SEO & MUSIC Marketing

How to get on the SEO tour bus?

So, you are an up and coming band, a singer or maybe a small record label trying to generate more traffic for your website and increase its visibility? We presume that you realize that, in today’s world, marketing your music is as important as making it and you certainly realize that the Internet has taken over the world.

Just to let you know and without any intention of insulting your intelligence, generating more traffic for your website and increasing its visibility comes under a category called SEO (search engine optimization). This is just in case somebody asks you about SEOing your website, and you don’t react by scratching your head and wondering what the hell are they talking about.

Although one might argue about the relevance of SEO for musicians, bearing in mind that most of us look up music on YouTube, we are not going to get into this debate. We are just going to give you the skinny on what you should do to achieve a more prominent position for your website.

Therefore, if you a DIY when it comes to SEO, here are a few tips how to win over more online fans:

1. Original, relevant and appealing website content is a must – This goes without saying. It is (or at least should be) the Alpha and the Omega of having a website in the first place. Remember that, when creating the content (news, videos, photographs etc.), you should think of fans first, and search engines second. Having the right keywords scattered across the site is essential, but don’t overdo it. Choose the top five or even ten keywords, nor more or less than that. Believe or not, Google does notice when you go overboard with keywords and could even penalize you for it. If you can’t decide what keywords to use and you need a bit of a push in the right direction, refer to tools like Google Analytics or Google AdWords (specifically its Keyword Tool). Don’t forget that having a site map allows Google to have access to every segment of your website.

2. Update your website regularly – This is important, important, important! This is how you come out on top of your competition, and ensure that your fans and website visitors are getting the best possible experience out of it. Your website needs to keep up with ever changing market and maintain its rankings. Apropos competition, Neil Patel, one of the Internet marketing gurus, advises: “A good way you can size up your competition is through sites like Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast. These 3 sites will give you a good understanding of how much traffic your competition is receiving to their website.”

3. META tags – Now, there are so many pros and cons for using META tags and it is totally up to you to include them or not. Some claim they are obsolete, that they don’t make any difference in generating traffic and that the biggest search engines consider them unimportant, while others say that META tags are becoming increasingly important for achieving visibility. Whatever you choose, remember to use proper tagging.

4. Bad link strategy / failure to build good links – Somebody said that “for search engines, links are the streets between pages.” Actually the reasoning behind link-building is very rudimentary – the more links you have coming into your website, the more people are referencing you or referring you for something. Remember that people will only link you if your website contains information that is valuable to them.

There are other ways on how to build traffic for your website such as CRM, social bookmarking, community building, commenting on blogs, newsletters, directory submissions.

Be creative and use a combination of all of the options that are out there. Use Flickr and Instagram to upload your band’s photographs, and don’t forget about YouTube and social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Certain know-it-all-Internet-geeks also recommend using a popular SEO tool call BrandYourself in combination with the aforementioned techniques.