We can’t wait for this final “night” session of #Day2 #PodFestAsia – A Virtual Event on December 4 starting from 830am – 1030pm (Singapore time). Last 4 speakers from China, France and USA will join me for a 25-minute, 1:1 conversation and answer questions submitted prior by our community and during the live stream by attendees, in a wide-ranging convo about podcasting.
08:30pm – 09:00pm Yang Yi
09:00pm – 09:30pm Jason Barnard
0930pm – 10:00pm 30min call-in segment
10:00pm – 10:30pm Alex Sanfilippo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpytes5wK5A
[00:29:44] Wayne Cheong: How are you, my friend?
[00:29:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Hi, man. How are you doing?
[00:29:47] Wayne Cheong: How are you doing? I’m fantastic.
[00:29:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You’ve been up all night, all day, two days running.
[00:29:55] Wayne Cheong: Yesterday, yes. And I’ve been grabbing two, three hours napping time here and there just to keep myself alive and awake. And I have my coffee.
[00:30:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant stuff.
[00:30:06] Wayne Cheong: So, yeah. You can see that I can barely open my eyes after two days of marathon or live streaming
[00:30:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Okay. Well, I’ll try and make it easy for you then. I’ll be enthusiastic and full of beans and present lots of interesting things to people so that you don’t have to pay very much attention.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) as an SEO Expert, a Previous Cartoon Blue Dog, an Author, a Speaker, and a Podcaster
[00:30:22] Wayne Cheong: As usual, because we know that the energy that’s coming out from you is always overflowing. Ever since we met for the first time in Las Vegas during the PubCon conference, you’ve always been a person that always energise me whenever you’re next to me. So, let’s maybe have you take over the mic and maybe tell us why you’re going to share with our audience in PodFest Asia today.
[00:30:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. You told me about this the other day and I thought, wow, that’s really interesting. And I come from the world of Google. I’m an SEO expert. And I call myself The Brand SERP Guy. The idea being that I specialise in what Google shows when somebody searches your brand name. And what I like here is that I can actually show my life story through my Brand SERP. If you look at this Brand SERP, that’s my name. If you search Jason Barnard, try it on your computer now and you’ll see that it’s terribly rich. I’ve got these videos. I’ve got the Twitter boxes. I might have the podcast boxes depending on where you are in the world. On the right-hand side, I’ve got the Knowledge Panel. When somebody searches your brand name or your personal brand name or your podcast name, it should tell the story of yourself, your brand, or your podcast.
[00:31:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now you see here, I can say that I’ve been in two decades in digital. You can see there I used to be a blue dog in a cartoon on the TV, ITV international. It was shown in 25 countries. So that part of my life story is shown there. I’m an author on lots of SEO digital marketing platforms, like Search Engine Journal and SEMrush. I’ve got the groovy podcast that you were going to talk about here. And then I go around the world when we could go around the world speaking at conferences. And we met at PubCon Las Vegas. That was one of my conferences and it was great fun.
[00:32:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the idea here is that I think I’m the only person in the digital marketing world specialising in what Google shows when somebody googles your name, your brand name, or your podcast name. So, that makes me unique. And it’s not just my mother who says that now. There you go. There’s my groovy podcast. I don’t know how the slides got out of order, but you can actually see it, With Jason Barnard…
[00:32:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I’ve been podcasting only for about a year and a half, almost two years. And I started podcasting because I wanted to go around the world interviewing people. And recently, I’ve been really getting into how much leverage I can get for building my audience but also how much presence I can get in Google, how much I can leverage Google to expand my audience and to inform my audience. And we’ll look at that in a moment.
Podcasters Should Consider Putting a Thumbnail on Every Episode of Their Podcasts
[00:32:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now, one thing that hit me this week, and that’s why we started talking, is the thumbnail thing. At the moment on pretty much every platform including Google, you’ll see that the thumbnail for each episode is actually the podcast series thumbnail. And it seemed to me when I started podcasting, that was really foolish, but an expert told me don’t bother doing the episode thumbnails because nobody uses them. And as far as I’m aware, not very many brands, companies, websites, and not Google even uses them. And that seems to be changing and it seems to be now something we need to do. Here I’ve actually redone all my thumbnails. This is on podchaser.com.
