Finally! A Podcast Website That Doesn't Suck

Crazy as it sounds, more people read Podcast Pontifications than listen to Podcast Pontifications. Now, that's happening on a podcast about podcasting. Imagine the audience your podcast isn't reaching.

Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.

Want a bigger audience? Improve your website. Want better SEO? Improve your website. Do you want to reach people who have no idea who the heck you are? Improve your website. Here's what the message of the day is, improve your website! Yes, that's right, podcaster, I'm talking to you.

I have talked about this concept in the past. In fact, several years ago, I discovered something called "The Upside Down Podcast Design," and it was created by a friend of mine named Juergen Berkessel. Juergen lives in Florida. He's a German, if you can't tell by the name. Great marketer, smart guy about a lot of various things, and he had this concept called The Upside Down Podcast Homepage Design. I'll put a link to it in the episode details.

And I've talked to Juergen about that. I've tried to implement that, and I'm just not very good at that, but I'm getting a whole lot closer. I first tried it at the very beginning of Podcast Pontifications.  In fact, if you go to the Wayback Machine, I'll also put a link to this in the episode details, because why not? You can see my horrible attempt at doing that, knowing I'm not a designer. Also, I was using just a single page website, which I had a kick of for awhile. It wasn't a very well-done idea, but it was sort of it in principle. It really helped me get there.

And then a year or so ago, I switched to Webflow as my CMS, because I wanted every single episode to have its own episode detail page because that's important. And I also didn't want to use the standard things out there. I wanted a no-code option that wasn't a Wiziwig option. I wanted something new and neat and Webflow seemed to do that. And it's a great. It's a great product. And so I found a template and kind of kluged one together and it sorta put into practice the elements that Juergen talks about with The Upside Down Podcast Homepage Design, but far from perfect.

Well, I changed that. I changed that by hiring a designer. Hi Steve! I hired a designer, Steve Yong. I will have his contact information in the episode details. Steve took what I had done previously inside of Webflow and made it look so amazing. So amazing. So stinking amazing. It took him some time.  I had - all the content that was there. I had the basic elements that were there and needed to put a nice, lovely wrapper around it. And then just blew my mind with some of the great design he did. So wonderful. Wonderful.

So the big question you might have right now, that I certainly have right now, is why did I spend money to do this? Because it costs money to have a professional designer come in and put a very kickin' design around your podcast website. Why did I do this when I don't make - I certainly don't make a living from this podcast. I make a living from podcasting, but certainly not this podcast.

Well, I did it and I do it because of one simple fact. Host-generated websites. I don't care where you're hosted on, host-generated websites are good, some of them, but none of them are good enough. None of them. They just don't have the right sorts of details to do that. Same goes for the other services that are out there like PodLink. I love PodLink. I love the services that will take your RSS feed and put together a nice-looking website, but they're not good enough. They just don't have enough information from the RSS feed to make a good quality website. They get close, but honestly, not close enough.

And let me tell you what I mean by that. Let me give you some proof to that. Even without the really cool design my website has had, as effectively of last night, so it was less than twelve hours old, even prior to that, when it was just on its own, and I did a good job of putting together the content - the design may not have been perfect, but all the content was there - really lovely article, transcription, video, lots of things for people to go through and consume, even if they don't listen, which is kind of nuts.

But I said at the beginning of this, most people aren't even listening. They're reading the content. Let me give you some proof to that numbers. I just ran the analysis before I got on this show. And I found that in February of 2021, so last month, we got a nice, good section of data here, February of 2021, 57% of my content, the way to think about that, let me rephrase that. If you look just at the episodic content, so just the individual episodes of my show that are available in audio form, that are available in video form, that are available in printed form, that are available in emailed form, those individual episodes - so forget the About page and the Home page and the Equipment Guide and things like that.

Now, let's just focus on the episodes themselves, the content people are here to get, ideally, the reason they show up day after day or week after week, and listen to the things I have to say or read what I have to say. If you look at just the content pieces, 57% of my content was consumed by people reading with their eyeballs, not audio. 57% of my audience reads my words. 41% listen. 57% to 41%. 41% listen. And that means download the episode, stream the episode, whatever. 41% of that. 57% read the text.

Now, yeah, there's probably some overlap. I know there are some people who go to the written word page to play the episode, but that's a really small number and there are some that do a hybrid of both, but that's fine.

Look, this is not about an absolute number. It talks about the trend, talks about the intent of people who want to just read as opposed to listen. And keep in mind, the only thing I talk about is podcasting. My show is designed for working podcasters like you. Every single word I write is really only of interest to podcasters. Podcasters like to listen to stuff, but apparently they also like to read.

So yeah, your website matters a lot. Like a lot. And that's from what the audience prefers. Let's go to the people who don't know anything, who are just discovering my content. In February, 76% of my website's traffic was from organic search. 76% of my traffic was from organic search. And for you SEO nerds out there, less than 3% of them were branded search terms. For the rest of you, what that means is only 3% of my search terms are things like "Podcast Pontifications." Not people who are struggling to find my content. It's from people searching for topics that get led to my site. 76% of my website's traffic weren't looking for me, weren't looking for Podcast Pontifications. They were looking for content I produced and found it. Talk about your discovery problem right there.

So yeah, your podcast needs a website. Steve's contact information is in the episode details or get in touch with me. I can also help connect you guys together. I think that's a concept worth sharing, don't you? So share this audio, share this article, share the video, whatever you want to share with someone in your podcasting circle to say maybe we should do this because yeah, you should do this.

And if my ideas and words or video, whatever you watched or listened to or read sparked an idea within you, and you really appreciated that, well, I would really appreciate you going to buymeacoffee.com/evoterra and buying me a virtual coffee. That's always nice.

That's it. I shall be back tomorrow - no, I won't. No, I won't, it's Thursday. Oh my gosh! It's Thursday! I will not be back tomorrow. I'll be back on Monday with a new, all brand new thing to think about yeah - Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!