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I ended up on the first page of google’s search engine one day after writing a post for my music blog. I wrote the post with the intention of ranking for a particular set of key words. I was pleasantly surprised that it showed up at the top of search results soon after!  Putting together a website is the first step to generating online exposure, however if you want to drive traffic from search engines, a website alone is not enough.  There has to be a search engine optimization strategy. When I first started pursuing a career in music, I created a website. But my name didn’t rank high on search engines even when I typed in my own name. Other websites, that mentioned me in some way, ranked higher than my own website.  Search Engines acknowledged other websites for my music instead of my own. It was very upsetting. Today, thankfully, that is not the case. Through this experience, I learned some techniques by accident, and also experimented with some ideas that have produced fantastic search engine optimization (SEO) results for my music. Here are some examples.

A Lesson from a Blog Coach

My favorite tactic involved me taking a page out of a blog coach’s book. I wrote a post with a specific search term in mind that a potential fan or event planner might type into a search engine.  The search term was ‘soul music in Nashville.’ At that time, I lived in Nashville and was hoping to attract targeted local people to my website. I figured people who would be interested in my genre of music who lived in Nashville, would most likely type this particular search term.  I wanted to attract people who might be interested in either hiring me for a performance or wanting to see a soul performance in Nashville.  My goal was to come off looking like an authoritative expert providing various options for experiencing soul music in Nashville, so that people would feel like they came to the right place. So I did some research and found some venues in Nashville that present soul music, I found a soul music museum, and even some other artists like me.  I made sure to mention who I was and that I’m available for parties and also linked to my website. The post is now the most visited post of all on my blog, it is at the top of search engines for those key words, and people have gone to my website as a result of that one post.

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I get at least one visit each day from search engine traffic to the blog post. Even now that I live in Houston, people are still going to the post. I wouldn’t dare take it down now, so I edited the post to mention that I now live in Houston and if they’d like to hire me for a private event, I’m willing to travel. So now, I’ve got people in Nashville finding out about me everyday because of that one post.

You could do something similar. You could create a post on your blog or your news page if you have one about music in your neck of the woods. It helps if the title of the post is the exact search term you think people would use. Don’t just stop at one. Write several posts about it and experiment with different sets of keywords and targeted audiences.

Online Calendars Helped Raise My Online Exposure.

Another thing I noticed early on was that when I added my events to online calendars in different cities, the search engines would include those sites in the results when my name is typed in as a query.  Online event calendars seem to be highly respected because they pop up a lot when you do a search for various things.  I was adding my website link to the event details and that also helped create backlinks to my site which gives you extra points when it comes to ranking high on search engine results pages. If search engines see that websites are linking back to your website, it thinks your website is cool. So the search engine begins to serve up your website at the top of search results.

 

I Leveraged My Niche Audience.

I wrote an album about natural hair. There is a large movement of black women going natural and the songs I wrote are a perfect fit.  I researched and found several blogs all that discuss natural hair. I pitched my music and offered to send them two albums, one for them and the other for a giveaway if they so choose. It was a very successful campaign. My name, music, and face ended up on websites all over the world.  They interviewed me and wrote articles about my music. They included a link to my website on their blogs. More backlinks!

After doing all this, I began to see my website promoted to the top of the page ranking for my name and soul music in Nashville.

SEO and YouTube

I also discovered that search engines, especially Google since they own it, love YouTube videos and will not hesitate to stick a YouTube video in search results if the keywords match the search query. This means that if you tag your YouTube videos correctly to target specific search terms, then your videos will show up in search results. Wouldn’t it make sense that a person searching for your music genre in your city would want to play one of your videos if it popped up in search results?  It makes total sense. Be strategic and tag your videos with keywords based on what the people you’d like to attract would search for. Use these keywords in the title of your videos, in the description, and fill out the tags in the video settings section.

What I’ve learned about SEO is that sometimes it helps to think backwards. Start with the end user in mind. What would they be searching for? How would they word their search queries? Come up with keywords based on answers to these questions and create material and content that matches that.

Your blog is a very powerful tool. It’s great for keeping your fans up to date about your career, but it could also be a funnel to attract new potential fans or event planners.  As independent artists, our websites tend to be stagnate. What I mean by this is that most updates made to it are show calendars, blogs, and maybe a news section. The bio, photos, videos, and music sections are not typically updated on a daily basis.  However, search engines give websites that are being constantly updated more precedent over those that are not. This is where your blog comes in. If you can post articles consistently on your blog, you will attract more search engine traffic. Remember to write content that will pull in targeted traffic – people that you want.

If you need help with some ideas on how to bring traffic to your site, I am available to chat. Join me in the Facebook Group and post a question to the wall, or schedule a one-on-one. What are some ways you’ve gotten to the top of search results? Share in the comments section your tricks. We are #BetterTogether!

 

SEO – Get Your Music on the First Page of Search Engines via @thecraftymusician
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