¶ Are You Making This Mistake?
I see podcasters make this one mistake where they lose the ability to boost their SEO and they trash the ability to reinforce their brand. What is it? I'll tell you about it in just a second. There are so many new tools coming online to help podcasters, but there are some that I go, yeah. You don't need that. And so today, let's talk about this common mistake that
¶ Off Site Subscribe / Follow Options
I just see all the time, and that is sending your audience off your website for something that you can easily do. And I'll give you an example. There's a website right now called episodes.fm. Nothing against those people, but you don't need that service to create a page with links to your show on the different podcast apps. You can do this. And when you send people away from your site, you're losing valuable SEO. Why? Because if somebody goes, hey. How do
I, you know, follow your show? Instead of ranking, find me wherever you find, you know, your podcast, which for the record, I think I've mentioned this. Don't do that. Searching apps is horrible. And instead, put the links to your show to these different apps on your website.
¶ Finding Your Links
And there are a couple different ways you could get the links. 1 is if you just go to the actual app. So if you go to, like, music.amazon.com, search for your show. There's a share link right there. That's the link to your show. You could also use a website like podnews.net. Go out, search for your show, and James has links to most of the platforms there. Or you could use something like episodes.fm.
Just don't click on the links. What you wanna do is, let's say, you do that and you see there's a link to your show on Apple. Don't click on that link. Right click on it and copy that link, and then put that link to
¶ Your Follow Page
your website. Like, right on your website, it could be something like, you know, your website. When you create a dedicated page like your website.com/follow with all those links, this is a way to reinforce your brand and make it easy for listeners to follow your show all from one central location that is on your website. Now there's another advantage of this, and I'll talk about that in just a second. The other potential advantage of this is if somebody goes, hey. How
do I follow your show? And you go, oh, just go to my website, and they go, great. Well, then they love the show, and their friend says, hey, where'd you find that show? And they send it to their friend who sends it to their friend. So now you have all these people backlinking on their website or in their newsletter or whatever to your website. Those backlinks can boost your SEO. And so think about this, Using external tools now they might be fast and cheap, but it's not the best
long term strategy. Now have you ever heard about this? It's an old saying, there's good, there's fast, and there's cheap, but you can only have 2. So if I go, alright. It can be good and fast. Well, it's not gonna be cheap. It could be good and cheap, but then it's not gonna be fast. You get the idea. You can
¶ The SEO Benefits
only pick 2, good, fast, and cheap. And so, sure, when you link to these outside sources, it's fast and it's cheap because many of them are free, and but it's not gonna be good. And in this case, the good is it's not good for your SEO. And it's so easy to make a page on your website. And the other thing is you don't own that website. And keep the traffic and the SEO benefits where they belong
¶ Good, Fast, Cheap
on your website. The other mistake I often see people saying is they'll go like, oh, you go to their website, and all they have is a link to Apple Podcast. And that might be somewhat fine if you're primarily in the US. But remember, 70% of Europe uses an Android phone. So a better approach is to create a page with links to Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Now that right there will get you close to 80% of the market. You might add Overcast.
There are a bunch of different apps. Maybe the ones that you like, you could throw on there. Any other popular platforms. If you have too many options, it can be kinda overwhelming. So kinda stick to the major ones. Now here's some good news. If you're using PodPage, this is even easier. When you add the different podcast players in the PodPage, it automatically creates a follow page for you. SEO, for example, if you wanna see it, go to your
¶ Apple Only Link
podcastwebsite.com/follow, and you'll see where all the buttons and the links are automatically generated by PodPage. So I put them in there once, and they're there forever. And that, again, keeps everyone on your site. It reinforces your brand and it boosts your SEO. So quit sending your visitors off-site for something that, again, you can easily do on your own. Keep them on your website and strengthen your brand and watch your SEO improve. Now if you're like, I'm on Wordpress, there's a great
plugins. It's social subscribe and follow. I'll put a link to that out in the show notes as well, And that's a plugins that works much like what I just said. You put the links to all your different
¶ Podpage For the Win
apps where your show is, and it will put these really nice looking buttons on your website. And it's easy to create your own follow page. So thanks so much for tuning in. Remember, if, speaking of following the show, if you go to your podcastwebsite.com/follow, you can get
the episodes the minute they're available. And that's also if you know somebody who would enjoy this episode or just is a person that's running their own website but don't really know what they're doing, send them over to your podcast website. I'm Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting.com. I help Podcast. It's what I do. Your podcast website is part of the Power of Podcasting Network. Find this show and all of
¶ WordPress Resource
Dave's other projects atpowerofpodcasting.com.