0:00

- A lot of website platforms, if you don't keep things up

0:03

to date, can be hacked.

0:05

And especially if you're also handling other things

0:08

with your website, that would require people to sign in

0:12

with some personal information. So a lot of times you don't do that on a podcast website,

0:17

but you know, sometimes people have websites

0:20

that do multiple things. Definitely want an SSL certificate.

0:24

That's the, uh, the difference between HTTP and H-T-T-P-S.

0:28

In your, uh, address, you are listening

0:32

to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran,

0:36

and McKenzie Bennett from the blueberry team,

0:40

bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips

0:43

and tricks to help you start, grow

0:46

and thrive through podcasting. With all the support of your team here at Blueberry

0:51

Podcasting, welcome, let's dive in.

0:54

- I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist here at Blueberry.

0:58

- And I'm Mike Dell, the VP of Customer Relations at Blueberry.

1:02

- Today, we're explaining the essential elements your

1:04

podcast website needs to be effective.

1:06

- Well, first off, one of the questions we get a lot is,

1:09

do I need a website? - This yes and no, but really yes, <laugh>,

1:15

- Yes, it's the best practice and it's the blueberry way.

1:19

But yeah. So, uh, anyway, let's get into the meat of the subject.

1:24

- Yeah, so we recommend that you have a website

1:27

for your podcast so that it has a home. And one of those first things is the RSS feeds.

1:34

Mike, this is kind of your specialty. - Yeah, of course. In our case, you want to use PowerPress

1:40

with WordPress to create your site

1:42

and to create your RSS feed.

1:44

But that's not necessarily the only way to do it.

1:47

But this is the easiest if I can be so humble.

1:51

But you wanna configure the RRSS feed

1:54

specifically for the podcast. You know, WordPress in particular comes with a lot

1:59

of RSS feeds. You know, the blog posts have a feed

2:01

and there's other feeds available in WordPress.

2:05

But you wanna configure a special podcast only feed,

2:10

which is what PowerPress does for you,

2:13

but to not let you get it distributed to Apple and Spotify

2:16

and all the other podcast apps. I gotta quit saying Google Podcasts since they're no longer

2:22

a thing here in the US <laugh>. But if you're outside the US Google

2:25

podcast is still a thing. - So one of the other important things

2:29

to have on your podcast website is a robust podcast player.

2:34

This is super simple.

2:37

There's a bunch of different players

2:40

that you can choose from with WordPress or whoever you host your website with,

2:45

but you just wanna make sure that your show is actually available on

2:50

your website as well. Yes, you can recommend that people go listen

2:53

to it in their favorite podcast app, but it is essential to have it on here as well,

2:59

for people to be able to listen. - Yeah, and for sure you, you wanna have a player

3:03

that has all the cool functions too, you know,

3:06

like our blueberry player that comes with power press if you're hosting with us, has, you know,

3:11

the play and pause and forward 30 seconds and backward 15

3:15

or 30 or whatever it's set to, I forget.

3:19

And also it allows you to speed it up.

3:22

So if you wanna listen to it at two x, I don't know,

3:24

I can't even handle it at one x sometimes <laugh> <laugh>.

3:27

But you know, you wanna have a pretty functional web player.

3:31

'cause a lot of your podcast listeners,

3:34

especially if you are demographic skews a little older,

3:38

they, they definitely use the website to listen to the show.

3:41

And again, we don't care how you listen.

3:44

It's nice to have it in a, in an app so you can take it with you and all that stuff.

3:47

But having the player on the site's pretty important.

3:50

One of the reasons to have a site is for search engine optimization for people

3:55

to find your podcast and you can emulate

3:58

or emulate, where did that come from?

4:01

<laugh>. You can implement search engine optimization

4:04

techniques right on your website. And it helps the visibility,

4:08

helps it rank well in the search. And that will get you more listeners usually.

