Thumbnail: Brand SEO and SERP for Podcasts with Jason Barnard

[00:00:00] Christopher Jordan: Helping creators navigate the waters of podcasting. Welcome to the Podcast Cadet Training Series, where we simplify the world of podcasting with techniques and advice from professionals across the podcasting industry.

Introducing the Topic for This Episode of the Podcast Cadet Training Series

[00:00:35] Christopher Jordan: Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Podcast Cadet Training Series. I am Chris Jordan, your host, coming to you from Austin, Texas. Our guest today is going to be the amazing SERP guy himself, Jason Barnard, of Kalicube.Pro. We will be talking about the world of SEO, what is SERP, things like that. Whenever you hear SEO optimisation, how can you do best practices to make sure that amongst the millions of shows on the internet with podcasts attached to them, how do you get found? How do you maintain that discoverability? How do you make your show discoverable? So, that is his specialty. That is exactly what they do over at Kalicube.Pro. So, when we come back from this message, we will be getting into it with Jason Barnard, founder of Kalicube.Pro.

[00:01:41] Christopher Jordan: Have you considered starting a podcast, looking for a way to make your business a voice of authority in an industry? The Podcast Cadet is the solution for you. Whether starting a podcast for yourself, your brand, business, school, church, or just plain fun, Podcast Cadet is here to help you navigate the waters of the podcast industry. Specialising in one-on-one consultation and training with industry professionals and fields ranging from podcast technology and editing to distribution, monetisation, and even social media strategies, Podcast Cadet tailors their services to the specific needs of you and your podcast.

[00:02:23] Christopher Jordan: Do you already have a podcast and trying to find ways to engage and grow your audience? Sign up for your Podcast Cadet audit today, and let us help you explore new and exciting ways to leverage your content and elevate your podcast brand to whole new levels. From consultational workshops to affordable podcast production and maintenance packages, Podcast Cadet is your one stop shop for everything podcast related on the internet. Visit podcastcadet.com today to sign up for your consultation or training. That website again is podcastcadet.com.

Welcoming the Show’s Guest for Today, Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:03:01] Christopher Jordan: That’s right, folks. And while you are online checking that out, make sure to stop on by Kalicube.Pro. That is our guest today. You can find out so much more about everything that Jason Barnard is all about, his expertise, his podcast, With Jason Barnard…, everything else. Welcome to the show today, Jason. How are you?

[00:03:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’m doing great. Thanks a lot for having me. I’m delighted to be here talking about podcasts, how to promote them using SEO techniques on Google and Bing.

You Need to Create Your Podcast in a Creative Point of View and Package It for Google and Bing

[00:03:38] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. For a lot of people, Jason, this is one of the most nebulous topics in the world. And I think people really get lost when it comes to SEO in the world. I think people get lost trying to wade through the world of keywords, which are great, but not necessarily the absolute bee’s knees or necessity when it comes to such things, correct? 

[00:04:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Sure. I think from a podcasting point of view, the traffic, the interest, the branding is going to come from somewhere other than Google. The driving force behind podcast today is not Google. It’s not Bing. It’s not search, but it is becoming increasingly influenced by search. And search can influence and help us promote our podcast. So, I think you need to create your podcast from a creative point of view using the platforms that you’ve been traditionally using, and think, how can I package this for Google and for Bing to make sure that I get maximum traction as bonus from them.

We Need to Make Sure to Please Our Audience First Because Search Engines Are Trying to Serve Their Audience

[00:04:50] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Precisely, because it really is a lot about what you are serving up on literally the digital platter, right? 

[00:05:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think what is nice about podcasting is that we are not in a situation today where we’re thinking I have to please the search engines first. We’re thinking I need to please my audience first. And that’s where the search engines are going. And we need to stick to our guns. We need to make sure that we continue to serve our audience, because the search engines at the end of the day are trying to serve their audience, and to do so, they’re trying to identify which of us fits in with a particular subsection of their audience.

Sticking to who you are, what you do, and who your audience is from a podcasting point of view is a really great approach.

jason barnard (the brand serp guy)

[00:05:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, I need to inform both Google and Bing who I am, what I do, and who my audience might be, so that they can make that fit. So, I think sticking to who you are, what you do, and who your audience is from a podcasting point of view is a really great approach. And trying to do pure SEO for podcasts today would be a real pity because it’s about to change.

[00:06:04] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. And that’s just it. That’s what a lot of people don’t realise is that a lot of the times, by the time you’ve figured out those demographic keywords, things like that, the algorithm changes. That algorithm with Google, Bing, Yandex, all of those indexes, DuckDuckGo, what have you, across the internet, they change almost quarterly as far as what the AI is picking up, what it’s tying together, things like that.

[00:06:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Sure.

Updates Are the Big Changes That Can Make or Break a Specific Brand for a Specific Query

[00:06:38] Christopher Jordan: Unless you have the time or the money, which is typically my jazz hands moment in my presentation to keep people engaged, because it is about time or money. What do you have? If you have the time and money, yeah, you can pay an SEO or a SERP guy like yourself to come in and specialise things and keep on top of that trend. But if you’re a podcaster at home doing this from your garage and you’re a single mom, hey, you don’t have money to pay a SEO person and to keep up with the nebulous world of ever changing keywords.

[00:07:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yes. Now that you’ve made multiple great points there. Number one is you suggested that this changes on a quarterly basis. In fact, it changes every single day, every single minute of every single day, because what Google has is big algorithm updates maybe every month, every quarter. But in between times, the algorithm is evolving on its own. So, we have to understand that these updates are the big changes that can make or break a specific brand for a specific query.

