Seo, A Musicians Worst Enemy

[panaka]

It seems that Search Engine Optimization is always an extremely hard topic for musicians, so I gathered some resources that will help get your site indexed in google quickly and efficiently. Hope it helps!

First thing is put your website through the seo checklist here, it will tell you exactly what to do, and how it affects you on google.

http://www.webconfs.com/15-minute-seo.php

Next thing is to go to the following websites, but replace yourdomain.com in the urls with your actual domain. (These sites are indexed on a regular basis and will have your site indexed faster than if you submitted it traditionally).

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.yourdomain.com

http://www.statbrain.com/www.yourdomain.com

http://www.builtwith.com/?yourdomain.com

http://snapshot.compete.com/yourdomain.com

http://www.aboutus.org/yourdomain.com

http://www.quantcast.com/yourdomain.com

http://www.cubestat.com/www.yourdomain.com

http://whois.tools4noobs.com/info/yourdomain.com

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yourdomain.com

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=yourdomain.com

(Not sure why that text pasted like that...)

Anyways, Good Luck!

[Zedara]

The 15 minute SEO link is superb, good resource for beginners. Inbound links are tough to build in my experience, and it's hard to find dofollow blogs, but hohum...

[john]

With the right plug ins in your browser and the right queries in your search engine it's not too bad finding do follow links, but to be honest there are many many companies and individuals that will set you hundreds or thousands of backlinks, video submissions etc for a very low cost. Sites like fiverr.com make costing specific services a lot easier... I wouldn't use several of the backlink strategies on your main site, but your youtube videos etc are a great way to help promote certain things.

For a songwriter, knowing upfront certain keywords or keyphrases and using those within your song, particularly the title, is the place to start the seo preparation. Niche driven songwriting.

[panaka]

I totally agree with john, and if anyone has any questions on web marketing and stuff, I do design, and seo for a living, so I've got quite a bit of experience I could share.

Also, for dofollow blogs, go to this website

http://www.inlineseo.com/dofollowdiver/

and type in the keyword you want, it has a database of niche blogs that are all dofollow.

[john]

Oh and just on the subject of blog comments to get good backlinks there are some wordpress and other blogging platform plug ins that are do follow, or at least do follow by default. Search for that plug in name, or the default widget title etc as part of your search criteria and you can hugely save time on finding the do follow on topic blogs. Yet again using the right browser plugins configured in the right way and you cn re-order the results according to google PR etc, yet again improving your targeting and reducing the miss rate.

[MagicMonkey]

Er.....

The 15 min SEO guide is pretty good but when it comes to link building don't go near Fiverr. Its ok but you can only uy spammy links which Google is penalising heavily now. Thousands of links for cheap equals thousands of more spam posts around the net so don't use them - both for the internet's sake and your sites.

Also with the 15min SEO guide i'd recommend not doing all of it and mixing it up. Last month the update (Penguin nicknamed) has started penalising overly SE optimised websites

[nashvillecal]

Oh and just on the subject of blog comments to get good backlinks there are some wordpress and other blogging platform plug ins that are do follow, or at least do follow by default. Search for that plug in name, or the default widget title etc as part of your search criteria and you can hugely save time on finding the do follow on topic blogs. Yet again using the right browser plugins configured in the right way and you cn re-order the results according to google PR etc, yet again improving your targeting and reducing the miss rate.

content with keywords is important , but with panda and penguin updates , You better not keyword stuff it, meaning no more then 3 times in a 400 word article with the given keyword , I would not use fiverr anymore for anything especially for backlinks. Squidoo lense is a idea to use.

[john]

content with keywords is important , but with panda and penguin updates , You better not keyword stuff it, meaning no more then 3 times in a 400 word article with the given keyword , I would not use fiverr anymore for anything especially for backlinks. Squidoo lense is a idea to use.

True, although keyword stuffing has been an issue punished by search engines for years now Penguin turned the screws. Penguin certainly shook things up. My comments were just before Penguin went live and a number of things have changed from the backlink quality to keyword stuffing. How they assess backlink quality has become more strict accompanied with different weighting and more points of contextual measurement than before (reading between the lines).

[marcustaylor]

Good resources Panaka, Open Site Explorer & Majestic SEO are both great tools but probably slightly overkill for musicians. Most good music platforms (Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Reverbnation) are pretty good when it comes to SEO so you don't have to worry too much. If you play in a pub / wedding band, then something like Telnames.com is a decent option as it's mobile & local optimised.

[asera]

Here are some good resources for SEO beyond just links and on page optimization. They help with strategy, which is good to have before investing time, money and energy into tools. I have found them extremely helpful.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog (For industries of all types)

http://blog.macformusicians.com/promote-music/online-strategy/ (Music Industry)

http://searchenginewatch.com/ (For industries of all types)

[jvwhite]

Keeping yourself up to date by just visiting best seo blogs regularly and monitoring your link profile is the best solution for SEO. Targeted keywords are now on lesser value since anchor text is abused particularly those who post uncategorized content on blogs, and irrelevant link exchanges just to get a link. Focus more on branding and more lesser targeted keywords is the best way to overcome this Google update. I would also like to add that ahrefs.com and opensiteexplorer is one of the best online tools that can monitor your website's profile.

[realfanback]

SEO is very simple. Just make sure that you update your webiste daily and focus on the keywords.

[Elfoss]

I totally agree with realfanback. SEO is simpel today. A good URL that match your site. A title tag that match the page content and content, content and content. Google isn't stupid anymore. They will index you if your site is relevant.

[MikeRobinson]

Dissenting slightly here ... it always struck me as a crap-shoot approach, to assume (literally ...) "if you build it, they will come."

 

Most likely, they won't.  Not for music, anyway.

 

For music, I would "talk up my music" on every music-oriented forum (like this one) that I could possibly find.  Consider what places you might "hang out" if you were interested – as a listener – in the kind of music that you write and play.  Which of these sites have a "new music feature" section?  Which ones (like "macjams.com") have a random-selector which might introduce your music to someone by pure luck o' the draw?  What Internet radio stations out there might play your music?

 

I've found the great music that I enjoy ... from Internet radio, from satellite radio, but mostly from hanging-out (online) with musical friends who share common tastes.  I've never found a single song by "Google searching" for it.  Ever.

[barnettd]

I caution against paying for back links. It can get you banned from google. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

[tumiboy86]

What are your thoughts on Google+? I have been experimenting with Google's semantic search results, I noticed that preference is actually given to people with Google Authorship setup on their websites & even more "preferential treatment" is given to people who are very active on G+...any thoughts?

[john]

I caution against paying for back links. It can get you banned from google. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

I agree. At one point, you might have been able to get away with a low level amount of paid links to augment a campaign, but not now. Incidentally Songstuff has never used paid back links in a campaign. The OP highlighted a number of strategies that highlighted paid links. At that time fiverr services were certainly an alternative way to achieve it at low cost. Nowadays, and even at that point, just how advisable it is, is another matter entirely.

[john]

Preference to google authorship, use of YouTube and G+ and an active YouTube channel.... All of these push up the search listings.

[Brad Barnett]

Seo is something that should be more natural than anything.  Pasting a link on as many sites as you can just to get a link isn't going to help.  If you are keeping your website and social media accounts up to date you are already off to a good start.  Searching for indie/music blogs to get interviewed on is another way to get you good natural backlinks.  Just make sure they post a link back to your website in the article.