From Clueless About SEO to a Top 3% Globally Ranked Wine Podcast

It is with the deepest honor that I share some incredible news.

Thirteen years ago, Mike and I decided to start a winery. The heart and soul of that dream was our first Weimaraner, Draco. Since I was deemed the official “Head of Social Media,” I dove in headfirst—consuming every YouTube video and book I could find and bugging friends for help just to get started.

Along the way, I read that our website absolutely needed SEO. I didn’t even know what that stood for at the time! (For the uninitiated, it means Search Engine Optimization.) The one thing that stuck out to me was that search engines need fresh content to crawl if you want your site to move up the rankings. A blog seemed like the best way to do that.

My very first post was hosted on Google Blogger. After reading some less-than-stellar reviews of the platform, I jumped over to WordPress. Enter more YouTube tutorials and books. I just kept writing, with absolutely no clue if anyone was actually reading.

Then, to my complete surprise, an article I wrote titled Portugal’s Political History Affects Its Culinary and Wine Culture won the prestigious Millésima Wine Blog Award. The prize? An all-expenses-paid trip to Bordeaux for En Primeur week. From there, the blog took on a life of its own.

Eventually, I transitioned the blog to its own entity: Exploring the Wine Glass. Since then, it’s been shortlisted for the Born Digital Awards, ranked in Feedspot’s Top 100 Wine Blogs, and I was named one of the Top 15 Most Influential Wine Bloggers in the United States.

As the blog grew, so did the opportunities to share my love of wine with a bigger audience. Over the years, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be published in some amazing industry outlets, including Wine Folly, Santé Magazine, SommTV Online, DrinkStack, Live in Italy Magazine, and The Vintners Project. I’ve even gotten to bring wine education to the screen as a regular guest on KSEE24 NBC in Fresno, serving as their local wine educator!

Most recently, that passion for storytelling brought some amazing recognition. I was shortlisted for two of my articles in the prestigious 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Awards: From Missions to Modern Vines: The History of California & Paso Robles Wine and The Resurrection of Perricone – Sicily’s Forgotten Grape Finds New Life.

After writing for several years, I once again turned to books and YouTube to launch a podcast. In March of 2017, I spoke into a microphone for the very first time. The episode was titled “Would You Give Up Sex For A Year?“ It was a 14-minute episode with audio so quiet you could barely hear it based off a research article I had read.

Now, I am still far from being a professional audio engineer, but I’ve come a long way. I actually (mostly) understand Audacity now, and I finally have a professional microphone and headset!

Today, 414 episodes later, I just found out some mind-blowing news.

My podcast was named #25 on the Top Wine Podcasts list by Million Podcasts! If you aren’t familiar with them, Million Podcasts is a massive, trusted global directory that uses data-driven analytics to curate and rank the best shows across every niche based on listener engagement, consistency, and quality. The podcasts on this list are incredible, and honestly, Exploring the Wine Glass beat out shows with massive corporate budgets. What an absolute honor.

To top it off, Listen Notes has ranked the podcast in the Top 3% globally out of over 3 million podcasts worldwide. Listen Notes is essentially the Google of the podcast world—the definitive search engine and database used by the industry to track global podcast rankings and statistics. To be in the top 3% of all podcasts on Earth completely blows my mind.

Because I still stink at understanding analytics, I never fully know exactly who is listening. But I guess there are quite a few of you out there!

I want to take a moment to say a massive thank you to every single one of you. To those who read the blog, and to those who listen while driving, running, walking, or working. It truly warms my soul to know that what I am doing matters to you. 

Slàinte!