- Welcome to the Journey.
Today we're talking about 10 ways
to improve your podcast website.
So question, are you building or maintaining a podcast
for you or one of your clients?
With more than a million shows and 30 million episodes,
podcasts have become a favorite content consumer.
If you haven't built a podcast website, yet,
you're bound to at some point,
unlike Apple podcasts, where the show sits among 1000s,
or on Facebook, where the content is subject
to the whims of an algorithm,
a podcast website is the only platform you
or your client own 100%.
- That's right, no rules, restrictions or limitations,
it's a central place for you and your client can say,
anything you want to listeners and potential listeners,
and a great podcast website doesn't have to be fancy,
doesn't have to be expensive,
but it needs a few critical elements to be effective.
And in this video, we're going to cover 10 best practices
to improve a podcast website.
- Starting with the first one,
host your audio files
the dedicated podcast hosting provider.
So platforms like Google Play
and Apple podcasts are directories
that use an RSS link to display the content,
they don't actually store any of the actual audio,
so podcasters need a place
where they can host their episode files
that provide them with an RSS link.
Now most traditional website hosts aren't configured
to handle podcasts audio files,
they don't have the right optimization for audio content
and can't handle all that download requests from listeners,
you or your client will need to publish the episodes
with a dedicated podcast hosting service.
And hey, by using a separate host
for your website and the podcast,
both the website and podcast files will run fast and smooth,
which is important for SEO and the total user experience.
It also tends to cut down on costs even
though you're using multiple services.
- That's right and number two,
install the right podcasting plugins.
Now once you obtain hosting for the website,
we strongly recommend installing WordPress.
It's fast and it's simple.
And you'll have no trouble creating new blog posts
for each episode.
You might be wondering, which plugins should you install?
And it totally depends on your needs.
But here are recommendations
for a powerful podcasting stack.
- So I'm WordPress guy.
So I've got the plugins for you,
starting off with Seriously Simple Podcasting.
This one lets you manage your podcasts right from WordPress,
including one click imports,
a beautiful embedded audio player integrated analytics,
multiple show support and free add ons.
Next one is Yoast basically, just to optimize your site
for search engines, create those SEO optimized pages.
Third, we have CoBlocks.
It's used to design a website using
the native Gutenberg editor,
just the normal block editor as it's called now.
Next up, we have Sucuri,
basically protect the site from hackers.
Updraftplus is another great one.
This is just to protect the content of your site.
Most of the time your hosts will have some type
of backup service,
you can go one step further and create those backups
to safeguard the site even further.
Next up, we have Google Analytics,
basically see the analytics on the site
what shows are being listened to the most,
what pages are they going to things like that.
And then lastly, probably your podcast host plugin.
So to replace this Seriously Simple Podcasting,
there's a chance that
whoever you're hosting your podcast with
has created a dedicated plugin for that service.
Now I've used Podbean in the past,
and I know that they offer a plugin
where it easily imports my audio feeds right
into my website.
So check out with your podcast host
to see if they have anything
that makes your life a little bit easier.
- Nealey, so knowledgeable.
That takes us to the third way to improve podcasts.
And that's number three,
offer links to the podcasts on different apps.
Not everyone wants to listen to podcasts off of a website.
Many people prefer
to use their favorite podcasting app such as,
Apple podcasts, Google Play Stitcher, Spotify, etc.
I love Spotify personally.
But it's important to give them links
to the podcasters episodes on each
of those podcast directories.
So make the experience as frictionless as possible
by adding these links throughout your site.
- So our fourth way
to improve your podcast website is design
with SEO in mind for discoverability.
Now when someone searches for the podcast,
you want your website to appear first,
not someone else's listing on Apple podcasts,
Spotify or Google Play.
This means that the website should be built
with SEO best practice in mind.
Now SEO discoverability is a big topic.
We've covered tons of videos on it with a Journey already.
Make sure to check it out our channel for more.
So we won't go into the different nuances here.
But here are some critical ways you can design a site
that's SEO friendly. I'll go over the first few
and I'll have Emma tick off the rest.
So first off, optimize your site speed
so it loads as quickly as possible.
After two and a half seconds,
people are bouncing on the website.
They don't wanna wait that long.
They've got other stuff to do.
Next up, we have make it mobile friendly
and accessible on all devices and browsers.
Most of the time, I mean, me personally,
I'm on my phone listening to podcasts.
So if I can't visit your website
and it doesn't look nice on my phone,
chances are I'm not gonna want to take the time to listen.
And the next up, create a crawl friendly sitemap
to help search engines catalog pages.
And this is super popular.
If you're gonna use Yoast, it's gonna do that for you.
