Traditional Web Page Advertising
If the podcaster is looking to do some traditional advertising for his Web page to get more Web traffic, which in turn would give him more listeners and subscribers, there are a number of ways to do so.
Back links: This is where a great majority of normal Web traffic comes from; the more back links the podcaster has out, the more often people will be able to find the podcaster’s Web page through other sites. Finding high traffic areas for the podcaster’s back links is a very important aspect because a back link is only important if the podcaster is getting either traffic or an increased page ranking with the link. An easy way to get a group of listeners to visit the podcast or subscribe to it is by going into forums related to the topic and posting invitations for others to visit or view a podcast.
In most cases, people will come back to listen to the podcast again or will subscribe to the podcast to automatically have the newest podcasts downloaded. This can get the podcaster more visitors and viewers. If the podcaster remains active in forums, the he can put back links into a signature to draw in more viewers. This means that the podcaster will be able to receive one back link per post, which can get a lot of traffic from that forum while trying to promote the podcast at the same time.
Back links can do so much for the podcaster and it is important for him or her to put links out in order to advertise for the podcast, even while using other forms of advertising. They can help get the podcaster’s Web site a higher page rank and more traffic so it is a win-win situation. The stronger the anchor link used in the back link (this is the text that displays which can then be clicked on to navigate to the linked URL), the greater the search engine benefit.
Normal Search Engine Optimization: In order to appropriately advertise a podcast, it is best to have a good understanding of the concept of search engine optimization (SEO). First of all, the podcaster needs to modify his or her Web site URLs so that they are “SEO friendly.” Rather than have a URL that is very long or uses a lot of numbers and/or symbols, this needs to be changed to keyword friendly terms that are small and easy for a search engine to find. This helps greatly, as it will not give the engine pages filled with messy code; search engines prefer friendlier URLs that use words and phrases that will often be used as search terms.
Another thing that search engines prefer is that the links on the Web page do not link reciprocally. This is where two Web pages are linking directly back to each other. For example, let us say that Site A has a link to Site B but then Site B has a link to Site A. This would be a reciprocal link that can get you negative points with search engines. They tend to frown heavily on reciprocal linking, so it is a good idea to avoid doing this. Later on, in the chapter “Getting Your Podcast Heard,” this will be more thoroughly explained, and we will look at SEO in greater detail.