How to add a podcast to our website (or not?)

[#1]

Hi everyone, and thanks in advance for your help!

My company wants to start a podcast to expand our digital footprint. I see that some others in our field (video production)  have created another website specifically for their podcasts, adding a new page every time they publish an episode. The pages include links back to their main website, sponsorships, plus either bullet points or full transcript from the podcast.

My question is whether it makes more sense to set up a separate site, or add pages to our existing site. Would a separate site add more SEO juice than keeping those pages on our main site?

Also, if we do add pages, how best to do that? Use a blog module, and treat each new podcast page as a blog post? Or just create a podcast page  template?

Thank you so much for your help on this!

Catie Foertsch

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hey Catie,

Great question! I've come across 2 schools of thought on podcasts:

1. Host the audio file yourself on a blog
2. Have a hosting company like SoundCloud do the hosting

Sounds like you've chosen option 1, hosting the show's RSS feed on a separate domain? That can run a risk of fragmenting your SEO, if it's living off your main domain. You're doing all the right things by providing episode transcripts -- without that, you'd have a tough time seeing organic traffic to the domain hosting the podcast.

You may be better served creating a separate blog on your main domain (assuming the persona / audience for your business and podcast are aligned), and then create a blog post for each new podcast episode, embedding the show's audio file that will become the podcast RSS feed listeners will download on iTunes, etc. Hosting that file on your own blog will require a little more technical wizardry than hosting it on SoundCloud, but in any case, definitely, definitely, definitely keep uploading transcripts for the sake of organic SEO.

You're asking all the right questions!

-- Alex Crumb | HubSpot Academy

[#3]

Hi Alex - thanks so much for this information. Very helpful.

"assuming the persona / audience for your business and podcast are aligned" - they are not. We're looking to target a new persona with our podcast. Why would this be a problem?

[#4]

Hey Catie,

If the persona for your business differs from the target audience of the podcast, it's not as critical to keep them together on the same domain. It's likely the keywords would be pretty different and wouldn't be a lot of cross-pollination, so to speak. If the podcast is for a new venture that's entirely separate, you'd probably be okay letting the new domain / podcast target its own audiences and keywords (again, great call on transcripts).

Maybe include a few direct links from the main site to the new site, and back again, if only to get the off-site link-ranking to help your SEO?

Hope that helps!

-- Alex

[#5]

Hi Alex. I know that I am jumping in on an old thread but do you still feel that using a second blog would be the best way to set up a podcast section? Our agency currently runs a microsite on WP that I would like to move over. It's wagner.live. Thank you! - Wágner

[#6]

Old post but a new problem - so are you saying if the podcast is hosted at soundcloud, itunes, etc and the url for the podcast is embedded into a blog post on hubspot then that would work to feed the podcast via rss.xml?  Or does the audio file actually have to be ON the website for that to occur?

[#7]

Yes. I have begun the migration over which you can find at thewagner.agency/wagnerlive.