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Traffic Tips For Your Music Website - Get More Hits For Your Music Website
By Barry Walker © Jan 26th 2009
Last Update: 17th June 2009
This article will help you to discover how to get traffic coming to your website, and most of these tips are FREE to do. This article will also be revised every so often and more tips will be added in the future, so bookmark or link to this page and come back soon to check out more traffic tips for your music website.
1. Set Up at Least One Social Network Page
Setting up pages on Mypsace, Bebo, Soundclick, Facebook etc are great ways of promoting not just your music but also your website. Upload your music to these sites and if people like them they will follow your link to your website.
2. Give Out Flyers at Gigs
These are the people that you played to, who better to tell about your website. Flyers have been used in the music business for years and there is a reason. People hang them up like funky wallpaper. A constant reminder to the fan and his/her friends where to go to get your music.
3. Get Some Business Cards Printed
Anybody you meet who are interested in your style of music, your friends, people in the business, hand them your cards with your website address. The more people who know about it the better.
4. Contact Independant Internet Radio Stations
Internet radio stations are always looking for new acts, the next big thing. So send them your CD or MP3's.
5. Start An RSS Feed
This is a feed that people can subscribe to either through their web browser or by email, it updates them with any news from your website that you include in the RSS Feed
6. Start a Blog at Blogger.com
What better way to connect with your audience than writing a blog. Not only that, on Blogger.com you can create a link to your website so if people come from search engines etc to your blog they can find your music via the link.
7. Post Comments on Other Relevant Blogs
When you post comments on other peoples blogs, there is usually a field where you can add your websites address. This creates a link to your website whenever you post a comment. But, please do not post advertisements in the comments otherwise you will be classed as a spammer and will probably be banned.
8. Post on Relevant Forums
Set up a signature for your account on forums and place your website address in it (if they allow it) and whenever you post in a thread a link to your website is created. Again, do not post advertisements.
9. Release Tunes on NetLabels
Everyone loves a freebie, so if you wanna release anything for free, search out a netlabel for your genre and release your music on there. Your MP3 Download will reach alot of people and people will search you out and the netlabel will create a link to your website. We are always looking for track for our Free Dance Music MP3 store.
10. Start Your Own Netlabel
Not Interested in making money from your music distribution? Why not start a netlabel and use the creative commons license and allow people to host your music on their own website under the condition they link back to you.
11. List your netlabel on netlabels.org
Listing your netlabel on the netlabels.org wiki website will get you a few hits. You can also update them with your new free releases on there aswell.
12. Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
If you have your own website, learn about search engine optimization. Otherwise your website will probably never get hits from search engines.
13. Write Articles
Writing articles for your own website creates keyword rich content which are great for search engines. Writing articles for other websites can send you links simply because there is always a "Author Bio" that you can put your website address in or anthing else you wanna write about yourself.
14. Submit Your Articles To Free Directories
Submitting to free article directories can potentially get your article onto 100's of websites. Your Link in your Bio can send traffic to you, not only that the search engines may include those links as "inlinks" which could help with your "page rank".
15. Write a 101 or "How To" Article
"101 Ways to","101 Tips" and "How To". 101 and How To Articles, just like this one, contain loads of keywords for the search engines. Not only that people link to them. I mean, how did you get here? By Link or by search engine? More than likely it was one of them unless you came here through our home page. And if loads of people link to them this will increase your page rank.
16. Put Your Website Address In Your IDE Tags
Your MP3 files contain whats known as "IDE Tags". These are located in the properties option when you right click on the file. Put your website address in the description field.
17. Add Your URL to Music Directories
Find a free directory that deals with your genre of music and add your website address to it. However, some ask you to pay for inclusion, DONT. Do not pay for something if you dont know its true worth.
18. Hand Out Free CD's
Hand out CD's to friends and family, if they love you enough they will tell people about you. Gigging? Hand out free CD's to the fans, they will appreciate them and will go to your website. Remember to put your website address on the CD.
19. Submit Links to Similar Sites
When visiting sites which are similar to yours, check to see if they have a links page with a "Add Site" link or something similar.
