Making sense of traffic generation...
It is 100X easier to get Itunes traffic than it is to get Google traffic and in this post I’m not only going to prove that to you, I’m also going to show you how.
Excited? You should be!
Ana & Her Love For SEO
Now, we all know Ana is all for SEO.
On page and off page tactics, link building, keyword research, and h1 tags are all things you need to learn if you want to rank higher in Google the search engines. Over the past 6 months, she’s provided more than enough information to make you an SEO expert.
I’ve even gone to Ana with some questions pertaining to on-page SEO that she happily helped me out with.
But here’s the thing about SEO, and I’m sure she will agree - it takes time.
It takes time to see traffic coming in from your targeted keywords, even if they’re long tail.
Those who follow me at my blog know that I don’t talk much about it there. It’s a topic that I rather leave to the experts (like Ana) to deal with.
Your Unbelievable Advantage With Podcasting
If you want to start podcasting, you have an unbelievable advantage over those who don’t know jack about SEO.
Here’s why: iTunes is its own search engine. Right now, there are over 100 million active users (with credit cards) on iTunes. That’s like saying it’s a marketplace filled with buyers.
iTunes ranks podcasts based on different elements.
Just like a blog or a website, your podcast has a title, a description, keywords, and “votes”.
If you’ve been studying SEO for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of incoming links described as “popularity votes” for your blog; and the more links you have coming in, the better your site will rank.
Well, iTunes has a rate and review feature that allows your listeners to rate and review your podcast. The better your ratings, the better you’ll rank.
I’m sure they have a more complex algorithm that I wouldn’t know how to explain to you, but what I’ve been doing has been working very well for me in terms of ranking.
Here’s How I Know This Works
Besides the thank you emails, tweets and increase in subscriber count over the past 2 months, I can actually show you how my website ranks in iTunes for a few of my best keywords. These are keywords that would take me years to rank for in Google; if at all possible.
In Google the term “Blogging” has 68 million competing pages. “Internet Business” has 1.1 billion competing pages and “Traffic Generation” has 11.5 million.
Now, let’s go see how well I do for these terms in iTunes.
Check out the video below:
You see why knowing how SEO works will help you rank better in iTunes?
This is the part where you thank Ana for all she’s taught you. 
If you have any questions or feedback about anything we’ve discussed, feel free to leave it in the comment section below.
This post was brought to you by Hector Cuevas
You can check out Hector's Blog Marketing Blog to learn more about traffic and lead generation. He's also giving away a PDF report, 40 minute audio guide and a 6 part video course. Click here to get access to The Vault.
Hector has written 2 great posts for Traffic Generation Cafe.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Hector,
great information. I have started recording audios just recently and I want to submit them to iTunes. They’re in English and I choose of course in iWeb, but when I send them to iTunes, the pre-set and not changeable language is German.
Any idea how to fix that ?
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Take care
Oliver
Oliver Tausend invites you to read: Think And Grow Rich – Oliver Tausend Reads His Lessons – The Sixth Sense
Hey Hector,
Great stuff. Congratulations on your success with podcasting.
I love your podcasts - always packed with value.
I like the fact that people don’t have to be in front of a computer to read your content - they can actually listen to you wherever they go
Thanks for sharing your insights, Hector.
All the best,
Mavis
Mavis Nong invites you to read: Blogging Platform – Have You Convincingly Made The Right Choice
Hector, what an excellent post! How often would you recommend podcasting each week? I have a plugin that creates podcasts of all my blog posts, but while I think that would be good for backlinking, I’m not certain of the value of the content it would produce. What are your thoughts on that?
Jamie
Hey Jamie..
First of all, you can publish a new podcast episode however often you want. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve and how fast. I publish a new episode every Friday but I know of dudes who publish 3 per week.
Secondly, I wouldn’t recommend that if you really wanna start building connections and relationships with your newly found audience. If we’re talking about the same thing, they sound like robots and people don’t wanna hear those things.
As far as backlinks, yea I think that would work out great because you can submit that podcast feed to different podcasting directories, but I don’t even bother doing that (although I should) - all I’m focused on is iTunes and building connections with the audience there because that’s where the majority of downloads come from anyway
hope that helped.. if you’re interested, check out Podcasting For Bloggers that will be released March 1st..
talk soon
Hector
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
Hector,
Okay, more of a reason to get busy with podcasts. My Mac makes it so easy to do and to load to iTunes. In fact I just thought of away I can incorporate a podcast into the product I am working on right now. That gives me even more incentive to do this.
Thanks…back to work now.
Sheila Atwood invites you to read: What To Blog That Is The Question
Hey Sheila.. podcasting has definitely helped my blog in many ways so, anyway you want to incorporate it I’m sure will do great things for you..
Hector,
Your podcasts are great, always full of valuable content! I’m not surprised to see you ranking so high. This is great information and gives me a lot to think about as another way to generate traffic.
Thanks so much!
Stacy
Aww, thanks Stacy..
It’s an alternate universe not many bloggers take advantage of, you should definitely get started :0)
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
hey Hector…long time listener, first time caller :-p Which podcast plugin would you recommend to keep track of downloads and what not? Google analytics type of deal, only for podcasters…Im sure you know what Im talking about
Yep.. I use two things. The first is Feedburner SmartCast which gives you stats for all the downloads you get from iTunes, and the second is LibSyn. I use LibSyn for media storage but they also include analytics in their package.
hope that helps..
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
OK, I am definitely going to start videos and audios. I learned so much about it lately that it would be a shame not to use some of the things I learned.
I just never like my voice in the recording, lol.
