Marketing a Music Website

The music industry has many components that need to be completed if you want to be placed in the best position for success. You have hire the right publisher, agent, manager, and booking agent. You have to get the right studio people involved for the recording and of course you have to have good music. You got to posses an ability to write, play, sing or all of the above.

One of the most important aspects of any business is marketing. Without marketing, that good work is wasted. Sure, some of the above businesses or team members will help you do that, but what are you doing specifically and individually to make sure you increase your presence in the music industry? Today the way to do that best is a professional Internet presence.

It’s no secret that if you want to compete in today’s world you must be accessible via the Internet. The question is “How can I be most successful?” There is a lot of competition out there. You have to do more than create a website. You have to draw people to it.  If you can afford or practice some of the following items you may be able to get some traction started.

Number one there is always the option paying a company or individual to take care of this matter for you. However, hiring an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) service can be rather expensive. According to an article I read by Jenny Halasz, hiring an agency could cost $2500 to $5000 monthly. A consultant could charge you $100 to $150 hourly.

On a positive note hiring a company to do this work for you is a relief if you have the cash.  You don’t have to learn anything yourself and you should have people who specialize in helping businesses get their websites ranked on search engines working for you. Choosing a company or a consultant can be tricky though. You want to make sure your getting people that really know what they are doing.

Number two you can learn a few techniques and do it your self. Music industry professional Bruce Houghton suggests some of the following for musicians.

1.     Social Networking

·      We all know about Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. MySpace is also making a comeback with great interactive tools to market music and other forms of entertainment. Check out the New MySpace.

2.     Link Exchange

·      Google uses backlinks to measure the relevance of a site. You can designate a section or page for links to other related sites that rank well in your category.

3.     Keywords

·      Houghton mentions that we should use real words. Posting video and mp3s is not enough. The search engines can only read words. If there are no words then there is no data to rank the relevancy of the content.

You can read the entirety of the articles mentioned by clicking the following links:

Have Keywords Stopped Being A Proxy To The Customer? (Halasz)

9 SEO Tips For Musicians – Simple Steps That Drive Traffic To Your Site (Houghton)