Podcast Blog SEO: How Bad Links Penalize Your Site

Podcast Blog SEO: How Bad Links Penalize Your Site

Demystifying SEO buzzwords like backlinks and analytics with podcast expert and Podetize Co-Founder Tom Hazzard?

Your website is an integral part of your platform as a podcaster. To track the growth and the success of your show, you have to monitor your podcast and website analytics - an idea that is foreign to so many hosts - especially if they're just starting out. So let’s first talk about backlinks, their purpose and how to use them properly.

What Is A Backlink? A backlink is simply a link on someone else’s website to a page on your website.?

Backlinks As A Strategy

Podetize believes - scratch that, knows- your website is an integral part of your platform as a podcaster. To track the growth and the success of your show, you’ve got to monitor not only your podcast analytics but also your website analytics, and backlinks are actually a big part of that.?

For hosts who do guest interviews, there's a big opportunity to get very valuable backlinks to your website and benefit from the traffic. An example of this would be a guest blog post you wrote on someone else’s website. At the bottom of that blog, you put a link to your own website.

Podetize Truth Bomb: The more that your website is linked to other websites, wherever they are, that is a measure of the value of your website. It increases your level of authority in the eyes of Google.?

Proper Backlinks

Google is pretty sophisticated, and they have a system for determining whether backlinks are proper and useful to a site's rankings or leading nowhere - so to speak. If you have the wrong kind of backlinks, it can hurt your website’s authority and rankings. If Google believes your site is completely out of integrity, you’re going to be in their penalty box and they won’t send any traffic to your website.??

A Cautionary Tale

I had a client contact with Podetize. I ran an audit of her podcast and it looked great. I also ran an audit of her website, which I always do, and even though she had a ton of written content on her website, she wasn't ranking anything for keywords. After some digging, we discovered that she had hired a company in 2017 for SEO. This company used a bot that created a script that in turn created tens of thousands of backlinks to her website from Russian servers. The backlinks were useless after the initial surge and in the end, it was hurting her ranking and ability to rank on Google. The almighty Google decided the links were spam and in search results, that means the website isn't worth anything, making it blind to anybody searching.?

In Good Standing

Good backlinks are legitimate genuine links from one website to another. I’ll give you an example.?

• Tracy wrote a column for Inc. Magazine for over four years. She’s got 150 to 200 articles she wrote that are on Inc.com. For each of those, there is a graphic image, title and reference from one of Tracy’s websites. All of her articles that were written on Inc. are listed on her own website. For every one of those articles she wrote, there’s also an author portion and a link from Inc.com to Tracy’s website. People who read her articles on Inc. will go to learn more about her on her own website. That’s a very powerful backlink from a very authoritative website.?

If you’re a contributor of some kind on another website, having that link back to the main web page of your website creates a very powerful backlink. If you have a guest on your show, feature them in your blog posts on your website about your episode and link to their website, you’re providing value to your listeners and your guests while creating a very powerful backlink. You can also request that your guests do this as well, and you’ve created the potential for traffic and traction in a few easy steps.?

Podetize Truth Bomb: Links from low authority or spammy websites can hurt you.

Podcast Analytics

In the Podetize.com client portal, we’re the only podcast hosting platform that gives you your key website analytics in addition to your key podcast analytics.. We give you your top 20 organic keyword phrases you rank on and every keyword that shows position 1, 2, or 3 are on the first page of a Google search. That’s what podcasting can do for you and should do for you if you consistently publish episodes over time and create a comprehensive blog post for each episode on your website with your keywords and strong backlinks.?

There is no shortcut to powerful backlinks, and there’s no shortcut to hacking SEO. There are steps you can take, over and over again, a strategy for SEO, that are simple and that work in your favor. And there are strategies that are quick fixes and don't work. This is helpful as you build out your podcast and figure out what you're looking for and how to make it work for you.

You can watch Tom and Tracy Hazzard’s full episode below or listen to?Feed Your Brand?on your favorite podcast player.