Better Radio Websites

Any successful website, whether it’s for a radio station or not, needs to do all it can to keep visitors coming back regularly… multiple times per day is ideal, but at least once per day. Great content is the number one reason for visitors to return often. Let’s say you have great content covered whether it be local news, events, etc. There could be some mistakes you’re making that can leave a bad taste in your visitor’s mouth that forces them to leave and not return – ever.

1. Disregarding page load times. It’s important that all your content (most importantly your images) is optimized for mobile visitors first. Loading time is extremely important for any user experience.

2. A website that is not responsive to all devices. Most traffic is mobile traffic now – whether that be on an iPad, cell phone, or other mobile devices. So, your website should adapt to any device it can be viewed on. If it’s not, the visitor will simply go elsewhere.

3. Overlooking outdated text/content. If your site has “Copyright 2005” at the bottom of your last news post was a few months ago or more, then it’s past time to ensure the dates are correct and to add new content.

4. Overlooking spelling and grammar mistakes. Spelling and grammar mistakes will cause visitors to lose trust in your information. Install the free “Grammarly” plugin inside your browser to check your copy for mistakes or write your copy inside Word or other smart word processors first.

5. Not ensuring links open properly. For example, opening an internal link (on the same site) in a new tab is a no-no. This means the visitor can’t use the back button. Ensure that external links (links off your website) open in new tabs. This ensures the visitors can come back to your site without having to hit “back” several times.

6. Overusing stock photos. If the images you’re using in your pages and news posts look staged or from a free stock photo website, they will appear inauthentic and leave visitors with a sense of distrust. The best photos you can add to your radio station website are the ones you take yourself.

7. Showing “Under Construction” pages. Delete these right now. We highly advise against websites having pages posted that are simply not ready for prime time. Visitors simply do not return to under construction pages. It’s better to not have the pages active now and then create a buzz about them later once they are published.

8. Overusing banner ads. Generating revenue from your station website is crucial, but visitors don’t come looking for ads. They come for the content. If your content isn’t immediately consumable by the visitor, then expect your bounce rates to skyrocket. It’s better to keep visitors coming back and grow page numbers than have lots of ads on the page that fewer and fewer visitors will see over time.

9. Overusing popup boxes or modal windows. Everyone wants more subscribers or to ensure visitors know about the big contest happening right now. But try not to be so over the top with these. Ensure these appear every so often rather than every visit.

10. Auto-playing audio/video. Unexpected audio can annoy your visitors and potentially cause problems. The visitor might be visiting your site in a public setting or workplace and the unexpected sound could send them scampering to close the page very quickly.

Examine your website often to see if you are guilty of any of these. There are more we could have covered, but those are for another time.

Have an awesome week online making your radio website better. See you next time!

The speed of any website helps form the first impression for a visitor of that website and the business it represents. Developers and content creators strive hard to make a website aesthetically pleasing as well as functional by adding numerous features, content, and functionalities. However, if these features or the content are not adequately optimized it may adversely affect website speed.

How fast a website loads is instrumental to anyone visiting the site. According to research, 47% of people don’t wait for more than two seconds for a web page to load.

It is a human tendency to consider a faster website more reliable and professional. Inversely, a slow website can be annoying for users. Most users bounce immediately and prefer visiting other, faster websites to meet their requirements. Turning around that negative impression can be very challenging.

Periodically, you should test your radio station website to see how well it’s performing. There are a number of amazing speed testing tools out there but we will have a look at four free tools here.

Here are the tools that you should bookmark and test your website on occasion to see how well it’s performing.  (Links to these in the show notes.)

1. Google PageSpeed Insights (https://pagespeed.web.dev)

2. GTmetrix (https://gtmetrix.com)

3. Pingdom (https://tools.pingdom.com)

4. Fast or Slow (https://www.fastorslow.com)

Keep in mind that the scoring on each of these tools varies for a number of reasons, so you may get a great score in one tool and not so good on another. That doesn’t mean one test service is better than another. The key is to apply the advice they provide to give a better experience to your visitors.

