If you’d like to increase your fan base and have more people accessing your music, then you should consider search engine optimization (SEO) for your music business.
SEO is a marketing strategy aimed at boosting traffic to your website via organic search results.
Is it essential to bands and musicians? Yes, it is, and for two primary reasons:
- It allows people who love your music to find your website by searching for you in search engines.
- It increases the chances of people who may like your type of music to come across you after searching for your brand.
In other words, it’s about using the right SEO techniques to make your music discoverable on Google. Here’s how to go about it:
Start and Optimize a YouTube Channel
YouTube is a gem for all artists. It’s where most people go when searching for their favorite music. Specifically, you need a YouTube channel for your music because:
- It’s the number one search engine for all music fans.
- Most artists have used YouTube to build their careers.
- Younger music fans use YouTube as their top listening platform.
- Creating engaging music videos is by far the most effective way to beam your personality and brand into people’s eyes, ears, and imagination.
- You can monetize your music through YouTube’s large ad-revenue.
Now that you’ve your music channel on YouTube, how do you optimize it for search?
- Make the first five lines count, as it’s what people see before they click the ‘read more’ option. Research your most essential keywords and include them in these lines along with LSI keywords.
- Sprinkle links to your social media platforms and business website in the description.
- Use all the 5,000-character space to write something that will excite your followers. It could be an enjoyable blog post related to the video content.
Join Other Platforms to Make Your Music Discoverable
Other than YouTube, you can also promote your music on other platforms, namely:
Wikipedia
In March 2020 alone, Wikipedia had 23 billion page views with an increase of 10.59% every month. That shows you that Wikipedia is a powerful platform worth joining.
Start by creating a Wikipedia page and optimize it for keywords people are searching for. This step alone can drive traffic to your music website or YouTube channel.
SoundCloud
If you’re an up and coming artist, this platform is for you, as it helps fans to discover new music. If you’re an established artist, you may want to consider Spotify. SoundCloud provides an avenue for music producers, record labels, and other artists to find your work and explore collaborations or remixes.
Other than that, you make money from SoundCloud through a revenue-sharing model that gives you 55% of your sound recordings. Besides, SoundCloud doesn’t have a geographical restriction on its users, which means fans from all over the globe can access your songs.
MusicBrainz
This online encyclopedia contains all useful information about artists, songs, and releases. Like Wikipedia, you can create your artist profile to let new fans learn more about you and your music.
These platforms are highly popular with tons of users, so joining them makes it easy for your music to show up in search results.
Set Up an Artist/Band Website
When you choose to sell your music, you’re starting a business, and a business needs a website so people can take it seriously. The site allows you to showcase your portfolio, list contact information, and sell your work without involving intermediaries.
Your website should have the following elements:
- Use your name as a domain; for example, yourname.com sounds more professional than yourname.service.com.
- Optimize the site for mobile
- Integrate a newsletter signup form
- Include your contact details on every page
- Use high-quality photos
- Use a clean design and navigation
- Keep the website information up-to-date
- Make purchasing super easy
Publish Quality Content on Your Website, Regularly
Setting up a beautiful website for your music career is only half the battle. You need to update the site with relevant content that’ll attract the press, fans, and booking agents to learn more about you and connect.
Before publishing content, you may want to employ the best SEO practices, especially researching the right keywords and writing content based on that. Properly chosen keywords help you to capture the right audience.
You can also find out what keywords your competitors are using and use them to outsmart other artists in your music niche.
Shows and Events Page
Create a ‘shows and events’ page to display your upcoming performances and direct your fans to purchase tickets. The page should consist of the event dates, city, venue, and places to find the tickets.
This page will benefit your business because when more fans know about your upcoming concert, more of them will attend.
In terms of SEO, the page is a linkable resource, which means that people are likely to share its information on social media and other music publication websites, which further promotes your event.
Merchandize Page
Most artists have items they’d like to share with their fans. The merchandise may range from albums and posters to hoodies and hats, and you can create a shop for this on your site. This initiative helps fans to connect more with you.
Not only will the fans buy your stuff, but the promotion will also drive tons of backlinks and traffic to your website.
Promote the Website
To get more traffic to your site and broaden your fan base, you may want to execute the following approaches:
- Guest posting – Publish posts on industry-relevant websites to help get traffic and backlinks from such platforms. Backlinks are an essential ranking factor, so don’t neglect this practice.
- Social media marketing – You should share new blog posts and event photos on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The social factor makes it easier for search engines to find your content on social media faster and index it.
- Email marketing – As soon as your site’s up, create an email sign up form. An email blast can trigger an uptick in your website traffic.
Final Word
To get your music on Google’s first page, you need to work on your website and balance it by being published on other platforms. Follow the above tips and watch how your rankings start climbing.
