Lesson #4
Understanding Your Competitors’ PSO Strategies
Podcast Search Optimization (PSO) isn’t something you do in isolation. Without competition, PSO simply wouldn’t exist. To truly improve your podcast’s visibility on listening platforms, you need to understand how other shows in your niche are positioning themselves.
October 8, 2025 • About 11 min. read
What keywords are your competitors using? How do they write their titles and descriptions? Which search queries rank them the highest?
By analyzing and understanding your competitors’ PSO strategies, you’ll be able to carve out your own space and stand out from the crowd.
In the previous lesson, you learned how to set up and use Ausha’s PSO Control Panel. In this lesson, we’ll dive into how to make the most of one of its key tools: PSO Live Search, among others, to keep an eye on your competitors and finally uncover their SEO tactics.
What you’ll learn in this lesson:
- Identify your competitors on the keywords you’re tracking
- Analyze their metadata to extract best practices
- Evaluate keyword competitiveness
- Adjust your own PSO strategy accordingly
Test your podcast’s visibility for free with PodWars
Enter up to five keywords in PodWars to see where your podcast ranks on Apple Podcasts.
Why is this step important?
PSO isn’t just about writing great metadata or picking the right keywords. It’s also about positioning yourself wisely in relation to other podcasts, many of which may have been around longer than yours.
For most keywords, you’re not alone. And if you are, chances are that keyword has very low search volume.
Having competition is totally normal. In fact, I’d go further, it’s a good sign! It means there’s an audience out there for your podcast. Now it’s time to find out who your competitors are, and how to outperform them on their own turf.
To build a strong PSO strategy, start by identifying:
- Podcasts that focus on similar topics
- Podcasts that use the same keywords
- Podcasts that appear in search results on listening platforms
This step is essential: it helps you assess the competition level for each keyword, understand which approaches work (and which don’t), and spot underused angles. These PSO opportunities are your chance to position yourself more strategically and stand out from the crowd.
Understanding your competitive landscape is like reading a map before starting a hike: it helps you plan your route more effectively, avoid traffic jams, and choose the best paths to reach your destination.
See How a PSO Strategy Can Take You to the Top :
Courtney Elmer’s PSO Journey
In this free case study, Courtney Elmer reveals her PSO strategy and how analyzing her competitors helped her increase downloads by 41% in less than two months.
How do you identify your competitors?
Not every existing podcast is your competitor. But those targeting the same keywords as you, on the same platforms, and reaching the same type of listeners… definitely are.
We can distinguish two types of competitors:
- Direct competitors:Those who cover the same topics, use the same keywords, and appear in the search results for your priority queries.
- Indirect competitors: Those who speak to the same audience (or a similar one) but with a different editorial angle, a different format, or a different vocabulary. They may not rank for the same keywords… but they still capture your target audience’s attention.
Analyzing both types gives you a broader view of your ecosystem. It helps you pinpoint keywords where the competition is fierce and those where a different approach could give you the upper hand.
There are several methods to identify your competitors:
Do you know how visible your podcast is on Apple Podcasts?
Use the free PodWars tool to see where your podcast appears in Apple Podcasts search results.
Method #1 Explore the Charts
Podcast charts (by platform, country, category or subcategory) give you an overview of the most popular shows in your niche. Even if these shows don’t rank for exactly the same keywords, they often cover similar topics and speak to the same audience.
That makes them particularly valuable direct or indirect competitors to observe.
You can easily browse these rankings thanks to Ausha Charts, a free tool available directly on Ausha’s website. Whether or not your podcast is hosted on Ausha, you can access this feature and explore the charts that matter most to you.
Pay attention to the formats that perform well, recurring topics, titles that grab attention, or even how positions fluctuate over time. These observations can spark new keyword ideas or help you identify underused editorial approaches.
See How a PSO Strategy Can Take You to the Top :
Courtney Elmer’s PSO Journey
In this free case study, Courtney Elmer reveals her PSO strategy and how analyzing her competitors helped her increase downloads by 41% in less than two months.
