Podcast show notes are one of the most underused pieces of your podcast SEO strategy. And if you’ve been told nobody reads them anymore so they don’t really matter, I want you to look at them a little differently.
Your show notes aren’t just a recap for the person who’s already listening. They’re another opportunity to help the podcast platforms understand what your episode is about — and to help the person who hasn’t found you yet decide that this is exactly the episode she’s been looking for. That’s where podcast discoverability gets really interesting.
In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes of exactly how I write my own podcast show notes. I’ll show you how I choose one target keyword, reinforce it naturally throughout the description, layer in five related keywords and give myself enough room to do all of that without sounding like I wrote the thing for an algorithm.
Because yes, we’re thinking about podcast SEO. But there still needs to be a human being on the other side of it.
And when you repeat this process across your catalogue, all of those little pieces start working together. That can support podcast growth, help you grow your podcast and create more opportunities to increase podcast downloads by bringing the right new listeners into your show.
The best part? You don’t have to sit down and write the whole thing yourself. I use AI to do the writing after I’ve made the strategic decisions, and I’ve included the exact prompt I use below so you can steal it and try it with your next episode.
The Prompt I Use to Write My Podcast Show Notes
Write the show notes for this podcast episode in my natural, conversational voice. Use the attached transcript as the source for what was actually discussed in the episode. Episode title: [INSERT TITLE]My target keyword is [TARGET KEYWORD]. Use this exact phrase within the first 100 characters of the show notes and three additional times naturally throughout the copy. My five secondary keywords are: [SECONDARY KEYWORDS]. Work each one naturally into the copy without keyword stuffing. Do not bold, capitalize or otherwise highlight the keywords unless grammatically required. Keep the finished show notes between 1,200 and 1,800 characters and do not exceed 2,000 characters. Write for a human reader first while keeping the SEO strategy underneath the copy. The finished show notes should sound natural and conversational, not like they were written around keywords. Do not include timestamps. Finish with one clear call to action directing the listener to [OFFER OR RESOURCE] at [URL]. Use Canadian spelling.
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