Summary: The accessibility of podcast shownotes is important, but forgotten by most podcasters. Learn how to make short, easy-to-use URLs with Pretty Link for each of your podcast episodes. Hire me to design stuff for you! Make your message look great by hiring me to personally design your website, presentation, podcast cover art, and more! Visit D.Joseph Design to view my portfolio and request an estimate. Additional sponsor: visit gotomeeting.com, click the Try It Free button and use promo code "Podcast." Don’t make it hard for your listeners You have heard many podcasters—or maybe even yourself—say, “Get the links in the shownotes at mypodcast.com.” That may seem all right, but what if they’re listening to an old episode? Many podcasters will at least mention the episode number, “Get the links in the shownotes for episode 35 at mypodcast.com,” but they still aren’t making it easy for listeners! Subdomains are not effective Subdomains are supposed to be a segregated section of a website (like testing.mypodcast.com), or a completely different website that is a member of a main site (like most of the WordPress.com or BlogSpot.com sites). Using subdomains as redirects (redirecting visitors from one place to another) can be effective for technical, back-end stuff (like making media.mypodcast.com redirect to your separate media server), but I recommend against basic redirects. Unless your website server is setup right, visitors may have problems visiting your subdomain. Do you know how many people still type “http://” or “www.”? Will your subdomain work if “www.” is prepended? Keep your complicated URL … As I shared when I talked about shownotes URLs for search-engine optimization (SEO), let your complete URLs be based on your episode/post titles. Don’t shorten it by changing WordPress’s permalinks. … but simplify with Pretty Link Never speak your long URL; no one will remember it. Instead, make short, easy-to-remember URLs with free Pretty Link (Lite Version) plugin for WordPress. If you run only one podcast on one website, then this is easy to setup. Install Pretty Link (Lite Version). In the lower-left of your WordPress admin, go to Pretty Link > Ootions. Expand Link Options Defaults and ensure that Track Link is enabled and Default Link Redirection Type is “Permanent (301).” When writing the blog post for your shownotes, click Get Shortlink. This button will not be visible until either you have saved a draft or published. Copy the URL, which will be your domain with “/?p=” and a number appended. This is the absolute URL to your post and it never changes, even when you rename your post or change the permalink. Access either Pretty Link Quick Add from your WordPress Dashboard, or Pretty Link > Add New Link in the lower-left. Paste the shortlink into Target URL. Type something short into Pretty Link. If you’re running a single podcast on your website, then I recommend the super-simple method of a number (1, 15, 130, etc.). The title and description fields can be left blank, but the title will be automatically pulled from the post title. If you URL parameters (the stuff following a question mark in a URL, such as “?utm_source=tap024&utm_medium=Tweet&utm_campaign=tap024”) for advanced Google Analytics or anything else, you must turn on Parameter Forwarding in the Link Options for every Pretty Link. Click Create. Do this for all of your podcast episodes, and your listeners can easily get to your shownotes by typing in mypodcast.com/24. Why you should upgrade to Pretty Link Pro While Pretty Link offers “Lite Version” for free, there are some great benefits to upgrading to Pretty Link Pro, which I do recommend. Skip almost all of the above steps by enabling Create Pretty Links for Posts in Pretty Link > Pro Options > Page and Post Options. This creates a new widget in your Edit Post page where you can create a Pretty Link without leaving the page or copying anything! Under these same options,
