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SEO What?
The reason most independent artists aren’t succeeding is because they’re thinking like major record labels. As a result they’re distracted and completely overlooking what will make them or break them in online marketing, Search Engine Optimization.
Major record labels are going broke as we speak, do you really want to follow in their footsteps? In the past labels have used huge marketing budgets to create and sell artists. Independent artists should not concern themselves with this. Those huge budgets are now bankrupting them. Instead independent artists should think free marketing, the Internet. Do not pay for ads. Focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is the age of the computer, online music sales, and the independent artist. The biggest example of this is Soulja Boy, a complete online phenomenon. He marketed himself online and got the whole world singing his song.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Now that you’ve made the decision to only sell your music online (no CDs), take that would be CD money and invest it in your home studio. Your marketing should be online and virtually free. Marketing online is simply a matter of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which 90% of people think they know how to do. The remaining 10% are smart enough to know they do not know how and they hire somebody to optimize their web pages. Then they go on to become millionaires like Soulja Boy even if their product (music) was
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Marketing Online Successfully
Successful online marketing is simply a matter excellent of Search Engine Optimization. Why? If your web pages are optimized correctly, people will find you online even when they are not looking for you. Major record labels can afford to pay MySpace an obscene amount of money to put Chris Brown’s picture all over MySpace login pages. This forces users to look at Chris anytime they want to access they’re MySpace page.
Independent artists cannot afford this. Instead independent artists need to focus on getting as many web pages as possible, linking them together, and optimizing them in such a way that search engines pick them up easily. The more space you take up, the harder you are to miss. This is why you need as many pages as possible. You MUST HAVEyour own web page (yourname.com). In addition, you need online community pages like MySpace Music, YouTube, FaceBook, Friendster, Imeem, WeMix, SounClick, etc… Link all these pages together, meaning people can click on one page and get to another. This helps bump you up the search index and you’re making yourself a bigger target.
Why Isn’t It Working?
If you’re one of those people who has already done all of the above and is still wondering why people have not found you, I recommend examining the structure successful web pages. I was in the same boat as you. I started looking at web pages that were coming up high on Google and Yahoosearch indexes. I’d also check out they’re coding to see how they had structured their page. You can do this by right clicking on a web page and scrolling down to ‘view source’. Look at the Meta tags they used, the websites description and their use of grammar, the websites title, sub-pages, sitemaps, web link structure etc…
Little Microscopic Details
A lot of this is trial and error and some things are so small you would never think they could hinder your rank on search indexes. For example, take web links. When you post a weblink on your web page make sure the link opens up in a new browser. This way people don’t leave your web page. Many little details like this are overlooked and as a result create one big problem (your page does not coming up on major search indexes). I encourage you to read a book on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of even take class. SEO is constantly changing with technology and emergence of new scripting languages. Keep your eyes, ears, and minds open to change.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
