A website is a valuable resource for musicians and, when used properly,can be a powerful tool for converting fans, but before turning them into long-term followers, it’s important to get them there in the first place.
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Guest Post by Nicholas Rubright
For musicians, having a website is the norm these days. However, many artists don’t use their website to their full potential. Most musician websites sit idly online until they send a link to someone or give it a mention on stage.
Your website shouldn’t simply be used as a music distribution channel. When it comes to getting your music heard online, your website can be a powerful fan acquisition channel that converts your website traffic into new fans – but how do you go about acquiring the website traffic in the first place?
You don’t simply want to post links to your website around the internet in ways that are only ever going to get you a few page views for hours of work, you want to find the channels that let you continue to acquire website traffic over time once you’ve put in the work to build them up.
Here are 3 ways to drive lasting website traffic to your music website.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Showing Up in Google
Website traffic from search engines like Google is great because it’s completely free, and if you rank well in popular search terms, the traffic will keep coming.
So, how do you get your website to show up in Google?
It really comes down to providing content that people are searching for, optimizing the content for targeted keywords, and getting other websites to link to that content so it ranks higher for the targeted keyword.
Here’s how to get started with SEO.
Start blogging
The best way to show up in Google is to start a blog. This increases the number of pages Google will index on your website, which makes it more likely that you’ll show up in search results. Once you have a blog set up, choose a topic to write about that interests you and that is likely to interest those within your music scene.
Finding targeted keywords
When you have your chosen topic, it’s time to do some keyword research to find popular keywords.
When searching for keywords, you want to find those that have high volume, but are less competitive. If a search term is filled with results from the top 100 websites, it’s going to be hard for your content to rank well.
To find new keywords, use Google’s keyword planner. While you do need an Adwords account to use it, you don’t have to have any ads actually running.
To use the keyword planner, just type in something you think will interest readers of your new blog, and then a list of keywords will show up with their monthly search volumes. Type some of these keywords into Google to check out the current results, and see if you can put together something better.
Write for other blogs
Once you have a good amount of content on your blog, a great way to get links back to yours, and increase your rankings in Google, is to write for other blogs.
To do this, simply find blogs in your niche by using some of these search strings:
- Your keyword + “guest post”
- Your keyword + “write for us”
- Your keyword + “guest article”
- Your keyword + “this is a guest post by”
Once you find a nice sized blog in your niche that accepts guest posts, look around their blog to see what they’ve written about before, brainstorm some article ideas, and send them an email like this one:
Hey [Name],
I was on the search for some information about [Topic] and came across your blog. Awesome stuff!
I’m contacting you because I’d like to contribute an article.
I’ve been brainstorming some ideas that I think your readers would get a ton of value from:
- Idea 1
- Idea 2
- Idea 3
I’ll make sure to include information that’s difficult to find elsewhere.
You can also check out our blog here.
Looking forward to your response!
Best Regards,
Nicholas Rubright
Using an email similar to the one above, I’ve been able to generate a 1 in 10 response rate, and most of these responses lead to guest posts being published. Getting backlinks to your website is the most powerful way to increase your rankings.
Backlinko and QuickSprout are awesome resources for learning all you can about search engine optimization. They both provide actionable information that helps you build backlinks to increase SEO traffic quickly.
- Social Media
Social media isn’t just about how to manage your social media pages or how to promote your music on Twitter or Facebook – it’s about leveraging the engagement on these platforms to drive more traffic to your website.
Social share buttons
A great way to get social media traffic for your website is to leverage social share buttons. You can use free services like SumoMe to add these to your blog or website.
Social share buttons can leverage incoming traffic from search engines and other sources by encouraging visitors to share your content and web pages with their followers, thereby driving more traffic to your website.
Mention others in your blog articles
If you mention another musician, brand, or website in one of your articles, reach out to them and see if they’ll share it with their followers. This can drive brand new, targeted traffic to your website if executed properly. Depending on your blogs topic, a great way to take advantage of this can be to set up interviews with influencers for your blog.
Share more than once
Sharing more than once on social networks like Twitter can greatly increase the amount of traffic you receive from social media, since Twitter’s feed is real time.
When you share more than once, be sure to write a different message each time so your followers aren’t bothered if they happen to see the same link twice.
- Your Email List
Getting fans to sign up to your email list is one thing, but keeping them engaged in a way that drives them to your website is another.
Getting your mailing list subscribers to your website can result in greater music and merchandise sales, and increase social media shares of your website content. However, to leverage an email list as a source of website traffic, you need to get mailing list subscribers.
Here are some ways to get subscribers for your email list.
Promote it on your blog
If you have a blog, growing your mailing list through your website can be extremely powerful. If you provide readers with valuable content, they’ll want more, and will click the subscribe button when asked. You can ask visitors to subscribe to your email list at the end of the article, but since most people won’t read the entire articles, popup forms can put conversion rates in the high single-digit percentages.
Ask fans to subscribe at checkout
People who are making a purchase on your website are already in love with what you’re doing, so having them as mailing list subscribers can result in more engagement with the emails you send out.
Promote it on social media
If you keep your mailing list content different from your social media content (like you should), then as a part of your promotional posts, plug away at your email list with exclusive content and special offers.
If your email list is large enough, sending out weekly emails can bring users back to your website, and fuel new visits through social media shares – both of which can result in increased sales.