[00:33:41] Wayne Cheong: They are beautiful.
[00:33:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I figured if I’m going to do it, I might as well do it properly. The challenge is that it needs to look good at 30 pixels, which is the smallest I’ve found, up to 620 pixels, which is the biggest I’ve found. So, as podcasters, we need to now include these thumbnails because, oh, sorry, excuse me. And we’ll see that in a moment. Again, the order of my slides is a bit weird because I prepared them this morning very quickly. Because Google’s going to start using them. I’m very sure that Google will start using them. Google is starting to show podcasts a lot in its results and a lot of traffic. Maybe you can’t see it, but a lot of your podcast traffic is going to start coming from Google.
Google Recognises the Regularity of Jason’s Podcast That Comes Out Every Tuesday and Associates Him With People Who Were Guests on the Show
[00:34:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I also realised recently that regularity is incredibly important. I think we all know that, but this really hits the nail on the head. This is my Kalicube Tuesdays from 2020, more beautiful graphic design, absolutely not thanks to me. That’s my ex-wife who does that. She’s really good at colours in particular and actually putting things in place. Now, what I find astonishing about that image and it has nothing to do with the story I’m telling, but that’s actually a square image, but it looks…
[00:34:57] Wayne Cheong: Yeah, it’s a perfect square.
[00:35:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s a perfect square, but it feels to me like it’s horizontal because of the way it’s designed, which is a really nice effect. Anyway, that has nothing to do with it. On the right-hand side, you can see that my Kalicube Tuesdays event, which the podcast is drawn from every single Tuesday without fail for six months. And that’s what happens every Monday and Tuesdays.
[00:35:21] Wayne Cheong: The spikes on this chart, I think that’s the first observation from even someone who’s not a podcaster. They would notice that spikes and in traffic is always great if you’re a brand or you are a product service provider or you’re a platform. So tell us how does podcasting actually created all these huge peak for you on Tuesdays.
[00:35:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. My podcast comes out every Tuesday. And these are searches on my own personal name. It’s searches on Jason Barnard. You can see that the difference is phenomenal. Basically, nobody cares about me all week long. And then on Mondays and Tuesdays, people get really over enthusiastic. They search my name presumably to find the podcast. And that’s a very strong signal to Google that this podcast is important because Google sees that regularity. And what it’s going to start doing is associating me with Tuesdays in digital marketing content going out live on YouTube and then afterwards on the podcasting channel.
[00:36:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what I’ve also noticed is that Google, it’s a long story, we might talk about it later, pushes all of these events into the Knowledge Graph. Google’s Knowledge Graph is its understanding of the world. It’s trying to understand the world like we do as humans in our brains. And it’s saying Jason Barnard has a podcast, works for Kalicube, knows Rand Fishkin, for example, who’s been on my podcast. And it’s making these associations. And the associations it’s making, if it knows that I know Ted Rubin, Rand Fishkin, Bill Slawski, all these really smart people. Yeah. It assumes that I must be intelligent too. So, these associations are helping me look better. So, here a) we have Google now associates me with Tuesdays, associates my content with Tuesdays so I have to stick to Tuesdays now that I started, and associates me with all these incredibly smart people.
The Importance of the Design of Your Thumbnail Which Helps Google Group Together the Topics of Your Podcasts
[00:37:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the design, you mentioned it. It didn’t really strike me before, but my design was a bit all over the place. And you can see here the thumbnails. I’ve got thumbnails for the pages. I’ve got thumbnails for the podcast. I’ve got thumbnails for the YouTube videos. And it’s all in a design, very colourful, but you can tell it all goes together and it makes sense. And that’s when you search for Kalicube podcast.
