Redirecting your feed is some serious stuff. If done incorrectly you may lose your subscribers. Below we’re outlining our best practices for redirecting your feed.
What is a 301 redirect?
In podcasting, a 301 redirect permanently redirects your podcast's RSS feed to a new URL. This is crucial when you change podcast hosts or migrate your feed, ensuring that podcast directories (like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or NPR) and your subscribers automatically access the new feed without interruption.
For example, if your original RSS feed is:https://prx.com/podcast/feed
and you move to a new host with this feed:https://dovetail.com/podcast/feed
A 301 redirect ensures all traffic to the old feed automatically points to the new one.
Import your feed.
Before redirecting your feed, you must first import your RSS feed to Dovetail. If you're using dynamic ad insertion, be sure to import an ad-free version of your feed. Contact your current distributor for an ad-free feed or instructions on how to generate one.
Notice to Megaphone users: Megaphone’s ad-free feeds have different GUIDs than the public feed, which may cause episodes to redownload for listeners when redirecting. To avoid issues, please contact podcast-services@prx.org before importing a feed from Megaphone to Dovetail.
Notice to Grove users: Grove feeds are typically capped. Before importing them to Dovetail, Please make sure to uncap your feeds. For instructions on how to uncap your feed, visit NPR Studio (you must have an account to log in).
🔗 Check out NPR's guide on how to integrate your site with 3rd party distributors for additional tips/recommendations (you must have an account to log in).
Import your ad markers
If your podcast uses dynamic ad insertion, remember to import your ad markers. Your current distributor should provide you with a list of ad markers for proper migration.
✍ Import ad markers to Dovetail
Validate your feed
Check to make sure your feed is free of issues before importing/redirecting to Dovetail. Several feed validators are available online. Our favorites are listed below.
Podba.se
Cast Feed Validator
Live Wire
Make sure your feed is up to date.
After importing your feed to Dovetail, check that the data matches your current public feed. The episode data should match in both feeds. We recommend the following data matches:
- Number of episodes in the feed
- GUIDs
- Publish date and time
- Episode titles
Initiate a 301 redirect
You’ll need to follow the steps provided by your current podcast distribution platform to initiate a 301 redirect. Please let us know if your current distributor is missing from this list.
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- Megaphone
- Libsyn (scroll down to Moving from Libsyn)
- SoundCloud
- Simplecast
- Podbean
- Spotify for Creators (scroll down to Leave Anchor for another podcast host)
- Omny Studio
- Feedburner
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After 301 redirect
Validate your feed once more! You can never be too safe when redirecting your feed.
Check your feed on Redirect Detective to ensure a 301 redirect is in place.
✔️ Additional Checklist!
- Check your apps after a redirect! It's good to check the big ones after a redirect to make sure all looks and sounds good.
- Update the RSS feed URLs listed on your website
- Update the web players on your website (depending on your distributor, these will typically stop working once you redirect a feed).
- Use the Export button to export a list of MP3 URLs from Dovetail.
- Download your metrics and keep them in a safe spot (you don't know when you'll need that info).