All you need to know about SEO for musicians

OK, maybe not all, but I've seen a bunch of articles over the last few weeks, which, when grouped together, will give you a very solid training in what SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is and why you need to do at least some to further your music career.

I'll let the articles do most of the talking, but, in short, you need to learn what things you should aim to have your music website rank for in Google (and other) searches and some basic techniques that will help you do that.

Start with this article on Musician Wages for a great overview:

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is process of organizing the content of a website in a way that will be most easily understood and indexed by search engines. If you do it right, you will be closer to the top of the list when strangers search for terms relating to your website. For instance, if you are a punk bluegrass accordion trio, you should be at the top of the listings whenever anybody searches for that genre of music.

Read it here.

Then their follow up article talks about how to apply your new found SEO knowledge to other online sites that can point people (and search engines) back to your main website:

Musicians needn’t be overly concerned with SEO on their own website if it’s for mostly promotional and informational purposes. This is very true, and the last thing a working musician needs is one more distraction from their instrument. However, the concepts are important to understand as you expand your internet presence because better optimization helps more people find your music. In this article, we’ll apply these concepts outside the musician’s website and into other online communities.

Read that here.

Then I'd recommend moving on to this article on Music Think Tank that goes into some specific but very basic and simple methods that you ought to know:

Search engine optimization (SEO) often gets passed off as a sort of snake oil — some gimmicky trick that people do to manipulate search results in their favor.

SEO is really about one thing: making what your website is about clear to people and bots alike. There’s no tricks or gimmicks, and if you can make a website or manage a wordpress installation, you can do some very simple things to make your website more search engine and people friendly.

Read that one here.

Then, last but obviously not least, there's our post and video on Band Website SEO which covers a lot of the same stuff but you get to hear my dulcet tones to boot!

Band Website SEO post and video.

Really - do take some time to read and digest this info. It's a good basic training that will help you in ways that you can't really understand until you try them. It won't break your career instantly but it will, with luck, bring in some new fans and may create opportunities out of the blue!