[00:37:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if we come back to Google again, stick on topic. Search for your podcast in Google Images and see, does it look good? Does it look like you think it should? Has Google understood what images go with your podcast? If you’ve only been doing thumbnails for the whole series itself, I will bet you’ve got a lot of repetition of images or a lot of very boring images or a mixture of images that don’t really make sense. And that’s really unfortunate.
[00:38:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if you look at the top, you can see Knowledge Graph, generate unlimited, platform effect, John Mueller, who’s a guy at Google, one of the most important people for our community at least at Google, Gennaro Cuofano, an Italian business analyst, Jim Boykin, who’s an SEO, Chase Reiner, who’s an SEO, David Avrin, who’s a social media influencer person, retaining customers, which is a topic, nail product. It doesn’t mean nail product as in fingernail product. It means nailing product positioning, but it’s got a bit confused. But those are the topics I cover. And you can see it’s the topics I cover and the people who’ve been on the podcast. And you can see it’s very grouped. And this is a good indication of whether Google has understood what your podcast is about.
[00:39:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So you search your podcast name, name of podcast, search it, check your images, and then check those words at the top. And if the words don’t make sense, don’t actually refer to what you’re talking about and the people you’ve invited, Google really hasn’t understood what your podcast is about. And if it hasn’t understood what your podcast is about, how can it possibly offer it to its users? And especially if anyone’s been using Google Discover, Google Discover is Google saying to its user you haven’t asked for this podcast, but I’m going to give it to you anyway.
[00:39:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And this lady here, Jes Scholz, the yellow one, Google Discover another pushy features is basically saying to us, if Google’s understood what you’re talking about on your podcast, Google will push it to people who it thinks will be interested much in the way Facebook does today. But imagine the scale that in 2018, there were 1 billion people using Google Discover every day.
Google Is Getting Better at Tracking Information About You for It to Recommend Something You Will Like
[00:40:01] Wayne Cheong: I have to ask one question because right now I’m fascinated by what you’re showing us, especially in terms of podcast being shown up more, being more discoverable by Google, because it understands perfectly based on the graphics and all the keywords that we’re now putting.
[00:40:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Let’s go back to that screen. I like that screen.
[00:40:18] Wayne Cheong: Does it help in terms of getting these podcasts being recommended by, let’s say, okay, Google on a smart speaker? Because of all these ground laying work that you’re doing on your side for your podcast, does it help it to be easily discoverable on a smart speaker with how at home audio is now penetrating households at a bigger skill than ever before?
[00:40:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I think our habits are changing as Google gets better. I listen to Spotify a lot and Spotify’s reasonably good. And I put on Spotify Radios based on a song. So I’m telling Spotify, this is my starting point, find me some songs that I might like around that. And it’s pretty good.
[00:41:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But Google knows so much about you if you’re a Google user. If you use Chrome or you use Google Discover or you use Google Search, that’s probably most of us, or Android for that matter, that must be like 80% of the world. At some point, I have been on one of those. It knows so much about you and it’s tracking everything you’re doing, which is slightly scary on one side, but it also knows what you like.
[00:41:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So if it understands that I’m interested in digital marketing, it will push to me digital marketing podcast. If I say to it, I’ll put something on Google because I can’t be bothered thinking about it. Or I want to discover something new, play me something new, man. Isn’t that just the dream? For me, for music, you’re talking about the Dead Kennedys. I’m sure we’ll come to that in a moment. But I would love it if I could just say to Spotify, just put some great music on and it got it right every time, but it doesn’t. It plays me some rubbish music sometimes. And sometimes it gets it right.
Google Discover Is Already Pushing Similar Topics or Podcasts to People Based on What They Are Listening to
[00:42:01] Wayne Cheong: Playlisting comes into the picture, because playlisting means we’re able to create our favourite bands, like Dead Kennedys, Jello Biafra, Ministry, for example. And then because based on the playlist that we keep on replaying, just continuously playing the next song, which is based on a playlist that’s just been played, does the same happen for a podcast? That if we create a playlist of our favourite podcast shows, will this be helping in terms of discovering similar shows?
