Search engine optimization should be the focus of any up and coming band when beginning their blogging adventure. When I first was working with my label partner, we were undecided on what kind of layout to use for our band. The first thing we did was evaluate our competition and learn from their successes and failures with their website design. First thing I did was look at the Billboard Top 100 and find artists in my similar genre. From this point I wanted to learn what kind of layout and format would be manageable for my band.
I focused on the current Hip Hop artists showing up on the Billboard Top 100 and was paying attention to the initial layouts. Some of the artists had sites that were just landing pages for their music while others were fully developed websites with forums and focused on community building. This is important because how much work do you want to put into your websites’ development: blogging, developing a forum and promotion all include alot of effort. How much time can you dedicate to its development?
Kanye West was the first website I found and liked a couple of things. The website design is flash and has a futuristic look to it, but the graphics aren’t the most important thing. There is a definite call to action to join his mailing list on the bottom of the homepage. As you scroll from side to side and admire the graphics or wonder what is going on, the mailing list stands out. Their is promotion of a book he has that is “exclusive to the website”. Next to it is a link to buy his album that is on iTunes and the final box on the bottom has a fan club sign up offering a contest for filling out a survey.
Akon has an interesting site that seemed more like a plain landing page promoting his recent release. The homepage is simple displaying his new album and telling fans where they can buy it. The reason I like this one is that instead of throwing a website at a new visitor with so many things going on, you are easing them into where to find stuff. Right under where to find the album, there is a link to enter “Akon Online” and a “Join the Akon Community” and how to join “Akon Mobile”. Simplicity works well for a newcomer, while at the same time stressing a call to action: buy an album or sign up for my community.
What did surprise me was the amount of artist sites out there that didn’t even have keyword descriptions for their website. You can easily see this by right clicking on a website’s home page and selecting “view source”. Right where the header is you will see a section called keywords and this will tell you what keywords they chose to describe their site. I checked out T.I’s website TrapMuzik and found his keywords being just his name, crew name, record label, album title, and artist. I was expecting a little more describing his genre or style of music.
After continuing the process I realized what I wanted for my band blog and the sections involved
These are just a couple of examples of how I made a list of things we wanted for our band. Mix and match what you like and what you don’t. This will definitely help when searching for your website theme and if you were going to have a web designer take on your project, you now know what you want from your design.