[00:07:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But in fact, over time, it’s evolving constantly. And we need to get into that idea of saying, I’m not going to trick the algorithm. I need to make sure that I am positioned in a manner that Google and Bing understand who I am, what I do, and who my audience is, i.e. what I talk about and who might be interested.

Take Into Consideration What Vocabulary to Use to Drive You Towards People Who Could Potentially be Your Audience

[00:08:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now, when you talk about keywords, my single biggest piece of advice to people is to say, don’t spend your whole life looking at Semrush or SE Ranking or another tool like that, trying to figure out what keywords you should be using in your titles. Think about vocabulary. What vocabulary is my audience using? What vocabulary could my audience potentially use to search for something online where I might be a good helpful solution or answer?

[00:08:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, you’re looking for the vocabulary and you’re looking for understanding from these machines. And the vocabulary will drive you towards people who are searching, who could potentially be your audience by the fact that they’re searching. But more importantly, the fact that these engines understand you will enable them to present you spontaneously through things like Google Discover. If you haven’t looked at that, that’s going to be a big, big, big deal in podcasting in the years to come.

[00:09:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google Discover is Google pushing towards people what it thinks they will be interested in. And if you think about to what I just said, if Google understands who your podcast audience is, they can push your podcast to an audience that you have never seen before and who aren’t even actively searching for you. And that is the key to the future, especially as when you think about it, social media and podcasting platforms do exactly the same thing.

Google Sees Through Its Multiple Platforms If Your Community Interacts or Engages With You 

[00:09:55] Christopher Jordan: I do not have an applause button for this show and I should, because that is precisely. We spent three panels yesterday. It was like an echo chamber talking about no matter what your show is, start building a community. That network is more valuable for SEO search and everything else than you will possibly know. That network of similar descriptions, similar activities, posting similar articles to similar places, whether it be Twitter, whatever you’re on, make sure that your engagement is quality engagement.

[00:10:38] Christopher Jordan: It’s great to have a presence on every social media platform. But literally, if your audience is, hey, man, if your audience is like mine, 45 and up, for most shows, I’m not going to get a TikTok. You know what I mean? I’m not going to invest the time to creating and curating content, which is what you have to do for specific platforms is make sure that you are engaging the audience in that specific way. But if you’re providing that quality content and it’s getting engagements there, it’s going to pop up on that Google Discover. If you’re a social media user on that platform and you search for things like that on Google, your group’s going to pop up in that discoverability area, stuff like that.

[00:11:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. A hundred percent. And what’s really interesting and you talked about it there is if I can build a community and my community interacts with me, engages with me, Google potentially sees it through the multiple platforms it has, Gmail, Google Search, Google Podcasts. We forget just how much they are out there, how much they can actually track what we’re doing. So if it can look at my audience engaging with me, it will say, I understand the audience and I understand that this audience appreciates this content from this person or this podcast.

Make Sure That Google Understands Which Subsection of Their Users Is Your Audience So That It Can Actively and Confidently Promote You

[00:12:06] Christopher Jordan: Yeah.

[00:12:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And therefore, I can confidently recommend. And that’s what we’re looking for from all these platforms. We’re looking for them to recommend us to their users. And you have to remember that these are their users, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Bing, Instagram. We are asking them to promote us and to push us for free to their users.

[00:12:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I would just like to say before ending this whole section is our audience is simply a subsection of their users. So, we need to make sure that they understand which subsection of their users is our audience, so that they can actively and confidently promote us to people who will appreciate us.

Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) on Aiming for a Niche, Like Brand SERPs, Which Will Get Him More Visibility

[00:13:03] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. And once again, that cannot be, before we end that section, that cannot be overstated. Whether it comes to your show description, the matching description on your website, on your social media platforms, whatever, that it is that niche definition of what you are that is totally going to make the difference and totally be, like you said, completely be a game changer as far as discoverability coming up in the world of Google, Bing all these other platforms.

[00:13:32] Christopher Jordan: And even whenever it comes to monetising your podcast, that SEO and that niche SEO that you are providing, that’s the sale. Forget the actual number of listeners. It’s what niche SEO do you control that whenever you add a hashtag to it, pings back to them and adds them to that. 

[00:13:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): An absolutely brilliant point and a hundred percent on board with that. If I aim for SEO, there are 15 million other SEOs, including people like Neil Patel, who have pretty much nailed that market right now. But if I aim for a niche, I will get more visibility because I’m talking about something that other people are not talking about. If I aim for SEO, I have no chance. It’s a big market, but I have no chance of being visible.

[00:14:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But if I aim for Brand SERP or if I aim for Brand SERP SEO or Knowledge Panel SEO, that’s a niche within the SEO industry, whether it may be 15 or 20 people competing with me for that space. Now, SEO, 15 million users. Brand SERP SEO, a thousand users, but I’m likely to get in front of those thousand users regularly if I focus on that specialty. Whereas with the 15 million, I will never get in front of them. And there is absolutely no point because the big guns have nailed it already.

Reserving a Domain Name of Your Own Now Will Cost You Less Than If You Start in Five Years Time

[00:15:07] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. That is one of the big, big reasons why whenever I’m teaching people podcasting, it’s like please, even if you’re not going to build a URL right now, go buy it, start controlling your brand now. The sooner you can start pushing content out from that rather than a platform, the sooner you will literally, it’s no different than going out in your front lawn, folks, and going high. This is my front lawn. You’re literally putting your foot on the corner of the internet and going, this is my corner to play on, right here. 

