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website promotion |
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Getting people to your web site... It is fairly pointless having a website that no one can find. So how do you attract visitors to your site? Well fortunately gone are the days of keyword infested sites. Most search engines, notably google, reward context rich sites with high ranking. It is important to have words and phrases appearing as often as possible but they have to be as part of constructed language. Piling a page full of keywords, one after the other, will result in a lower ranking and sometimes disqualification. Google have this to say about their ranking system. Independant advice can be found here. This article is worth reading as it gives a load of pointers and having done it, i can assure you a high ranking can be achieved without too much effort. With music sites there are countless online communities that are discussed elsewhere. In the realms of web promotion, all you need to know is some are better than others. UK bands is probably the best known in this country and is a ridiculously good site. See it here. You can easily advertise your web presence on their forums and in your profile and the same goes for many communities. Get your URL in as many places as you can - once it is there that is it. If no one visits from there then it has not cost you anything. Get as many links as you can from other music related sites - advantageous for SEO (search engine optimisation) too as google gives a lot of weight in rankings to incoming links. Have your web site address on all your gig ads, CDs, press releases - in fact absolutely everything. That is another advantage with using a domain e-mail address instead of the free one you get with your internet provider - it is fairly obvious from your e-mail address what your web site address is. Be as creative as you like getting your web address known - the whole point of it is to get people there. Please come back... You want your surfers to come back as often as possible. Encourage them to do so. Regular updates of the site and new information, even if it is just what the band is planning, will help you in that. There is nothing worse than a band's site never being updated. I have even seen some with the gig listings years old. If you want no visitors at all then that is a good way to go about it. Interaction plays a huge part in return visits. Set up forums where people can air their opinions, offer suggestions and generally find out more. Reply to them as quickly as possible as we all like to feel our opinion is important. Mailing lists are wonderful promotional items for web sites - make it easy for people to sign up to. Send out mails regularly with gig dates, recording news, what your drummer had for breakfast. The information does not need to be earth shattering - but it will serve the purpose of reminding people who you are and that you are still about. Blogs can also be good if they are updated regularly. Some hosting companies provide blogger software on their hosting but if not there are plenty of free ones and good ones. www.blogger.com is good, free and easy to set up Added value... Added value will give your site an advantage over others that don't have added value. For example links to online shops, music related sites, etc. You can have affiliate agreements with some that will then give you a percentage of any sales coming through your site. Added value for your site and you make a few quid. As with links, try to have these affiliate sites opening in a new window so yours stays open. Just a word of warning - do not attempt to have a "banner farm" with list upon list of other sites. It doesn't work and in fact keeps people away. |
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