Method #2 Manually search for your competitors on listening platforms
This method puts you in the shoes of a listener. Open Apple Podcasts or Spotify, type in a keyword you’ve identified as a priority, and review the search results.
- Which podcasts appear at the top?
- Which ones show up repeatedly across several of your target keywords?
- Do their titles or descriptions clearly include these keywords?
Make note of the shows that consistently rank high: these are your top direct competitors for those queries.
While this manual method takes a bit of time, it offers a solid first look at your competitive landscape. The next method will help you save valuable time.
Method #3 Use Ausha’s PSO Live Search to run your benchmark
This is by far the fastest and most accurate method to identify your direct competitors for each keyword.
Simply open the PSO Control Panel from Ausha (you’ll learn how to maximize your use of this powerful tool in Lesson #6 of this guide), type in a keyword you want to rank for, and you’ll instantly see which podcasts or episodes appear at the top of Apple Podcasts and Spotify search results.
💡 Pro tip: Start by focusing on your direct competitors, those ranking for your core keywords. Then gradually expand your analysis to include indirect competitors and related keywords. This will help you define your priorities more clearly.
Test your podcast’s visibility for free with PodWars
Enter up to five keywords in PodWars to see where your podcast ranks on Apple Podcasts.
Take action: position your podcast against the competition
Analyze Your Competitors’ Metadata
Once you’ve identified your competitors, it’s time to move on to a qualitative analysis. The goal: understand how these competing podcasts manage to rank higher than you in search results.
To do that, focus on their metadata, that means the show’s title, description, and tags, as well as the titles, descriptions, and tags of each individual episode. As you learned in previous lessons, these text elements are what algorithms rely on to determine a podcast’s relevance.
Of course, the aim isn’t to copy your competitors, but to understand their strategies so you can outperform them.
How to proceed?
- Type your keyword into the search bar on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or use the PSO Live Search to get instant results.
- Study the episode titles and descriptions that appear in the results: Is the keyword placed right at the beginning? Is the tone informative or attention-grabbing?
- Look for repetition: Is the keyword used in multiple episodes? Is it rephrased or expanded using synonyms or long-tail variations?
- Spot the dominant editorial angles: What topics are being covered? Are they treated in a fresh or formulaic way?
- Take note of what’s missing: Are there any keyword variations or phrasings no one is using yet? Are there questions left unanswered in the descriptions? That’s where your opportunities lie.
📌 To make this easier, download our Competitive Analysis Template (Free downloadable resource to help you dive even deeper.) It lets you compare several competitors on the same keyword and quickly identify recurring patterns that work.
Test your podcast’s visibility for free with PodWars
Enter up to five keywords in PodWars to see where your podcast ranks on Apple Podcasts.
Compare your podcast to the top shows in your category
Analyzing competitors one by one helps you understand specific strategies tied to individual keywords. But to truly refine your PSO strategy, it is just as important to step back and position your podcast relative to the practices and trends observed among the most visible podcasts in a category.
So far, we have mainly reasoned in terms of search results: which podcasts rank for which keywords, and why. This approach is essential, but it does not always fully explain why certain podcasts dominate their space over time, beyond a single query.
By looking at the most visible podcasts in a category—those that consistently appear at the top of the charts—you shift perspective. The goal is no longer to analyze a one-off search performance, but to understand the editorial and structural choices that contribute to sustained visibility over time.
This means moving beyond the question, “What is this competitor doing for a given keyword?” and instead asking, “What do podcasts that remain highly visible in this category month after month have in common?”
This deliberate change in perspective adds new strings to your PSO bow. By combining search-result analysis with an observation of the most visible podcasts in the charts, you approach visibility in a more holistic, consistent, and strategic way.
💡 If you’d like to go deeper into how podcast charts work and how to interpret them, the Ausha Academy offers a dedicated guide focused specifically on podcast rankings.