[00:15:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. And also telling people, remember when you want to come and talk to me, come and talk to me here on my front lawn. Don’t go and talk to me on the front lawn of the local social society where I happen to hang out once a week. My lawn is where I will always be, and you can always find exactly what it is I’m talking about. And you can interact with me directly.

[00:16:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And one really important point about getting a domain name, getting your corner of the internet that you own is that even if today it seems scary trying to create a website that you can control and that you can actually manage, because technically it might be difficult, reserving it today will cost you $10-15 a year to reserve it.

[00:16:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And in five years time, that would’ve cost you $60. And in five years time, then you can start. But in the meantime, it’s only cost you $60 to reserve that corner. And that corner, if it’s incredibly relevant, if you choose incredibly relevant for your podcast and yourself, it will be a natural human reaction to type that into the browser and come straight to your lawn, as you said earlier on. So, that’s $60, I would argue, is well invested.

There Are a Lot of Possible Alternative Domain Names You Can Use Besides .com 

[00:16:59] Christopher Jordan: Oh, absolutely. It’s literally the best investment that you can make. Like I said, whether you start a website today, whether you start at 10 episodes in, whether you start at five years from now, it’s the fact that you are building that niche SEO. And as you build that, anything related to that is going up in value. And when you go to buy that domain later, somebody a) may have already purchased it in hopes that, hey, eventually they’re going to want a website. Guess who owns the .com. Or somebody’s going to just piggyback off content, what have you, or turn it into something totally different. And now your SEO that you’ve been working on is tied to a plumbing company somewhere.

[00:17:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): A hundred percent. And the thing is now there are a few things to bear in mind here. Don’t waste money reserving a thousand domain names that might potentially be used by your competition. We’re not in a situation like Google where we need to protect our brand name across all these different, what we call TLDs, top level domains. So, you can have a .com. .com is great because that’s where people go to straight off the bat. So if you’ve got something incredibly relevant with a .com, go for it, take it, reserve it now.

[00:18:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But then you also have .info, .live, .expert, .show, .club. All of these are possible alternatives. If you’re not in the US, then you’ve got .fr if you’re in France, .co, .uk. There are all sorts of possibilities. So, don’t get frustrated by the fact that your best favourite domain .com is taken, because the internet up until four or five years ago was very much .com focused and is increasingly occupied by different TLDs, i.e. instead of having .com, you could have .me if your podcast is yourself, if the podcast is named after you. .me is a great idea. 

[00:19:08] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. I’ve got chrisjordan.ninja. 

[00:19:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. That makes you sound really smart.

[00:19:15] Christopher Jordan: I love that ninja address. When I heard about that, I was like, yep, that’s my personal resume website right there. That’s my personal resume. If you want to see my AV samples, things like that, that’s where you go to do it.

The Story of How Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Bought Kalicube.com for a Cheaper Price

[00:19:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. One thing is Kalicube. When I started Kalicube, the domain name Kalicube.com was taken, and I got Kalicube.pro instead. And I communicated with the domain Kalicube.Pro on everything. And in fact, nobody ever went to the Kalicube.com that belonged to somebody else, because I communicated using the domain name as part of my communication.

[00:20:00] Christopher Jordan: Yeah.

[00:20:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other interesting point that I think we should remember is or it might be useful to some people is Kalicube.com. They offered me that for $16,000 right at the start when I launched my company. And over five years, that price came down from $16,000 to $1,000.

[00:20:25] Christopher Jordan: Wow.

[00:20:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I recently bought it for $1,000, which is a lot of money, but I wanted to do an experiment. And I’ve done that experiment, and I’m very pleased that I’ve done it. But what I mean is people when they think you need it will try to get as much money out of you as they can. And if you stick to your guns, over time, that price will probably come down. And you might be able to buy that .com in five years time for a lot less money.

Christopher Jordan’s Story of Building a Website on 1999 Which Is Now for Sale and Valued at $2,200

[00:20:51] Christopher Jordan: I’ve got my .com story years and years ago. And I mean years ago. Everything was still being done in Adobe Flash. If you had Adobe Flash on your site, you were the bomb. This was easily 1999. 

[00:21:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): In that case, I was the bomb because my site’s from Adobe Flash. And we got 5 million visits a month to the site. So, yeah, that’s the bomb.

[00:21:19] Christopher Jordan: Exactly. Exactly. And it was the age of people just buying domains for pennies, things like that. And I owned hcproductions.com. It was for putting my music out, my poetry, things like that. And I was supposed to build a website, didn’t really have the money to do it.

[00:21:42] Christopher Jordan: My buddy, who was hosting the name for me, was like, hey, need to find out what you want to do with this name, everything else, payments coming to us. Listen, I can’t do anything with it. Just do whatever. And he sold it. Many years later, I went to go buy my domain. hcproductions.com was taken. And when I looked it up, I’m now hcproductions.org, have been since. It was one of the only domains around available at that point, so I took it because I do work with nonprofits, that kind of stuff.

[00:22:18] Christopher Jordan: Anyway, it was wild because I have now seen my .com. Every once in a while, I google it. And it’s available now. And now it’s moved down to I think it’s $2,200. But at one point, it was $14,000. My .com was valued at $14,000. It went through an evolution of being an extreme sports videography company in Vegas that shot motocross. It went through so many different permutations of companies called HC Productions.

