6 Simple Steps
SEO is a fickle beast. But there is still hope for those wanting to funnel some of Google’s billions of daily searches to their own site.
Like you, I want a steady stream of customers coming straight to my landing page without lifting a finger. Google can help you do that.
So, with the commencement of my podcast coaching, I made a page on my website to gather them all together.
I thought “podcast marketing services” would be a reasonable keyword to target, so I used that as the page title.
But after a few weeks, I was searching through Google Search Console and noticed something:
My podcast marketing services page was ranking for podcast marketing coach. I realized this was much more accurate to what I was offering since I don’t do the marketing for you but teach you how to do it yourself.
I tweaked the page to target “podcast marketing coach,” and after making basic SEO tweaks, rankings shot up from page 7 to page 2.
I went back in and updated the content, and voila, it was page 1.
Here’s exactly what I did so you can do the same.
Step 1. Updated the URL
The first correction I made was updating the URL from:
podcastmarketingpuzzle.com/services to podcastmarketingpuzzle.com/coaching
You don’t need to repeat words if they already appear in your domain. I can use /coaching because podcast marketing already appears. If I was using something like kieranmacrae.blog, however, I would have had to create a page that was /podcast-marketing-coaching.
I then set up a redirect from the old page to the new page so there was no confusion with Google, and I didn’t have to wait for it to drop the old URL and pick up the new one. I used the Redirection plugin on WordPress to do this.
Next, I used Better Search and Replace to swap out all my internal links from the old URL to the new one. Technically I didn’t have to do this because of the redirect but you know what they say, belt and braces.
I made all the changes at once, but I suspect this had the most significant impact.
Step 2. Updated the Title
I previously had the title Podcast Marketing Services, but that was no longer the keyword I wanted to target, so I updated it to Podcast Marketing Coach. I’m undecided on what copywriting I want to do to make the title more click-worthy, but for now, I’ve gone with I’ll Help You Grow Your Podcast:
Step 3. Updated the Meta description
While I was updating the Title with Yoast, I also updated the meta description to include my keyword. Google typically pulls from your page to make its meta description, but again, I like to make sure all the boxes are checked for maximum effectiveness.
I used my name to add trustworthiness and signify that it is a single person who is the coach. It’s a hunch, but I think this will show the right search intent since a person looking for a coach is looking for one person, not an organization.
Step 4. Used My Keyword 3–4 Times in the Body of the Text
Initially, the page was simply a list of my services with links to the product pages on ConvertKit. I was curious how far I could get up the SERP without adding text, so I ensured that my keyword was used 3–4 times across the 500 words. This isn’t to fit a specific keyword density but rather what felt natural:
These changes all got indexed overnight, and I immediately jumped to page 2, position 12, which you can see in the screenshot at the top. Nice.
But I wasn’t done yet. I ultimately want to appear for Podcast Coach but will settle for the longer tail keyword of Podcast Marketing Coach first. Now, it’s time to update the content.
Added New Content
I took a look at the other pages ranking on the first page and found they had two sections I was missing: an “About” section detailing who they were and why they could help and a ” How I can help” section discussing areas of expertise.
I made sure to add both.
I was feeling lazy, so I copied and pasted my About section from my podcast Audits page, tweaking it slightly to focus on the coaching side. I wrote it with the help of Claude.ai because I’m not the strongest copywriter, especially when I’m writing about myself.
In my How I Can Help section, I broke into the three main stages of podcast marketing that I can help with (obviously).
Then, I went in and ran a content check through Surfer SEO, a tool that looks at the use of NLP keywords across a page to suggest an article’s relevancy. I scored quite well initially, but after a round of edits and adding in the suggested keywords, I was in the green.
I then copied and pasted it back into WordPress and hit publish.
Step 6. Add Internal Links
Finally, I updated my internal links to say podcast marketing coach. This didn’t take long, as I do what so many other solopreneurs do: I have a section at the bottom of each article about my services.
I updated the couple of pages I’ve built links to already to try and pass along some “link juice,” as they say, but I wasn’t too ruthless about this. I also already had a link from my homepage for maximum effectiveness.
Straight to Page One
The next day, I updated my keyword tracker and BOOM, I was on page 1 in position 7. This is before I built links to the direct page, and I feel like I will move up a couple more slots over the coming weeks as Google plays around with placement.
This is a fairly untargeted keyword, so it’s not surprising I moved straight to page 1. Targeting “Podcast Coach” will be tougher and definitely involve me working on my overall website authority, but one step at a time.
SEO can feel like playing a rigged game in a casino. But you can rely on these basic practices to get your website in front of the people who want it. Give it a try, and let me know how you get on.
Supercharge your traffic with the free Free SEO checklist I use to get #1 rankings in Google.
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