Not Transcribing Your Podcast Episodes Yet? Here’s Why You Should

7 min read
Mar 4, 2024

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It’s possible that, as a podcaster, you’re constantly wondering how to create a podcast episode that offers a wholesome experience for listeners. Many creators are already catching up to the rising video podcast trend. But what about transcribing episodes? Transcribing your podcast welcomes a different kind of audience: avid readers, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and first-time listeners who want to skim through your first sentences before committing to the audio. If you’re not sure transcribing your episodes is worth the effort, you’ll be glad to know that the US is a nation of readers, garnering 39% of bookworms who read more than 20 books a year, compared to the global average of 27%. So, going the extra mile by integrating transcriptions attracts new audiences in readers. Additionally, creators often find it hard to generate organic website traffic since most of their content is in audio form, which search engines don’t index. Transcripts help them solve this issue by turning audio into text so search engines pick up their content’s keywords. After all, the first Google result gets 27.6% of all clicks. With this in mind, let’s dive into three fundamental reasons why all podcasters should transcribe their episodes.

Enhancing Accessibility

Audio formats exclude a large chunk of the population who are hard of hearing and deaf—hearing loss affects around 48 million Americans. Transcripts give people with hearing disabilities the opportunity to enjoy quality content they wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. To illustrate how vital transcriptions are, take the case of SiriusXM. In 2021, the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) sued the giant online and satellite radio company for failing to provide transcriptions for its vast catalog of audio content. The organization asserted that audio platforms should comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which states that companies that offer customer-facing services should make them accessible to people with disabilities. Many podcast hosting platforms already include automated transcriptions when you upload your episode and let you edit the text for accuracy. This way, your content is compliant and leaves no audience members behind.

Increasing Organic Web Traffic

Transcripts bring another massive advantage for podcasters: the ability to inject search engine optimization (SEO)—without any extra podcast equipment. This means your website will have a higher chance of appearing in web searches thanks to its text optimization, attracting more people to it. SEO has become an essential marketing strategy to improve online content, as 53% of web traffic comes from organic searches. It’s also simple to implement. Once you have your episode transcript, you can put the text into an SEO tool (like Semrush, Ahrefs, and RankMath) to help you identify keywords and recurring themes in your episode. Then, you can write this information in the episode tags, title, and description so your podcast becomes more discoverable in places like Google and Bing. Thankfully, many podcast platforms, like Disctopia, already include an SEO feature, so you won’t need to jump from place to place to improve your content.

Easy Quote Extraction and Text Previews

Transcribing goes beyond how to record a podcast that’s inclusive and discoverable. It also attracts first-time listeners and helps people extract quotes from your podcast. The Pew Research Center found that 55% of podcast listeners learn from them, meaning their content is often informative and educational. Turning your podcast audio to text allows for effortless text extraction, helping anyone to cite you—be it on social media, an academic paper, or a journalistic piece. Moreover, just like with online articles and paperback books, people want to read the first few sentences of any content to judge whether it’s something they’d like to commit to. With podcasts, audiences only had a short description to summarize episodes, which didn’t feel like enough of a preview. This changed when creators began incorporating transcripts; now, people can get hooked on the episode’s introductory sentences and realize they’d love to continue listening to your valuable content. Ultimately, transcriptions help your show become more inclusive, get new listeners on board, and enhance organic web traffic. What’s not to love? Just make sure your preferred podcast hosting platform has a quality transcript feature to fast-track your audio-to-text efforts accurately, and you’re good to go! Explore Disctopia’s wide range of podcast features, including transcription services and video podcast uploads, and get started hosting your podcast here.