It’s Not the Domain and Domain Name That Has Value; It’s the Content That’s Behind It

[00:22:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. I think one really important thing there to say is that it’s not the domain and domain name in and of itself that has value. It’s the content that’s behind it. And if I’m pushing Kalicube as a content filled concept and nobody else is using Kalicube, the person who owns Kalicube.com has no real use for it and therefore would just want to take the money they can get. And in terms of podcasts, if you want a relatively easy way in, you can have .show or .radio. Those are great opportunities for podcasters. 

[00:23:31] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. And if your show incorporates video, you can always go with the .tv address.

[00:23:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant.

To be Able to Dominate on Google, It Is Important to Have a Unique Name for Your Brand Name 

[00:23:37] Christopher Jordan: Things like that, because it really is it’s, once again, it’s that unique domain that you’re looking for. When it comes to that, when it comes to the uniqueness of your name, your niche, your show itself, where does that come into play, as far as discoverability being able to be found amongst the literal millions of fish in the ocean of podcasting now? 

[00:24:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The other thing is that your domain name, in terms of Google, please do remember that keywords in your domain name make absolutely no difference. There is no point in buying a domain name that has keywords in it. For example, bestbusinesspodcast.com is completely without value in terms of adding any kind of ranking value to your podcast in Google. But what is really important is having a unique name. Because at that point people search you, they will immediately find you on Google.

[00:24:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If somebody searches for Kalicube, Kalicube, my company will always come up because it’s a unique name. Jason Barnard is less of a unique name. And yeah, I still come up. I still managed to dominate. But if I didn’t, if I was called, I have a friend called Simon Cox. Simon Cox is a very common name in the UK, probably in the US as well. If I search for Simon Cox and then don’t find him, I find the cricketer or the politician or somebody else who has the same name, I will then say Simon Cox SEO. I will add a qualifier word.

[00:25:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Once somebody is searching for your brand name, they will either find you immediately because you’ve dominated that particular name on Google or they will add a qualifier and find you anyway. So, the domain name in and of itself should represent you and not be an attempt to cheat these machines, because they don’t get cheated by anything that simple anymore.

Search Engines Are Doing a Good Job of Presenting Helpful Information Before the Users Even Ask for It 

[00:25:47] Christopher Jordan: No. Back in the day, you could literally load every page with keywords in white text at the bottom of your page, and it would help you rank. It’s been amazing. Even as somebody who works in the technology industry and is normally the guy putting microphones on people like you, it shows, and taking your PowerPoints, that kind of stuff. And to see where things have grown AI wise, as far as Google, that kind of stuff, as far as searching on the internet, it is, like you’re saying, become inordinately organic. And the more niche you can make your name, the more of that niche SEO you can control, the higher discoverability you’ll have with or without listenership. 

[00:26:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. A hundred percent. And the other thing is the search engines are trying and successfully trying. They’re doing a very good job of saying we want to present more helpful information to our users before our users have even asked for it. And that requires an understanding of the different elements they could propose.

[00:27:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, for example, I’m interested in chess. There must be chess podcasts. I can’t imagine how boring that might be. And I do apologise to anybody who happens to have a chess podcast. But if Google knows that I’m interested in chess, it can potentially offer to me in a search that is related chess podcasts as a possible, what Bill Slawski calls teachable moments.

[00:27:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google’s saying here’s something I can help you with. I can teach you by sending you to this great resource that will be interesting to you and want to help you move forward in your learning experience. That’s number one. And that’s when I’m actually just on Google searching. Number two is I boot up my Android Google phone. I swipe right. It shows me the latest news, the latest things it thinks I might be interested in.

[00:28:03] Christopher Jordan: Yeah.

More Examples Where Google Suggests and Pushes Content It Thinks You Are Interested In

[00:28:04] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other day I was in the south of France. I live in France. And it said, why don’t you go and see a film with Bridget Bardot, because I was in a town where there happened to be a film about Bridget Bardot being showed. And that’s to do with the fact that I often go to the cinema and the fact I was in this town. So, Google’s pushing this content towards me.

[00:28:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If I had been in London and I’d been searching for chess games for the five or six days previously and there was a chess tournament going on in London, that Discover would’ve said, why don’t you go to the chess tournament? Maybe you want to listen to this incredibly interesting chess podcast. That’s where the secret, that’s where we’re coming from, or that’s where we’re going to rather. 

[00:28:53] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Precisely.

[00:28:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And there are chess podcasts.

[00:28:56] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. There’s plenty. There’s a list of the top 15 chess podcasts. 

[00:29:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh my Lord. I don’t want to listen to those 

[00:29:06] Christopher Jordan: Riveting content, I’m sure. I’ve even have examples.

Jason and Christopher on Having Obsession With the Games They Play

[00:29:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Just to defend myself, in fact, I was a big, big chess player when I was younger. And I was actually very good. I was North England champion at one point. And I stopped because it drives you totally insane. You get this complete obsession with these incredibly useless bits and bases. And people like Bobby Fischer, who did go totally nuts.

[00:29:36] Christopher Jordan: Yeah.

[00:29:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I understand why. So, it’s not that I find it boring. It’s that I’m frightened if I get into it again, I’ll find it too interesting and then I’ll never get out again.

[00:29:48] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. A lot of people, my cousin, my little cousin understands me probably more than anybody else in that realm. And I remember at one point, one of our cousins was like, hey, yeah, you should, oh god, what was the game that everybody was into? It was beyond Doom and stuff like that. But she was like, you should get into this game, you would enjoy it. And I was like, Ricky, take it, man. He’s like, no, Chris can’t do that. Chris would get nothing done in the world. If he got back into gaming. You don’t understand how much time Chris played Doom and Wolfenstein and things like that.

