The #1 Reason You're Not Gettomg Engagement On Your Show

On today's show, are you not getting any engagement on your website?

I've got a pretty good idea why.

We also have three tools for you.

One is going to help you save your SEO.

Another one is going to help you make money, and the third one will pretty much enable you to do anything on your website.

Plus, we have a quick lesson on the power of words.

Welcome to Podcast Website Tips, the ultimate guide for podcasters who want to level up their online presence with no coding required.

Whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting started, this show gives you practical, actionable advice to build and optimize your podcast website.

We cover everything from design and content to SEO and monetization.

Get ready to attract more listeners and take your website from good to great.

Here's your host, Dave Jackson.

Hey.

Welcome to Podcast Website Tips.

My first tip today is how much friction have you put between you and your visitors?

I had a project this month where I had to contact people.

And one would think I would go to the website, there'd be a word that said contact, maybe fill out a form, maybe show me your email address, something.

And I was amazed at how hard it was to contact people.

There are a couple things that really got me.

Number one, the person that says, oh, just DM me on Instagram.

Not everybody uses Instagram or Twitter or Blue sky or whatever.

You know what?

Everybody uses email.

So that was one that just.

I was just astonished that I couldn't just email you or if you didn't want me to just DM you.

It was contact and it was like, click here to schedule a discovery call.

Well, I don't want a discovery call.

I'm trying to figure out if I need a discovery call with you.

And that would start with an email because can you imagine that if I did that?

Hey, here's a discovery call.

What would you like to talk about?

I don't know.

I'm trying to figure out who you are and if I want to work with you.

I mean, I just.

It was amazing.

And so also think about this for everyone that is using AI as a customer service tool, because I don't know about you, but the one thing you have to train these things is when they say, I need a live person, that it either a says one is not available, give me your email and I will get back to you, or it gets them to a live person.

Because I've had many that I was like, hey, cause I'll give them a shot.

You know, like, here's my question.

It'll give me an answer that doesn't do it.

I might try a different question, but many times it keeps sending me to the same wrong answer.

And I'm like, okay, give me a live person.

And I'm not sure.

Go in and look at your stats and see how often AI is actually helping the customer.

Because, I don't know, too many people are like, hey, that was amazing.

I know of one company whose name is escaping me right now that I was like, hey, look, AI actually, you know, helped me.

It was amazing.

So think about all the things you want your audience to do, whether that's follow the show.

At PodPage, we have a follow page you can set up.

That way you don't have to say, find me.

Wherever you find your podcast, I'll put a link in the show notes.

I had this happen again a couple weeks ago where I went to find a show.

I typed in the exact name of the show and it did not come up.

You do not want to say find me.

Number one, why is your show lost wherever you find your podcast?

Because if you're looking in Spotify and sometimes Apple, it's not going to come up.

And now people have to keep searching or in most cases, they just give up.

So if you're not getting the activity you want on, the things you want your visitors to be active on, try to do it yourself.

Or call a cousin or a friend and go, hey, I want you to go to my website and do this.

And it's really great.

If you want to do this, have them do it in front of you and stand behind them, because you'll be amazed at what people click on and what they miss.

And this is just an obvious case of, we know the website because we're there every day, and all of a sudden, Cousin Carl, you're like, wait, and don't just let them do it.

And if you can get them to think out loud, okay, I'm going to click on this because I think this is this and I'm trying to do this.

So I'm going to click here, have them think out loud.

But I'm just amazed.

If you're trying to get engagement with your audience, have you put up any kind of hurdles because you want zero.

So when you started your podcast, you picked a domain name that it turns out is hard to spell, hard to type, maybe put a bunch of numbers in it, you know, for whatever reason, you're going to rebrand.

And the problem is everything has been pointing at domain number one, and now you want to point it at domain Number two, and even though you just started the podcast, or even worse, if you've been having it for years, you don't want to lose the SEO.

And so in theory, we used to tell people at PodPage, oh, just forward the domain with Path.

And it turns out to the best of my knowledge, that Google Domains, which was bought by Squarespace, is one of the few domain handlers that allows you to do that.

And then I found.

And this is a real domain.

I don't ask me why.

Redirect Pizza.

Yeah, that's it.

And what's cool about this?

I'll have a video in the show notes.

You go in and you say, here's my old domain.

Here's the new domain, and forward this with Path.

You have to throw a little, you know, numbers into your domain to get it to forward properly.

And it's free.

Now, if you want to see how many, you know, people have gone from point A to point B, that is a fee.

It's not a lot.

And it is because you can do five, you know, domain names with a hundred thousand requests a month for free.

The basic plan, you can do 15 names with a million requests.

That's $15 a month.

So basically, you could do that if you wanted to see that.

And when the number of redirects gets down to zero, then you just cut it off.

But I was really amazed by this.

And really, this show was originally called your podcast website, and I had your podcast website.com.

and then after I started working for PodPage, we needed a podcast.

I said, I got one.

So we rebranded this to podcast websitetips.com and I wanted to forward the domain, and there are things like, you know, podcast websitetips.com voicemail that I didn't want to lose.

And the cool thing is, if you go to the old domain, your podcast website.com voicemail, it will redirect because of the path to podcast websitetips.com voicemail.

So if you're moving from one domain to the other, you don't want to lose the SEO juice.

Check it out again.

It's a kind of bizarre name.

It is Redirect Pizza.