[00:42:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That already happens on many podcasting platforms and applications. Google Discover, in fact, you can see it already. A guy called David Savage, I think it was his name, the Savage podcast, and it was brilliant. And what I noticed is underneath, or he actually noticed it, underneath my appearance on his podcast, it actually says similar topics and I’m one of them. So it actually then pushes you to listen to more of my podcast guest appearances and also my own podcast. So, it’s bringing it all together, but it goes well beyond the idea of saying I created a playlist and then find me some other stuff, which is a Spotify example with music. Google’s actually going to start pushing this stuff to you whether you ask it to or not, whether you’ve got a playlist or not.
[00:43:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, even if you don’t have an explicit playlist on Google, for example, Google knows I love Bob’s Burgers and it can then associate that and say, okay, he’ll probably like this comedy podcast. So if I say to it, put me a podcast on Google, it will play me perhaps a comedy podcast that’s got to that kind of humor, but only if it’s understood what kind of content is in the podcast. It cannot do that if it can’t understand.
[00:43:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, one of our biggest jobs as podcasters is to communicate Google who we are, what we do, what our podcast is about, who our guests are. So if somebody said, oh, I’d like to listen to something that Rand Fishkin’s been saying recently, then it might pick my podcast because it knows my podcast has Rand Fishkin in it. But you’ve had Rand Fishkin on yours, but it might not pick yours if it hasn’t fully understood that, because it wants to be sure to get the answer right when I ask it.
[00:44:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the other thing with Discover is that you swipe right on your Android phone and it just shows you what it wants to show you. You haven’t even asked for anything. That’s push technology. That’s saying here’s something you might like to do today. And it’s inspired me to go and listen to a podcast.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Was Inspired When He Saw the New Format for the Podcast Carousel which Shows a Bigger Thumbnail
[00:44:28] Wayne Cheong: Absolutely. I think you’re really on ahead, especially these days. I basically use my smart speaker to do my research on my guests, rather than actually having to open my laptop or stay at a screen, just to find out the information about my guests. Actually, the first thing I’ll do is actually to ask Google anything about my guest. And that’s the best way to actually absorb by listening. I think that’s a shortcut. And it seems to be the kind of behavioral change as well in terms of how people learn. So maybe can you continue to present your wonderful slide? I love every slide that you have wonderfully created for our PodFest Asia audience. So we’re going to show that and please continue.
[00:45:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. This is what inspired me. It was literally 10 days ago. No, it was a week ago. It was last Friday. I found the one on the left. I was researching on Google and that’s the new format for podcast carousel. So, instead of the tiny little thumbnails you can see there, it’s these big ones with the blurry backgrounds, because it’s the wrong format for Google so it’s trying to get around that. And it was a test Google did a week or so ago.
[00:45:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that was where I thought those podcast episodes need their own thumbnails because that looks absolute rubbish. It isn’t attractive. It isn’t informative. We’re all image based by nature. We will react very quickly and instinctively to a good image, a quality image, an attractive image, and an informative image. So if we then look at that, that’s what I’ve now done. Google isn’t showing it like this yet, but I did a mockup because I wanted to see what it will look like. Isn’t that so much better?
[00:46:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): All of a sudden I’m looking up Jason Barnard and I say, right, I can listen to his podcast or Cindy Krum, I know her, Dave Davis, yeah, great, brilliant. Rather than that, where I’ve actually got to read it, I’m going for that one a hundred percent. And Google’s going to go for that one a hundred percent. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind. It’s a question now of when. So it started testing now, so we can expect that to roll out in 2021. So if you haven’t done some nails for your episodes, which I think most podcasters haven’t, get your skates on, do it now. Because in 2021 on Google, that’s going to happen. Then what happens is everybody else will copy Google.
