Website marketing overview

- [Narrator] One of the most important online tools for any musician, artist, or band is their website. It's not enough to only have a presence on social media since social networks ebb and flow in popularity. Just look at MySpace, which was once the most visited site on the web, and now it's struggling to stay relevant. Or Friendster, which no longer exists. A website gives you total control over the look, feel, and content that you present in a way that no social network can provide. Plus, you never have to worry about the terms of service, the layout, or the access changing the way that you do with social networks.

That said, the way you construct your site means a great deal to how it will be received by your fans or clients, or found by search engines. Website design and layout for musicians, artists, and bands also have several differences not found in normal personal or business sites that you must be aware of, and these are critical to successful artist marketing. Some of the things that we'll look at in this section include website design, website description, search engine optimization techniques, the press and booking parts of your site, and some things to avoid, and ways to measure just how well your site is doing.

We won't go over the intricacies of building a site, as you can get that from a lot of good sources on Lynda.com, but we will cover some of the big picture qualities that an artist, band, musician, song writer, or producers website must have.