4:13

- Actually I was, I was kind of thinking about it with the player as well, is these descriptions

4:18

and titles that you have for your podcast

4:22

might not necessarily be easy to find

4:26

in a podcast app just because, you know,

4:30

looking up a specific phrase is not always gonna get the

4:32

best results in various apps,

4:35

but if people are just searching for it on Google in general, this is gonna help with that.

4:40

That is kind of the SEO optimization

4:43

of your website a little bit, is making sure

4:45

that you're using appropriate keywords for the,

4:49

like the show notes that you're doing as well.

4:53

'cause we tell people one of the things

4:55

that they should also have is an episode archive

4:59

and all of that is just building your SEO over time

5:02

of having these categorized, you know, setting them up

5:07

by past episodes, by date, topic, guest,

5:11

really whatever you would like to do, but just a clean

5:14

and simple way for Google

5:17

and people to be able to understand what is happening.

5:20

- Yeah, one of the keys to getting good SEO is to have,

5:25

you know, your site easy for humans to do to, uh, navigate.

5:30

Now Todd will always say something like, you know, write

5:32

for Google and do your show for your audience.

5:35

Well, it's true to a point, but Google, their goal is

5:40

to make information findable by humans.

5:43

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, if you make your website

5:47

human friendly <laugh> you, you're gonna do okay in SEO,

5:51

but there are some other techniques and things you should use for that.

5:55

But another thing on a website, and I hate going to a website

5:59

and them not having a search bar,

6:02

almost all website creation tools out there allow you

6:06

to have a search bar so people can come to your site

6:08

and search for a particular episode

6:11

or a particular topic that you're talking on. So,

6:14

- And you know, if someone doesn't have it, I'm gonna do it

6:17

with a keyboard command <laugh> if, if it doesn't exist,

6:21

I'm still gonna search for it that way. - But that's, yeah, that's not gonna dig

6:24

deep into the archives. Nope. You know, usually on the front page

6:28

of a podcast website, there might be 10 episodes showing

6:31

and if you have a hundred episodes,

6:34

well those won't be included in that keyboard search.

6:38

So definitely, you know, put the search bar in there.

6:41

- Yeah, that can definitely go into your episode

6:44

archive functionality as well.

6:46

Yeah. So one of the other things that we tell people not

6:50

to forget is a, the subscription options, you know,

6:55

people are gonna subscribe to your show,

6:57

they're gonna follow it, you know,

7:00

whatever it's called on whatever app that they're using.

7:02

But you need to make all of those ways

7:05

to follow you available on your website.

7:08

We actually have a really great subscribe widget

7:12

that we provide to people in PowerPress

7:14

because we think it's super important and it's one of the first things that we think should kind

7:19

of stand out on your website. - Certainly. And don't just do Apple and Spotify.

7:25

Yes, they're gonna be the ones that get you the most

7:28

listeners, but have an RSS link as well.

7:32

And I know that won't make sense to a lot of people, but that helps.

7:36

The search engines know it's a podcast for one.

7:39

That's great. And for those that know how to use an RSS feed, it's invaluable to them.

7:45

You know, I suggest, you know, apple and Spotify of course,

7:50

but you know, maybe something like Podcast Index or Pandora

7:55

or you know, whatever other ones you're in, you know,

7:58

it never hurts to have more be everywhere. Okay,

8:02

- Sure. - <laugh>. - So part of

8:05

that be Everywhere is effective social media integration

8:08

on your website as well. - Oh yeah. You definitely wanna have a link to your Facebook

8:15

or X or Instagram or whatever social media that you partake in, you know,

8:20

have a link there for sure. And you know, with, you know, sharing of episodes,

8:28

that's the other thing, you know, with a website,

8:31

you should have a post for that episode.

8:34

That's what you wanna share out to the social media.

8:38

- Yeah, there's really two ways to kind of go about this when it comes to social media.

8:42

So you want people to be able to share

8:48

the post very easily where they can just kind of click on it

8:52

and it has that shared capability of, I want this to go to

8:56

my Twitter and have, you know, that that prompted

9:01

notice or like caption and with the URL to what you wanna share.

