I attended an excellent session at SESNY06 on optimizing Podcasts for Search Engines. An article summerizing the same subject from the Chicago SES in December 05 has much the same information and is a good read.
"Most people are still wondering what a podcast is and have trouble not only finding it," he said. "So we put a lot of energy into not only the search (finding) aspects but the consumption aspects as well. We have done a variety of things—search, editorial, a browsing system and a tagging system for podcasting."
"Metadata alone is not a sufficient indexing criteria to find relevant podcasts," he said.
"I also agree that just metadata is not enough, said Chandratillake. "The average podcast today, which is about 15-20 minutes long, only has 25-30 words describing it. There is no way that short description contains everything that is in the ‘meat’ of podcast. That is also why we use speech recognition to understand more completely what its about."
Podcast optimization tips and guidelines
Speakers offered the following tips and guidelines for optimizing podcasts:
- Promote only one feed. "Many podcasters create a podcast, then move over to a different content management system, promote a new RSS feed, and wind up with all of these different feeds out there for every podcast," said Dick Costolo, CEO of Feedburner. "You want your content to be easily discovered. Promoting one feed makes it easy for search engines to know where your content is."
- Optimize the audio file. A lot of people listen to a podcast on their computer as well as MP3 players.
- Close the findability gap. "Optimize a landing page for each episode of your show, as well as your category page," said Amanda Watlington, owner of Searching for Profit. "Provide subscription information on the landing pages that’s very visible."
- Build correct and valid feeds. "Validate your feeds with feed validator tools," said Watlington. "Remember that iTunes does not redistribute. So you must build a separate feed for iTunes. I like to promote doing 3 separate feeds: a 2.0 feed, a media feed, and an iTunes feed."
- Include a transcript or summary. Whether or not it is a transcript or a summary will depend on the podcast’s time span. "If you’re giving just a little short tip, that’s one thing," said Watlington. "Typically, a summary is all you need for your landing page, a nicely optimized page that covers the podcast’s high points."
Some of these notes jogged my memory as it was largely the same content as the session I attended early this month.