[00:30:30] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. I literally made the promise to myself that whenever I built a computer again that I would never have a game on it ever, because it was just a vapid time suck in my life, not that I didn’t love it and enjoy.

People Are Listening to Podcasts While Doing Other Things Like Cooking, Driving, and Riding to Work

[00:30:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I can relate to that a great deal. But one other thing is what I do find is I don’t listen to very many podcasts, because I don’t have travel time to work because I have always worked from home. And I was talking to John Mueller from Google, who says he listens to a podcast every single day on his bike riding to work. And I think from that perspective, podcast is something that I had underestimated. But in fact, we’re incredibly interested in this podcast.

[00:31:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’ve got a friend, Hugo, who’s in the band with me years ago, and that’s a completely new story, different story. I spoke to him yesterday, and we were talking about cooking. And we both agreed one of the best skills we both learned was how to cook. And he said, I love being in the kitchen, cooking a meal, listening to a podcast.

[00:31:40] Christopher Jordan: Yep.

[00:31:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I think we forget that there are these moments in people’s lives when you need to do something else, but you can listen to a podcast cooking, driving, riding to work on your bike, in the train. And perhaps even, there are some people who actually listen to podcasts staring at a blank wall. I can’t imagine who that might be.

For Podcasters, They Need to Consider the Environment in Which People Will Consume the Content and How Will They Access It 

[00:32:03] Christopher Jordan: People riding in subways, buses, that kind of stuff. And that’s something that I try to explain to people is that as opposed to a normal radio show and somebody who comes from broadcast, they have been chasing our coattails. If you notice now, there is not a radio show out there that you listen to that’s not like, when we’re off the air, make sure to tune in to the podcast. If you’re watching the evening news, they talk about the podcast, things like that.

[00:32:34] Christopher Jordan: And it’s literally because they realise whenever people go into their cubicle, they can’t have a radio anymore. They can’t go online and listen, but they can listen on their mobile device. They can turn on their phone. And while they’re working in their cubicle, be listening to a podcast, things like that. We’ve stolen a lot of their audience and their listenership. We have gotten to the point of Cheers, where people schedule it into their life. They knew that 8:00 PM on a Thursday night, they could go to NBC and catch Cheers. People know that they can come on Tuesday night and catch my show live at 8:00 PM. I’m sure people in your industry schedule your show into their schedule. 

[00:33:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then when they can’t, they have the opportunity to click on a button, download it, and then use it or listen to it whenever they need. So, I think as podcasters, part of our work is to think about or part of our approach needs to be think what is the environment in which people will be consuming this content and how will they be accessing it, i.e. will it be online or will it be offline downloaded previously? And that downloaded previously offline is I need to encourage people to click on that button, save for later.

[00:33:55] Christopher Jordan: Yep.

[00:33:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I think we tend to miss that. I certainly do.

The Importance of Building That Community of Trust and Controlling That Niche of Your Market

[00:34:01] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Of course the concept of call to action in shows, things like that, is so entirely important. And that, once again, is part of that just looping it right back. It goes right back to the building of community, and the fact of when you ask your community to move, they move. And there are so many broadcasters out there that I give the example of.

[00:34:26] Christopher Jordan: Rush Limbaugh was a prime example here in America, where, hey, he had the Limbaugh Letter years ago, where you paid five bucks a month and you got a literal newsletter mailed to your house, things like that. He mastered the concept of giving the listeners what they wanted outside of the radio show and how to monetise a mailing list, how to give people that content and serve it up in another way that still kept them interested when they weren’t near the radio.

[00:35:03] Christopher Jordan: And it’s so important to build that community of trust, to build that community that moves when you say, go check this out, they move to go check it out. And that only comes from social media from being there, being visible. We were saying controlling that niche of your market.

Google and Other Machines Can Recommend You Because They Understand Who Your Audience Is and Share the Same Values and Vocabulary as You 

[00:35:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. And that does come back to not kowtowing as it were to the keywords, mantra, not saying I need to stuff all the keywords I possibly can into my title and my description so that Google will like me. It’s who am I, what do I do, and who are my audience. And I need to stay true to that. And the keywords aspect is vocabulary. I need to use the vocabulary that my audience would use or does use.

[00:35:58] Christopher Jordan: Yeah.

[00:35:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And at that point, there’s an intersection. And at that point, Google, Twitter, Facebook, the podcast platforms, all of these machine can recommend me, because they understand who my audience is, because we share the same values, the same vocabulary, and because they’re hanging out in the general corner of the internet where I exist.

[00:36:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, I really would say, figure out who you are, what you do, and who your audience is going to be, and make sure that you are very clear about that and that you don’t get tempted by these get rich, quick, great keywords, different audience. I can move over to this new audience and suddenly make a big splash. If you can get the core audience, you can build out little by little. And I think that’s the secret.

We Can Influence Google by Creating Demand and Encouraging People to Search Around Your Vocabulary 

[00:36:49] Christopher Jordan: That’s just it. It’s a slow and steady process. And once again, the jazz hands moment for my presentation would be time or money. If you got the money, you can definitely pay an SEO person to go out there, and your discoverability will shoot up, all kinds of stuff. And you’ll be paying them regularly. Or if you have the time, you can put out content after content after content of the same quality of the same type of description using the same type of vocabulary, talking to the audience in the same organic way. And that will literally become a search type in Google after a certain amount of time. 

