Table of Contents
Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO may sound very complicated to a lot of musicians because what does it even mean? I get that feeling and I understand why you think it’s too technical and you basically do not need it to grow your music career but as an Independent Musician, you do need to understand the importance of SEO to your music career and some surefire SEO strategies for musicians.
It doesn’t really matter if you’re an upcoming artist or an established one, it’s important to make sure your audience can find you easily online. When a new listener listens to your music and tries to look you up to hear more of your content and they don’t find you, that’s one potential fan lost right there. Now imagine this happening on a large scale, you wouldn’t want to lose your potential fans right? Then you should learn some SEO strategies for musicians.
But before we proceed to the importance of SEO and effective SEO strategies for musicians to help build your music career, you need to know what SEO is.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of using organic search results to boost traffic to your music website. When people enter a search query on Google, the most relevant content is shown at the top. By applying effective SEO strategies for musicians, your content will show as the top content on search results.
Bringing your content to the face of your searchers is the major goal of SEO. Now that you have an overview of what SEO is, let’s proceed to the subject of this article— Effective SEO strategies for musicians.
How To Promote Your Music Using Specific Seo Strategies For Musicians
Now that you know what SEO means, let’s get into the SEO strategies for musicians to help you promote your music. Your goal is to get your music to the first page of a search query whenever a user searches for something relating to your music.
The very first step is to have a unique artist name so whenever anyone searches your name, you’re positioned as the result of the search. This can be one of your Unique Selling points. To understand how to create a USP for musicians, here’s an article.
The following are SEO strategies to help you promote your music effectively:
Distribute Your Music On All Distribution Platforms
Before you begin search engine optimization, you need to get your music on all music distribution platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, Audiomack, etc. This is very easy to do as all you need is a digital distributor like Tunecore, and so on. The digital distributor allows you to upload unlimited music to tons of distribution platforms worldwide.
Having your music on these platforms helps listeners find your music easier. This is why this strategy is the foundation of the SEO strategies for musicians. The more content you have on different platforms, the easier it gets to be ranked number one for your particular keyword or artist name.
Build And Update Your Music Website
Having a music website is one of the most important things needed for a musician. Asides from distributing your music on digital platforms, your music website is your one-stop shop for your listeners to get major information about new music releases, concerts, etc. To achieve the aim of these SEO strategies for musicians, you need to create a music website.
If you have a music website already, you need to make it updated with the newest information about you. You also need to monetize your music website. Here’s an article on Tips to help you monetize your music website.
Many hosting platforms include SEO tools to help you optimize your website with better content and keywords. Make sure to link all your contents across the web to your website so as to help search engines better rank your website and contents when a user enters a search query.
Use The Right Keywords And Links
Keywords and links are the foundation of SEO because these are the factors that increase your visibility on the web. The backlinks and keywords will help you show up more in searches and also help strengthen your website. When a user enters a search query, the search engine crawls every place it can find that particular keyword on the web and if the keyword is present on your site and on platforms that link back to your website, your website will be ranked at the top of the search results.
This is why you need to understand the importance of keywords and links to these SEO strategies for musicians. The keywords will depict your brand as a musician and rank you at the top of search results.
Connect Your Website To Google Search And Analytics
This is an important strategy within the SEO strategies for musicians Google Analytics is a very important tool for musicians. This tool will help you know what works on your website and what doesn’t. It also helps you have insights into your website and social media traffic. It’s very important to set up tracking as it will help you know your audience’s demographics, age range, and some other personal information about your audience.
Some web hosts like WordPress have analytics embedded in your website already that once you host your website, they provide you with this analytical information to help you successfully implement the SEO strategies for musicians like you. Analytics is very important because you will get a lot of information that can help you learn the platforms to focus on for promotion, the posts that are doing very well, and other key data about your audiences.
Google’s Search Console: This will help you determine which pages on your website are strong and being indexed during searches. It can also help you determine where your website is lacking and how you can improve your website’s indexing.
Google’s Tag Manager: With Google tag manager, you can easily manage and track your tags if you have embedded Google analytics to your website. This will help you show up in more searches just like using keywords.
