Keyword Research for SEO - Tips for a Better Podcast w/Brandon Leibowitz

[00:00:00] J. Rosemarie: This is tools of the podcast trade, where you can learn about the tools and resources. You can use the start and grow your podcast tune in each week. As we talk about the help, you need to remove the mystery from podcasting. So you can become a successful podcast that your reach, your audience, where they are. [00:00:20] My guest today is digital marketing expert. Brandon Leibowitz. Welcome Brandon. [00:00:26] Brandon Leibowitz: Hi thanks for having me on. [00:00:27] J. Rosemarie: thanks for coming. before I start, I always ask, because I think it's very nice to hear your story from your mouth. So tell us who Brandon is. [00:00:37] Brandon Leibowitz: Yeah, my name is Brandon Leibowitz and I have been involved with digital marketing for the past 15 years. Helping out businesses get more traffic through a ton of different resources through Facebook, through Google, through doing like doing social media, doing search engine optimization, doing email marketing, doing paid [00:01:00] ads. Doing everything for businesses, but really focus more on search engine optimization just because that's the way to get free traffic. So all of those things, I mentioned work to get your website traffic, but I've really just focused more on the SEO side of things to help people get that free traffic, because why spend money on ads if you could get up there for free. [00:01:17] So that's really what I focused on over the past 15 years is just trying to figure out Google's algorithm and how to tap into that, to get that never ending supply of free traffic from the search. [00:01:28] J. Rosemarie: Okay. All right. Thank you. search engine optimization. Now, what is that? [00:01:34] Brandon Leibowitz: It's a search engine optimization is ranking websites on Google. [00:01:38] So optimizing your website to make it show up on the free results in Google. So when you search in Google, there's going to be ads at the top, and there might be ads at the bottom of Google, but in between those ads, there's always going to be 10 websites and that. The organic listings, which SEO is trying to get to your website ranked organically and those free listings that Google gives out. [00:01:59] J. Rosemarie: Okay. So [00:02:00] if you have good SEO, then you, hopefully it will be one of those 10 organic listings, [00:02:08] Brandon Leibowitz: right? That is a goal is putting the right keywords in the right areas. So Google, so when people search for your keywords, you show up on Google for those keywords. [00:02:16] J. Rosemarie: Right. Okay. All right. So as you know, this podcast, the audience is mainly new pod-casters. [00:02:24] So how can SEO and search engine optimization help podcasters [00:02:31] Brandon Leibowitz: you want to definitely make sure you put the right. On your podcast, silly titles, title of your podcast, very important, but also title of each individual podcast show is really important to place keywords in there. Writing good descriptions in there helps all these different podcast directories kind of read through. [00:02:51] Google read through your website like Stitcher or Spotify is going to read through or try to make sense of what your podcast is. And a lot of these, [00:03:00] I mean, they're getting better at understanding voice, but they still heavily rely on content text. So like writing test, like if you could transcribe your podcast, Might be a little tough. [00:03:10] So for me, it's a really, really long form one, but if you're doing like a 10 or 20 minute podcast, maybe you transcribe that because content is so very important. The more content you have for now, hopefully sooner, they'll be able to fully take care and understand the human language. But even when you do like voice to text on like your cell phone, it doesn't always read it properly. [00:03:30] It's getting better, but it's not a hundred percent. So it still relies heavily on. Researching keywords is very important. There's a ton of tools out there that will let you research keywords the best. I always tell people is just spying competition. Everything is out there and open. You can just search for your keywords in any of these podcast directories or on Google and see who shows up on that first page. [00:03:52] And you'll see what keywords they're using and the title of their podcast or their title of their shows, because that's going to give you kind of give you insight of what they're thinking. [00:04:00] Mentality they're using. And if it's working for them, it's more than likely going to work for you. I would still double check and see how many people actually search for these keywords every single month using different tools. [00:04:09] Like there's a Google keyword planner. I'm sure there's other ones specifically for different podcasts apps that your directories can utilize, but definitely researching keywords is so very important. Then another big part of that. SEO is getting other websites to talk about you, which is probably very true for podcasting is the more places that you could embed that podcast on third-party sites, the more places that you build up that trust, because then it's like a vote, like all these other websites are voting for. [00:04:37] It's kind of like with YouTube. So the rank higher on YouTube, there's always this little share button on the bottom, right. Of YouTube videos that says, share this YouTube video. Shared on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, on pin all over the place, but then it says embedded and it gives you this little code that you can embed and add to your website. [00:04:55] And the more places you can embed that video, the higher unit rank on YouTube, same with the [00:05:00] podcasts and the more places you can embed that. And just share that and get the word out. They're more likely to give than rank you. And then also one other thing is probably reviews. Reviews are really important. [00:05:09] Not the number of reviews, but keywords in reviews are so very important for like ranking higher. So if someone reads, it leaves a review saying this podcast was great. So very informative. That's good, but they can write something like this podcast helped me learn about search engine optimization techniques to improve my business and get me more free traffic from Google. [00:05:31] So you putting all these keywords in there that. There read through those reviews and pull those keywords out and say, okay, this person's sentiment was talking about search engine optimization, or we constantly see people talking about podcast information and maybe it related to podcasting, but it's all about just having good quality content and making sure that everything aligns.