[00:37:32] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Which is a brilliant point, because in fact, we can influence Google by creating demand, by saying here is the vocabulary. And encouraging people to search around that vocabulary, you will create the search, even though it’s very small. And Google will understand that Google is massive. And I think we tend to forget that. And it’s quite easy. If you look at the bottom of the Google results for related searches, you will see that you don’t need to generate large amounts of search volume for a related search for it to appear.

Looking at Jason’s Brand SERP and the Things It Has Associated Him With That People Search For

[00:38:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And you are now looking at the Jason Barnard, my Brand SERP. If you scroll to the bottom, we can actually look at that, Jason Barnard LinkedIn, Jason Barnard podcast, Veronique Jason Barnard, Jason Barnard Boowa. What it’s done here is associated me with things that people search for. Now, Jason Barnard Boowa is a cartoon character I created 20 years ago.

[00:38:32] Christopher Jordan: That’s how deep this can go.

[00:38:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. And there isn’t a vast amount of search volume around that, but it understands because there is some. And it now suggests that as a teachable moment, as we were saying earlier on, an opportunity for its user. Once they’ve searched for Jason Barnard, it’s saying maybe you want to look for Jason Barnard Boowa. It’s a suggestion.

[00:38:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But then if you think about that in a wider sense, if somebody types Boowa, the blue dog from the cartoon I created, the related searches could potentially be Boowa Jason Barnard. And somebody would then come and find me the other way around.

[00:39:14] Christopher Jordan: Yeah.

[00:39:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Which is a delightful idea. And if you push it out even further, which is maybe not short term, definitely not short term, is if somebody starts searching for digital marketing podcasts and I have managed to get Jason Barnard digital marketing podcast in my related searches, potentially there is that connection, and that connection could work the other way around. That would be very long term, but it’s certainly something I could hope to achieve over 5, 6, 7 years.

The Reality That Only a Few Podcasts Get Past the First Few Episodes 

[00:39:45] Christopher Jordan: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And that’s where really it comes down to. I remember one of the first articles I read, because I tend to do a lot of rabbit hole research before I get into a project and before I started my beloved talking sound podcast, which you were on, I remember doing months of research. And one of the best articles that I referred to all the time was literally titled “So you want to start a podcast, be ready to be lonely.” And it was just the idea of it’s going to take a while for people to find you.

[00:40:23] Christopher Jordan: So, you’ve got to have the stick-to-itiveness of getting to 50 episodes, 100 episodes. And just to give you an idea, folks, if you’re releasing once a week, that’s two years. That’s two years of doing something. And you’re looking at for an hour long show with proper social media promotion, everything else, probably about five hours of work a week per episode, maybe ten.

[00:40:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Can we just calculate that? For 100 episodes, that’s 500 hours of work over two years. You have to be prepared to put that in. And I think if I understand correctly, 95% of podcasts don’t get past the first episode. I don’t know what percentage it is, but it’s something shocking like that.

[00:41:09] Christopher Jordan: It is something close to 70% that are out there that are nowhere beyond 20 episodes. I know that there is one platform that I don’t necessarily speak of by name on the show, but a lot of people use it. And yeah, I want to say 75% of the shows on that platform are defunct shows that have no content. They went to 10 episodes and they’re gone.

Jason’s Podcast Is in the Top 10% Because He Continually Keeps Producing Episodes 

[00:41:38] Christopher Jordan: And you have to remember, folks, you’re sharing your SEO discoverability with dead shows. If you don’t have your own website, if you don’t have your own URL that’s pushing that out, you’re now being dragged down by that dead SEO that’s not going anywhere, that’s not being built. 

[00:41:58] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): There are actually two points there. One of which is if I have a site of my own where I’m pushing my content out, I don’t care if those platforms live or die. There are 30 different platforms. It doesn’t matter to me anymore, because people can always come to my site. So if I was on a platform and they were used to listening on a platform, for example, Podchaser, and Podchaser collapses for whatever reason, people will then know to search for Jason Barnard podcasts and come to my site, which is brilliant. And it gives me power. It’s my front lawn, as you were saying. And once again, phenomenally important and vastly underrated.

[00:42:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the second point that you made there that I really like to pick up on is my podcast is in the top 10%, but it isn’t in the top 10% because it’s one of the best podcasts listened to by millions of people. It’s in the top 10%, because 90% of podcasts collapse after 10 to 20 episodes. So, it’s no glory to me, but actually just keeping going for 180 episodes, which is what I’ve done, gets me in the top 10% right off the bat.

[00:43:11] Christopher Jordan: That’s right. That’s right.

[00:43:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Not right off the bat, excuse me. After three years, it gets me in the top 10%. But the fact of just being there and keeping producing immediately puts you in the top 10%.

The Reasons Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Made a Podcast: To Learn From His Guests and to Experiment With Google

[00:43:23] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Precisely, because you are continually serving up those platters of information to Google. They know every Tuesday they can come by your site for a similar snack. 

[00:43:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That’s a really important point that I’d almost forgotten to make is part of the podcast, my podcast, I’m not actually doing it because I think I only get gazillions of listeners. I’m doing it for two reasons. One of which is I invite guests who can teach me things that I didn’t already know. So, I ask them questions and they explain to me things that I didn’t previously understand. So, it’s a vast learning experience. And honestly, in the last three years I’ve been doing this podcast, I have learned a hundred times more than in the 10 years before without the podcast. That’s point number one.

[00:44:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And point number two is it’s an experiment with a company called WordLift, who are an Italian company who do very complex SEO stuff. It’s incredibly interesting. But the point was we were trying to get Google to understand what the podcast is, who we’ve invited, what the topics are, so that we can potentially be pushed out onto Google Discover and get this extra visibility in Google from the fact that Google fully understands who we are, what we do, and who our audience is. And so far, it’s going incredibly well. And I’m enjoying the experiment a great deal.