[00:46:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Once these platforms have the images and they can show the images, we’re going to end up in a situation where they start showing the images when they can. So if you don’t do it, you’ll be at a disadvantage because yours will still be all the series images, one after the other, look very boring, not very informative, not very helpful. And your competitors, let’s call them competitors, we’re all friends in the industry, but competing podcasts are going to look prettier. And Google, if it has to choose between your podcast or my podcast, and I’ve got these groovy thumbnails and it can show them in Discover, it’s going to show mine and not yours. It’s one of those tie breaker situations.
When we’re trying to reach out to new audiences and expand our audience, small advantages make all the difference.
jason barnard (the brand serp guy)
[00:47:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I think we all agree when we’re trying to reach out to new audiences and expand our audience, small advantages make all the difference. People use the example of the British cycling team, who are absolute rubbish, and then they improved tiny things on everything on their bicycles and they became world champions or Olympic champions.
[00:47:52] Wayne Cheong: Maybe you could use in an example the Liverpool football team during Ray Houghton days. They make fine refinements every season until they finally nailed it, right?
[00:48:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. If you’re looking for flopped, exactly. What’s he been there five years? First few years, it was tiny improvements each year, as you say, and then bingo, he’s nailed it there and they’re stars.
[00:48:20] Wayne Cheong: Yeah. Please continue. Yeah.
[00:48:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No, yeah. We both love Liverpool. We both love the Dead Kennedys, so we’ve got a lot in common, which is absolutely delightful. I do love that. Yeah. What else do we need to move on to? Oh yes, that was it. Sorry, I’ve forgotten. I just prepared this literally 10 minutes ago.
The Growing Popularity Curve of Google Podcasts Through the Help of Google Discover
[00:48:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Podcast on Google, that’s the popularity curve. It’s going up and up and up and up. So even if Google isn’t, I think we tend to think as podcasters we can use Stitcher or we can rely on Apple Podcasts or we can rely on now Spotify and now Amazon as well. All of these big players, they’re driving listens and downloads.
[00:49:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But Google, people are going to Google more and more and more and more. And Google with Google Discover is moving into that space, once again, of social. So it’s like a mixture between Apple Podcasts and Facebook, which is scary, but it’s a big deal as well because it’s such an immense opportunity. Because whereas with Apple Podcasts, you’re in there searching for podcasts explicitly. On Facebook, they’re pushing things to you because of what you have been interested in, what your friends are sharing. And Discover is going to become more and more like that.
[00:49:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the idea that your podcast might suddenly pop up on my Discover page is increasing. And this is the actual active people actively searching for podcasts is on the way up and up and up. And you can see some countries that are really getting bigger and bigger. They’re the fastest growing ones, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Australia, and at the bottom there, you’ve got the United States, which is still growing despite the fact that it’s already the biggest market
[00:50:06] Wayne Cheong: Does this include the voice search as well for those who are asking Google on your smart speakers for certain podcasts?
[00:50:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No, this is just web search.
[00:50:16] Wayne Cheong: Got it.
[00:50:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, I didn’t actually look up voice search because I didn’t know you were going to ask. You’ve caught me out.
[00:50:26] Wayne Cheong: No, it’s learned together. So that’s something that I’m going to search on probably later and maybe share back with you, because you’re sharing so much golden nuggets of wisdom with us. We should share with each other.
[00:50:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. We were going to just have a chat. And then I said I’ve got some interesting things to show, and I showed you them. And you said, why don’t you come along and show your screen and give us a mini talk. So this is a mini talk for me. It’s a mini conference.
Your Brand SERP Is Your New Business Card That Needs to Be Positive, Accurate, and Convincing
[00:50:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And this is what where I’m really based. And I think this is going to talk to a lot of us and it might open a few eyes. It’s your new business card. Now, for a brand or a person, when you meet somebody, you talk to somebody and you say, I’ve got this wonderful service, please buy from me, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then what do they do? When you leave the room, they search for you on Google. And what comes up is effectively now your business card. And if it’s rubbish, all of that great convincing you just did is it goes out the window. And if it’s great, you’ve cemented to do. You’ve nailed it.
