Sorting Out Your Music Website Design for Music SEO

According to the February Search results posted by Silicone Alley Insider In February of 2010 Google domestic core search volume was 65.5% vs. 16.8% for Yahoo and %11.5 for Bing. Google is the 800 lbs. Gorilla. The reason want control over where you come up in search Engine results? According to a recent study by icrossing - roughly 95% of all clicks for what people are searching for come from the top page of results across the big three search engines. I’m going to guess you are coming along with me on this ride and see where this is going – you have to be able to be found when someone is looking for you and preferably they should find you through a destination page that you have 100% control over.

A word about websites in general – if you don’t have one – get one. MySpace and ReverbNation are fantastic tools but they are only tools at the end of the day. For perception alone it is required that you have a website – it makes you appear considerably less fly-by-night than the bands who only use social network profiles. It sends the not so subtle message that yes – I make music for a living and yes- I am serious about my job. A website does not need to be complicated and does not need not be expensive to do what it is supposed to do. A website is to get people looking for you to be able to find you and to listen to your music and your message when they arrive there – that’s it.

I often hear that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can’t be done for art or for music. There is some truth to this in that unless you are making music for a certain purpose like “Music for Meditation” or “Music for Halloween” it is very hard to determine exactly what keywords (words people enter into a search engine) would lead people who are fans of what you do to your homepage. On the other hand, a well-optimized site can ensure that your most important keywords (your band name, the name of your last album, the name of your single / song in a recent TV commercial) can be found. It is best to have your site set up to be found just in case your promotion and marketing activities get you some placement where people would know your song but not your band name (TV placement, radio play, opening slot on a tour – whatever it happens to be).

Here are some very basic things to consider about SEO.

1) Your band name. If you have a simple ordinary one-word band name that is a commonly used word – you might be in trouble. The more people who search for that word – the harder it is for you to manipulate the search engine algorithm to ensure you come up in the top positions on a search Engine Results Page. In this instance an Artist like DeadMau5 or Deadmaus would do really well because of the deliberate misspelling and a band like Stand for Dublin are going to have trouble coming up for a search for their name alone. If you are just starting out and haven’t really branded yourself yet take a moment to consider whether or not people will find you based on your name. If you don’t know how often people are looking for a given word or phrase give the Google Adwords Keyword Tool a try.

2) Your Website Text. Search Engines read a webpage from top to bottom, left to right. This is why owning the domain name that is your band or performing name is very important.- so important that people will pay lots of money for domains that get lots of traffic. Owning the domain name with your biggest keywords (usually band name) is the biggest single advantage you can have in showing up first in results. Also along those lines dot COMs seem to rank better than dot NETS and any other suffix for your desired keywords (by way of example – radiohead.com) except for dot EDUs which are not available to the general public. It is also important that your home page have real text on it rather than flash or a photo. I can’t tell you how many people ask me why they aren’t coming up in results only to look at their website and see that the “text” on their homepage is actually part of an image file and therefore not helping your case with search.

3) Tags. Header tags, Meta tags and title tags. Learn what these are and make sure your web designer has these filled with keyword heavy descriptions including the band name – i.e. “The Righteous Dudes – polka music from Plymouth”

4) Breadcrumbs. Also called external links. The more sites that link back to yours the more search engines think your website is worth. The caliber and quality of these sites that link to yours are also important because people who overdue the gaming of their external links tend to wind up on sites called link farms that can actually negatively impact your SEO. All that said make sure that all of your social network profiles – Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, ReverbNation, Linkedin etc point back to your site. Search Engines also value sites that link to themselves even if it is just from one page of your site to another.

5) Anchor Text. The words that are highlighted on what is usually a blue underlined link to another page are called Anchor text. What those words are can help determine how well you show up in results for those words. You never want to highlight the word or words “here” or “click here” when you have the option to use anchor text. Use your band name or whatever keywords you think will help potential fans arrive at your site. I run a site called musiciancoaching.com but lately I have been trying to boost my search results for the words Music Consultant. ß— That should help.

6) Frequency and Consistency. Do you know why the most boring businesses out there blog about their products? I assure you it is not because they enjoy it but rather because search engines favor sites that are regularly updated with new content. As an artist you should make sure that your shows, new albums, press releases etc are online regularly anyway and if you use rich media (photos, mp3s, videos etc) make sure that all of the files are tagged with the words you want people to find you with…

There is much, much more to ranking in search engines but if you weren’t at all familiar I hope that was a bit of help to you. If you set up your website correctly to begin with you won’t have to scramble to make sure that people can find you when your promotion efforts begin to bear fruit or when people have heard about your band and just want to see what you are all about by entering your name into their favorite search engine. Specifically try making Amazon album lists including yours, iTunes iMixes and post on the message boards and blogs of artists who have fans that you think will like you. If you do it in a non spammy way and you have a good product these things will help you tremendously. As always though a good product is always worth more than good product development.