MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (Hypebot) – Most musicians want their band to be discovered. Not by a Universal Music talent scout maybe – that would be so 2005. Nowadays musicians need to be discovered by their fans and using a search engine like Google is the top way that people find out more about anything they're interested in, including music.
But when a fan "Googles" Ten Ton Rock Machine do they find a great band or the latest in granite splitting technology? And when the fan finally finds the band, will their MySpace page and an article from the Peoria Rocks blog be at the top of the rankings? Or will they find the band's official web site where they control the message and can capture email addresses?
In an age of too many choices and 10 second attention spans, this stuff matters. Courtesy of Jason Feinberg of PBS' MediaShift blog, here are 7 Search Engine Optimization Tips For Musicians:
1. Don't Build Your Site Using Only Flash – Unless properly planned in the design stages, Flash cannot be indexed by search engines.
2. Don't Build Your Site Only With Images – Again much harder for the search engines to find.
3. Use Key Words In Your Content – Make it easy for search engines to know this is a band site (your band's site) and not something else. In addition to words like guitar and drums consider a static page that is" focused solely on band facts – member info, publicity quotes, simple description of the band's sound, detailed discographies, and more"
4. Don't Just Rely Meta Tags – These hidden string of key words were all the rage, but search engines caught on and have devalued their use in rankings.
5. Develop A Link Strategy – The quality of both incoming and outgoing links matter to search engines. Find them, trade for them, put them on your site.
6. Don't Overlook Alternative Search Types – People don't just search for words. They search for images, documents and media like mp3's and videos too. Get them on your site and make sure that they are named properly.
7. Utilize Analytics – No where your traffic is coming and what they are clicking on using free tools like Google Analytics and Urchin.
