This is the first part of a series of articles about the perfect band website. It consits of one very important aspect of a band’s website which would be SEO also know as search engine optimization. There are some great resources on the Web about all the technical stuff related to search engine optimization. That is why I will not talk about how to craft your titles, headings and sites structure. I assume that you are a musician or record label working together with a partner that is responsible for your web presence. This Article is supposed to help you to ask the correct questions and point out the correct goals for your bandpage SEO. The focus will be on keyword research and about how to choose good keywords.

Basics you need to understand:

The Internet is one of your distribution channels to attract new fans at relatively low cost. It also gives you the chance to sell your products (cds, mp3’s, merchandise, concert tickets,…) with the highest possible profit margin.
Your website is the single most effective marketing tool you have on the web. Years ago every artist needed to be on myspace. Today it is called Facebook and do you know what will be tomorrow? In opposite to those portals your website will be perpetual and should be the center of all your online activities. It doesn’t make sense to have music streaming on myspace and give news corp your greatest treasure and raise your myspace page over your webpage. Remember News Corp not only doesn’t pay the musicans licence fees for streaming but they also drive traffic from your website to myspace.
Most important: People don’t look on your website for information. They look on google for information! You might be lucky and someone who wants to buy merchandise or a CD will type in your band name and then clicks on your website in order to find more information. But chances are much higher that he will type in your name and the word merchandise and then browse to the first results of the Google search result page. So will your band page appear in that case?

Usual difficulties of Search Engine Optimization

Very simplified speaking search engine rankings are calculated by the amount of back links (which means the number of other websites linking to your website) the anchor text of the back links and the site’s structure, format and keywords. A shop or everyday website faces the very hard challenge that not many other Webpages or magazines talks about them on the Internet. In these cases on page optimization, link building and link baiting – which needs a lot of effort, time and money are mandatory.

The special case for bandpages:

Since a music band is likely to have fans and gain attention by media websites it usually gains tons of back links (we remember the hard stuff for your search engine rankings) in a very short time. The best thing is: Most links will contain your band name as an anchor text making it the most relevant result for this keyword and also for moste keywords related to it as long as you place your content with a good structure and follow basic formatting rules. Your webmaster should be aware of these things. If not, well… you could change?
So your question should be: Which keywords do my fans type into Google that should always lead them to my homepage? Once you know the answer to this question due to your fame and relevance on the web any webmaster should be able to optimize your page for these keywords.

Keyword list for your band’s page SEO:

Since bands do not seem to have the experience to choose the good keywords and bandpage SEO is as explained really 90% the choice of keywords I will now give you a list of keywords that your page should be optimized for.

• Your band name +…
• merchandise
• shop
• ticket
• concert
• tour
• album
• reviews
• lyrics / song text
• mp3
• download
• video
• listen
• CD
• tabs / chords / notes
• buy

Note, since the internet is full with piracy anyway it would be wise at this point not only to win these keywords but also to provide the fans with the content they are looking for. This means put up the tabs and chords of your songs. They are on the web anyway and other people earn a lot of advertising dollars.
futher more (maybe in combination with some of the keywords listed above):

• name of your band members
• song titles
• titles of your records
• Names of the band you are on tour with / Name of the tour

and if you want to be really cool:

• your band name + name of the releases in combination with:
• rapidshare
• bit torrent
• megashare
• Napster
• …

There is much more to band page optimization (e.g.: photos, videos, social media optimization, crm, reviews, community building, newsletter…) and i will continue to write about it. If you do not know how to optimize for those keywords have a look at the In Legend website. If you need help for implementation feel free to contact me! If you think I am missing some points feel also free to tell me via comment. And please give me feedback on my Question: Do you think band page SEO is useful / important to online music marketing of bands?