Why You Should Treat Each Podcast Episode Like a Blog Post

Dave Jackson:
It's so easy, and it looks so cool. How can it be bad for you?

Dave Jackson:
When it comes to podcast websites, there is one, and I'm gonna call it a mistake, that I see over and over and over. And this is where you go into whoever your media host is, and they will have the option to have an audio player that shows multiple episodes. And the cool thing about this is, let's say, you have a player that shows the last 5 episodes. When you put out a new episode, that player updates to continually still show the last 5 episodes. It's very much SEO it and forget it. And I know I mentioned this in the interview I did, I believe, in episode 2, but I thought we should put this in its own episode just to explain what's going on. Because when you copy the code for that player, it's using a thing called an iframe. Now we're not gonna get super nerdy on this.

Dave Jackson:
But to make a long story short, it's kinda like somebody went to your website, and you've got all that content. And then somebody just took, like, a razor blade and cut out a hole and put the player there. So it looks like it's on your website. But behind the scenes, that information is really on your media host's website. Alright, Dave. So what? That means you're getting 0 SEO. 0. And this is why I always say what you need to do is don't take the show player.

Dave Jackson:
Although, you could have that on a page and label it binge listen if you wanted to. But what you wanna do is take the code for a single player, and then put that on your episode page. And every podcast website should treat every episode like a blog post. So the information that you put together for your episode, that can be the blog post. And then you copy and paste the player. And I would also say, have a way for people to follow slash subscribe on your website right there. That way, you can kinda keyword tweak that post for whatever the keywords are. It's easy to share that one episode versus, oh, here.

Dave Jackson:
Go. Let's check out this episode. Click on this link and scroll down to the 4th episode. No. You have one there. It's easy to share and easy to follow if you've got those links on the bottom. And it's also then easy to see in your stats what pages are doing well because instead of, like, oh, it's this page, but you don't really know what brought it there. Now you can see every page has its own keywords, has its own player.

Dave Jackson:
So when do you use that show player? I'll talk about that right after this. I'm not saying never use that multiple episode player. Like I said, you can make a page that says binge or maybe on a page that you've made for follow, you could have that there for people to sample, etcetera. But in all in all, what I see this on is people will have podpage. Maybe they have some sort of, you know, click funnel or something like that. Instead of having a full website, they have a single page for all of their Podcast. And their way of getting this into a single page is to use the show player, and that's just not a great idea. Again, the better strategy, treat every episode like a blog post.

Dave Jackson:
And so a couple things here. When I make my show notes for my episode in my media host, it's typically a paragraph that gets them to click. And then anything that has a link that you mentioned should be in your show notes. Because when somebody interviews an author and it sounds like a great book, and I swipe up on my phone and there's no link to buy that someplace, that's frustrating. And I've had multiple listeners tell me when I survey my audience, yeah, I love the fact that you always have the links, and I hate it when other people don't. So if you ever wonder what is the most important thing in episode description slash show notes, It's the links to the stuff that you talk about. And so when you say, oh, you need to go do this and click and check it out, and then they swipe up and there's nothing. You've really just sent them into a brick wall.

Dave Jackson:
Let's say you're using WordPress. Paste it there, make your blog post, have your player there, and this is where now, once it's on your website, now you're in the land of Google. So now is where you really expand that from just a single paragraph to an actual article because you're trying to attract Google. Then you have the player, you have the follow buttons, and all those links. But for me, I usually add at least a paragraph or 2. I just did an episode on what makes great content. And there were so many citations. But if we go back to the previous episode where we're talking about Google's EEAT, to be trustworthy, you have to have those links to everything you mentioned proving that you've done your homework.

Dave Jackson:
So to, again, kinda conclude here, nothing wrong with what I call a show player, which has multiple episodes. It has its purpose to let people binge. We'll talk about other ways you can use them as well. However, in terms of SEO, they're horrible. Treat every episode like a blog post. Expand your description and your words once that information gets to your website to attract Google, and you'll end up with more people at your website, which means, if you think about it, once they get to the website and they see the player and they click on play, now you've upped your time on-site, and the words from the, you know, the blog post have attracted Google. And by having more time on-site, yep, that's gonna boost your SEO. If people can share it, that's gonna boost your SEO.

Dave Jackson:
It's just a better strategy than that set it and forget it all in one show player. Now if you know another podcaster that has that situation set up, you're like, oh, man. If you go to the front page, they just have that one multiple-episode player on their website. Could you do me a favor and share this episode with them? Or you can just tell them to go to your podcast website, and they can follow and check out the episode there.

Meg the AI Voice:
Your podcast website is part of the Power of Podcasting Network. Find this show and all of Dave's other projects at powerofpodcasting.com.