Other website builders will have that capability as well.
- Number four, create lots of interlinking opportunities.
Number five, use heading tags in proper hierarchy.
Six optimize for Voice Search.
It's growing in popularity.
I'm a huge fan of always talking to my Google.
And number seven improve machine readability
with structured data and limiting hard
to read languages like flash and Ajax.
- Our fifth way of improving your podcast website is
to set up a unique page for each podcast episode.
Yes, it's nice to have one page that has all of it
and easily accessible and I could listen to it right away.
But you also wanna have each episode
have its own dedicated page with show notes and comments
and links to what is mentioned on that episode.
So the title should match the episode title.
And if you're building with WordPress,
each episode should be a blog post,
you can use the standard post type
or create a custom post type for your podcast episodes,
and use the standard post type for other content.
Fortunately, an episodes page is pretty simple.
So a couple things that should go into this are,
a podcast player that's touch friendly
and queued up for the pages episode,
just at the very top
of the page before visitor our has to scroll.
Again, like I mentioned before,
those show notes that highlight the importance
of the recording, ideally with timestamps,
if you have the time,
it's definitely a helpful tool just to say,
I talked about SEO at four minutes and 37 seconds
and I talked about content strategy
at seven minutes and 32 seconds.
That way, if I only care about content strategy
as a visitor, I can jump right there.
Also, a complete audio transcription is great
for SEO and accessibility.
There are lots of great websites out there
that will transcribe your website either automatically
or you can hire people to do so as well
for relatively inexpensive for what you're getting back
and offer other marketing assets like audio grants
and shareable images.
If you forego everything else, it's just important
that each page includes at least the podcast player.
That way new listeners have the ability to sample an episode
without downloading an app or visiting another page.
- Absolutely, and the sixth way to improve podcast,
help new listeners get started with a curated playlist
of the best episodes listeners, you know,
they might decide to listen
to every episode eventually, right?
But in the beginning, they just wanna know
what is the best stuff first.
And plus, in the interest of building a strong relationship,
it's important to hook the listener quickly
with great content.
So create a page on the site,
specifically for those new listeners.
And this page should briefly explain the podcast,
introduce the hosts or host
and provide links to the best episodes.
- Oh yeah, Emma's all about those curated playlists,
whether it's podcasts or YouTube videos,
but our seventh way here
of improving that podcast website is
to create an archive page for the products back catalog.
Now even though each episode has a dedicated page,
it's helpful to have an archive page
that links to each of those pages,
You should have an archive page for each category of episodes
as well as an archive just for all of the episodes.
Now these archive pages help listeners find the type
of content they're looking for, in a nice organized manner.
- Now the eighth way
to improve your podcasts include email lead capture
and links to social media.
So you or your client probably intends
to start an email list.
So new listeners have a way
to receive notifications about new episodes,
upcoming content and other promotions, all the good things.
And an email list is important
because it's a direct line of communication to the audience.
And to join that list, however,
the website needs lead capture opportunities,
so add signup forms and reasonable places like sidebars,
footers, and on the contact page.
- Our ninth way is
to implement Google's recommended structured data.
This gets a bit technical,
but Google can expose your podcast
to users across its entire ecosystem of products.
So this includes Google search all browsers,
desktops, and mobile devices.
Users can actually play episodes in the browser,
which I thought is pretty cool.
Google podcast app, Google Home speaker systems,
content actions for the Google Assistant
on your phone as well.
But you can help the podcast appear on Google
by making the RSS feed and the homepage point to each other.
This is called reciprocal linking.
However, if there's no link element in the feed,
or if it points to a site other than the website,
ask your podcast host how
to specify the website's homepage address.
And this brings us to the 10th way to improve your podcast
so create a consistent brand
that relates to the podcast subject.
So for a professional podcast website,
a generic WordPress theme just won't do.
You need unique branding
that's consistent throughout the website.
It should relate specifically to the topic.
And if the podcast is about the paranormal,
it should be dark and spooky.
And if it's about kids and parenting,
it should be bright with primary colors.
Choose complimentary fonts
and if possible, custom photography.
And these design elements help visitors connect
with the podcast quickly
and they help potential listeners understand the show
without reading a word.
It's like a visual elevator pitch, if you will.
- I love that.
But yeah, these best practices we covered in this list
will help you design a professional podcast website.
It's accessible, aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.
- Keep in mind, however,
that all shows and brands are different.
And don't be afraid to experiment with new ideas
and creative techniques to make your site unique.
- But that's a wrap.
I hope this helps you improve your podcast website
or the one that you're about to make.
Make sure to leave us a comment below
and don't forget to subscribe to our channel.
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This has been the Journey thanks for watching.