Local SEO For Musicians

Ah, the launch for NME Blueprint is over – no more pithcing for a little while! Today we get right back into the content with a gnarly guest post from Carla Lynne Hall. She previously posted about her experiences at the New Music Seminar in New York. Today she talks about a real life case study with SEO, or search engine optmization. I think its a great piece, because while she tells you the upside, she also mentions how it wasn’t the magic pill that some tout it to be.

BTW – there is an awesome webinar going down tonight with my buddy Preston Ely on lifestyle optimization. It might be a little left field from music marketing, but there is something to be said about musicians that have goals and life aspirations. I think you are going to like what he has to say. Register for it here.

Hundreds of people go to search engines like Google every day seeking musical talent in your hometown. While they might not be looking specifically for you or your band, they are using music-related keywords to find a local band or music teacher. By optimizing your band’s website or blog for certain keywords, you can attract new visitors to your site.

After learning this little-known technique, I couldn’t wait to test it out. To find my own local keywords, I began by brainstorming musical categories related to my local area, and tested them out on Google Adword’s Keyword Tool. This free tool is invaluable because it lets me know the actual keywords that people actually use when they go to Google. This will help me choose the best keywords to describe my music.

I’m a singer/songwriter that lives in New York City, so the results of my brainstorm using Google’s tool looked like this:

• new york singer songwriter: 480 monthly searches
• nyc singer songwriter: 210 monthly searches
• new york singer: 14, 800 monthly searches
• new york city singer songwriter: 36 monthly searches

After analyzing the results, I decide to focus on “nyc singer songwriter” as my primary keyword, and “new york singer songwriter” as my secondary one.

In order to maximize these keywords on my websites, I did the following:

I bought the domain NYC-Singer.com and added “NYC Singer Songwriter” to my site’s title section

I sprinkled the phrases “NYC Singer” and “NYC Singer Songwriter” throughout the text copy of my site.

I added “NYC Singer Songwriter” to the title section of my Rock Star Life Lessons blog.

Although “new york singer” gets 14,800 searches each month, it’s not the most relevant choice, as many of those searches are for Singer brand sewing machines in NYC, as well as New Yorkers who have the last name “Singer”. Not to mention the other singer songwriters in the entire STATE (not city) of New York. As Google prides itself on giving relevant search results, it would be difficult to maintain a solid ranking for that keyword.

So armed with this information, should you buy the domain for your keyword?

After testing this theory on my own site at http://NYC-Singer.com, I’d only recommend it for professional musicians, bands and services such as NYCWeddingBands.com and MusicianCoaching.com.

While NYCRockBand.com may get traffic, there’s no guarantee that you’ll receive a return on your investment of time and energy from websurfers searching on that term. However if your NYC rock band has a blog, you’d do well to have a “NYC Rock band” category, and pepper the occasional blog post with that term.

Should you buy the URL, and have it forwarded to your band site?

What I’ve learned is that domain forwarding is invisible to Google. The singer who purchased NYCSinger.com, and forwarded it to her music site only catches traffic from websurfers who enter that URL specifically (and how many people do that?). And since her website title (or site) doesn’t mention “nyc singer”, her site doesn’t even come up in Google searches.

It’s now over a year later since choosing these keywords, and I’ve had a bit of a rude awakening. Last year at this time, my sites held the #2 and #3 slots
on Google, behind the long-running NYC Songwriter Circle. This year, NYC-Singer.com ranks #18 in regular results.

If this site had been a blog, creating more blog posts on that topic would increase Google ranking.

My Findings On Local SEO For Musicians

One thing I learned is how powerful keywords are for blogs. My blog, Rock Star Life Lessons features the keyword ONLY in the website title. But for each new blog post that gets indexed by Google, the website’s title is also included, which adds strength to my “ownership” of the chosen local keyword.

Using your band’s local keyword in the title section of your band’s blog instead of purchasing the domain is a better choice.

My site at NYC-Singer.com would have ranked higher if it had been a blog with regular updates.

All said, maintaining ranking for some keywords can take more time and energy then it’s worth. If you’re seeking to maximize your online music marketing, the better use of your time would be collecting fan email addresses!

This post was written by Carla Lynne Hall, a NYC-based singer/songwriter and music marketing consultant. She blogs about the life of an indie musician at her Rock Star Life Lessons blog, and is launching a new podcast and video series for Fall 2010.

Tags: carla lynne hall, guest post, Music Marketing, SEO