I've talked in the past about Genius Link.

I love that service.

I use it.

It's a whopping $6 a month.

And what it does is I can basically send somebody a link, and if I have an affiliate program or if I have an affiliate, you know, I'm a partner with Amazon and Sweetwater and B and H and all the other places, I can send them to A page that has a link to all of those and they can decide which one they want to use.

Love that service.

I had someone at podpage that where you can build your own store and they had a ton of products and they were affiliates and they're like, nothing against PodPage, but there's no categories, you know, the.

It's not really meant for people with a ton.

In that case, you know, you would want to link to maybe your Etsy store or something of that nature.

And they were doing affiliates.

So I found this tool and it's interesting because I used this probably 10 years ago.

Back then you had to host it on your own server.

You had to be a bit of a nerd.

And now it's self hosted and it's called Fresh Store.

And I will say I signed up.

It's a whopping $4 a month.

And the thing I like about it is, yes, you can tie it in with Amazon and ebay, but if like in my case, I have Sweetwater as an affiliate and I like Sweetwater a little better than Amazon, just the customer service is through the roof.

And I said, hey, can I add my own affiliate links?

And they're like, yes.

And so it is Amazon compliant, so you're not gonna break any rules.

I will say this.

I went in and said, because, you know, AI is the bee's knees, as my grandma used to say.

And I said, hey, make a store for me based on the word podcast.

And it gave me things like facial soap.

Yep.

Not making that up.

I was like, you know, maybe we all need to clean our faces a little more in the world of podcasting.

But I was not overly impressed, but I really didn't want that.

Anyway, I'm gonna go in and pick my own microphones and stands and lighting and all that stuff and set it up.

And it's not set up yet, but for four bucks, if you're a person that does a lot of affiliate marketing, you could easily have this thing pay for itself.

And from what I've seen, it's gonna take me maybe a half hour to set this up.

I already went in and set it up and tried to make the automatic store and was like, yeah, nevermind.

But just to go in, set up a couple categories and I've probably got, I don't know, 15, 20 products I'll recommend.

And if affiliate marketing is something you do, or if you're trying to make money with your podcast and you don't have enough downloads to get a sponsor and you're not selling Your own product and service, then sell somebody else's products and services through affiliates.

Links are in the show notes.

So I run a podcast for my local city, Akron, Ohio.

I've creatively named it Akron Podcast.

You can find it@akronpodcast.com on my pod page.

And I needed an events calendar.

And that is something that's not built into pod page.

So I kind of went looking and found this site called ELF Site.

So apparently I don't know what's going on with the Internet with the dot pizza and now ELF site, I'm like, okay, that's not exactly the most descriptive thing I've ever heard, but they have a ton of scripts.

So I found an events calendar.

And here again, it's, I want to say, $4 a month, maybe six.

I know you can get up to like 96 different things.

So if you want banners on your website, or a countdown timer or a store locator or a QR code or an FAQ or, I mean, it goes on age verification.

What are you doing on your website?

Etsy reviews, ebay reviews, you know, all sorts of stuff.

And I found, like I said, an appointment booker.

If you want that, that's there as well.

I mean, I could go on.

The list goes on forever.

And I use the event calendar.

I go over, I log into elfsight, I go into my little event calendar, I add new events, and I've already copied and pasted the code in my case into a custom page on podpage, made a link for it, and we're good to go.

And so I was really amazed at just all the, like, if you need cookie consent on your website, if you need a image carousel, that's there.

There are just tons of things that you can do.

And I was amazed.

So if you are feeling like you were somewhat limited to what was going on with your website, no matter what you're doing, well, then you might want to check out elfsight and I'll have a link out in the show notes.

All right, in this last one is both an announcement and a lesson.

And that is PodPage has announced for Elite Annual members, free podcast website design services.

You get a free design polish based on your podcast artwork and a free live design review with the PodPage CEO, better known as Brendan Mulligan, for expert design service.

So you get to sit down with Brennan.

He'll basically kind of polish up your website based on your artwork.

And that's the cool thing.

That's the new thing we're doing now.

Notice I said for Elite Annual members.

And this was written up in POD News.

And we're not blaming Pod News, but just the fact that I'll read this whole thing.

The podcast website tool POD Page lets anyone get a great looking website for their podcast.

But today for Elite annual members, they're announcing free podcast website design services, free design polish based on your podcast artwork, and free live design review with the PodPage CEO for expert design device.

So we had the word here free three times and we had people sign up that thought podpage was free and we're like, no, the design polish is free if you are an elite annual member.

Now, we didn't have a lot of people, we had more than one.

And so if you're doing things for free, be careful because people that want things for free are not happy when they're not free and might maybe go out and flame you on social note.

Luckily, this did not happen to us.

I've had that happen to me in other places.

So be very careful if you're giving away something for free.

To make sure that people know exactly what they're getting for free, our website podcast websitetips.com, throw on a slash follow and you can follow this show for free.

You can in whatever app you want.

I'm not telling you to go find my podcast.

I'm telling you right where it is.

It's at podcast websitetips.com follow while you're there.

Sign up for the newsletter and be notified when a new episode appears.

I'm Dave Jackson, head of Podcasting odpage.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We'll see you again real soon with another episode of Podcast Website Tips.

Podcast Website Tips is part of the Power of Podcasting Network.

Find this and all of Dave's shows@powerofpodcasting.com.