Are Podcasts Taking Over Blogs? SEO in 2024

For many years, blogging has been a dominant force in the digital landscape, enabling anyone with access to the internet to become an author, critic or expert. However, in recent years, podcasts have skyrocketed in popularity, prompting the question: Are podcasts taking over blogs? 

In this blog we’ll compare the two platforms, using contextual analysis and specific data metrics to determine if podcasting is truly paving the way.

Blogs, Podcasts and Discoverability

So, where did blogging begin? The history of blogging reflects the evolution of the internet itself. The idea of blogging rose up onto the internet as early as the 1990s, allowing anyone with access to a computer to spread ideas and opinions. Since its beginnings, blogs have successfully evolved communication and marketing to keep up with technological advancements. 

With just a simple understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO), you should be aware of the landslide advantage blogs hold over discoverability. Search engines love fresh content, and as blogs are mostly made up of text, search engines crawling and ranking makes it a whole lot easier to increase search engine result page (SERP) visibility. 

But as we know, nothing stays the same for too long on the internet. With the growth of audio information climbing in popularity, Google is working to make indexing podcast audio a reality. It could be argued that for years podcasts have been penalised against SEO, relying on show notes and transcripts to help increase any chances of discoverability, but with this new advancement, podcasts might start to see the same success as blogs. 

What about YouTube? As the second largest search engine, YouTube boasts over 2.49 billion monthly active users. Posting podcasts on YouTube can significantly enhance discoverability, addressing one of the biggest challenges in growing business podcasts.

Podcasts 

Podcasts hold a short history, with the word only being introduced in 2004. But what are podcasts? In simple terms, podcasts are content marketing in audio form, relating to a specific theme. 

Once a podcast has been established, it’s important to understand what you are looking to get out of the medium. This may be to increase brand awareness or build on audience rapport to name a few. 

Podcasting Advantages

With a changing of the times, more and more consumers are choosing to buy into people over faceless brands. From an organic perspective, conversion rates are higher when audiences are allowed a more intimate look into a brand. By adding a voice to a business, you are automatically evoking an emotional attachment that resonates way beyond innominate content.

Building Authority and Credibility

There’s huge social currency in podcasting. Consumers now look to recommend podcasts in the same way we do with books and movies. With this, it is without question that building authority and credibility will help to solidify your business niche. 

Podcasts that define strategy for their episodes are built with purpose. By creating a regular podcast that informs, innovates and entertains, you will help to solidify your business purpose and authority, that will pay off with ROI.

Great Inbound Leads Strategy

Leveraging podcast call-to-actions (CTAs) to generate leads is a strategy for using your podcasting platform to convert as many actions to leads as possible. 

For consumers who crave authenticity and trust, podcasts are the perfect platform for generating leads. The human voice is a powerful tool for building connections and as such, consumers become more receptive to the message and buy into the brand.

Less Competition and Low Saturation

Podcast popularity is by no means classified information, and businesses have certainly noticed. With more than 5 million podcasts available worldwide, is there space for your brand?

Podcasting simply cannot be over-saturated. The consumers who listen to podcasts aren’t limited to how many they can listen to or subscribe to. This means that you could subscribe to 50 different podcasts should you wish and find room for 10 more if something comes along that you enjoy. 

The saturation of the podcast space is limited only by the consumer’s capacity for consumption. Simply put, the demand is still greater than the supply.

(Source: Backlinko)

Podcasting Disadvantages

So podcasts are great, right? While they can be an effective way to build brand awareness and attract people to products and services, they also have their downsides.

Tackling Performance Tracking

Marketing is all about analysing the outcomes with data. However, when it comes to podcasts that data isn’t so black and white. Tracking podcast analytics can be an arduous task. Unlike other platforms, there is no single way to track the exact number of people listening to your podcast.  

Once a podcast is downloaded from the host server onto audience devices, it becomes extremely difficult to precisely monitor if that podcast was listened to in its entirety or not touched at all. What this means is that only a rough approximation of the audience size is available to marketers, impacting the likes of budget spending and analysis of ROI.

Blogs

Blogs are often rightly praised for their success as an SEO strategy, but aside from this, what other tangible benefits can you get out of blogging?

Blogging is both scalable and affordable, allowing even small businesses to impact SERPs and boost brand awareness. As of 2024, 90% of businesses maintain a blog, making evident its power for companies seeking to expand their reach and remain competitive. 

(Source: MasterBlogging)

Blogging Advantages

Blogging is a good tool for SEO because it helps with a number of things that are important ranking factors.

Boosting SEO Performance

Blogging regularly is a great way to add to and update your website with organic content that will keep you relevant amongst search engines, as well as making your site more attractive to potential customers. 

Relevant and fresh blog content not only keeps brands relevant amongst the competition, but is also a brilliant medium to increase leads and conversions.

Improving Internal Links

Internal links are a significant part of blogging. By incorporating internal links, you are assisting search engines in finding, indexing and understanding all of the pages on your site. Since these links are entirely within your control, there’s no reason not to use them. The more internal links you include in your blog posts, the more traffic you’ll likely drive to other parts of your website.

Building Brand Authority

Establishing a brand should be a top priority for every business. How does blogging aid this? Blogging allows you to cultivate a unique and recognisable voice for your company, showcasing your expertise and highlighting what sets you apart. 

By becoming a go-to resource in your industry, a successful blog can build strong customer relationships and trust in your knowledge.

Blogging Disadvantages

Blogs are perfect for businesses looking to convey information and attract new leads organically. However, like any strategy, blogging comes with certain drawbacks.

It’s Time Consuming

Blogging requires time and patience. Beyond writing, you need to consider research, rewrites, grammar checks and SEO amongst others, all of which can be time-consuming.

Additionally, results are not immediate. Building an online presence and a loyal audience takes time, so be prepared to wait for a significant ROI. 

A Saturated Market

The blogging platform has become extremely saturated over the years, with more than 600 million blogs posted online as of 2024, and more businesses wanting in on the industry. 

As a result, competition has got higher, as has the standard of blogs. No longer can marketers rely on keywords alone to produce highly ranking results. Instead, you must approach from a unique angle to keep blog content fresh and new.

So is podcasting better than blogging?

The answer isn’t a simple yes or no. While podcasting excels in accessibility and building trust, blogging remains unmatched for delivering quick information and improving search engine visibility. 

Regardless of your choice, both blogs and podcasts can enhance your inbound marketing efforts and strengthen customer relationships.

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