[00:05:50] J. Rosemarie: Yes. Thank you. So the key is having the correct keywords for what you want to be known for and making sure [00:06:00] you're everywhere so that Google can find you. Am I framing that right? [00:06:05] Brandon Leibowitz: Yep. Yep. So you want to put the right keywords, first of all, focus on keyword research and then. Just get the word out, spread the word to as many people as possible for you, social media, via your own website, reaching out to other podcasters and building relationships with them. [00:06:20] And maybe they wouldn't share your podcast episodes on their website. And just trying to get that word out there, anybody possible. [00:06:27] J. Rosemarie: Right. Okay. All right. Thank you very much for sharing. And I introduced you as a digital marketing expert. can you tell us what the trends are currently in digital marketing? [00:06:39] I know we just talked about SEO, but if you could expand on that topic a little more. [00:06:44] Brandon Leibowitz: Yeah, no, it was S E O it's a lot of. Validates content marketing. So you could build a website and I could build a website saying I'm a mechanic and I do autobody mechanic. Then I could build a website and tell [00:07:00] Google, Hey, I'm a mechanic. [00:07:01] Send people over to my body shop to fix their cars. But Google is just like, all right, we see that you built this website, but you don't believe that you are who you say you are because I can put keywords all over it saying I'm a mechanic. Based in whatever city, Los Angeles, but Google doesn't want to send me to, or send people that location without making sure that I really exist. [00:07:20] So what Google wants to see are third-party sites talking about me. They want to see that I'm on like Google maps. I'm on Yelp. I'm on map quest. I'm on apple maps, Bing maps. I'm on yellow pages. All of these other maps. And then Google's like, okay, maybe you really do have a physical location here because you're on all these other maps. [00:07:39] So it's really a lot of just like building trust up cause Google and all these websites don't trust anybody. So you have to build that trust. And the way to build trust is by getting other people to talk about you getting other websites to talk about you getting on the podcast, talk about you getting other social media channels, whatever it may be, but just getting other things, other websites talking [00:08:00] about cheap. [00:08:00] The number one aspect of SEO, without that you put keywords all over your website. You're not going to get any rankings from Google. They don't trust anybody. They want to see those are called backlinks. The more backlinks you have from quality websites, the more trust Google has. And then Google looks at the keywords on your website to figure out what to rank you for it. [00:08:21] But it doesn't work that way. [00:08:22] J. Rosemarie: Yes. Well, it makes sense, right? I mean, somebody has to protect, your customers, [00:08:28] right? [00:08:28] Brandon Leibowitz: Yep. And if Google's sending all that traffic, they want to make sure that you really are credible. They don't want to just send you to some website that all of a sudden just was ranking for keywords related to like automotive repairs. [00:08:41] And then all of a sudden switches to like selling pharmaceutical drugs, which happens all the time. So. We don't see it happen. We don't think that happens a lot, but it happens a lot. So, I mean, you have to think about like the dark web to over half the websites are kicked off Google for weird shady stuff. [00:08:56] So Google just looks at everyone and just says, like, I, we see, but we [00:09:00] don't really think you are who you say you are because too many people have checked us over the years. [00:09:04] Thank you. All right. So, you're big in social marketing. So tell us why, you know, why should you post on social media? Like what good is that to us? [00:09:15] Social media is good to just get more visibility, more awareness and get more exposure. Like if you write a blog post on your website, just share it on social media. [00:09:23] If you're creating a new video, if you're a guest on a podcast or you do your own podcasts, you should share that on social media to help get the word out there and get more eyeballs on it. Get more people watching it or reading it or viewing it. The goal is, but social media is a great way to get more visibility and get more exposure without having to spend money on that. [00:09:43] So you could run ads on those campaigns, but you don't necessarily need to. And social media, a lot of people think they're going to get clients off of it, which sometimes happens. But social media is. More for way to build trust for people like peep, you gotta think like I'm an SEO company, or like [00:10:00] for example, a doctor, not many people are gonna go on Facebook looking for a doctor. [00:10:04] So social media is not always the best place to get new clients, but maybe you're looking at a dentist and you're like, all right, I want to go to this new dentist, but I've never been to them. I see. They have really good Yelp reviews. I can't really trust