20. Put Your Website Address on EVERYTHING
Stands to reason that the more things you put your address on, the more people will see it. Put it on CD's, Flyers, Letters, Social Network page etc.
21. Start a Social Networking Group
If you have the spare time, start a Group on a social networking website specialising in either your music genre or something connected with your music scene. You can then advertise your site on the page.
22. Put Your Website Address on Photo's
Another place to advertise your website is your photo's, you will probably notice other websites doing the same. This isnt just for copyright reason, its because if other people use them, the people looking at them know where it came from.
23. Upload The Same Photo's to Bebo
Upload the photo's with your website address to Bebo and allow people to use them on their own profile. Especially the ones from Gig's, these get shared alot by the other artists who performed at the same gig and are then further copied by the fans who attended.
24. Upload Mixes With Your Own Music
Are You A DJ? Then upload mixes with your own music. Mixes are downloaded all the time and if you put your playlist up with your tunes in them, then people will search you out.
25. Upload Vids to Youtube
Uploading videos to youtube can get you alot of coverage, spend some time on the description though otherwise you wont get many views. Put your website address in the video.
26. Give Away Car Stickers
Want 24 hour free advertising? Then try this one, cars get about town and car stickers will advertising your website 24/7.
27. Create Web Templates
If you are good at web designing, you should try designing free web templates for people to download. Put your link at the bottom of the template page.
28. Send Your Music To Magazines
Some music making magazines such as "Computer Music" have a readers music section. Send them in to those section and make sure they advertise your website address.
29. Enter Remix Competitions
Entering remix competitions can get you hits if you so well in them as people will search you out, and if they include your website address on the competition page then thats a bonus.
30. Get T-Shirt Printed
T-shirts are also a great way to advertise your website especially if a photo is taken of you or someone else wearing it ends up on websites and magazines. You can also give them out for free to fans who turn up at your gigs.
31. Give Away Presets and Samples
Give away synth Presets and Samples you have created and they will be shared. Put them into a zip file with a readme.txt file which contains your website address and other info about you.
32. Create Your Own Desktop Wallpaper
These will be seen by the computer owners friends.
33. Give Away Ringtones
These can also get you hits as they are shared to the max. You may aswell get some free advertising out of it.
34. Compile Your Own Charts
Compile charts of your favorite tracks and put them onto your social networking pages and website. They create keywords for your pages.
35. Send Your Charts To Magazines and Related Websites
If your charts are published then your name will be noticed and people will search you out. And again, if they include your website address then its a bonus.
36. Get Listed on DMOZ
Get your website listed in the DMOZ directory, once you have done that your website will be listed on hundreds of other websites. Hundreds of link backs to your website, good for search engine ranking.
37. Ask Friends for Links
Personal recommendations from your friends are a good thing. But, give them the html code you want them to use, especially if it has been Optimized for search engines.
38. Review Other Music
If you have the spare time, review other peoples music on your website and keep an archive of everyone of those reviews. Create links on the review to the musicians web page so that it will grab the musicians attention and just maybe if that musician sees that your review has grabbed peoples attention then he/she might give you free music or a link back. And the more review pages you archive the more content for search engines.
39. Respond To Quality Recoprical Link Requests
Responding to a recoprical link request is a good idea, providing the website requesting it is a quality website. Make sure they get alot of hits, if not then check the google page rank of the page your link is gonna be added to, if its low then forget it as the link exchange will be useless to you.
40. Create Your Own Widget
Creating your own widgets that contain a link back to your website is a great way to promote it. Try and make sure your widget appeals to more than just your fans and you will then see it being added to many myspace and bebo profiles aswell as other peoples websites.
41. Use Social Bookmarking
If you put options at the bottom of your web pages for people to bookmark your pages in social bookmarking websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious, these websites can get you hits. And the more people bookmark them, the more hits you will get. A service you could use to get people to bookmark your website is addthis.com as they provide you with the code to add a bookmark button.
42. Use Hash Tags on Twitter
Using Twitter is a great way to promote yourself and engage with your audience. Hash tags are used as a tool to search and monitor certain topics and if you use a popular hash tag you can reach more people than just the members who follow you. But, your profile must not be locked as your posts must be able to be viewed on the public timeline for this to work.
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