Podcast Search Optimization: What 5 Podcasts, Including BlackRock’s Branded Show and an Indie True Crime Hit, Teach Us About Ranking Higher on Apple and Spotify

We’ve published several case studies featuring the PSO Control Panel over the past months: BlackRock and its branded podcast The Bid, Camille Debreuille’s true crime show Crimes Oubliés, Courtney Elmer’s Insider Secrets to a Top 100 Podcast, the launch of Grit in the Boardroom* with Host Erika Eliasson Norris, and Kelley Bonner’s Black Girl Burnout. Going back through all of them together for this article, we noticed the same mechanics showing up every time, even though these podcasts have nothing in common on paper.

Here’s what we’re taking away from it, concretely, for your own podcast. But first, a quick note on what PSO actually is, so the rest makes sense.

*The show’s audience development efforts were supported by The Podcast Guys.

Podcast Search Optimization, in plain terms

PSO stands for Podcast Search Optimization, it’s the equivalent of SEO, but for the search bar inside podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It’s a topic that tends to be underrated, even though it’s the number one way listeners discover new shows. According to a 2024 study by The Podcast Host, one in two listeners discover new podcasts directly inside their listening app. And among those listeners, 70% use the search bar, compared to 24% who browse the charts, and only 6% who follow the app’s recommendations.

In practice, your search ranking mostly depends on your metadata meaning your show name, episode titles and descriptions, author name). 

The method, in short, comes down to three steps: find the keywords your audience actually types, work them into your show and episode titles and descriptions, then track your ranking over time and adjust. That’s exactly what each of these five podcasts did, in their own way.

Their instinct was already good, they just needed the method

None of these creators had a keyword strategy when they started. But in every case, their instinct was already pointing them in the right direction, they just needed a tool to confirm and prioritize their efforts.

Kelley picked the name “Black Girl Burnout” in 2021 on gut feeling. In hindsight, it’s an excellent choice: “burnout” is a broad, powerful keyword, and “Black Girl” targets audience listeners could easily identify with. As she told us herself: “Before I used PSO, I did have an understanding of SEO. It wasn’t a really deep one. I would say it was a pretty shallow understanding, but I did know that words matter and phrases matter”. The PSO Control Panel gave her that next step.

Same thing for Camille Debreuille, who hosts Crimes Oubliés, a french podcast, in the highly competitive true crime category: “PSO gave me a method, a framework. Before, I was just going on instinct, so this has made me a lot more efficient.” Her topics were already good. What changed was her ability to choose between twenty good ideas instead of two or three.

For you, that means something simple: you probably don’t need to rethink your podcast from scratch. You need to measure what’s already working and prioritize it.

Your metadata matters more than anything else

Every element of your metadata is a chance to rank: your show name and description, tour episode titles and descriptions, and even your author name. But Apple and Spotify don’t weigh them the same way.

On Apple Podcasts, only three fields actually affect your ranking: show name, episode title, and author name. Spotify indexes almost everything, including both show and episode descriptions. 

Once you know where to place your keywords, the real question becomes: which ones? Catrin Skaperdas from The Podcast Guys, puts it simply:

“We asked ourselves: what would someone type into Apple Podcasts or Spotify if they were looking for a show like this? And from there, we focused on clear search topics like boardroom decisions, corporate governance, risk management, and executive leadership.”

Result: in three months, the keyword “boardroom decisions” went from being invisible to position 1 on Apple Podcasts UK.

To do: Look at your show name, show and episode descriptions, episode titles, and author name. Do they include the 2-3 keywords your audience actually searches for?

Choosing keywords with two numbers, not gut feeling

Once you have a list of possible keywords, you need to know which ones to prioritize. Camille Debreuille has a straightforward rule: she only keeps keywords with a search volume of at least 50, then uses the difficulty score to decide between them.

Catrin applies the same logic on the agency side: “It became a test-and-learn process. If a keyword had a high difficulty score, wasn’t ranking well, and wasn’t a top priority for the audience, we didn’t try to force it. We focused our energy somewhere else.”

To do: for every keyword you’re considering, write down its search volume and difficulty score before deciding. Don’t rely only on what feels like “the right word.”

The single change that updates your whole catalog at once

This is probably the most useful point in this whole analysis. Courtney Elmer has over 300 episodes. Rewriting each description one by one would have taken months. She found a faster shortcut: Update all episode descriptions in one go using keywords in the Episode Footer. One single change, applied instantly across every episode. “It was a game-changer for my PSO strategy,” she says.

Over the following 4.5 months she saw 12 keywords in the top 5 on Apple and Spotify, 14 in the top 10, up to +99 positions gained on some episodes. 

Camille did the same thing her own way: instead of touching up every episode, she rewrote her podcast’s overall description, which she took from 200 to over 2,000 characters.

To do: before rewriting your episode titles and descriptions one by one, check whether your platform has a spot (footer, show description) that applies automatically to your whole catalog.

Results show up fast, but consistency is what keeps them

One last thing all five cases have in common: results show up fast. Kelley sees her first results in 3 to 6 weeks. BlackRock sees gains in 4 weeks. Courtney Elmer and Camille Debreuille get their best results over 4 to 5 months. 

But rankings shift constantly, new episodes come out every day, and your competitors are working on their PSO strategy too. It’s an ongoing effort, not a one-time fix. That’s why every podcast in these five cases runs regular audits: they revisit their metadata to make sure it’s still accurate, and check that they’re holding their positions on the keywords they’re targeting. What we can confidently say is you get out of PSO what you put into it, so make sure you’re putting in the work.

The tool behind these results: the PSO Control Panel

In all five cases, the optimization work was done with the same tool: Ausha’s PSO Control Panel. Here’s what it actually does, and it’s what Courtney, the team behind The Bid, and the others used to get their results.

First, it helps identify the right keywords: for each term, the tool shows the search volume (how many people type it) and a difficulty score (how many podcasts are already competing for it). 

Second, it helps optimize episodes in real time: the PSO Checker analyzes an episode’s title, description, and tags as soon as you enter them, gives an optimization score, and tells you exactly what to change to rank higher on your target keyword.

“Before PSO, optimizing titles, descriptions, and tags was somewhat subjective. Now, we receive data-driven recommendations to refine metadata in real time and improve discoverability.”

Dale Gaughan – Vice President, Marketing Analytics at BlackRock

The tool also lets you track your ranking and see who’s ahead of you: for each keyword, you see your exact position on Apple and Spotify, and which podcasts are ranking above you, with the option to check how they’re using their own keywords.

Finally, a dashboard brings together an overall visibility score, your best-performing keywords, and how your ranking moves week by week, so you can actually see whether your work is paying off, instead of guessing.

It’s having access to all these pieces of data together that makes the difference compared to optimizing on gut feeling alone.

What we’re taking away

Five things worth testing on your own podcast this week:

1. Write down what you think your audience actually types into the search bar to find content like yours
2. Focus first on  the fields that count on every platform: your show name, episode titles, and author name.For every keyword you’re considering, write down its search volume and difficulty score before deciding whether to target it or not
3. Take a look at your back catalog and optimize your past episodes.
4. Run regular audits: rankings shift as new episodes come out and your competitors optimize their own PSO too. Treat it as ongoing work, not a one-time fix.

Ausha’s PSO Control Panel gives you access to the same data used across these five cases: search volume, difficulty score, keyword and platform-level rank tracking, and of course much much more. [Book a demo with our experts now.]