Yelp cause there's a lot of fake reviews there. [00:10:18] So let me check them out on social media and see if they have a Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and making sure that they have a presence on there. And then also you could see people left reviews on Facebook and check out the reviews or see the dentist is still in operation. So it's really for building trust for people. [00:10:34] Sometimes they'll get you clients, but it really, it doesn't work that way unless you're sounding like a physical product that kind of goes viral or it's like trendy, then possibly walk to get new clients. But in general, social media is just a way to tap into your audience and be able to connect with them, engage with them, message with one another, have reviews and really put a face behind the company. [00:10:55] That's really what social media is built for like 8, 10, 15 years [00:11:00] ago. It was like putting a face behind the company because. There is websites. Like you could go searching on Google, buy a new TV, and Amazon's always going to be up there. But maybe this website Bob's TVs is going to pop up. You're like, who's Bob's TVs, but Bob's TVs. [00:11:13] Might've been around for 80 years. They're legitimate business, but you just don't know about them. You're like, who is his boss TV? And then all of a sudden Facebook came around where you could create a Facebook page and people could ask you questions and engage with you and says, okay, wait. Bob's TVs is really a legitimate business. [00:11:28] They'd been around. Longer than Amazon or so I could trust them. But before that it was kind of trusted. This is like, websites are just like, who is this website? How can I trust it to spend my money, put my credit card information in there. Thinking like 15 years ago, it's was like, it's a little weird back then. [00:11:44] Now everyone is just fine. Just clicking, sending their information away. But back then you had to build the trust up with people. And that's what social media is really good for is building trust. [00:11:53] J. Rosemarie: Yeah, That makes sense. And yeah, it does. Thank you very much. tell me about a time. I noticed that [00:12:00] you've been in the digital marketing space for a long time, over a decade. [00:12:05] Yeah. tell us about the time you failed. You thought your efforts sucked. [00:12:12] Brandon Leibowitz: Yeah, it's happened a few times. I mean, with SEO or digital marketing, talk about trial and error because unfortunately there's no playbook saying, all right, here's the steps to get you ranked higher on Google or here's what you need to do for social. [00:12:24] I mean, people put content out there on like YouTube and stuff like that, but you have to take everything with a grain of salt. But works today. Doesn't necessarily work tomorrow. Google changes their algorithm. Every single day, social media platforms emerge, pop up new ones, emerge some disappear. And so it's always just trying to [00:12:41] stay afloat. Just trying to keep up with all the latest updates and trends and something like one big flop was me trying to focus a lot on Google plus of anyone remembers when Google plus came out a few years ago, that was Google trying to compete with Facebook. And I spent a lot of time and effort building up my audience on there. [00:12:59] I think [00:13:00] I had like . 70,000 circle. I think they're called like circle followers or whatever it was called back then, but something a lot of time building it up only to find out a few years later, Google does counseling at all and just closes it all. So all that time and effort I spent on that social media platform just disappeared. [00:13:17] The event that really made me realize don't put all your eggs in one basket. Like you got diversify, you can't trust anything. Like even like, if you're getting all, if you're ranking really good on Google, you're getting all the chatter from Google. You still have to make sure that you have a good presence on social media. [00:13:29] You have a good email, drip funnel campaigns set up because you don't want to rely on one thing. Like a lot of people will have like an Instagram page where they're getting all this traffic, all these visibility they're having a ton of followers or you have is Tik TOK profile. There was just huge on there. [00:13:43] Everywhere else. They don't have the big following. You have to diversify because you never know what's going to happen. Or maybe you get blocked on one of these platforms. That's happened to me in the past where someone's given me some content to post and it had music in there that I didn't know was copyrighted and it's kind of triggered by Instagram and they actually took [00:14:00] a page down. [00:14:01] And so that's all something I would be careful about because getting a page back is really tough and that page had a few hundred thousand followers on Instagram. That one, I still have not been able to get back. That was like one of my personal ones. And that one is kind of frustrating. Like social media could be a little frustrating cause there's no Contact Us form. [00:14:17] I mean, they have one, but they don't