In most tests we’ve seen on active radio station homepages, large images played the biggest part in negative scoring. Simply optimizing your images to the smallest file size has shown significant increases in scoring.

If your images are optimized the best they can be and you’re still receiving low scores, then look at your overall page size. Can the homepage be less cluttered? Could you replace a multiple image slider with a single call to action?

When de-cluttering, weigh your options on what is really needed. Remember that a slow-loading website could be the reason visitors are not returning as often as you need them to. And that can affect your digital revenue.

If your homepage is optimized and de-cluttered and you are still receiving low scores, then it’s likely your code or the host server that’s the issue. That means it’s time to speak with your website developer or hosting provider to see what can be improved. We’ve seen optimized websites run slowly on a poor website host or a low-cost shared hosting plan.

And I should mention that you can perform the same tests on your competition as well.

Hopefully, you will bookmark these tools and test your radio station website often to see how it’s performing. Best wishes for high scores every time.

Need help with your radio station website? Reach out to us at skyrocketradio.com.

You can spend a lot of time creating content so that your listeners and website visitor stay informed. This great content helps with search engine optimization as well. But what if there were evidence that many of your visitors are not finishing the articles you publish? Would you still take the time to create extensive news articles and blog content and if so, would you feel bad about dedicating large amounts of resources to that content that you knew wasn’t being read?

A few years ago, Chartbeat and Slate.com published a research piece that analyzed how much people actually read through entire articles as well as some of the other actions they take before leaving your site. Here’s what their research showed…

10 Percent of Readers Won’t Scroll at all: While data shows that most readers scroll through about 60 percent of articles, as much as 10 percent are not scrolling at all. This data does not include people who bounce (get to the page and immediately leave). These people spend a very small amount of time reading the first few sentences to get the gist without scrolling.

Only 60 Percent of Articles are read by most people: There is a good chance that only 60 percent of your articles are getting read to the median scroll depth. This indicates that readers are not staying interested in articles long enough to get the meat and potatoes or the conclusion. 

Even people who don’t finish articles are sharing them socially: The Chartbeat data examined the percentage of people who scrolled through the article against the overall amount of tweets to those articles and found that people are sharing articles even before they finish reading them. Chartbeat’s data cannot tell the relationship between when the articles were shared (retweeted) compared to where exactly on the page visitors were but was able to show evidence that many people were sharing before they got close to the end of articles. 

65.7 percent of readers spend time below-the-fold: The “fold” is the bottom of the page once it’s loaded. Think of the place where you have to scroll any to see it. Chartbeat says that higher-quality content causes people to scroll further, indicating that all is not lost for quality content producers.

The takeaways: The data in this research shows some very sad and yet some very promising information on how users engage with our content.  We lose 10 percent of visitors before they have any time to interact with our content and the majority of readers, 60 percent, only have the capacity to make it to the median length of our content.  It was revealed that a lot of readers see the majority of content on photos and videos indicating that these visual elements are very helpful content pieces and should be used aggressively. In other words, have a good photo to go with every article.  

Do a little research of your own with Facebook and Google Analytics to see what content works better for your audience and try to do more of that.

Have a great week making your radio station website better!  Reach out to us if you need help at https://www.skyrocketradio.com.

Before you sit down to make your list of website goals, you need to know why your site exists. Please don’t say, “because everyone including my competitor does” or “for better branding”. Neither of those is the proper response. What action do you want your website visitors to take? What do you want them to do or know once they’ve left your website?

Do you want them to…?

Specific visitors may have completed all of these by giving you their information, signing up for your newsletter, listening to the station, etc. So, now what is the purpose of your website? Retaining them by getting them to return on a regular basis.

What ongoing website goals should you set?

