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

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.

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 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

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

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

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

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

Dave's other projects

atpowerofpodcasting.com.