ⁓ for it. ⁓ there is also, podcast platforms are taking advantage of the HLC video format, which, which for instance, allows you, ⁓ to toggle between video and audio when you, when you're accessing that video. So it's quite. It's a useful thing for the user. there's sort of like, the argument goes that there's better streaming format for video. So yeah, it's definitely the hot topic of the day. I think for us as fledgling podcasters, Barry, the advantage of YouTube is that it just gives you more data about your podcast. And as we all know, it's... really critical to hook in the audience within that first 30 seconds ⁓ or slightly longer for podcasts. though that YouTube is just another way to get more metrics about your audience, ⁓ particularly around retention. there's nothing more brutal and honest than looking at your retention data and seeing a drop off at a certain point where you might be talking about something you think is incredibly interesting. but there's a drop off there, right? So that's just hardcore information, lots of feedback to come back and say, okay, we now need to re-edit the script or re-think about the topics that we're covering. lots to talk about in that area.
speaker-0: Yeah, I suppose it's very humbling to see the data and understand that people are dropping off when you are having a fantastic rant about a specific topic. Which you've never done before. Me? I'd never rant, Steve. I'm always so composed and calm. ⁓ I do like the fact that you can use the Shorx to sort of ⁓ highlight specific sentences, specific areas, and see it as an extra distribution channel. You mentioned metrics a few times already, and my question then is...
speaker-1: which you've never done before,
speaker-0: What do you think are the most important metrics to look at and take on board when it comes to podcast optimization?
speaker-1: I, well, ⁓ it's, it's interesting. So, ⁓ there are downloads, but they're not always available, ⁓ depending on where you're hosting your podcasts. now they're, the thing about downloads is that it is a metric that's been used in the past to, ⁓ to flag up with advertisers and being seen as a success, ⁓ metric. ⁓ but a download is not a play. Right. So it, and, and with the fact that. podcast can be auto downloaded onto into your ⁓ podcast ⁓ app, whatever you whatever platform you're using. It's kind of like ⁓ a false ⁓ sense of how popular your podcasts are. So it's definitely useful metric to have if you can get it. I tried to get it from Riverside, but it doesn't seem to be available for some technical reason, which I need to investigate. But I'm sure experts like James Cridland will be able to tell me who I'm seeing in a couple of days time. yeah, so downloads, but also duration, any form of engagement. So Apple will look at engagement in the form of if you are listening more than 20 minutes or 40 % of your podcast. whatever that is. And then Spotify will look at more than 60 seconds. That's what it. looks at as engagement. ⁓ Again, you've got some like dirty data that can be involved in some of the metrics that you get back because Apple will class a play anytime you click the play button. So you might play, pause it, play, pause, play, et cetera. That's going to contribute to the overall number. So, yeah, so. So any form of engagement. then it's quite difficult to find like demographic data. Obviously you're going to find that more in platforms like YouTube, cetera. But the way around that would be surveys, newsletters, social media, right? So there are always understanding more of your audience because at the moment that's quite limited. So you have to be quite proactive, like using quizzes. to build up that audience, particularly if you were to launch your own website to support your podcast, that's all ways of sort of finding out more about your audience. another metric would be followers. They're all healthy signs. that's going down, you can have all the engagement in the world, but if that's going down, that's something to be mindful of. Now there are... tools that can help you out there. So ⁓ what I've been using over the last couple of months, I've been using ⁓ like ⁓ keyword ⁓ tracking tools that you can use, which will ⁓ you upload your, or you enter your podcast by ⁓ RSS feed, identify a number of different competitors, and then it will track the keywords that you put in against how your competitors. So, you know, this is all familiar landscape with anyone that's in SEO. ⁓ you know, I think it's only part of the, of the story. ⁓ the, is a huge amount of audience that will be searching for podcasts in the, ⁓ in the podcast stores. So you do want to be optimizing for that, but a huge amount of, audiences will also be coming in obviously by social media or through PR marketing opportunities. But. On the whole, I think those kind of tools are useful because it gets you to think about what are the keywords that you are optimizing for. ⁓ And also if just like any kind of like SEO project, if you're having to scratch your head on actually what are the topics and what are the keywords that we are talking about for the last 40 minutes on this podcast, then that's probably an indication that it's not very focused. ⁓ so yeah, I think, and to know and to be aware of your competitors, there's loads of competitors, ⁓ from clients that I've worked with that I was not aware of before. And again, just like in classic SEO, they are not the kind of competitors that you think are, ⁓ or the client thinks, is, ⁓ you know, you can track your, what your client thinks is that is the competitors. But who is actually ranking for SEO or content marketing fight and do exactly what we've been doing for many years. Learn and listen from your competitors, take notes, ⁓ and, ⁓ and use that information to optimize your own podcast.