9:06

But then there's also make sure that you are including your own social channels for them

9:10

to follow somewhere on the website as well.

9:13

You know, it's very common in the sidebar and the footer

9:15

and the header, the about page, whatever you wanna do

9:18

- With that. Yeah. And it kind of goes both ways. You know, you promote it on social,

9:22

but you also promote your social Yes.

9:25

And promote it so that they can also share

9:28

that episode if they so chooses.

9:30

- Yes. If you want people to share your content, you have

9:33

to make it easy for them to do. - Yes, I was, I had that problem this morning.

9:38

I was trying to share a, a post and you know,

9:41

and I know how to just go copy it out of the address bar,

9:44

but a lot of people don't. - So, and especially if you're on mobile,

9:49

you really don't wanna poke around and find it.

9:52

You just want it to work. So - <laugh> Yeah, yeah, definitely for mobile and you know,

9:56

and that a lot of people now don't even have a computer.

10:00

Yeah. They're doing it all on their phone or their iPad

10:03

or their whatever Android thing. Yeah.

10:06

- So that, that definitely leads into,

10:09

we wanna talk about a contact information page as well

10:12

as an about page. Sometimes people will combine these,

10:15

but generally for Google's sake, it's good to keep them separate.

10:19

Like and for your site map, if you choose to do a site map

10:22

as well, it's good to keep these separate contact information is just

10:25

how can they actually contact you. That might be a good place to add your social as well.

10:29

Encourage your listeners to provide feedback, engage with them.

10:34

They can send inquiries about, you know, I would love

10:37

to be on the show or congrats

10:39

or the best is always when someone tells you that they hate it.

10:43

That's kind of a, like a badge of honor for some podcasters.

10:47

- That's never happened to me. - No <laugh>. So they really,

10:51

they really just need like a contact form for the most part.

10:55

And then the about page is kind of when you can get a little more personal

10:58

and add some more of your own personality

11:01

and flavor to your website as well. So talk about the podcast mission, the host,

11:06

the background story, and just about yourself if you're comfortable with it.

11:11

- Yeah. And it doesn't have to be an email address.

11:14

Now email addresses are kind of the traditional feedback

11:18

that podcasters way back when used to put on their sites.

11:22

And that's fine if you're okay with that

11:25

or maybe have a special email that, that you just use

11:29

for show feedback. You know, Google email is for is free, make one

11:34

of those up for it or whatever. But have some way

11:37

that you can get feedback talking about mobile.

11:40

You know, so many websites out there look beautiful on a 27

11:44

inch screen on your desk or on your laptop screen,

11:47

but they look like crap on mobile <laugh>.

11:50

So make sure your website works well on mobile.

11:54

Again, most or a lot of people now do not even own a computer.

11:58

They're mobile only. - And because of that, Google

12:04

will decide like how well your site is doing

12:07

based on mobile first and then desktop just solely based on the fact

12:12

that more people have mobile phones than they do, you know,

12:16

full laptop devices at this point.

12:19

So definitely consider that.

12:21

It's super easy to figure out, you know,

12:24

whatever browser you're in has all of these options to view

12:28

what everything is gonna look like. There's plenty of articles out there on how to do this.

12:35

Um, so don't be intimidated by it,

12:38

but just know the importance of it, I think.

12:40

- Yeah. Yep. And this next one, I could get super geeky,

12:44

but I'm not going to Okay. <laugh> a blog or a news section on your site.

12:50

And you'll notice that podcast insider.com has

12:55

blog and podcasts together. So we have our news articles and our announcements

13:01

and all of the other things intermixed

13:03

with the podcast episodes. That's kind of the way I like to do it.

13:08

But you can also, and again, not getting geeky, you can have a special

13:14

blog section on your podcast website

13:17

and there's nothing at all wrong with that as well.

13:20

- Definitely good for the SEO for sure.

13:22

- Yeah, yeah. Having other content other than just podcast

13:26

episodes is good for SEO. - Well the next thing we wanna talk about is analytics

13:31

tools, specifically Google analytics.

