New ‘Genre’ Meta Tag for Bands & Musicians
Posted on November 7th, 2009 in Online Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimisation, Website Management & Improvement.
Tags: abstract, genre, meta tags, Search Engine Optimisation, search engines, seo, targeting a genre, unsigned band promotion, web marketing
Here is something I’ve literally just stumbled across that I though might be worth sharing. According to unsignedbandpromotion.com a new ‘genre’ meta tag can be used to let the search engines know your style of music. You can read more on the tag here but is it effective? I thought it was worth sharing and offering my two pennies on this find.
In short, it’s a tiny snippet of code that goes in your web page code (just like the description and keywords tags) but instead, is focused on music – bands, musicians and artists, DJs, producers, MCs – even session musicians that have a specialist genre they work in or promote.
It simply tells the search engines which genre you work in so, theoretically, it could help increase your positions within the search engines for anyone searching using the same genre in your tag. But is that the case? Are search engines paying attention to it?
It isn’t an official meta tag are far as I am aware, both as a website developer and search engine optimisation technician for a UK SEO company. It’s an idea utilising the ‘abstract’ meta tag (very similar to the meta description tag) and is usually used to describe the page in a short sentence or two.
Since the description tag is already an officially recognised meta tag that does the same job, it seems there is little need for another and doesn’t mean anyone or anything will take much notice of it. And, if they do, there’s probably very little they can do with it that’s going to make it worth your while or benefit you since it seems none of the major search engines pay a blind bit of notice to it when it comes to ranking your website:
This is an optional Meta tag. It will not assist you with the major search engines. If you have content that is highly specialized, with the use of the Meta abstract tag it will allow search engines that are apart of your field of expertise to index your website correctly. Currently the Meta abstract tag is not apart of Google, Yahoo!, and MSN algorithms. – Web Marketing Now
In days gone by it may have helped a little. But these days with so much spam and fierce competition on the internet, if it was that easy to rank your website high up in the search results for anyone searching any major search engine for ‘rock music’ every band, label, music shop/download site and promoter would be doing it, resulting in widespread spam and no real useful results in the search engines.
You have to remember, there are no shortcuts in getting a website recognised on the internet. In the past, things were much simpler but these areas got abused (particularly within the adult industry) and as a result now have little/no effect on your rankings in the search engines.
One hot tip, though, an area that is increasingly becoming more important is the size of your pages… more importantly, the speed at which your pages load. Anything unnecessary is best to be removed (or at least reduced) if it means a slower loading time for your website. A fast loading website shows that you are keen to provide a better experience for your users and the search engines love it, wanting to send people to your site more often, therefore ranking your site higher than others that haven’t spent so much time getting things right.
With that in mind, consider if it is worth putting that extra code into your page that isn’t strictly necessary and without any real backup of it being of much benefit.
I’d love to hear more on this as it isn’t something I’ve tested personally but Unsigned Band Promotion seem quite keen on it. Have you tried it? Did you implement the tag and test where you rank in the search engines before and after it had been picked up? All comments on the genre meta tag idea are welcome below.
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