Producing a podcast is more than just about quality audio and interesting content, it’s also making sure that your content is searchable or accessible so that your audience can easily find your content. In making your podcasts available, it is also important to label or tag them properly so that users can tell right away what to expect of the podcast. The less information people can garner about the podcast at a glance, the less the likelihood of them giving it a chance since the last thing people want is to waste their time listening to some podcast that in the end they will find uninteresting.

To let people know what your podcast is all about without them having to listen to a sample, all you need to do is embed your feed with relevant metadata. At the very least, you should include the following information and embed them as metadata in your file:

• Track number: the episode number of your podcast
• Title: the title of the episode
• Album: the name of your podcast
• Artist/Author: your name
• Genre: set it to Podcast

It is also a good idea to include a summary or short description of the podcast’s content, thus providing more information to your potential listeners that will be useful in helping them decide whether they really want to listen to that podcast episode or not.

Embedding keyword tags and category tags is also advantageous, not only to your listeners as they scan podcast listings, but also for your search engine optimization efforts, providing search engines with information as to the content of your podcasts to help them determine its relevancy in relation to the users’ search terms.

To learn how to add meta tags to your podcasts, click here to learn more about the ID3 audio file tagging format and click here for a list of iTunes meta tags.

Originally posted on October 18, 2011 @ 2:57 am