It is possible to think of these things as separate or even in competition with each other. On the other hand they can be complementary and reinforcing. In this post I be looking at what works and what doesn’t and why.
Let’s get into it.
Your website and podcast should, ideally, be driving traffic to each other. A player in your website will point people to your show. A call to action along the lines of “And show notes are at my website www.myshow.com/episodetheme” or some such link drives people to the website. All this is interesting but why?
Well, your website is a place you own. It is unlikely to suddenly change it’s rules of engagement and you find yourself banned by you from your own website. People have and I suppose will continue to find themselves removed from iTunes. But on your website, you own the real estate.
Here you can keep your listeners up to date but more importantly, you gather their email addresses. This may be just so you can let them know when you’re away or there’s a bonus episode or whatever. It really doesn’t matter until it does. If for some reason you are bumped from Apple Podcasts you can let your listeners know you are onto it and will be back soon. Once you’ve been through whatever is needed from the Apple types.
The other reason to have your own website is a little thing called Google. They have been indexing blogs and so on since they started. With the relatively new Google Podcasts app you will need a separate page somewhere on the interwebs with your RSS feed on it. This page must only have one RSS feed and be for just one show. So separate pages for separate shows. A bit of a pain but that’s what Google wants. While 60-80% of downloads still come from Apple either through their app or as scraped by other app providers, Google will be a bigger thing over time. This is my guess as they will be throwing their algorithmic magic at the problem. The idea is that they’ll be placing podcasts nearby videos and news and so on in search results. This is another reason to have both a podcast and a blog. SEO feedback loops and, hopefully, more listeners.
Takeaways
- If you have a podcast you need a website
- Your website is insurance against being bumped of iTunes
- Google is looking for podcast RSS feeds
- Have a website!