Claim Your Google Knowledge Panel
The information box that often appears on Google when you search for something is known as the Google Knowledge Panel. This panel has the most relevant information about the subjects picked from across the web and will help you implement SEO strategies for musicians like you.
Google automatically creates a knowledge panel for artists who have their music across different places on the web and pulls the most relevant one with the most relevant information to add to the panel. You can update this panel with your links to help your fans ding you and your content faster.
Importance Of Seo To Musicians And Your Music Career
The major importance of SEO to musicians is to use it to improve your music marketing strategy by indirectly creating an awesome fan journey for your fans. As you build your Fans, your audience will move through some steps to eventually reach the goal you have in mind.
Throughout the steps, there are experiences you want them to experience online as they engage your music. Some of these experiences will majorly be dominated by search engine experiences. Here are the points where search engines come into play to make the SEO strategies for musicians effective:
Discovery
Usually, in marketing, the discovery phase is known as the awareness step and it’s where SEO helps most businesses.
If a fan goes on to Google to search for “new afrobeat artists” there’s little to no probability that your name will pop up before the already well-known afrobeat music artists. This is where blog contents come into play.
If you’ve had your name mentioned on blogs as one of the top new music artists and you’ve implemented the SEO strategies for musicians like you, the fan will go on to read the article and discover you. This is where the fan now moves to the exploration phase
Exploration
Now that your fan has discovered you, listened to your music, and like what they hear, they want to explore your content more. This is where SEO begins to play an important role and if you’ve implemented the SEO strategies for musicians to your SEO, you needn’t worry about anything.
This is an opportunity for you to show your fans what you’ve got. You want to make sure that when fans search for your music, you have a pro selection of content for them to check out. Your audience at this stage of the fan journey are potential fans and with SEO, you want to help them get to know you better.
Your website will help them learn about you. Your social profiles will depict the kind of person you are, your views about certain topics, etc. Also, having your music on digital platforms will help them sample your sound to decide whether they like your kind of music.
Your videos and images will help your potential fan get a feel of how you look. Interviews and Reviews will help you get a sense of who you are and what others say about you.
From this stage, if the fan becomes very interested they move to the purchase stage
Purchase
This is the most important stage in the fan journey for a musician because as a musician, you need to make money. If you’ve implemented SEO strategies for musicians you can easily get your fans to purchase your music or tour tickets easily.
You want to make sure that it’s easy for your fans to locate your music online to make purchases, or your ticket pages to buy tickets to your next show or concert.
Retention
Lately, attention spans are short as there’s a lot of content to digest by fans. There are tons of talented artists out there releasing great new music and content so it’s not guaranteed that you’ll keep the attention of your hard-earned fans even after they’ve bought your music.
At this point, the SEO strategies for musicians have already done their part because your fans have already downloaded your music and already visited your concert. This is where other communication and marketing methods should be used.
You can use mailing lists and social media to keep your fans and make them anticipate your music. The goal is that your fans should be able to find you when they’re looking for you online. And with SEO that has been achieved.
Advocacy
The advocacy stage of the fan journey is where you’ve already won over your fans that now they are now stans to your music culture. At this point you barely have to do some marketing as your fans will carry out the majority of the actions but still, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t market your music the way you normally do. You want to win over new fans too, remember?
SEO is important to you here when your fans are indirectly promoting your new projects or old ones to new potential fans. The potential fan will definitely want to know more about you by searching for your details. So if you’ve implemented the SEO strategies for musicians, you can easily be laid back and watch your fan base broaden.
Now that you understand how important SEO strategies are to improve your fan journey and also skyrocket your music marketing strategies, implementing SEO into your music marketing strategies now makes sense. You should make sure to adhere to these SEO strategies for musicians thoroughly because it helps your fans majorly when they get to the engagement and purchase stages of the fan journey.
If you’re financially buoyant enough and you have a budget for your music marketing, you can hire an expert who will help you implement these strategies but still, as an independent musician, you need to understand what’s being done to help improve your music marketing strategies so make sure to understand the process thoroughly.
You can also do this by yourself self, although it’s a slow and gradual process and as your music career grows, you’ll see the improvements whenever you review your analytics so keep to it and make sure to follow the SEO strategies for musicians.
