Fix your podcast title and podcast author tags – before Apple Podcasts kicks you out!

If you have a podcast, please review your podcast title and podcast author tags.
If you are planning on launching a podcast, don’t follow ‘old’ advice. Please take care with your podcast title and author tags.

So here we are in the latter months of 2018. Podcasters are sharing stories about being kicked out of Apple Podcasts. Apparently it just happens! No warnings are given, and their podcasts are given the boot. And it’s happening to big names, with high volumes of downloads.

Apple are having a clampdown on abuse of the podcast title and podcast author tags, because podcasters have been keyword stuffing them. They are the 2 tags that are searchable. So podcasters have included keywords in those tags to help a podcast get found within Apple Podcasts / iTunes.

What WERE Podcasters including in title and author fields?

Typically there would be the podcast title and then some form of punctuation, maybe a colon, and then some keyword based phrase which further described the podcast. Same with author. It would contain the author of the podcast, and then another piece of punctuation, and a keyword enhanced description of the skills and talents of the podcaster.

This followed advice on other platforms and other media, to enhance a title or name by adding some important relevant keyword phrase too. We see it in Facebook and particularly in LinkedIn profiles all the time. It’s all about search engine optimisation. We all want our stuff to be found don’t we?

But apparently, it’s now greatly frowned upon by Apple and so to focus podcasters minds on the issues, they are booting out podcasts which have stepped over the keyword stuffing mark.

I have seen posts where the question was asked ‘how to punctuate a podcast title’. Well unless your actual podcast name has punctutation within it, then you do not need to worry about podcast title punctuation. It’s a redundant concept. Don’t do it.

If we need to improve the description of a podcast and its author, then we already have the large podcast description tag to put what we like into. Descriptions belong within descriptions.

By encouraging shorter podcast titles and author tags, it actually makes using the podcast apps more user friendly and less cluttered looking. I noticed that yesterday whilst looking at a podcast that I know had been kicked out. They have fixed the title and author, and have been allowed back into Apple Podcasts / iTunes. I was in iTunes, on desktop, and it looked much better. It will look a lot better on mobile devices too now.

Current Advice (Nov 2018) on Podcast Title and Author

This may seem like a revolutionary idea, but actually the podcast title should (gasp) only have the title of the podcast in it. The podcast author tag should only have the name of the podcast author in it.
Include nothing else.

How To Change Your Podcast Title & Author tags

Well if you host your podcast with Libsyn, here are the places you will change:

1. Go to SETTINGS and then select  EDIT SHOW SETTINGS.
2. Go to SHOW TITLE and change your show title so it is ONLY the show title.
3. You might want to review and improve your SHOW DESCRIPTION, and any other fields listed there.
4. SCROLL right down to the bottom of the page, hit SAVE.

Then go to DESTINATIONS and then select EDIT OR VIEW EXISTING

1. Look for LIBSYN CLASSIC FEED listed under ALL DESTINATIONS.
2. Click on EDIT.
3. Scroll down.
4. You might want to review your CUSTOM ITUNES SUMMARY to see if it describes your show in the best way it can be described. Does it encourage someone to listen?
5. Under RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL INFORMATION then you will find ITUNES AUTHOR.
6. Change that to be just your name, nothing else.
7. Scroll down and hit SAVE.

That’s it. You are done. Phew!

What about episode titles?

And whilst we are thinking about getting found, then it’s also a good time to review how you title your episodes. Make sure they are descriptive, accurate and will encourage a potential listener to listen. Including the series and episode number in the episode titles doesn’t really help with describing the episode and wastes space. And anyway, Apple include series and episode tags separately, so you don’t need to include them in the titles.

Do you have a podcast website?

A massive benefit of having a website for your podcast, is that each episode is featured in its own post. This provides another opportunity to get your content optimised and indexed. It will exist outside of the podcast directories, so people can find your stuff, even though you are a podcast. Non podcast listeners will not find you if you are only listed within podcast directories. You can add whatever you want to your titles and other ‘metadata’, although they still need to be written for your audience, as well as thinking about how the search engines will pick them up.

You can read more in this post 7 strong reasons your podcast needs its own website

Need help with all this?

Coming up with a strong podcast title is one of the steps I lead you through when I work with you to create and launch your strategic business podcast. We develop a podcast that is appropriate for you and your business model. We do not blindly follow where the podcast hype monsters would have us all go. What works for them will not necessarily be appropriate for you. We will make the correct decisions for you.

I’m here to help you create and launch your strategic podcast.
I am also here to help you fix and improve things on your existing podcast which maybe are no longer working as you would wish.

If you want to learn more about the unique way in which I work with you, then my Podcast Services page would be a good place to start.

Are you ready to get started? I’m here to help  🙂