You’re Probably Sending Listeners to the Wrong Place!

[00:00:00] Today’s episode is covering something short and sweet, how to link and share your podcast. But if you’re thinking, I don’t need to listen to that, of course, I know how to share my podcast already and you want to skip this episode, stop.

Because it turns out the majority of people actually get this wrong. So you may not really know what you’re doing when it comes to sharing and linking your podcast, and it’s really important. Okay. I’m Joel Oliver. This is Profits Through Podcasting where we help health focused entrepreneurs generate leads and revenue for their businesses through podcasting.

So linking and sharing your podcasts. Like I said, a lot of people do this incorrectly, and while it can seem simple. I’m not overly surprised that this is an issue because it is so simple and such a seemingly small detail. It’s really easy to overlook and not even think about or realize that you’re doing something wrong.

So I wanna start with a bit of context here first, just to explain what I mean when I say link and share your podcast. What would this be? Well, [00:01:00] sharing links to your podcast. As a whole, like your general podcast page or episodes, and this could be on social media, this could be in email newsletters directly with friends or clients.

It could be links on your own website as well to the podcast, and we’re gonna get into how that should all look. But right now, if we took look at your most recent email newsletter, or let’s say a LinkedIn post where you point people directly to your podcast or a specific episode, what is that link?

What link did you put there for people to click to go to where you wanted them to go? Is it to Apple Podcast or Spotify? Is it to the automatically generated page from your podcast hosting company? Is it to your website? Which of those would be optimal? Well, I’ll tell you, it definitely matters. One of those is really good.

Others not so good. And actually, if you don’t have your own website with the podcast on it, that’s an even bigger problem. So we’re gonna talk about that because you want your podcast to have [00:02:00] a proper home online that you own. Otherwise, you are losing out on a lot of benefits and could be setting yourself up for a lot of problems in the future.

So what are some of the benefits that this would include? Well, SEO traffic, search engine optimization. People coming in through Google because they were searching for something or ai these days even, they were searching for something and you happen to have a, a good authority in the space. Because of the content you’ve posted on your website as well, email list or lead magnet capture.

So if they’re on a website that you own, you can have a way for them to put their email address in there and join your list, get a free download, whatever it is. Maybe even just go directly to work with you. That’s a great benefit. Custom control over the experience, so having proper calls to action on your website, like perhaps a popup, having related episodes, having your, your branding, that sort of thing, and long-term, proper ownership and autonomy of content.

So being able to move it around, having the benefits of posting all that stuff online under a [00:03:00] domain that you own, right? These are all very important. And you could be missing out on them. So considering the benefits that I just listed there of say having everything done properly and existing on your own website, a site that you own, what are the downsides?

If you haven’t done that and you’ve done things like linked. Elsewhere to other platforms. You haven’t set up a proper home online. I’m talking here like linking directly to Apple Podcasts, linking directly to Spotify or your hosting platform when people are either asking you for links or you’re trying to promote your podcast.

Well, first of all, some people might not use the specific service that you link to. Let’s say someone asks for your podcast, you send them a Spotify link, but they don’t use Spotify, they use Apple. Now you’ve given them a link that is essentially useless to them, and you’ve gotta hope that they’re gonna go and search for it on Apple or find it somewhere else.

We don’t wanna have friction, okay? So that’s not good as well. If you are giving links directly to your hosts. Generated pages like for each [00:04:00] episode or the general podcast page, like for Lipson or Spotify, for creators, for example, if you switch hosts later, you lose all of the backlinks. Every link you’ve ever created, any link that was out there online, going to your podcasts or episodes, you didn’t own them, you didn’t build any authority through all that content, and now those links are gonna break.

As well. If you had nothing on your website at all, you’ve completely negated all those potential benefits I mentioned earlier, like potential SEO benefits and domain authority that you could have built up. You don’t own any of it. It’s all on someone else’s website. And then if you switch, you’ve got a big problem ’cause you broke all of the links you’ve ever posted.

So the bottom line is the platforms, if you’re linking to them, they own that listener relationship. Okay. Having your own site lets you own it and convert listeners into patients, clients. Community members for you, whatever the case, however that looks. You want to own as much as you can. Now, yes, of course.

If you have a podcast, people are going to [00:05:00] subscribe on Apple Podcasts. I’m not saying not to link there or that’s not the way to do it. That of course, is very important. Yes, apple is a middleman of sorts there, but that’s fine. That’s how it works. There’s just other cases where we wanna make sure that we’re optimizing things for other reasons.

Okay, so. Let’s talk about the better way to do all of this, and that is a dedicated podcast page with individual episode pages on your website, a domain that you own. That’s what solves this. That’s the optimal way to do it. It is welcoming, it is frictionless, and it is business smart. Okay? It’s the proper strategy.

So we are talking a main podcast page on your website where you’ve got, let’s say, your artwork, your description, an overview of the podcast, maybe a bit of information about you subscribe, links. To the individual platforms. So here’s how to subscribe on Apple. Here’s the Spotify link. Here’s the YouTube link.

Those three are typically fine. You could get into other ones, but they’re not that common. [00:06:00] It’s, it’s up to you. So you’ve got that, and then links to individual episode pages. So every episode, every show notes, all of that is on your site with a different page that you can click into. And then on those individual episode pages, you would have, uh, an embedded player.

So they can click play right there. Uh, whether you’re self-hosting the podcast or if it’s an embedded player from your host, like whatever. Again, Lipsy, Buzzsprout, speaker, Spotify, whatever you’re using, you can embed the player right there on the page so they can click, play and listen. You want all your show notes there.

