I’ve been debating on this since starting my podcast. Recently, I’ve started including a transcript on the blog posts where I announce my new podcast episodes.
Before making this decision, I googled around for an answer from a fellow podcaster, but it seemed like most of the articles were written by transcription service companies. Biased much?
I finally found a decent answer on episode 136 of the AskPat series for SmartPassiveIncome, entitled “Should I Have My Podcasts Transcribed To Create Content On My Site?” He also outlined some of his thoughts on the topic in .
He indicates that having a transcribed version of your podcast on your website can help boost SEO, but yet he doesn’t seem to include those on his podcast posts? He just offers a downloadable PDF transcript.
An article on the Moz blog underscores my thoughts regarding SEO: Podcasts embedded into webpages are not good content in the eyes of a search engine because they are not crawlable! Search engines, at the moment, can’t understand audio, video, or images, which makes posts centered around these media assets more difficult to rank.
Though google can rank a PDF in the search engine (see below), I don’t think it has nearly the amount of influence as a written article.
I think there are a few benefits to including a transcript and having “show notes” for your podcast, but I also think that doing it the wrong way would just be a waste of time. Check out some of tips below for doing it the right way. I’ll be implementing these on my new blog posts and measuring the results in the coming months.
1. Format the post like an article, not a transcript.
When you think of a typical transcript, you might think of a long-winded blog post like the screenshot below.
However, this format ignores many of the common SEO recommendations like linking to relevant other websites when appropriate, formatting the article according to H1, H2, and H3 tags, and including images with appropriate titles/alt text.
Therefore, I’ve started formatting my transcripts more like an article, which I believe are better for readers and search engines. I’ve included an example below.
I think that this format will prove better than the traditional transcript format. I’m also now linking to other articles/websites when appropriate inside the transcript.
P.S. If you’d like to learn more about SEO, I highly recommend this book: Inbound Marketing and SEO: Insights from the Moz Blog
2. Emphasize the value of the transcript and the “show notes” in your podcast.
It’s no secret that the best way to incentivize someone to do something is to give them something! Usually, that’s something they want. This is why you see so many blogs offering a “free ebook” or “free checklist” if you subscribe to their email newsletter.
When people discover your podcast on iTunes or through other platforms, I think it’s vital to get them to the “hub” or home location for all your content and products. This is your website!
I know that platform companies like Apple, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. don’t want to hear it, but the goal isn’t to keep interacting with your potential customers on Twitter and to create great content for Twitter. It’s to get them off their platform and on to yours.
One way to do this is to point out that all the key takeaways, valuable resources, and even the transcript itself from particular podcast episode is available on your blog. Don’t forget to give your listeners an easy way to find the post.
I’m going to start doing this by pairing my podcast episodes with the accompanying redirect URL on my website, like:
website.com/podcast/1 for episode one or website.com/podcast/135 for episode 135.
However, the original podcast episode will still read website.com/title-of-the-podcast, which is more SEO friendly.
3. Find an affordable transcription service.
I really hate spending money on new projects. A typical transcription rate is about $1-3 per minute, depending on the quality and accuracy of the transcription. At the moment, I’m doing 30 minute episodes every Friday. That could be a $120 – $360 monthly commitment.
To help ease that cost, I’ve found a sponsor for the show, which will cover the transcription costs. In addition, it occurred to me, why do I need an exact transcription?
True, that’s the definition of the word, but why should I have someone transcribe the words “Well, uh, I guess… hmm… I guess I think that the product’s success was due to x,” when they could just write “The product’s success was due to ____.” or “____ caused the product’s success.”
For now, I’ve found a cheaper transcriber who, with my help, is paraphrasing the episodes. This makes it easier to digest the text and cuts down on the time it takes to transcribe them.
P.S. In my experience, guests tend to like it when you provide a transcript! It bumps up your “official” meter a bit. For some practical tips on how to get a guest on your show, see this post.
4. Don’t forget to inter-link posts and link out to other websites!
I think the best part about including a transcript on your blog of each podcast episode is that there is ample opportunity to link to other resources on your site or around the web.
When I’m conducting an interview, I don’t always remember that we talked about something in a previous episode that a listener might like, or that I outlined a few tips regarding one point in a previous blog post. Now, I’m starting to link to previous resources and podcasts in my transcripts!
Again, this will improve the authority of your website, and also connect people with the resources they want!
Should you publish a transcript for your podcast episodes?
I think the answer depends on what your goals are. My goal is to grow my SEO traffic, so including a text transcription makes a lot of sense. I’m still experimenting and will report on my results at a later date.
If you are trying to grow your email list from listeners who discover you in the iTunes library, then maybe you should offer the transcript as a download in exchange for their email address.
You could even offer the transcriptions as a paid download for your podcast!
Whether or not you decide to include a transcript, I definitely think having “show notes” or links to the resources mentioned in each episode is vital, and these should go before the transcript for easy access.
Do you agree with me? Are you going to have your podcast episodes transcribed? Let me know in a comment below!