really read it. And it's tough to get stuff that, so that's one thing I really realized is just be careful with what you get. Double check, everything don't trust, what other people send you, is that going to be okay? And just really don't put your exit diversify, diversify, diversify as much as you can. [00:14:34] J. Rosemarie: Yeah. That makes sense. Thank you. And thank you for sharing those things, because a lot of times, you know, you hear the wonderful, success stories and the 10,000 a month or 10,000 a day, but you don't hear all the frustration that happened. And yeah, I tried Google plus and got that. What you got. [00:14:53] all right. Thank you. So what is Brandon grateful for today? [00:14:56] Brandon Leibowitz: Nah, I'm just grateful that I have my [00:15:00] friends, family, and that I was able to quit a job a few years ago to really focus on freelance work and just continue to do what I enjoy. That's really important. It's making sure that you do something that you enjoy and not just waking up just to wake up and go onto into an office, but actually something that helps out and like working with businesses and helping them to be. [00:15:20] J. Rosemarie: Yes. Thank you. And give me one piece of advice for a new podcaster starting out, or, inching along, trying to get their episodes out and trying to navigate this space because there's a lot of big players. And if we allow. Ourselves to focus on them, then you're in trouble. Right? So give us a piece of advice, as we're starting out with about how we can navigate the digital [00:15:49] landscape, [00:15:50] Brandon Leibowitz: I would say, find something niche. [00:15:53] So if you could differentiate yourself somehow from everyone else. I know that it's become pretty saturated, the [00:16:00] podcasting market nowadays, everyone seems to be jumping on it. So you gotta figure out what can I do that differentiates myself from everyone else. And also. The patient, everything takes time. [00:16:10] It's not going to just immediately just skyrocket to the top. You're going to have to build it up and build it up and build up because a lot of people kind of just start doing something and then a month or six months later, there's like, all right, am I seeing this traction? But you have to keep going and going and going. [00:16:23] And over time, you're going to see that growth. That might not be a giant hockey stick, but it might just be slow. But over time, it's going to keep growing and growing and building and builds. Got to keep sticking with things and don't give up with it because all this stuff does take time. There's a lot that you need to do initially to build it up. [00:16:40] And even once it's built up, there's a lot you still need to do, but you'll be able to have a team helping you out by then hopefully, and just, just keep working at it and find that one unique thing that helps differentiate you from everybody else. That's gonna really help you to help you stand out and get noticed by other people. [00:16:56] J. Rosemarie: Yes. Thank you very much. And how can we [00:17:00] get in touch with you? [00:17:00] Brandon Leibowitz: Yeah. [00:17:00] So everyone that stuck around. Thanks for listening. And I created a page on my website with a special gift for everybody. So if they go seooptimizers.com forward slash gift, they could find that page right there. So once again, it's seooptimizers.com forward slash gift. [00:17:20] And they can find all that information there. [00:17:22] Okay. All right. And, are you on Instagram or where somebody could say hi or Twitter? [00:17:27] Yep. If they search my name, Brandon Leibowitz. So @brandonleibowitz. They'll be able to find me on all those social platforms or YouTube might be the best. Cause I do a lot of other classes where I give out information, about .[00:17:45] All aspects of digital marketing, Google analytics, search console, how to run Facebook ads, Instagram, YouTube marketing, and how to rank higher on Google maps on Yelp, all that stuff. So if they want to learn more, that might be the best, but also the [00:18:00] website SEOoptimizers.com forward slash gift has all that information. [00:18:04] J. Rosemarie: Okay. All right. Thank you. And I'll put all those links in the show notes and your YouTube channel as well. Cause I think that's a good one. Yeah. Thank you very much, Brandon, for coming and talking to us today. I really appreciate [00:18:15] you. [00:18:16] Brandon Leibowitz: Yeah. Thanks for having me on and I hope this was helpful for everybody [00:18:19] J. Rosemarie: I'm sure. [00:18:20] Yeah. Thank you. It was. Got questions about podcasting. Do you find yourself struggling with the tools and strategies that you know will help you launch and grow your show? Why not join the new west podcast us club, where you can get your questions answered by me or one of our guests expert. The link to our next meeting is below sign up today and don't let confusion about. [00:18:49] Stop you from owning your genius, whether you're an individual or a nonprofit, the new west podcast club is where podcast is [00:19:00] come for answers. Check the link below for next meeting.