[00:51:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And this is mine. We saw it right at the beginning. And I think my business card is pretty cool. You can see there the podcast at the top, so people immediately know that I’m a podcaster. My Twitter boxes are there, so they know that if they go onto Twitter, they’re going to find me being active. It’s telling my story, as I said. And it’s saying to somebody, this person, Jason Barnard, has his site at the top. He has his podcast. He’s got a Wikipedia page, although that’s now been deleted, which is a whole story in itself. They deleted it because I kept editing it and they don’t like that. And he’s active on Twitter.
[00:51:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if you look further down, if we think back to what I said earlier on, I write for Search Engine Journal, I write for SEMrush. I talk at Yoast, which is the word WordPress plugin people. And all of that makes me terribly, terribly convincing. I like to say that a Brand SERP or a personal Brand SERP or a podcast Brand SERP needs to be accurate, positive, and convincing. And this is accurate. I’ve made it accurate. I control all of these. It’s positive and it’s convincing. I look like I know what I’m doing.
Three Things to Look at as a Podcaster: The Host Name, the Podcast Name, and the Host Name Plus the Podcast Name
[00:52:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then I found Marc Maron, who’s famous apparently. He’s got his podcast up there. Now, these are the three I will be looking at as a podcaster. Think about what does Google show when people are looking up your name, the host name? Wayne, you look up your name. What comes up? Is it positive? Does it represent you? Are you even on that page? The answer is probably not if you’ve got a very common name. If you’ve got an uncommon name, probably. If you’ve got a common name and you’re famous like this guy, you’re going to be nailing it, you’re going to be dominating. And people will find something positive, accurate, and convincing.
[00:53:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then look at your podcast name. If your podcast carousel boxes aren’t there, then Google hasn’t got to grips with your podcast. Then look up the host name plus the podcast, same thing. And you want all of these to be the best possible representation of yourself and your podcast, because that’s what people see. And Google is a reference for people. When I search somebody’s name or somebody’s brand name, I trust Google to show me an accurate representation of them. So that trust in Google means that that for people is truth. Obviously, that’s exaggerating a little bit, but we’re not very far away.
[00:54:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): How many people go through to page two or three or four? Nobody. You stick on page one. You say, that’s what I was looking for. He looks cool. She looks cool. That podcast looks great. I’m sticking with it. Or that looks absolute rubbish. I’m going to go and search for somebody else. And that’s about it. There’s a whole kind of technical aspect of how you go about it.
Connect With Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Through Twitter and LinkedIn and Help Him on His Experiment on Kalicube Pro
[00:54:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Follow me on Twitter or on LinkedIn. Connect with me in some way. And I actually teach this. I have a set of courses where I teach you how to optimise what appears when somebody googles your brand name or your personal name or your podcast name. And I’m really, really happy to share. I’ve got a whole research thing going on at Kalicube, where I’m actually looking into it.
[00:54:48] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if I can get enough podcast names into my database, I can start tracking those. So if somebody can provide me with a big long list of all the podcasts, famous and not so famous, so that we can actually get a good view of how Google is presenting podcasts in its results, I will be incredibly interested. Right now, I’ve got 35,000 people, 40,000 brands, two and a half thousand music groups, and I’d love some podcasts.
[00:55:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You go on to Kalicube.pro and you add your name and it’s free, because it’s a research project that I’m running to try to understand how we can better control what appears when somebody googles your brand name or your personal name or your podcast name. There you go. That’s my specialist subject, Mr. SEO of the podcast world.
The Growing Necessity for SEO Podcasting as Google Is Starting to Pay More Attention to Podcasts
[00:55:41] Wayne Cheong: Fantastic. I think you’re creating a new category for yourself, because podcasting SEO is a subject that not many people have written about. I think only maybe Neil Patel has probably one article on LinkedIn. I remember half a year ago. That’s about it. And nobody is really speaking about a topic. And you’re provoking this discussion right now about the SEO podcasting. That’s going to help a lot of podcasters really cut through the noise.