speaker-0: Yeah, you just touched on a very important point about having focus in the podcast. It's not just a meandering conversation that touches on a hundred different things, which maybe we have been a little bit guilty of in the early days of our podcast. And now we're trying to be a bit more focused with this podcast as a great example of that. There's a trend that I see in news and media in general and also in podcasting where it becomes an influencer-led endeavor. We have talked about influencer media, influencer journalism before. I think that's probably a topic we want to dig into in more detail in later podcast. ⁓ But we see the same happening in podcasts. A lot of them are influencer-led, personality-led, if you will. and some of the biggest podcasts being very much focused on a specific person who is either the interviewer or the main narrator of the podcast. Do you think that is a critical element of a podcast success or is it not really necessary as long as the content of the podcast itself is really, really good?
speaker-1: ⁓ I think it is a sensible, Avenue, particularly if you're launching into the world of YouTube, because YouTube is all about cross collaboration. ⁓ it's not essential. It depends. I would go back to your goals and work out what it is. What, who's your target audience? How are they most likely to become more engaged with you? What kind of information do they want from you? ⁓ do you think that you're gonna add more value to your offering by introducing a guest than happy days? ⁓ know, sometimes ⁓ clients ⁓ might indicate, well, you we've had a lot of success on a podcast, the audience seems to not be there. And when you kind of look at the spikes, it's because they've had a ⁓ celebrity guest on, right? ⁓ so yeah, it's kind of like it's all to, it does add value to the conversation and. know, for instance, we could, for instance, Barry, we could invite Taylor Swift on our, on our podcast, right? I we're, I, we'd probably get an absolutely massive audience from that, but are the people that came to watch that or listen to it, are they likely to, ⁓ to use us as SEO, ⁓ consultants? Probably not. Right. So, ⁓ You know, it's a classic case between sort of like reach or conversions. What, are you aiming for? So yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not necessarily not essential part of things, but, ⁓ used correctly. can really, ⁓ drive the audience to your podcast.
speaker-0: Yeah, I've discovered a few podcasts because they had a guest on that I was already following either social media or of their own podcast. then because they were a guest on another podcast, it exposed me to that podcast. And then I looked through the episodes and thought, hey, this is actually really interesting one. I'm going to subscribe to this podcast as well. Yeah. The collaboration, the cross pollination and cross promotion is very, very important. So basically we need more celebrity guests, Steve. need to see you to come. ⁓
speaker-1: Yes, need to have celebrity guests that are either interested in beer or SEO, Yeah. We'll probably get more in the former.
speaker-0: Yeah, probably. We'll have to think about that. I see a lot of publishers, especially ones that I work with, also put podcasts behind their subscription paywall. As in, you only get access to a podcast if you also are a paying subscriber. And I have seen one particular publisher even experiment with a podcast-only subscription, where they have a hard-paywalled website, but you don't need to pay for the website to get access to the podcast. It's a separate subscription, cheaper subscription option. What do you think about that? We're going to talk about monetization a little bit more, but I want to tackle the paywall first because that is something that I think is becoming more more common.