13:33

That's just, you know, the main source to monitor your website traffic behavior

13:38

and engagement metrics. But those Google analytics, if people aren't actually going

13:42

to your site because there's no SEO optimization via your

13:46

episode archive or your podcast player

13:49

or the blog post, then you're not gonna get a lot

13:51

of Google analytics to look at. And <laugh> people get frustrated over that

13:55

because they're like, no one's coming here. You have to give them a reason to come there.

13:59

You have to lead them there. So. Right.

14:01

- And don't, and don't confuse Google analytics

14:05

with podcast analytics. - Oh yeah. - Google will not do anything

14:09

with the actual podcast analytics.

14:12

They can tell when people visit a site,

14:15

a PA particular page on the site,

14:17

how long they stay, that kind of stuff. But it does not do anything for

14:23

your podcast analytics, which, you know, in our case

14:26

with blueberry, you know, you go to blueberry and look at those which are completely and utterly different

14:32

- <laugh> there. Yeah. There's a reason that we tell people

14:35

to implement these and that when people are like, oh, well,

14:39

do I actually name podcast Dots? Yes, yes you do. And you need Google Analytics.

14:44

They are not one and the same. So, - Or something like that.

14:47

I mean, a lot of web hosts have their own

14:49

analytics as well, so - Absolutely.

14:53

Just make sure you're keeping an eye on both of 'em at least a little bit. So,

14:56

- And accessibility, that's, that's something

14:58

that is also important on a website.

15:00

Making sure that your website is accessible to all users,

15:04

including those with visual dis disabilities or,

15:08

or even, you know, hearing d difficulties now with,

15:13

you know, with podcasts, they're, they've generally been hard to access

15:17

for the hearing impaired. And now with all these tools out there for transcripts

15:23

and closed captioning and all of that stuff, it's becoming more

15:27

and more accessible. - I think we've really seen a huge lead in this movement on

15:33

social media platforms and on like YouTube

15:36

and just kind of the downfall

15:40

of sound mixing in any TV

15:42

and movie that you watch that has made people turn on the

15:45

captions <laugh> when they're watching whatever

15:48

content they would prefer. But I think it's good to just provide all of this similar

15:53

to the mobile responsiveness, like don't be overwhelmed by it.

15:58

It's very easy to kind of figure out how

16:00

to implement these things a lot of the time. Like things like alt text for images

16:06

and compliance a lot of the time, like your web host

16:11

is gonna point these things out for you and say like, this is not the way

16:16

that it should be type of thing. So just keep an eye out for it,

16:19

I think would be the easiest thing

16:22

- For sure. And you know, a lot of WordPress themes in particular do have accessibility

16:29

features or, and or features that allow you to

16:34

have a mobile responsive version and an accessible version and you know, all that.

16:39

So you might check into that. In fact, the next item on our list is themes and visuals.

16:45

<laugh>. Yeah. So I'm not a very designy type person,

16:48

so a form follows function <laugh>, you know,

16:52

but you know, you wanna make it look decent.

16:55

- You do, you wanna make it look decent

16:57

and feel like yourself, you know, you, you want people

17:02

to be able to associate what your website looks like, kind

17:04

of with your overall brand. And I'm not saying that in like a influencer, I have

17:10

to have a brand type of way, but more so the way of the look,

17:15

this color scheme matches this person in real life.

17:18

- Yeah. The look and feel has to be cohesive on a website.

17:23

You, you know, don't get overly don't overanalyze it

17:26

and make that stop you from having a website.

17:29

You know, get something up there and you can always tweak as you go.

17:32

But uh, you know, you definitely want to have a decent logo

17:35

and keep all the colors and you know, so that they're not clashing too badly

17:39

unless that's what you're going for. - And a lot of these make it very easy to, you know, kind

17:44

of just like follow the step by step guide and make it fun to kind of play around

17:48

with these, these things. You know, do we wanna add this here?

