Search engines

What search engines see

Every release and song page tells search engines what it is, in structured data they read but visitors don't see. A release is described as an album by your band, with its tracks, release date, cover, label and UPC, where to buy it and for how much, and the same release on each streaming service. A song is described as a recording by your band, with its length, ISRC, the releases it's on, who wrote it (from Credits lines like "Written by: …"), and its lyrics when they're shown. The release's excerpt, when you write one, becomes its description.

Set your Organization Type

Every release and song says it's by your site's own organization, so search engines need to know that's a band or artist. With Dirigible SEO installed, go to SEO → Settings and set Organization Type under Structured Data to:

• Band or Music Group for a band, and for a solo artist too. It adds your genre, home town and members.
• Person, if you'd rather the site be about you as a person.

Until then, search engines see your music as a business's. The Music screens show a note with a link to the setting. Add your Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp artist pages to your site's social profiles too, so search engines connect them with you. See SEO settings.

If the site uses Yoast or All in One SEO, they take over structured data and the music details aren't added.

What to expect

Google doesn't show special results for music, like the star ratings or event dates some pages get. Your albums and artist panel in Google come from Spotify, YouTube and other music services. What the structured data does is help search engines (and AI answers) connect your songs and releases to you.

What does bring visitors is your song pages. Lots of songs by independent artists have no page on lyrics sites, so when someone searches for "song title lyrics" or the song with your name, your own song page can be what they find, as long as it has the lyrics on it. Song pages that show lyrics are titled “Song Lyrics – Artist” for that reason, unless you set your own title in Dirigible SEO (with Yoast or AIOSEO, their titles are used instead). That's why it's worth adding lyrics to every song you can, and why songs with nothing of their own yet are kept out of search until they have lyrics, credits or a story (see Songs).

The link pages are kept out of search on purpose, so they don't compete with your release pages.