speaker-1: Yes, and, yeah, I mean, if you could talk about two brands in the UK, see the economist, ⁓ do that, they have a free podcast called the intelligence and then they have, ⁓ several other podcasts behind their paywall. and I think introduced, ⁓ announced today, ⁓ sky have now in their sky insider, ⁓ podcast, what they, ⁓ I think if I can, if I can remember. there is additional cost to access ⁓ exclusive episodes on the back of that. So it's about different ways of widening or to encourage subscribers. I think it's a great value add basically, because depend, if you take The Economist, that's access to additional ⁓ experts, right? So you're paying for The Economist to understand the economy and international politics. ⁓ So yeah, and it's just that they've got a hard paywall there. It's just another reason to go there as opposed to a close competitor like the FT, et cetera. ⁓ So yeah, so quite often it can be a competitive positioning ⁓ and ultimately it's another way of forging that close relationship with a client. It's not text, it's a person talking to you and You know, the key in audio, it's all about, um, uh, it's all about establishing that, relationship with the, with the listener. Um, I worked in, um, with, uh, news podcasts in the past. And one of the things that they, they would talk about when they had a number of, uh, quite dry political things to discuss, it would be, but we need to be warm, you know, here. So it's all about creating that warm, environment when you're dropping sort of quite. harsh news ⁓ stories or ⁓ the latest ⁓ from Westminster. Yeah, so it's definitely a well worth strategy to invest in.
speaker-0: Yeah, and on the topic of monetization, I think there's a bit of a misconception that you need huge audiences to make a podcast profitable. Is that actually true? Do you need a very large audience to make money off of a podcast?
speaker-1: you need a well-targeted ⁓ audience. So you can make money just by, ⁓ with ads inserted into ⁓ audio, which are obviously monetized by CPMs. You need a large volume ⁓ of listeners to make a decent wedge of money on that. I was very fortunate. ⁓ last week to attend the Flashes and Flames monetizing B2B conference and podcast was a core ⁓ conversation there. we had two excellent ⁓ podcasters ⁓ from the media voices, Esther and Peter Houston. And we talked about monetizing podcasts in there. definitely, you know, it's definitely on everybody wants to know how can I make money from this? But the, particular interests in, in B2B, I would definitely encourage anyone who's thinking of, starting a podcast or, or thinking about how to monetize it. Definitely look to the world of B2B because these are often very niche podcasts. and some of their volumes will be very low. So it could be like 200 downloads, ⁓ for a podcast, but they are monetizing it and driving a fair bit of revenue. And the reason they're able to do that is because they definitely know their audience ⁓ and they are providing that information that the maybe high level decision makers want. So the advertisers know that and that's why they're interested. But you still need to do a fair bit of work in attracting those advertisers. So, you know, obviously do all the work that we've spoken about today about ⁓ about driving up audience to your podcast. So obviously video is part of that. Social media, newsletters, surveys, build that audience up. But also really understand your audience and super serve them. ⁓ When you are in that kind of like mode of ⁓ needing to or positioning yourself to advertisers, packaging your podcasts ⁓ as a series, talking about a particular topic often helps. ⁓ You you're going to be talking about a particular topic which is adjacent to what the advertisers is interested in and it's an exclusive opportunity for them. So it's also a nice way to frame it for the users, right? If you've got like six episodes talking about AI or a particular topic, it's a nice... I think users understand and would appreciate the deep dive on that particular topic. Yeah, so, and then, you know, it all depends, like I mentioned before, about what the object of that podcast. You might, monetizing it might not be the ultimate solution for you because we'd probably class this podcast, Barry, as a professional services podcast where the ultimate goal apart from us having a great time, having a nice chat, is, you know, one very valuable output of that is to generate leads from it. you know, you might, if that's the ultimate value from it, then that you might clash if you've got like an advertiser involved, because you might think that actually that might put other potential leads, ⁓ you know, might. ⁓ make them less interested in getting in contact with us. Anyway, I'm thinking and talking at the same time, which is never a good idea, but I can't blame the beer. So yeah, there's different, there's definitely money there. I would definitely look at the B2B world because they are exceptionally good at monetizing very niche ⁓ topics.
speaker-0: Yeah, I think if it helps if you have a very specialized audience that is valuable to specific B2B niches because it makes it easier to monetize and ⁓ very attractive for advertisers to go on. And on the topic of leads as the core value of a podcast, the same probably with both our sub-stacks. My sub-stack has over 12,000 subscribers. I've gotten quite a few offers of sponsorship and I've turned them all down primarily because I don't want... create a perception of any sort of commercial attachment to any particular tool set, a provider or whatever it is, which is why I've always said no to sponsorship opportunities, because I want to maintain independence and be able to give advice without any sort of perception of a commercial connection to a tool provider or CMS or whatever it is.