[00:56:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I think up until quite recently, SEO for podcasting just wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t interesting because people weren’t going to Google for podcasts. Google wasn’t really paying attention to podcasts. Google Podcasts only started a few years ago. So Google had left it to one side and it was Apple dominating. And now, you have Google with Google Podcasts, you have Voice Search, you have Google Discover, and you have more and more people using Google for more and more different things and researching and finding new things to do and looking people up to see what kind of person they are, what kind of podcast we’re looking at.
[00:56:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google’s really moving into the space. And I think SEO for podcasting is something that would’ve been worthless two years ago, but it is quite important today. And from 2021 onwards, it’s going to be phenomenally important for all of us. And anybody who gets into it and gets it right is going to win the game.
As More Podcast Contents Arise, Should Every SEO Expert Also Have Their Own Podcast?
[00:57:02] Wayne Cheong: And we see all the buzz by Google, by Amazon, by Apple. They are all producing smart speakers at scale right now. And we are seeing charts of explosive growth of these smart speakers invading our homes. And I got my smart speaker recently. I’ve been talking to it. And my consumption of podcast has grown 1000% as a result of that. Of course, I’ve been listening to more music as a result of that as well and using it to create appointments and alarms. We don’t even have to touch my laptop or my phone.
[00:57:31] Wayne Cheong: So, it’s changing the behavioral patterns and consumption of content. So, it’s great that you’re showcasing and highlighting these important things that podcasters should take note of and to ensure that we don’t get lost in the myriad of so many podcast content creators that are now appearing. And I think there are 2 million podcast shows predicted for next year. That’s a growth of I think a hundred percent within a short one period of time.
[00:58:03] Wayne Cheong: So, do you think that every SEO expert should also have their own podcast and nail their own podcasts strategy well so that they can also cut through the noise and create their own category like what you have just done?
[00:58:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If everybody does it, then nobody does it in that kind of if everybody’s number one, nobody’s number one kind of a way. I think we all have different approaches. As an SEO, I love being on camera. I was the blue dog in the cartoon, so TV was fine for me. I was a singer in a band for years, which we talked about, which makes me comfortable in front of a microphone. So, podcasting and videos and conferences are all part and parcel of how I communicate and I’m comfortable with.
I think we all need to develop our own strategy that corresponds to our personality and the way we like to present things.
jason barnard (the brand serp guy)
[00:58:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Other SEOs are going to be more comfortable writing. So I think, as well, that’s an interesting point is obviously some people don’t like Twitter, so you can get the Twitter boxes on your Brand SERP. I think we all need to develop our own strategy that corresponds to our personality and the way we like to present things just as much, interestingly enough, just as much as different people consume content in different ways. Some people like listening. Some people like watching. Some people like reading. We like to present in different ways. I know some people who couldn’t stand up in front of a room full of people but can speak in front of a microphone. And I know people who can’t speak in front of a microphone because there’s no people to bounce their visual ideas off.
[00:59:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): A guy who played in our band, the guitar player, if you put him in front of a crowd of people, he could play. It was fine. He was good. And as soon as you put him in a studio with a microphone, he would be playing away. It’d be fine. And you put a microphone there and he would suddenly play really badly. He couldn’t do it.
[00:59:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the microphone, you are sitting there with an enormous microphone in your mouth. It doesn’t scare you at all, apparently. It actually encourages you. So I think we all approach it differently. I use this little lapel microphone because I don’t like having something big in my face. It doesn’t stop me actually performing, but I prefer the comfort of being like this and being able to move around and not lose the sang. So anyway, yeah, each to his own, Wayne.
Podcasts Are an Opportunity to Leapfrog the Massive Written Content in Google
[01:00:25] Wayne Cheong: Yeah. And just these pandemic has deccelerated the adoption and also changing the game for many people basically across all verticals, right? You have seen the CEOs or the C-suite who never even appear in the live stream before are now doing it. And I think some of these habits is a result of there’s no other live events. There’s no other chances to interact with your audience. So how do you continue to communicate a skill?