There are lots of other measurable stats that we could mention working on as goals but try to limit your primary goals to the things that directly impact the station's bottom line. It’s all about increasing the awareness of your radio station, making more revenue from digital sales, and attaining better visitor data.

Having everyone on board and on the same page is CRUCIAL: Everybody… from the digital content person to the air talent to the programming and sales team… all the way to the General Manager/Owner. Everyone should know the purpose and the importance of the goals set for your radio station website.

Have you noticed that everyone has lost interest in the station website? If your on-air team isn’t promoting it and your sales department isn’t selling it is because there’s no definitive direction.  If you haven’t taken the time to explicitly define the goals of your station website, then get the appropriate personnel together and do this right away. Follow up on this strategy each week with a meeting specifically focused on the website where you can review analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t.

Please reach out to us at skyrocketradio.com if we can help you.

Each week we explain ways to make your radio station website more appealing to listeners, but what are you doing online to attract more advertisers?  How are they finding out about all the opportunities that your radio station has that could benefit them?  This week we’ll talk about why your station or group of stations should have an additional dedicated corporate/group website.

Having a website has become so “normal” that advertisers and the public simply expects all companies to have a website no matter what business they are in.  Being active on social media is great, but it’s very hard to close a sale there.  You need to have a website where you can send people to that are looking to advertise.  

Sure, you could have a page on your website that does this, but how much detail can you fit on one or two pages? Can you really fit in all the advertising opportunities, how it’s involved with the community, events that it’s a part of regularly, and possibly a showcase of your best creative work?

Think about it, when you need information about something probably the first thing you will do is search for it on Google.  (Everyone does this.)  Will your station appear within those results if a new business owner searches for “advertising in (your city)”?

1. Competitive Edge: With more and more stations increasing their web presence, your station/group will be more likely to lose business to your competitor because you’ve failed to properly represent yourself.

2. Increased Awareness: A website makes it easy for advertisers to learn more about your station(s) at their own pace. 

3. Instill Confidence: Providing free/useful information is a great way to instill confidence in your clients because it positions you and your team as community thought leaders and forward thinkers. A great way to give away this information is with a blog.

4. Increased Hours of Operation: Your corporate/group website is available to the world 24/7/365. This makes it possible for your advertisers to contact you outside of your normal business hours – when they are thinking about new advertising possibilities. 

5. Reduced Costs: Have you ever tried designing and printing flyers for an upcoming sales event? Almost any printed item can be converted to a web page and distributed by e-mail at far less cost and time than any other medium.

6. Enhances Company Image: A corporate/group website can help you to establish a credible, professional image, instilling a level of trust with your advertisers and their purchasing confidence will follow. 

7. Better Customer Service: Does your staff spend a lot of time on the phone answering questions from advertisers? Do they keep answering the same questions and sending out the same material?  Reduce the time and costs associated with these repetitive tasks by having frequently asked information on your website.

Your radio station website is created to connect with and inform your listeners. A corporate/group website is created to connect with current advertisers and convert new ones.

Could you include all of this information on a page within your radio station website? Absolutely, but we believe that a website fully focused on generating more sales is the better play.

So, if you don’t have a corporate/group website, then it’s something to consider.

The homepage slider. They’re sometimes called “carousels” or “slide shows“. They once ruled the web because people were captivated by something moving on the page. Over time though, and especially in recent years, they’ve become a disappointing user experience. 

Here are 5 reasons why you end the relationship with your huge homepage slider.

1. Sliders Contribute to Lost Traffic: Sliders slow download times because they often use multiple large images, which quickly eat up bandwidth.

Websites lose traffic when it takes a significant amount of time to load content. That few milliseconds of slowness in loading several large images have been proven to contribute to a higher bounce rate. “Bounce rate” is the percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without taking any action, such as clicking on a link, filling out a form, or making a purchase.

2. Sliders can become invisible to your visitors. Banner blindness is when people subconsciously ignore content that resembles an advertisement.