But I guess if I wanna go forward, I better start doing some new stuff soon
Thanks Hector, this is really useful
Brankica invites you to read: Site Build It review New stuff added for free
Brankica.. your voice is probably lovely. We tend to criticize ourselves a lot more than anyone else would. So, get to it, I wanna hear your first podcast when it’s released :0)
Hector:
Brilliant post. I especially enjoy how you broke it up with print/video. I see that you rank very high in Itunes for some keywords and that’s rock start status! Now, do podcasts ever get decent Google rankings?
All the best,
Lisa
No, I haven’t seen my podcast show up in the search engines for any of the key terms I mentioned in the video. The great thing is that those who listen to the podcast are going to Google and typing things like:
Hector Blogging Podcast
Hector Business Blogging
Hector Cuevas Podcast
In order to find my blog or learn more about me. So I think that’s an added benefit to podcasting.
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
Great thought. I would love to have TGC tell me about podcasting (how to) in bit more detail. Just as you explained things with YouTube.
Cheers,
Jane.
Hey Jane.. glad you liked the post. I’m actually working on a product right now that will take you from zero to podcast in just a few days. If you’re interested google “Podcasting For Bloggers”.
thanks for the comment
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
Thanks for that explosive post on itunes traffic. I’ve heard a number of things about it but I’ve not been able to actually put it to use. Maybe I’ve not gotten a good hang of it but I know with articles like this, it’ll push me in the right direction…maybe podcasting is the next thing to learn from me. Thanks again for that wonderful post. Enjoy your day.
Hey Tim.. the information out there is either hard to find or outdated, so I know exactly how you feel about starting a podcast; this is why I created Podcasting For Bloggers, so people have somewhere to go to get up to date info on podcasting on itunes and using it to grow their blogging business.
Appreciate the comment, talk soon
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate it. Can you please give me a link to that resource? Plus…which plugin handles your comment replies, I love it.
Tim invites you to read: My Very First Post- What am I gonna say
Hey Hector this was really good man LOL. The entertainment business knew that traffic fact about itunes for sometime like through sites like MIX. I need to send them here to get more tips on traffic.
Lol.. thanks Darren, I appreciate the comment
talk soon
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
Hi Hector,
I’m not equipped to podcast at this time, but I will have to put it on my wish list. The importance of traffic generation by whatever legitimate means is not lost to me. One fact that jumped out at me was that there are 11.5 million entries in Google for traffic generation and I know that Ana’s traffic geneeration cafe is on page one.
Lou Barba
Lou Barba invites you to read: The Catch
Ana has put in a ton of hard work work and built a lot of great links to be able to reach page one - she’s a tropper for sure.. I’ll stick to iTunes traffic for now and I’ll leave the search engines to her Lol..
thanks for your comment
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
+1 on this. I have a podcast on Life Of The Freelancer and each episode gets more hits than pageviews. Over the past months I’ve gained more than 2K repeat listeners, and new listeners tell me how they are “catching up on episodes.” I have yet to hear that about the blog.
It’s also a great source of traffic though too as you mention. I can post an audio there w/out doing a post get more traffic to the site.
Very cool, and super easy to do with the Powerpress plugin, Audacity, and Amazon S3.
Robert, you’re totally right. I know exactly what you mean about the post getting less pageviews than downloads - it’s the same with my blog, too.
Thanks for your comment
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
Great post Hector!
Wow, I’m loving the podcast idea even more. (Yours is fantastic by the way!) I never would have imagined that 27 votes (that’s what it looked like in the video) would be enough to get a top rankings for those keywords! Congratulations. I’m so impressed.
I hope you don’t mind me asking a couple of tough questions? I would be interested to know how that’s actually resulting in traffic to your blog. Are your listeners listening in iTunes and converting themselves into traffic to your blog? Are you also seeing in an increase of subscribers or customers? I also know you embed your podcast in your blog, are those listeners going to iTunes also to vote for you?
I would think that a marketing funnel of some kind, like sending your readers who are already subscribed to your blog, directly to the iTunes podcast via an email would be effective at getting comments and rankings on iTunes. And then embedding the podcast on your blog so that your blog traffic stays on your blog longer to gain more value and subscribe.
It would create a nice circle of traffic, if it works. So please tell us, Hector.
Inquiring minds want to know…
Heather
Lol.. OK Heather, I’ll answer these tough questions… :0)
I’ve noticed a few things (and I’ll be creating a “Proof Video” for lack of a better name - to share how the podcast has affected the growth of the blog).. but here are the few things so far:
1. I’ve noticed an increased of search results leading to my blog:
Hector Cuevas increased after starting the podcast, as well as
Hector Blogging
Hector Blogging Podcast
Hector Business Blogging Podcast
Hector Cuevas Podcast.. and many others that would take me forever to type down. So that tells me that, yes people are actually listening and Googling me.
2. I’ve noticed an increased in monthly subscribers. 50% increase from November to December and 20% Increase From December to January. So I’m very happy about that - I’ve also gotten clients who say they listen to my podcast regularly, which doesn’t really mean they found me in iTunes, but the value they got from the podcast, made them hire me.
3. I’m beginning to place link on my blog posts so that my blog readers can subscribe and rate. The reason I wasn’t doing it before was because I wanted this to podcating thing to be a true test. Could I really increase traffic, and subscribers just by podcasting and promoting it too much on the blog. It worked and now I’m sharing it with my audience so they can get the same and even better results.
Any other questions..?? :0) I like that you asked these questions, because it proves that people actually wonder about these things, even if they don’t come out and ask..
talk soon
Hector
Hector Cuevas invites you to read: 5 Popular Bloggers Reveal How Podcasting Helps Their Business
You know, I get nothing but great tips from you guys. One of my top reads every morning when I sit down with Google Reader. I’ve just recently been considering doing a Youtube video and iTunes podcast for my site, and this is very timely.
Keep up the good stuff
John