Topic: Data

The hosts of "How to Get Discovered" discuss the initial three weeks of a podcast discoverability experiment. Despite transcripts being indexed and Google beginning to crawl pages, the data shows only tiny, single-digit results, leading to slight disappointment for one host who expected a more dramatic, immediate impact. Access to Google Search Console, a higher-tier feature, is currently unavailable.

One host expresses a quiet intention to upgrade their Podherd tier, specifically to gain access to Google Search Console integration. This decision stems from the current inability to see detailed data for their three-week-old podcast discoverability experiment, highlighting the desire for deeper insights into how their content is performing in search results.

Structured data, following standards like Schema.org, allows webpages to communicate their specific content type to search engines. For podcasts, this means marking up a page to explicitly state it's a podcast episode, including its title, description, duration, and transcript. This structured approach helps search engines understand the content without guessing, leading to better legibility for both machines and AI systems, rather than just higher ranking. Most show notes pages lack this due to hosting platform priorities.

The hosts conclude the episode, highlighting the significance of the personal experiment. The next episode will focus on "compounding" and "long tail traffic," exploring how a podcast's back catalog performs over years, a topic now directly relevant to the host's ongoing data collection.

The discussion highlights the common inadequacy of podcast show notes and advocates for more comprehensive descriptions. Good show notes should include a premise, key discussion points, guest introductions, quotes, and relevant links. Treating show notes as standalone content that someone might read instead of listening can significantly improve listener engagement and discoverability.