17:51

Do we wanna make this color this? You definitely don't need a graphic designer to do this

17:58

for you or any type of, you know, consultant. I mean, if

18:03

- Extra one, that's kind of nice, but if you - Don't wanna do it, you can have someone do it for you.

18:08

But it is, it's kind of fun - <laugh>.

18:12

Anyway. And then I guess the last item, you know,

18:15

something you gotta think about is security. Yeah. Well, lot of website platforms,

18:20

if you don't keep things up to date can be hacked.

18:24

And especially if you're also handling other things

18:27

with your website that would require people to sign in

18:31

with some personal information. So a lot of times you don't do that on a podcast website,

18:37

but you know, sometimes people have websites

18:39

that do multiple things. Definitely want an SSL certificate.

18:43

That's the, uh, the difference between HTTP

18:46

and H-T-T-P-S in your, uh, address.

18:49

- Can you explain how someone would go about getting one?

18:52

- Well, a lot of web hosts give them away for free.

18:56

A lot of them charge you lots of money for them, <laugh>.

18:59

But, uh, and I won't call out any particular company that

19:03

ticks me off about that, but, uh, but basically you, on your web host especially, and

19:09

or if you're using one of our blueberry websites,

19:12

it's somewhat automatic. You log in the first time using your domain,

19:16

you hit enable SSL, boom, you're done.

19:19

You know, your mileage will vary on various other websites.

19:22

I know Squarespace, I think just by default it all there,

19:25

everything's https. So - Yeah, that's, yeah, a lot

19:29

of the times these companies will lead you in the right

19:31

direction in this scenario, <laugh>. - And one thing is, okay,

19:34

the most popular web browser out there is Chrome.

19:37

Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. If you have a website

19:40

that doesn't have H-T-T-P-S

19:42

or SSL, then your web players will not work on

19:47

that person's computer on, on Chrome.

19:50

And so that cuts out a lot of listeners,

19:54

and I do believe Apple now requires

19:56

that on the RSS feed. I don't know if that

20:00

- Honestly Good. Yeah. - You know, so get it.

20:03

They're either cheap or free with the most web hosts

20:06

and you know, except for one, which, like I said,

20:08

I'm not gonna name, I wanna, but I'm not going to

20:12

- <laugh>. Yeah. Well also speaking of security, I mean,

20:15

even just this morning I logged into some website

20:18

and they were like, oh yeah, your website has been

20:21

found on the web for this.

20:23

You should go ahead and change it. So - Password.

20:27

- Yeah, I feel like everyone that has a podcast,

20:29

because they're, you're gonna have your own website.

20:31

You're gonna be logging into blueberry or some

20:34

or something else. Get a password manager. I use LastPass

20:39

and I have for many years. It's, I mean, it's nothing fancy,

20:43

but you need something generally

20:46

to keep yourself from going crazy

20:48

over all of your passwords. - Yep, for sure. And so I guess as we wrap it up, you know,

20:56

thanks for listening of course. And just remember that, you know,

21:01

having your own place on the internet, you know,

21:05

even though you're doing a podcast and people can, you know, go view it on

21:10

or listen to it on all the apps,

21:12

or say you're doing a YouTube channel even, you should still have your own place on the internet

21:18

- If you don't want to go out and do it on your own.

21:22

And if you're a blueberry hosting customer,

21:25

we give you a free WordPress site that we manage for you.

21:29

All of those security measures that SSL, those themes

21:32

and plugins that you choose from, we all lay that out for you.

21:36

So if that is something that you are not interested in doing yourself,

21:40

there are solutions. - Yeah. But you know, you still have to do the work as far

21:44

as, you know, publishing your show and all that.

21:46

But it's no different doing it from a WordPress site than it

21:50

is doing it from our dashboard. You know, there's, you know, that looks

21:53

just slightly different. But all the stuff's there. Thanks for joining us.

21:57

Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast

22:01

insider.com for more information to subscribe, share,

22:06

and read our show notes. To check out our latest suite of services

22:10

and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast.

22:14

Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease.

22:18

We couldn't afford the ease.