speaker-1: Your free bird.
speaker-0: Yeah, also because I swear a lot and that tends to turn people down a little bit. ⁓ That was really, really good. I'm going to drop another question on you that you're not prepared for because I want to know the answer. What are your top three favorite podcasts?
speaker-1: Um, so I'm a bit of a news junkie, so I will fill my ears with, um, think it's Sam and Annie's, uh, podcast on, uh, which is Sky News, uh, podcast. So that's like a very brief 20 minutes into, uh, into what's going on in the world. Uh, the news agents and the rest is politics. So I'm, uh, guilty of, uh, long distance running in the morning. So, uh, normally the rest is. The rest is politics is probably about an hour, which is probably does it for me. What about you, Barry?
speaker-0: ⁓ Yeah, I like the pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. They sort of give a bit of an overview of the state of politics and tech industry in particular. really quite like that. I'm a rugby mad fan. So I have quite a few rugby podcasts. My favorite of them is probably for the love of rugby with Dan and Ben. quite like what they're doing. And then I've got some other podcasts that make me feel very intellectual on philosophy and history and stuff. it really tends to vary on the... kind of topic of the podcast. So it's not really a specific podcast, it's more about specific topics and I hop between several different podcasts on that front.
speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ it's it's interesting. there's also one that is audiophile the audiophiles with james, james, ⁓ jami ladle, ⁓ electronic music artist, and that's sometimes about two and half hours, ⁓ long And I think that's also key in podcasts sometimes people say what is the ultimate length of the podcast that you should aim for and I really do think it depends on what that podcast is because I'm quite happy to for him to update me about the, how he is in his own, ⁓ electric world of making electronic music. He's got a great legacy. it's always interesting to hear about him in the studio and then he introduces a guest and it's, I would say it's a very informal chat. ⁓ and I'm absolutely fine to have that while some running or what I'm doing something else in the house. And I really don't care if it's like two hours. So yeah, podcasts are great.
speaker-0: Absolutely. I listen to two-hour, three-hour podcasts sometimes if it's a very good conversation on a topic I'm interested in. I think the length is less important as the value of the conversation itself.
speaker-1: Yeah, also sometimes people, mean, there is a, sometimes there's, there is a, there is a general rule, which means actually there's just, it's a rubbish rule really, but, um, is that the more frequent your podcasts, the shorter they can be and the more infrequent they can be longer. Um, I would love to see example publishers that do that, but really, I really don't care if I, if I, into a podcast, I don't care what length it is. I'll just ultimately, I want more of it. So it's probably more on the longer podcast, but I would not mind a particular podcast that did 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 50 minutes or longer. So yeah, once I think once you're hooked, you're hooked. I think all the podcast audiences are very loyal. ⁓ And once you're in, I really don't think many people go in and edit their libraries. ⁓ yeah. Hopefully,
speaker-0: No, exactly. It's very rare. I unsubscribe from a podcast, so I have too many to listen to. This was great, by the way, Steve. This is really, really valuable. I learned a lot because this really is your wheelhouse, and this is very fascinating for me. ⁓ I hope our audience also picked up a few tips and tricks for their own podcasts. If you want to read more about podcasts or about Steve's general insight into the world of publishing, I highly recommend his sub stack. I will add it to the show notes. It's on publishingstrategies.co.uk. I also want to give a little bit of a shout out to the News and Editorial SEO Summit, which Steve was also a speaker at and I'm one of the co-founders of with John Cihata. We have a three-day program in October and on day three we also have a session on podcasts from the amazing Sarah McDowell. So if you want to learn more about podcasts, that is also an option. And as always, we'd love for you to review and rate our podcast, give us some feedback. Hit that subscribe button. Send us suggestions, ideas for guests and future topics and whatever else you want us to tackle. Nothing else remains but to thank you very much for listening and we'll hear you and see you at the next one.
speaker-1: Cheers guys.