[00:44:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I think podcasts, in terms of Google at least, Google’s putting a lot of effort into it. And it’s definitely, definitely something that’s going to get bigger and bigger and bigger in Google’s mind. And when you think about Google, when it decides to make something work, when it decides to make something popular, it will.

YouTube Is a Good Place to Push Your Podcast to Get Some Extra Viewers

[00:45:10] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Just a prime example, look at what happened after they saw the potential of YouTube and pick them up. They are now the second largest search engine. If you aren’t on YouTube as a podcaster, there are a hundred different ways. I’m getting ready to do an episode on how to use the software I’m using right now to put a still image with your podcast on YouTube, whatever. But if you aren’t on YouTube in some way, shape, or form, you are doing yourself a huge disservice, even if it’s just audio with the still picture. It is one of the largest search engines out there. 

[00:45:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Which is a really interesting point. Because in fact, my podcast gain us vastly more listeners and viewers on YouTube than it does from Google directly. Google directly is starting to move forwards, but I wouldn’t focus on that. I would agree with you. And that’s a really good point is YouTube’s a really good place to push your podcast to get some extra viewers. Some of them have got 50, 60 views. 50 or 60 views is still 50 or 60 views. I wouldn’t have got other ones.

Jason’s Experience of Having a Concert in His Garage Where an Unexpected Large Number of People Showed up

[00:46:23] Christopher Jordan: And you may not think of it a lot, but, hey, think of it this way, folks. Imagine you invited some folks over for a barbecue one Saturday, and 50 people showed up. All right. Imagine you put word out to 10 people. Come on by, man. We’ll make some burgers, pop some fireworks, whatnot. And 50 people showed up. How would you react then? 

[00:46:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’ve got a good story, because I did exactly that. I play in a band with a friend of mine. And I had a flat in the south of France with a garage. And I said to people, I said to the singer, sorry, let’s have a concert in my garage. And we opened the garage up, and we told 10 people in the afternoon from the village, come along. And we had literally 50 people turn up. By the third garage party, we were calling it, we had 200 people in my tiny garage jumping up and down to the music we were playing.

[00:47:28] Christopher Jordan: Wow.

[00:47:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it is true. And that’s the lawn thing again. Come to my lawn. I get 200 people. If I say, go to the bar next door, I get five people and a dog who’s not even interested in the music. 

[00:47:42] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I worked in music for years and that is 100% it, because it’s like bands who play every Friday night or bands that play once a month. That once a month, it’s an event. You have time to plan it and put it into your schedule. If it’s at every Friday, then everybody has the mentality of I’ll go next Friday.

[00:48:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah.

Consistency Is Important for Events Like Kalicube Tuesdays and the Boowa and Kwala Website to Succeed

[00:48:11] Christopher Jordan: I got too much going on this week. I’ll hit it up next week. There’s always too much going on. But when you, once again to bring it back home to podcasts, it’s about serving up that information in the same way, in the same timeframe all the time to let not only Google, but your listeners know where to come for the party, literally where to come for the party. 

[00:48:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. There are two things. One of which is I actually have an event online, which is called Kalicube Tuesdays. And when I invite guests, sometimes it’s like, oh, can we do it on a Wednesday? And you go, well, no, it’s called Kalicube Tuesdays, which bit of that don’t you understand? Which has always made me giggle. And it’s working incredibly well, that Kalicube Tuesdays, every Tuesday.

[00:49:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And one nice thing I like about it is I do it live. So even if I’m not in a good mood or I’m tired on a Tuesday, I still have to do it. And it’s always good, because I push myself through, the adrenaline gets running, I do the hour show, and it’s fine. And none of them are bad, however bad I feel. You can actually hear it if I was ill before, which has been the case in a few of the times.

[00:49:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other thing is the Boowa and Kwala we were talking about earlier on, the Boowa, the blue dog. It was a website. And we said to our audience, which started off as five people who were our neighbours and friends, every first of the month we will update the website with three games, one song, and one activity, one manual activity for kids. And over 10 years, we went from five people, who are all my neighbours, to 5 million people a month by being regular. We never, ever missed a first of the month for 10 years.

In Doing a Project, You Have to Have the Belief That It’s Going to Last and be Valuable and Helpful to Your Audience

[00:50:11] Christopher Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s just it. That consistency is so important. Once again, it was like growing up knowing every Thursday night Cheers was on. You scheduled it into your life. It gives you an opportunity to look forward to it. And in this day and age of especially binging the way that things are now, I think building some of that anticipation in the world and in life is a little bit important again.

[00:50:42] Christopher Jordan: And I think that we as podcasters need to appreciate the anticipation of where things will be, like you said, having that long play mentality of, if I’m doing this, I’m doing it for 200-300 episodes, I’m doing it for a couple years. I’m sure you have the same mentality as I do as a musician. I’m not getting into any band or project that I am not willing to put myself wholeheartedly into. 

[00:51:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Sure, no, a hundred percent. And some people say to me, oh, come and play a bit of music here. I’ll go and jam with people for music. I’ll do podcast, the equivalent of podcast, guesting. But if I’m going to put my name on something as a project and say, this is my project, I have to have the fundamental belief in my own mind that it’s going to last, it’s going to be something important and valuable and helpful to my audience, whoever that audience may be.

