.jpg "Web Optimization") How
to Optimize Your School Band's Website to Recruit Top Players: Part
2
This
two part series is designed to give school bands an advantage by
incorporating better Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While private
schools or universities may benefit the most from these ideas, any
school band that wants to grow and recruit top-notch players will
benefit from this series. The implementation of effective SEO will
also help drive audience attendance at concerts, and boost
fundraising efforts. This article is brought to you by the professionals at TicketPrinting.com .
{mosimage}How
to Optimize Your School Band's Website to Recruit Top Players: Part
2
This
two part series is designed to give school bands an advantage by
incorporating better Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While private
schools or universities may benefit the most from these ideas, any
school band that wants to grow and recruit top-notch players will
benefit from this series. The implementation of effective SEO will
also help drive audience attendance at concerts, and boost
fundraising efforts. Part one of this series covered the importance
of good SEO, included some search friendly website design tips, and
concluded with a guide to keyword choice. This article focuses on
tips, tools, and techniques for better keyword choice and placement,
as well as link building strategies.
5
Tips for Better Keyword Placement
Choosing
the right keywords is only the first step to keyword optimization.
Strategic placement of keywords within a website is equally
important.
-
The
title tag of a website is the best place to put top keywords. Make
sure that the title for each page in the site does a good job of
describing the actual content on that site, but also targets
specific web surfers.
-
Incorporate
the rest of your important keywords in to the headline.
-
Keywords
placed in the body text should focus on to 2-3 specific keywords per
page.
-
Meta
tags are
bits of data embedded in HTML code that provide information on any
given web page. Meta tags should target prospective band members,
be individualized, and be placed on each page of the site. Doing
this will ensure that search engines will recognize your site as
being relevant for top notch music education, and will increase the
chance that a prospective member that randomly stumbles upon your
band's site will actually visit it.
-
Place
keywords toward the top of the page rather than further down.
Links,
Links, and More Links
Getting
other highly ranked sites with content that is somewhat topically
related to your band's site is critical to making your page rank
highly among search engines. There is no shortcut to achieving this
type of linking structure. It simply takes a significant amount of
effort. The good news is you probably have a lot of entities willing
to link to your site already. The following are the different type
of links and linking strategies.
Inbound
Links
- A
good place to start would be to contact anyone affiliated with your
school or band and ask if they want to place a link on their site
that directs web surfers back to yours. This type of link is called
an inbound
link. For
more inbound link ideas, check out other school's websites and band
pages and see who is linked to them.
Achieving
a linking structure that appears natural to search engines will help
achieve greater results. Getting highly ranked, topically relevant
pages to link to your site is ideal. But, if links are obtained from
sites not boasting these characteristics, it is likely to only help
and not hurt your rankings. In general, the more inbound links you
can obtain the better.
Reciprocal
Linking
- Some
entities may only want to trade links. This is called reciprocal
linking.
Establishing a reciprocal link entails placing a link on your site
directing visitors to another site in exchange for that site
providing a link on their site back to yours. Search engines do not
value reciprocal links very highly, but a few reciprocal links is not
a bad thing as it will help achieve a more natural looking link
structure. This idea also holds true with lower ranking sites.
While you don't want to have a lot of low ranking site links, a few
will usually provide a slight boost in your website's rankings, and
also help achieve a more natural appearing link structure.
Anchor
Text - Another
factor that is pivotal to achieving a natural linking structure is
establishing varied, keyword rich anchor
text
for each link obtained. Anchor text is the text displayed in the
link on another page linking back to yours. If websites linking to
your site are willing to accept suggestions for the anchor text, make
sure each one varies and includes common keywords.
Website
Content - One
of the best ways to generate inbound links is to incorporate valuable
content into your webpage. Other websites will be more likely to
link to your site if it has content that is useful to them or their
website's visitors. Hosting a blog for you band is a great way to
attract inbound links, and search engines love them because they are
constantly updated. In addition, blogs are also excellent tools for
marketing, fundraising, and event promotion.
Blogs
are also a great place to put keywords, as long as this is done
tactfully. When incorporating keywords into the blog's text, be
sure to look at the content from the users' point of view first,
and strike a balance between the user and the search engine (priority
always goes to the user). For information on how to optimize your
blog for search engines read www.problogger.net.
For more information on creating valuable blog content, visit
http://www.buildabetterblog.com.
Similarly,
consider creating a forum for your school's website or band page.
A forum is great for site visitors, faculty, band members, and SEO
efforts alike. Another great option is to post podcasts or video
feeds on your site. For Example, if a respected music educator or
performer speaks or performs at your school, post it as a video or
podcast. Any of the above options are good alternatives for creating
valuable content on your web page, a characteristic that attracts
inbound links.
Effective
planning and implementation of the components discussed in parts one
and two of this series will certainly end in pleasing results. The
payoff from focused SEO will be greater than most any other website
centric effort. In due time your school band will begin to obtain
the players and recognition it deserves.
Return To Part 1 of This Article
Lance
Trebesch and Colt Lapham
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