When users visit a website, they have a particular objective in mind (like reading more about a news story they heard on the radio or registering for a contest) and anything resembling an advertisement gets passed over – both visually and perceptually.

3. Sliders have horrible click rates: Visitors simply do not get clicked. This means they are not effective in moving visitors around your website and getting visitors to do what you want them to.  A study by

4. Sliders can harm your SEO efforts: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing website traffic and exposure to your brand through proper search engine results. Contributing factors include:

- Slow site speeds because of multiple large image downloads. Slow-loading websites get pushed down in search results while faster loading sites get preference.

- Sometimes the headings in the slides are H1 (heading) tags. This creates problems for search engine rankings because the content isn’t following the correct hierarchy for HTML.

- Some older sliders could possibly be flash-based and therefore impossible for search engines and some modern browsers (mainly mobile) to read.

5. Sliders can overwhelm visitors and turn away certain audiences: Some sliders move so quickly that people can’t read the full message and take any action on the information.  Sliders are not accessible to all audiences. Not only do people with vision impairments miss slider navigation but some sliders can malfunction within specific browsers that disabled persons use to navigate the web.

So, what are some slider alternatives? 

Instead of showcasing multiple messages in a slider, narrow down the single most important one, or display several smaller static messages stacked in columns or rows. Small images load faster, and you still get the multiple messages across that you’re wanting to. Just don’t fill the page with every option you can think of (overwhelming).

We’ve seen some radio stations use video. Just be sure they are short and focused with one clear message.

We continue to see sliders filled with large static images of every daypart show. Folks, studies have clearly shown that sliders are doing the opposite of what you intend them for. You think they are promoting your shows. They’re not. They are simply distracting users from valuable content they come to the website for.

There are so many reasons to get rid of sliders. I hope this podcast helps you start a journey to a slider-less website.

Evergreen content is a powerful tool for building traffic, earning links, and improving rankings. If you want to create a successful website, it should be part of your content strategy.

What Is Evergreen Content? The term “evergreen” comes from the world of plants. It describes those plants that don’t lose their leaves with the seasons and instead stay green all year round.

That is also what evergreen content is: content pieces that continue to be relevant long past their publication date, regardless of what’s happening in the world. While all content stays around, the evergreen variety stays on top of search results for months, years, even decades.

How do they do that? By revolving around topics that people are always interested in, such as: vacation hotspots, how to train your dog, recipes, etc.

Non-evergreen topics would be like local or celebrity news, seasonal/holiday content, the latest iPhone release, etc.

Basically, evergreen topics are perpetually important while non-evergreen topics only have temporary significance and will go away.

A well-running radio station website will have lots of relevant content to keep bringing in visitors. An article that gets lots of attention one day can be completely out of date a week later. This makes it much harder to build sustainable traffic. If you don’t continually publish new stuff, your stream of visitors tapers off.

Write an evergreen piece of content once and it will continue to bring in traffic without you having to do much of anything. Sure, you might have to update it here and there if new information comes out, but the bulk of the article will always be relevant and helpful to readers – who continue to look for, share, and link to it.

Here are some tips for creating evergreen content

1. Choose your topics and make sure they qualify. Brainstorm topics and enter them into keyword research tools like Google Trends to get variations.

2. Create content that’s in line with your station brand. If you’re a top 40 station, with a younger audience, you’re not going to post articles on your website about the places to get the best senior citizen deals. Write for your station audience.

3. Avoid non-evergreen angles and dating your content.

4. Update your content occasionally, if necessary.

Here are some types of evergreen content

1. Tutorials and “How to” Guides.

2. Problem-solving.

3. Lists. Whether you like list posts or not, there is a lot of data that proves that they simply perform better.  There was a study of headline preferences. Numbered headlines came out on top — way on top.

These have been ideas for your radio station listeners on your website. You could also fill a group or market-type website with evergreen content that targets advertisers. Visit https://www.markettheme.net for a reference.

- 5 things to ask your radio advertising rep about.

