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Lead Generation SEO Podcast
Last Update August 11, 2026
SEO for Podcasters: How to Turn Every Episode Into Traffic, Backlinks, and Clients
SEO for podcasters is the most underused growth channel in the entire coaching world, and Brandon Leibowitz spent a full episode of Podcast Profits Unleashed explaining exactly why. Host Karen Roberts brought him on to unpack how coaches, consultants, and experts can get Google to send them free traffic that actually converts.
Brandon has run SEO Optimizers since 2007. Karen has built a business teaching coaches to turn podcasting into a sales machine.
Put those two together, and you get a very specific, very actionable playbook.
The Accidental Start of an SEO Career
Brandon graduated in 2007 with a business marketing degree and landed a job doing search engine optimization. He told the company straight out that college never taught him any of it.
Their answer: We are new to this too; we will learn together, and we will send you to workshops and seminars.
At those seminars, he kept meeting people running 10 websites, doing affiliate marketing and drop shipping. It clicked. He could work full time and pick up freelance clients on the side, a local pizza place here, a dentist there.
He never looked back.
Build It, and They Will Come Is a Lie
Karen made the point that most people think a website is the finish line. WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, GoHighLevel funnels, whatever the platform, they obsess over how it looks.
Nobody obsesses over the back end. That is where rankings actually live.
Brandon’s framing: what you see and what Google sees are two different things. Search engines crawl code, so keywords have to sit in the right places in that code.
Every website is unique, but the commonalities never change.
The One Fix That Needs Zero Coding
Add more text. That is it.
Google feeds off written content. It struggles with images, video, and audio, and while it is improving fast, text is still what it understands best.
For anyone publishing episodes, that means:
- Transcribe the audio.
- Timestamp the key moments.
- Summarize the conversation.
- Load real text into the YouTube description.
- Put a written version on your own website.
Brandon will nearly guarantee that original, quality content alone brings more organic traffic. No developer required.
Google Does Not Believe You Yet
Here is the part most site owners miss. Content without trust goes nowhere.
Brandon’s example is perfect. He could launch brandonsdentist.com tomorrow and stuff it with dental keywords.
Google’s response: Are you actually a dentist? Because sending patients to a practice that does not exist is a terrible user experience.
So the search engine looks elsewhere for proof. The more third-party websites mention you, the more credibility you earn, and the higher you climb.
A real dentist should show up on:
- WebMD
- Wikipedia
- Google Maps
- Apple Maps
- MapQuest
- Industry directories and local listings
Every one of those citations is a vote. Backlinks are simply other sites saying they trust you enough to point at you.
Trust Signals Sitting Right on Your Own Pages
Karen asked whether things like a WhatsApp button help. Brandon’s answer was blunt: Google wants a phone number.
He regularly reviews e-commerce sites selling physical products with no contact page at all.
If the order never arrives, how does the buyer reach you? If they cannot, why would they not just buy on Amazon instead?
| Page or element | Why Google and buyers care |
|---|---|
| Contact page with phone number | Core trust signal, proves a human is behind it |
| Email address | Second contact path, reduces purchase anxiety |
| Physical address, or at least city and state | Confirms a real location exists |
| About us page | Establishes who you are and your track record |
| Privacy policy | Standard for legitimate businesses |
| Terms of service | Same, and it is quick to create |
The test Brandon gives: look at your own site as a stranger. Would you hand over your credit card?
If people will not trust it, Google will not either.
The Number One Mistake Killing Rankings
Asked what most site owners get wrong, Brandon did not hesitate. Backlinks.
Either people do not know link building exists, or they do it in the most damaging way possible.
The classic version is a Fiverr gig promising a thousand backlinks for five dollars. That does not lift rankings. It sinks them.
Brandon can pull up any domain’s link profile in a tool and see the story instantly. Flat for years, then a vertical spike of a thousand links in one month, then a long slide down.
Google’s read on that is obvious. You built 20 links in five years and suddenly went viral? Unlikely.
What to Do Instead
Reverse-engineer competitors. Tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush are not free, and they are a little pricey, but they let you see exactly who links to the sites outranking you.
Then ask why that link exists:
- Did they give an interview?
- Did they contribute a guest article or blog post?
- Did they appear on a podcast?
- Did they sponsor an event or trade show?
- Did they join the Chamber of Commerce, the BBB, or TripAdvisor?
