If you aren't recording solo, headphones are a must – for you, and for all of your guests. Headphones prevent the audio from your guests from being picked up by your microphone, which can cause echoes, feedback, and make for a less professional sounding podcast.

Background noises, including a loud fridge, talkative people, an air conditioner, a loud fan, barking dogs, crying babies or anything else is going to make your podcast harder to listen to and distract your listeners. Also, sitting alone in a large, empty conference room will cause ambience and reverb issues as well.

While the microphones built into many computers are certainly serviceable, you'll hear a big difference even if you move up to a relatively inexpensive USB condenser microphone. The microphone built into your computer likely has an omnidirectional polar pattern, which means that it picks up sound equally from all directions – upgrading to a microphone with a cardioid polar pattern means the microphone will primarily pick up sounds that are right in front of it, giving you a recording that is more of your voice and less of everything else.