I hope you can see that evergreen content has the ability to consistently bring in traffic over long periods of time. It takes some more thinking and preparation to figure out, however, in the long run, the work that you need to put in results in better performance and less maintenance over time.

Now you know what goes into creating evergreen content. Now it’s just a matter of putting it into practice and making it a part of your content strategy.

I recently had a conversation with a local sales manager who works for a national group in a medium-sized market and asked him how they were doing at selling their station websites. I was blown away by his response, “We don’t unless someone asks about it – which is never.” When I asked why he said that there, "wasn’t much local content and really no reason to focus on the website". And then most that was done at the corporate level. I was just in awe.  But, he was correct.  The website wasn't much to look at, which was surprising for a larger group. 

Here are some reasons why your site may not be growing visitors or getting enough sales.  

Your content is not fresh: Would you buy a newspaper or magazine ad if the cover only changed every couple of months? Or never? Gosh, I hope not. Good/fresh content is so important for both visitors and advertisers.  Besides search engines, let’s not forget about the indirect influence of social media on rankings and traffic. Great content is more likely to be shared on social media channels and that means more clicks to your website. That’s why sharing your website content on social media is more important than simply posting it there.

You’re not promoting your site and/or its content: If you’re not hammering the benefits of your website on-air, the smart advertiser will know that you’re not very interested in promoting it (or their purchased ad on it).  Radio is the most proven form of advertising, so why not promote the website content as often as possible on-air?

Your salespeople are not trained to sell the website: Show them how important and relevant the station website is to you. If it is not just as important as the on-air signal, then this is where you can start. Emphasizing digital assets is a must-have mentality for any radio station that wants to survive moving forward.  Do the people who are tasked with selling your website know every opportunity that exists and what each location costs? Therefore, a Digital Inventory List is so important.

You’re not tracking the effectiveness of your website: If you’re producing good content and promoting it well, over time you will learn what works well and what doesn’t. If you’re not tracking the effectiveness of your content, then you miss out on this opportunity. Once you can see a trend, your content producers will have a guideline to go by and produce more of what the audience wants. For some it’s local news, for others event calendar and so on.

You have too many links away from your website: Radio stations that display RSS feeds that lead to other websites is one of our biggest pet peeves. We understand every station wants format news on their website. However, it’s important to ask yourself if the links away from your site, and the advertisers you sell to be on it, are worth it. What’s most likely to happen, the visitor will bookmark their content site and go straight there next time bypassing your site altogether.

Your website doesn’t perform well: Online visitors are a demanding bunch and have high expectations of the websites they visit. Here is a list of the things they will expect:

- Your site loads quickly.

Conclusion: Having more visitors and advertisers for your station website ultimately comes down to how involved the management team is with it.  Hopefully, these steps bring more visitors and revenue your way.

It’s probably safe to say that when most people upload images to their station website, they neglect adding additional meta information they should. We’re talking about the ALT TAG, DESCRIPTION TAG and the CAPTION. Most of the time these three meta fields will NOT appear on the frontend of your website, but if you DO add them, it can help your website grow and help a special segment of your visitors.

Title: In this episode, I failed to mention the title tag.  The title is the only attachment detail required by WordPress. This defaults to the name of the file but should always be changed to a descriptive title of the image. It's important to always change this because you can also use the title to search for images within your media archive.

ALT Tag: If I had just one search engine optimization tip to give, it would be to add alt tags to every images. As everything has been becoming more visual, search engines are putting more value on these tags than other copy in your post or page.

Alt tags also help search engines categorize images in their image search, which can help your pages and posts to show up in more results.

Description: An image description tag gives more details than alt text and allows someone to learn more about what is in an image. ALT text gives the user the most important information while image descriptions provide further detail. The description field can hold as much information as you want. It doesn’t have to be short. It can be like the ALT text, but longer and can contain keywords, or even metadata from your camera on how you took the photo, copyright etc. You can even add links in the description field.