So, nice, rich. Show notes, perhaps timestamps, if that’s your style. Key takeaways, bullet points, however you want to do your show notes, great, but they have to be substantial enough to provide benefits. A sentence it’s not useful for SEO and it’s certainly not intriguing to get people to tune in. So that’s another thing about having quality show notes.

But the point is here to have them on your site. Some people even go about writing expanded blog articles for each episode to further [00:07:00] make use of the content from that episode beyond just their typical several hundred word, uh, podcast show notes. and Yes, continuing on that thought, we want SEO optimized everything, so that includes the titles, keyword rich. I’m not gonna get into SEO too deeply here, but make sure that, uh, what you’re posting is good. SEO optimized stuff. Okay. You can use transcripts as well on these pages. They don’t have to be, proofread, but even just having the transcript there is good.

It’s more accessible, and it can also help Google index your content even more and see it as more valuable. Okay. internal links, proper links or, or rate as well. Here, but we want to have this on an individual episode page. That’s the main point. And you could even have, with your website design, then you can have a lead capture box at the bottom of every page.

You could have a popup if you want to do that, asking people to put in their email, you. Get whatever it is that you’re offering lead magnet of sorts, that’s a great idea. If it’s related to the episode specifically, even [00:08:00] better. And some people on these episode pages prefer to do, short link where they have, let’s say the episode number, so it’s nice and easy, like my website.com/ 3 0 4 for episode 3 0 4.

So you can always verbally reference that in the episode if you, if you want to do that. You know, there’s some up and downsides there, but in any case, quality episode pages for every episode is what I’m getting at here.

so having things set up this way is optimal for you and your business and your podcast. From here, what do we do? We’ve got it set up well, when you share a link to your podcast, you can link the main page on your site. If you just want to tell people broadly, go subscribe to my podcast, check it out, or someone asks, where can I check out your podcast?

You can send them the link to your website, that main page, because they’re gonna see. All of your episodes listed there. If they want to click into Apple or Spotify, they can click those links. They’re gonna be nice and and big label properly, so you don’t have to guess or ask what platform they use. They [00:09:00] can make that decision on their own.

If they just want to browse right online there in their browser without going to Apple or Spotify, play an episode there. They can do that. That’s great. They may be interested in one of the lead magnets that you’ve got on your website. These are all great things. And you know exactly where to send them.

you have a consistent link that you can put in your social media, your bios, all that sort of thing. that’s what you want to share. And then same goes with specific episodes. When you’re making social media posts or newsletters mentioning your specific episodes, or you want a client to listen to a specific episode, you can give them that.

Link right to the episode. Same deal. They can click it, play it right on your site, or they can click into a platform if they want, and listen on Apple, Spotify, whatever. But this is how it works. We want to be getting as much traffic that we own on the page that we own as possible. Now, something I mentioned earlier, I am not saying to never link.

To Apple or Spotify. Of course you can do that. You can even do occasional [00:10:00] posts like, here’s the Apple link, here’s the Spotify link. Or in your newsletter, you know, you can have it laid out. Like, here’s the website link. Here’s Apple, here’s Spotify. You give people the choices. The thing that we’re trying to avoid is not giving an option so that people end up having only one incorrect.

Option. Like if they are only given an Apple Link, but they use Spotify, they don’t even have an iPhone. Well now you’ve, you’ve given them nothing. You know? Whereas if you link them to your website or even use the smart link, that can detect what they’re using now, they can choose for themselves. You are actually helping them by giving them that link as opposed to giving them a link that is useless to them.

Okay. And as we mentioned, uh, having. No website set up properly at all to even give them a link like we’ve outlined here. That’s bad too, ’cause you’re not capitalizing on the benefits. Now, a lot of times when I meet podcasters who start working with us and I do an audit as I, I do for all new clients, this is a type of thing that I am [00:11:00] finding.

They have been podcasting for a year. They’ve been linking all incorrectly, so they’ve missed out on traffic and leads and money. They’ve missed out on SEO benefits that you would have after a year of posting great content, all because they tried to set it up themselves. They thought they knew what they were doing, but as that saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know.

It’s simple enough, okay, I have a podcast, here’s the Spotify link. But they didn’t realize the downside of just doing that or not having it integrated on their own website, or someone set it up for them and just didn’t do a good job. So anytime someone comes on board with us, because we’re starting to collaborate then and help ensure they’re getting.

The results from podcasting that they want. I have to check all this stuff because I want all these boxes ticked to make sure that they’re doing everything as good as possible to get the results that they want. Okay, so that’s something you’re interested in if you have been podcasting, but you’re ready to level up and ensure that you are getting the most out of it to grow your business.

And generate [00:12:00] leads, generate revenue, and you feel like maybe things are not going as well as they should be, or you’re just ready to get some professional help and, and just level up in podcasting. We can chat about that book, your podcast, vitality Call with me today. I do a podcast audit with all new clients.

As I said, we do ongoing coaching as well to check in on your goals and help make sure that the podcast. He’s optimized and working for you as best as possible. That sounds interesting. There will be a link in the show notes to book your call with me. It’s no pressure to do the call. I pressure you into booking a call, but once we’re on the call, there is no pressure there to spend money.

It’s not a sales call or anything like that. We’re just chatting to see how we can help you and if it might make sense for us to do some work together, I can outline all that for you on the call. But feel free to book one of those. Thank you for listening, and we’ll catch you next time.