Why compare your podcast to category leaders?
The most visible podcasts do not owe their position solely to a strong keyword or a single high-performing episode. Comparing your podcast to the leaders in your category is first and foremost a way to observe the recurring characteristics of podcasts that dominate a category, and to position your own strategy relative to those trends.
This analysis helps you:
- identify the most common choices in terms of titles, descriptions, and artwork,
- understand the publishing rhythms most frequently adopted by highly visible podcasts,
- assess where your podcast stands in terms of social proof (ratings and reviews),
- distinguish what reflects widely shared patterns from what can become a true point of differentiation.
How to compare your podcast to the top shows in your category
To carry out this comparison, you can use the PSO Category Benchmark, a tool available within Ausha’s PSO Control Panel. It allows you to explore the characteristics of the 200 most visible podcasts in each category, on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
By selecting a platform, a country, and a category, you gain an overview of the choices made by these podcasts: publishing frequency, title and description length, average episode duration, ratings and number of reviews, as well as certain visual approaches.
These elements provide a concrete basis for comparing your own podcast to the trends observed among the most visible shows in your category.The goal is not to copy these podcasts, but to better understand what contributes to their visibility, so you can identify which levers you may—or may not—want to activate in your own PSO strategy.
Remember that these insights can also reveal opportunities for differentiation and help you stand out in a highly competitive podcast landscape.
See How a PSO Strategy Can Take You to the Top :
Courtney Elmer’s PSO Journey
In this free case study, Courtney Elmer reveals her PSO strategy and how analyzing her competitors helped her increase downloads by 41% in less than two months.
Adjust Your PSO Strategy Based on Your Competitors Analysis
Analyzing your competitors’ metadata only makes sense if it helps you evolve your own PSO strategy.
Now that you know:
- which podcasts rank for your top keywords,
- how they craft their titles and descriptions,
- and where their strengths and weaknesses lie,
…it’s time to turn those insights into concrete actions. Here are a few ways to refine your approach:
Strengthen Your Own Metadata
If you’ve identified keywords your competitors consistently use (but that you haven’t tapped into yet) try incorporating them into your titles, descriptions, or tags.
On the other hand, if you notice overused or too generic phrases, look for more specific variations to help you stand out.
Refine Your Editorial Positioning
Is your competitor tackling a keyword from a highly technical angle? Try offering a more practical or inspirational take. Are they betting on long, in-depth episodes? Experiment with a shorter, more regular format.
The goal isn’t to go against the grain or to copy your competitors but to find a differentiating angle that lets you reach the same audience with a fresh promise.
Prioritize High-Potential Keywords
By observing your competitors and analyzing both Search Volume and Difficulty Score in the PSO Control Panel (see Lessons #3 and #6), you can now identify keywords with low competition… and so the ones where you have the best chance of ranking quickly.
Do you know how visible your podcast is on Apple Podcasts?
Use the free PodWars tool to see where your podcast appears in Apple Podcasts search results.
Well done! 👏
You’ve just completed Lesson #4 on analyzing your competitors’ PSO strategies.
Here are the key takeaways:
- PSO isn’t a solo game: understanding your competitors is essential to position yourself effectively
- There are two types of competitors to track: direct (same keywords and topics) and indirect (same audience, different approach)
- You can identify competitors using several methods: charts, manual searches on platforms, or Ausha’s PSO Live Search tool
- By analyzing their metadata, you can spot recurring keywords, dominant editorial angles and most importantly, untapped opportunities
- Use these insights to refine your own metadata, sharpen your positioning, and prioritize the highest-potential keywords
🎯 In the next PSO Guide lesson (#5), we’ll show you how to audit your own podcast to evaluate your PSO optimization level and identify your top-priority actions.
See How a PSO Strategy Can Take You to the Top :
Courtney Elmer’s PSO Journey
In this free case study, Courtney Elmer reveals her PSO strategy and how analyzing her competitors helped her increase downloads by 41% in less than two months.