Caption: The caption field is easy to understand. Unlike the ALT text or description, the caption does not have to closely mirror what the image shows.

Some people use image captions for describing the image. Think a condensed one-sentence version of the image description. You’ve probably seen this in print newspapers and magazines that lists the names of the people in an image left to right.

Other people use the caption field to display the image copyright information and that’s what I suggest you do on your radio station website. No matter where you get your images from, they should have the name of the image copyright holder. If someone on your team took the image, place their name or the station’s name here. If you purchased the image from an online service, paste in the service name. (i.e., iStock photo, Getty Images, etc.) This can protect you down the road. If there ever is any claim to the image, you’ll know who the image belongs to.

Benefiting your Visitors: So, in explaining these three image meta fields, I’ve shown how adding ALT tags, descriptions and captions can benefit your website. How does it help your visitors? People with vision impairments such as low vision and blindness may use screen readers to access the internet, or just have trouble distinguishing images. Screen readers will read the alt text out loud, as well as image descriptions, depending on what settings the user has enabled. Alt text and image descriptions can provide essential information such as text, links, and image details.

Read up on the “Americans with Disabilities Act” (ADA) or “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines” (WCAG)

Having image meta for the visually impaired is especially important if you are selling something on your website. If you don’t offer these tags, you can be tagged for alienating a segment of the population and that can become a legal issue.

Hopefully, this episode will motivate you to populate these fields moving forward.

Today we’re talking about Display Ad Networks that can help you generate passive income you’re your radio station website. Ideally, you have a team of sellers that are excited to sell your website on the street, but if you have great content to offer and having trouble in that department, these Ad Networks can help your website generate revenue while your team gets up to speed.

Don’t expect making a lot of money from Ad Networks. You’ll likely never get the money you would receive selling the ad spaces yourself. These can serve to supplement the revenue you’re already generating.

What Are Ad Networks? For all intents and purposes, ad networks work as a mediator to introduce the right impression to the right buyer.  Inside an ad network, you’re either an advertiser looking to advertise on a wide network of websites or you’re a publisher wanting those ads on your site to generate revenue.

Ad networks generally payout in one of two ways... CPM or CPC.

CPM - Cost Per Thousand Impressions

Nothing needs to be sold on the website they're going to. You don't make a commission or anything like that. Very simply, you get paid with a click or a view. Different ad networks have different parameters and most payout when either event happens.

Content is Crucial! Most of the best ad networks only cater to big traffic websites. Think 500K visitors per day big. Don’t let that discourage you though. There are plenty of ad networks you can plug into some with no minimum visitors BUT getting these networks to pay off depends on content – frequently updated content that attracts visitors on a daily basis. If your website has little or no visitors and the plan is to keep things that way, then an ad network isn’t going to help. These networks pay for traffic. And that won’t happen without fresh content.

Whenever we talk about monetizing websites, the first name that pops up in mind is Google AdSense.  It is, after all, the world’s largest ad network. There’s lots of training on Youtube to get the most out of Adsense. We’ve seen a few sites generate hundreds of dollars per month from Google Adsense. There might be some initial drawbacks though.

- Your website must be well established. Adsense will deny new websites.

In this episode, we’ll run down five alternative banner ad networks to Google Adsense. This isn’t a top-five list, but it’s five networks that we’ve found with no minimum traffic requirements, and they should let you get started generating revenue as soon as possible.

#1 Media.net

These five alternatives to Adsense are just the tip of the iceberg. Do a search for “Best Ad Networks for Publishers” and you’ll find hundreds more. That’s great because it means that every publisher can find their ideal solution. Just pay close attention to their requirements. Some do not allow imported content. Some specify requiring a minimum of unique visitors per day, etc.

The right ad network can help your radio station monetize your content and fill in the holes left open by your sales team. Again, it all starts with content and visitors.

I hope these tips help you. If they do, we’d love to hear about it. Reach out to us at skyrocketradio.com.