[00:51:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And once again, coming back to Boowa and Kwala, when you look at that, one of the reasons it worked is because we were regular every first of the month, the quality was always there, and every single month, the content absolutely stuck to the core values for what we were building, which is quality, helpful, educational content for kids aged up to 10 years old.

The Idea of Brand Consistency and Having a Mission Statement for Your Brand, Audience, and Content 

[00:52:17] Christopher Jordan: That’s an important thing to bring up that I bring up a lot in my presentation, before I let you go real quick, is just the idea of brand consistency, the idea of having a mission statement, having a two sentence mission statement that if you need to know whether or not to book this guest, if that guest or what they’re there for or the book that they’re bringing on or whatever cannot be shoehorned into that two sentence.

[00:52:48] Christopher Jordan: Just as a former broadcast producer, that’s the thing. If it can’t be shoehorned into that two sentence description of what you are, what you are about, and what your content serves up, don’t do it. Don’t do it. You are disobeying your brand, you’re disobeying your loyal audience and the content that they are looking to you for, and you’re totally, totally jacking up your SEO by tying it to other things that are totally unrelated. 

[00:53:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. No, it’s actually, to be honest with you, you said you’re going to let me go. And I think that is possibly the best conclusion to this podcast anybody could have come up with. And to be honest, hats off to you, Christopher, because I couldn’t have said it that well.

Thanking Each Other for the Great Conversations and the Quality Time Spent in Learning More

[00:53:35] Christopher Jordan: Thank you so much. I love the fact that you come on. The whole reason why, like you said with your show and the Tuesdays that you’re doing with Kalicube Tuesdays, the whole idea is for you to learn too. I learn from this process every day, even the audience that I taught yesterday, even today. The whole reason I wanted to have you on again was that first episode was amazing, and I loved it. And I’ve listened to it two or three times. But even today, I have whole new concepts that I need to implement because of it.

[00:54:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant.

[00:54:15] Christopher Jordan: That’s what it’s about is us learning, us exploring together as a community and building each other up. And I want to thank you so much for your time with our audience today.

[00:54:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I want to thank you for the great questions. Because as you said, I’m learning. You asked me a question. I think, why haven’t I thought of that? I think about it as we’re talking, and I find new things that I hadn’t thought of before. And I think sometimes one might imagine when I’m talking, I’ve thought of all this before. And a lot of what we just talked about, I haven’t actually thought through or articulated before. And I’m going to have to listen back to this because I’ve got things to learn from both what you said and the questions that you asked that brought me to say things that I hadn’t previously thought through or said.

Find More About Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) by Searching His Name and His Company, Kalicube 

[00:55:04] Christopher Jordan: Thank you so much. That means the world to me. Before we do let you go, tell everybody one last time where they can go to find everything, from Kalicube, where they can go to find the free tools that you guys have, all that kind of good stuff. 

[00:55:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Right. I’m a big fan of people searching my name, Jason Barnard, or searching Kalicube. Because the more brand searches you get, the more Google understands that your audience is interested in you and the better you will perform in general. So, search for my name, Jason Barnard, search for my company, Kalicube.

[00:55:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And by doing so, and then choosing, because when you search for those names, the information that comes up on Google is something that I optimised to make sure that it is helpful and valuable to my audience. By searching for those names, Jason Barnard and Kalicube, you will see my Google business card. And Google will understand that my audience or an audience that is relevant to me is interested in me and my company. And I would advise anybody who has a podcast to push that same idea, because it will pay dividends over time.

[00:56:20] Christopher Jordan: That’s right. Thank you once again so, so much. Such incredible information to get from you, Jason, that any podcaster out there can use and should be using. If you are not leveraging that, you are doing yourself a disservice. Please do hold the line while we close things out, Jason.

Promoting the Sponsors of the Podcast and the Content of the Podcast Cadet Training Series

[00:56:41] Christopher Jordan: While you are online checking out all the great work of Jason Barnard, checking out all the fantastic tools that you can use over at Kalicube.Pro, make sure to stop on by the Talking Sound Podcast. You can sign up and get your free five point podcast success checklist, as well as all the episodes dumped in your mailbox, all kinds of good stuff. Stop on by, check us out.

[00:57:08] Christopher Jordan: While you’re there, make sure to stop on by our sponsor, True Hemp Science. True Hemp Science is located right here in Austin, Texas. They are the home of some of the best spigerically made CBD oil out there. I use it myself. My doctor prescribed me CBD a couple few years ago during my travels as supplemental for my anxiety. I use their stuff. Make sure to stop on by. Use the code cadet7 to get 7% off your entire purchase. On the way out, you can also sign up and get two free, count them, two edibles on your way out the door. Once again, that code is cadet20.

[00:57:52] Christopher Jordan: Take care of yourselves, everybody. Take care of each other. Make sure that when you’re podcasting that you’re keeping your security in mind. We’re going to be having a whole episode coming up soon with Todd Cochrane of Blubrry Podcasting, talking about listener security, securing your listeners information, things like that. So, until next time, take care of yourselves. We’ll talk to you soon. Keep hitting record, everyone. Bye bye.

[00:58:35] Christopher Jordan: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Podcast Cadet Training Series. For more episodes and information, follow us online at podcastcadet.com and all major podcast platforms. Join our Podcast Cadet community group on Facebook for the latest in podcast industry news and conversation with industry professionals. The Podcast Cadet Training Series is produced in association with HC Productions and the HC Universal Network of podcasts. For more great episodes and content or for information about distribution or sponsoring podcasts, visit hcuniversalnetwork.com today. Thanks for listening and until next time. Remember to press record.

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