Online Promotion and Marketing CourseYour Web Presence: 7/11/07, 7:30pmBlog Postings: 7/11/07-7/20/07

Online Digital and CD Sales: 7/24/07, 7:30pm Blog Postings: 7/24/07-8/3/07

Social Media and Virtual Worlds: 8/7/07, 7:30pmBlog Postings: 8/7/07-8/17/07

Made possible by a grant grant from The New York State Music Fund ("The Fund")

Assignment:Based on the learnings from the webinar, describe one tangible improvement you will make to your website.  It could be in the area of search engine optimization, fan incentives, or any other area.

Post as a comment on the blog!

Let’s look at the blog and how to do that.

Conference Logistics

• You can mute your phone with *6

• You can unmute your phone with *7

• If you have a question, type it into the chat

• Questions will be answered throughout the Webinar at various points

Webinar #1 Your Web Presence: Dos

and Don’ts Presented by Jay Moonah

BOOTSTRAP MUSIC SERIES

Summer 2007

Internet?!? Is that thing

still around?

My Experience…

• …as a musician– Playing in Toronto clubs since the late 80s– Member of Uncle Seth (musicface.com/uncleseth) &

The McFlies (mcflies.com)– Created first band website in 1995

My Experience…

• …as an Internet professional– More than 10 years experience consulting and teaching– Previously worked

full-time at Ryerson U., University of Toronto, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)& CANOE.ca

– Now at 58Ninety, online advertising & media developmentagency with clients including Molson Coors, Dove, CHUM Radio Network and others

Topics

• What’s On Your Website?– Features every artist website needs

• Search Engine Optimization– Appearing properly in Google and other

search engines

• Common Mistakes– Things to avoid with on website

What’s On Your Website?

The things you need…

What Fans Want

• Fans (or potential fans) coming to your site want to…– …know who you are– …listen to your music– …buy your music and merchandise– …find out when & where you are playing– …get in touch with you– …interact with other fans

Example: Jonathan Coulton

• 36 year-old ex-computer programmer

• Became a full-time musician in 2005

• Lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter

• Doesn’t tour (at least in the usual sense)

• Gives away most of his songs on his website

• Makes a living as a musician

Jonathan’s website

Fans want to know who you are..

• …but keep it simple and to the point

• Provide extra info for those who are interested, including outside links, reviews, etc.

Fans want to hear (and hopefully buy) your music

• Provide option to preview whenever possible– Can be a stream

or downloadable sample

• Give fans an easy option to buy it if they like it

Fans want to see you live

Fans can even TELL you where and when to play!

Fans (and other important folks) want to get in touch with you

Fans want to interact with other fans

Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

They can’t love you if they can’t find you.

Brass Dogs – SEO in action

• In mid-2004, Uncle Seth decided to form a cover-band side project called “Brass Dogs”

• Created a site with: – carefully written titles & text, – links placed on a few sites

• Brass Dogs soon placed number one in Google for “toronto cover band” and high on other searches

• Has translated directly to two gigs and a dozen inquires in about 8 months

Google - 76%

Yahoo - 11%

MSN - 4%

AltaVista - 4%

others - 5%

Search Engine Page Traffic

All stats based on traffic to musicface.com for February 2005 unless otherwise stated

Traffic from External Sites

• Most traffic (~80 – 90%) on websites is:– “direct” (typed URLs, bookmarks, etc.)– “internal” (from pages on the same site)

• Page traffic from external links:– Search Engines * 72%– Other Sites 28%

• * Therefore, Google brought in 55% of external page traffic

All stats based on traffic to musicface.com for February 2005 unless otherwise stated

Google Indexing Principles

• Indexed sites have to be linked FROM an already indexed site– The more pages that point to you, the

better your rank

• Google copies COMPLETE TEXT of page– Google indexes based where and how often

text appears in the page

Title Tags

• What you put in <title> </title> very important• Main page title tag should contain band name

& brief description

• Make sure every page has a unique title tag:– Uncle Seth: A Toronto-area Independent Band– Uncle Seth Bio– Uncle Seth Contact Information– Uncle Seth: 03/05/2005 set list

• Approximately 50 characters max

What’s in a name?

• New bands: check Google and other searches first

• Existing bands: be extra sure to include key words like:– “music”– “band”– genre(s) of music– your location

(city, country, region, whatever is applicable)

Keywords are Key

• Most engines read the text on the page• Google either ignores metadata "keywords" or

uses them to re-enforce text– However, other search engines do still use them

• Use variations on terms – on one page use "80s cover band”– on another use "eighties cover band"

• Use heading (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) tags and proper HTML formatting

Don’t overdo your keywords!

• If you repeat one word or phrase too many times, Google and other search engines will assume they're being “spammed” and may reject your page.

• Use your common sense – if it reads fine, search engines are unlikely to reject it

The Importance of Being Linked

• Google doesn’t index anything that isn't linked!

• Find directories and other sites where you can submit links

• Create link pages and exchange links with bands, clubs, etc. – also helps findability - people searching for a club

might look at bands that have played there, etc • A trick: when your page gets linked from a site,

submit that site to Google– Submission linked from “About Google” page

Examples from musicface.com

All stats based on traffic to musicface.com for February 2005 unless otherwise stated

Graphics are Good, but Letters are Better

• Make sure there is regular text on your site, not just graphics, Flash or PDFs– Flash and PDFs can be read by some

engines, but things are often missed

• Very important to include HTML “alt” (alternative) text for any graphics or other non-text elements, particularly graphic headers

How are we doing so far?

• Use googlerankings.com to check your rating on certain keywords

Google Fight!

• For comparison to other sites (and fun) try googlefight.com

So remember...

• Make sure your site is linked from sites already in the index

• Make sure the terms your want to be searched by are in your titles and text

Common Mistakes

Things to avoid

Autoplay Music

—

Overdoing it with Flash

Not Linking to Other Sites

• Do you think your site is the only site on the web?– (Yeah, I didn’t think so)

• Give some “link-love” to – other bands– Clubs– Labels– Fans– Reviewers, bloggers, podcasters

Not having your OWN website

• Just ask Bones – the Baton Rouge band who lost their myspace page

• Register a URL tonight!– GoDaddy– DotEasy– Dreamhost– other providers

My Blog & Podcast

onlinemusicmarketing.com

Final Thoughts

• Give fans what they want quickly and easily

• Make your site easy to find in search engines

• Make sure you have your own site that is simple to use

MARGEWhat exactly is it your company does again?

HOMERThis industry moves so fast it's really hard to tell.

Assignment:Based on the learnings from the webinar, describe one tangible improvement you will make to your website.  It could be in the area of search engine optimization, fan incentives, or any other area.

Post as a comment on the blog!

Let’s look at the blog and how to do that.

Thanks!NEXT TIME:

Online Digital and CD Sales

Tuesday 7/24/07, 7:30pm