Two questions decide whether a podcast grows in search: whether its episodes actually rank for the topics they cover, and what topics the show is not covering at all. Neither can be answered by guessing, and a small set of tools answers both directly, turning a host’s sense of how the show is doing into data about where it stands and where it could go.
- Google Search Console (free): shows the real queries bringing people to the show notes pages and the exact position each page holds, straight from Google
- Rank trackers (Ahrefs, Semrush): monitor specific keyword positions over time, segmented by device and location
- Content-gap tools (Ahrefs Content Gap, Semrush Keyword Gap): surface the topics competitors rank for that the show has never touched
Google Search Console is where every host should start, because it is free and reports directly from Google. Connected to the website that hosts the show notes, it shows which search queries are already surfacing each episode, what position those pages hold, and how often they are clicked. A host can see that an episode ranks on the second page for a promising term, or that a topic is drawing impressions but few clicks, which points straight at what to improve. It answers the first question, whether episodes rank, with Google’s own data. No third-party estimate sits in between.
Rank trackers add the dimension Search Console handles loosely: monitoring chosen keywords precisely over time. Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush let a host track the positions of the specific terms that matter to the show, watch them move week to week, and see how a revised set of show notes changes the position. This is the difference between knowing a page ranks somewhere and watching exactly where it sits and which direction it is heading, which is what tells a host whether the work is paying off.
Content-gap analysis answers the second question, the harder one: what the show is missing. The content-gap features in Ahrefs and Semrush compare a site against competitors and surface the keywords those competitors rank for while the show does not, which for a podcast translates directly into episode ideas, the subjects an audience is searching for that the show has never made an episode about. A host using this finds the demand that already exists in the show’s own subject area, rather than guessing at what listeners might want.
Keyword research rounds out the set, since the same tools estimate how much demand a topic carries before an episode is made. For an Atlanta host, that includes gauging interest in local subjects specifically, the terms tied to the city that a regional audience searches. The tools together let a host stop guessing in both directions at once, seeing plainly which episodes are ranking and which episodes the show has not yet made, so the next one is chosen from evidence rather than instinct.