If a site linked to your competitor, there is a good chance it will link to you.
And yes, the paid memberships count for something. A Chamber of Commerce listing might run $500 a year, and a fly-by-night scam site is never going to spend that. Google notices which businesses invest in themselves.
Slow and Steady Wins the Link Game
Brandon’s benchmark: most sites in a normal competitive space have around 100 backlinks. Competition changes the number, but that is the ballpark.
Building one or two a month is a genuine win. Consistency teaches Google to trust you gradually.
What looks strange is going all in for 30 days and then never building another link again.
The Backlink Play Built for Podcast Hosts
This is where Brandon got animated, because podcasters have the easiest link-building opportunity on the internet and most of them skip it.
Here is the mistake. The episode goes live, the host emails the guest a Spotify link, and the guest shares that Spotify link.
Who wins? Spotify. They collect the traffic, the social signals, and the authority.
Do this instead:
- Create a dedicated page on your website for every single episode.
- Embed the YouTube video on that page.
- Add real written content, a summary, timestamps, and key takeaways.
- Link to your guest’s site and mention them by name.
- Send the guest that page URL, not the Spotify one.
Guests share it on social media, which feeds you social signals. Some of them link to it from their own website, which hands you an SEO backlink you did nothing extra to earn.
Karen runs two blogs for exactly this reason, one on her coaching site and one under her podcast brand, each with the episode embedded and the video at the bottom. Readers read, watchers watch, listeners listen.
Brandon’s closing argument on this point matters more than the tactic itself. You do not own social media. You do not own Spotify or iTunes.
You are renting space that can disappear without warning. Your website is yours.
Can You Use AI to Write the Blog Post?
Karen raised the fear head-on. Everyone is using ChatGPT now, so is that content still unique?
Technically, yes. Brandon pointed out the strange truth that if a million people run the same prompt, every output comes back unique.
Unique is not the same as accurate.
Google stated a couple of years back that it does not care who writes the content. AI can draft all of it. But you have to edit it and make sure it is genuinely useful, or expect a penalty.
The stronger move is starting from your transcript. Real conversation, real expertise, real voice, then use the tools to transcribe, summarize, and format.
That is content nobody else can produce, because nobody else recorded that conversation.
Traffic Without Conversions Is Just Expensive Noise
Karen pushed on the other half of the equation. Getting visitors means nothing if the site does not turn them into clients.
Brandon’s take: a pretty website is a resume. A converting website is a salesperson.
About half your traffic bounces immediately. That shows up in Google Analytics as your bounce rate, and it is completely normal.
Your job is minimizing it.
Win Above the Fold or Lose the Visitor
Everything visible before scrolling is above the fold. Most people never scroll.
So the top of every page needs:
- A clear value proposition
- Easy-to-scan bullet points
- Optionally a short video
- A call to action, phone number, add to cart, or form
Save the long-form text for lower down, where it still does its job for search rankings.
People scan in a Z pattern, left to right, hunting for words that pop. Give them something worth catching.
Brandon’s own homepage promise is not “in business since 2007,” because nobody cares about that. It is increasing sales and leads without spending money on ads.
His link building page has its own promise: quality backlinks without jeopardizing your website.
Every page answers the only question visitors are really asking. What is in it for me?
Always Be Testing
Split test your pages. Send half your traffic to one version and half to another.
Change the phone number placement, the font, the button color, the headline. More leads means keep it; fewer leads means revert it.
Amazon spends tens of millions doing exactly this. If we all load the same product page right now, we are seeing slightly different versions, and we would never notice.
There is no perfect website. There is only the next test.
How Long Before Any of This Works?
Six months to a year on average. Faster in low-competition markets, slower in brutal ones.
The failure pattern is predictable. People start, get impatient at month three, and quit right before the compounding kicks in.
Search rankings are a long game. Stick with it or do not start.
Your Next Two Steps
Brandon put together a free gift at seooptimizers.com/gift, along with his contact info and years of classes he has published for free. You can also book time on his calendar for a no-cost look at your website.
Karen closed the episode with her own tip worth stealing: pick one pain point your dream client is stuck on, tell one specific story about how you solved it, then make a simple invitation. She offers a Power Hour at podcastprofitsunleashed.com for coaches who want help pulling the right story out.
Start with the episode pages. Then start earning links. Then fix what is above the fold.