[01:00:56] Wayne Cheong: And podcasting is a great way. Of course, blogging has always been a great way. But now that everybody’s live streaming every five minutes, everyone is doing their own podcast. Is it a question of do I have to do it or am I comfortable in doing it or should I just do that content buildings after all and just continue to be part of that industry? So, it’s a decision everyone has to make, right?
[01:01:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, no, sorry, excuse me. I was interrupting you, but that’s a really important point is everybody and their brother and sister have got a blog. And Google has such a massive written content to rank, but it’s very difficult to get anywhere near the top anymore. But podcasts are an astonishing opportunity to leapfrog all of that stuff, because Google wants to put this rich content. It wants to have a blue link with an article and then a podcast. That will be perfect for Google.
[01:01:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So if you are making podcasts, you are already in a position around 2021 and beyond. You can potentially quite easily leapfrog these incredibly famous sites and get your content in front of people searching for terms around the topics that your podcast deals with. So it’s an opportunity to cheat your way to the tob. It’s not cheating. It’s a new format that Google really wants, and it doesn’t have enough of it.
Having a Transcript on the Same Page as Your Podcast Can Help Google Digest the Content and Push You to the Top
[01:02:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now, one really, really important thing for Google is if you do a transcript, it costs Google a lot of money to analyse the sound of your podcast and it doesn’t always understand what’s being said. If you do a transcript and you correct it and you put it in the same page as your podcast, Google can digest that written content really easily, and then you’re going to nail. It’s really easy for Google to then say, I understand what’s in this podcast and push you to the top.
[01:02:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Video is the same, subtitles, transcripts, articles written from the content, because Google can still, although it can understand what’s in a video or a podcast, it still prefers the written word because it’s much easier for it to digest and understand. And it’s much more confident because it’s been doing it for 22 years, whereas the sound in the video are relatively more recent.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) on Focusing at Recording Great Interviews Due to the Pandemic
[01:03:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the COVID thing, that was really interesting. And I was traveling around the world, which is how we met. And then one day, boom, I couldn’t travel anymore. And from March until June, I was thinking, oh god, I’ll start traveling again soon. And in the end I just thought I’ve got to do it online. It’s changed my perspective.
[01:03:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if you can share my screen again just really quickly, I started Kalicube Tuesdays by interviewing James Mulvany, who’s down there at the bottom, who runs a podcasting site. And since then, every Tuesday I’ve been doing an event, recording a podcast live on YouTube. And I’ve had all these guests. And I look at that and I think, actually, it’s a pretty good thing that this happened, because that makes sense to me. I think I’ve managed to focus down into what I’m really good at and that’s recording great interviews like you do. You are brilliant at it, recording great videos with intelligent people who want to share what they know with an audience who wants to learn and understand better.
[01:04:03] Wayne Cheong: Thank you, sir. You’re super nice. And I take that as a compliment.
[01:04:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you.
[01:04:09] Wayne Cheong: It’s incredible because they’re sharing so much great knowledge just within this 30 minutes that just flew by. And I wish we had more time, but we have an incoming guest who is from Nielsen, who is going to maybe come and say hi to our community. We have a lot of reluctance. I have to let you go. And hopefully, you’ll be back on and tell us what you are up to sometime in late January or early February where we’ll be doing this same thing all over again, second edition with new guests and having you back to share more updates on SEO podcasting. I think we have prepared another dozen questions that we don’t have time to cover, so save it for the next one. Yeah.
[01:04:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Brilliant stuff. Yeah. I was trying to save your voice. You said you were tired, so I tried to fill in and talk a lot. You are absolutely delightful and wonderful. And I love this and I do want to come back. Please do invite me back. Thanks a lot, man.
[01:05:02] Wayne Cheong: Thank you. We love you. Jason Barnard from With Jason Barnard… podcast. Do check it out, Kalicube.pro and also find his podcast on whatever you consume your podcast. Yeah. So we’ll see you very soon. Yeah. Keep yourself safe. Take care of each other. Bye bye, Jason.
