Song Titles

[Baldur2630]

We make Backing Tracks and Sheet Music (Notation and Guitar Tablature for popular songs. We use MyMuse as the Joomla Extension to display our work. We split the songs into Volumes or Albums. Each Volume contains 14 or 15 Backing Tracks and corresponding 14 or 15 Music Scores (with Guitar Tablature). We have currently 44 volumes and counting. Originally, we left the SEO work to someone else, who it seems has done NOTHING at all, and we have zero web presence, so I'm taking this over myself.

I know I have a lot of reading and research to do, but we need to start somewhere. First and foremost is how to display the song titles in each volume. Seems that using them in meta keywords isn't helpful, but if I try to put them in the title, just saying "Volume x contains the following titles and then a list of the 15 songs" we are looking at between 200 and 300 characters in the meta description.

Just to get me off the ground (at least at a slow walk) can you tell me how to get my 600 song titles onto the Search Engines?

[abdus]

Can we visit the old/current website to see how it works?

[Baldur2630]

Of course you can. It's http ://www.trax-n-tabs.com. We are going to update it to http so in the next few days. This site only has the Backing Tracks that we make and sell. If you want to enjoy the demos, there is a link to my site http://www.networkingtechnology.org/pan-an The demos are free to download.

we also have a YouTube Channel if you Google Trax-n-tabs YouTube, it will take you there.

Enjoy the music.

[abdus]

It looks like a good fit for @kongondo's Product Variations  and @apeisa's Padloper (for e-Commerce) modules. Keep in mind both modules are commercial packages.

I must admit I haven't used neither, but Product Variations allows you to create one product, and add many variations as you want. This could be useful for reducing the overhead for managing all products/songs and their variations.

Padloper is the module for e-commerce, many people swear by it. 

Both modules are quite easy to integrate, as outlined by @kongondo. You dont have to use neither, and you can build your system from the ground up, but these are battle tested and works.

As for the website, from what I gather, volumes are like albums that can house multiple tracks. This can be done as a parent-child relationship, or a categorization system. Not difficult at all.

For SEO, having a fast website helps. PW helps you achieve that quite easily. Using custom fields you can add any information to any product and show them anywhere you want, there's no limit to it. I've found that having original and interesting content that you marketed to your target audience, and building a good volume of backlinks from reputable sources and through social media helps a lot in ranking. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, every website's needs are different and it needs constant effort to stay in the game against your competitors.

https://www.padloper.pw/

https://processwire.com/blog/posts/padloper-brings-ecommerce-to-processwire/

[Baldur2630]

We started this site several years ago. Did I mention that I'm 76 years old now and on a very small pension. We spent a lot on money on Domain, hosting, moving to a different host when Dayana closed down, money on MyMuse, support and so far we have made just about nothing from the site, mainly because people who promise to do things, just let you down. 

We we aren't selling volumes. We sell individual BTs and Individual Tabs, so a customer can buy a BT from Volume 6 and a Tab from Volume 12 and we make 3 Euros, less PayPals charge. I'm afraid I have no option but to do everything manually. I just can't justify spending more and more money for no returns. 

Why do I do it? You may well ask. Primarily because I love music and love playing guitar. This still doesn't answer my question, so may I rephrase it?

How can I get my volume's song names into the metadata without spending more money and doing it myself?

[abdus]

I am sorry to hear that. Don't let it discourage you from doing what you love.

As for the website, it is using Joomla with a custom module (MyMuse). If it were vanilla Joomla, it would probably be easier, as most modern CMSs allow you to easily change templates as you see fit, and it's all well documented. But modifying a custom module, unless it's very popular might be daunting to someone with no expertise.

I assumed you were thinking of transferring your system to PW, so I recommended some points to start off your research. Although it's not a quick solution, and it may sound like I'm preaching, but in the long run it might prove less costly to switch to a system that allows you and any developers you might hire to easily change the wesite to suit your needs.

[DaveP]

Just so we are all on the same page of the hymn sheet here, what exactly do you mean by 'metadata'?

If you mean page metadata i.e. in the source code of each page of your website, then fair enough, but that is no guarantee of improving your search results visibility.

If you mean something else, then please explain.

[Baldur2630]

Does the picture put us on the same page? I started putting Song names into the Keywords, but seems that it wouldn't help. If I put them in the title I end up with around 300 characters, if I don't put them in how will people be able to find the songs that they are searching for?

[abdus]

I dont think search engines care about keywords anymore. This leaves you title, description and page content to attract visitors.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/meta-description-magic/

When you fill those fields, they show up on the page correctly, but how they work against other links is another question.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="ltr" lang="en-gb">
<head>
	<meta name="keywords" content="Always On My Mind, Apache, Beethoven's 5th, By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Dream Theatre - Best of Times, Fandango, Nights In White Satin, Phantom Of The Opera, Rave On, Skyfall, That'll Be The Day, The Loner, Walk Don't Run, You Raise Me Up" />
	<meta name="author" content="Administrator" />
	<meta name="description" content="Volume 1 of Backing Tracks and Musical Notation plus Guitar Tabs for popular songs and instrumentals" />
	<title>Trax-n-tabs - Wolf Trax - Vol 01</title>
    <!-- ... -->

 

[DaveP]

Think t

19 minutes ago, Baldur2630 said:

Does the picture put us on the same page?

Just making sure. 

Think maybe there may be some mileage in http://schema.org/MusicRecording as well.

[kongondo]

@Baldur2630

Moderator Note:

I sympathise with your predicament and acknowledge your frustration. However, your site seems to be a Joomla website and I have not seen any indication that you intend to transfer your site to ProcessWire. As these are ProcessWire forums, we need to stick to ProcessWire-related themes. However, given your predicament, and that there are members who have been trying to help you already, rather than interfere with the conversation, in the interim, I'll move this topic to Dev Talk. 

[Baldur2630]

I'm sorry. I had no idea that this was a Joomla competitor. I was searching for help and this site came along. When we started MyMuse and Joomla were all that seemed to be available for music. I guess at least until the site starts to earn its keep, I'm stuck with it. IF we start to earn money, there is a good chance that I will dump what I have and move forward, so it might be a mistake to write me off right now. Having said that, I want to thank all the guys who have tried to help

Abdus has it correctly. I tried this for the Meta Desciption :

Titles : Always On My Mind, Apache, Beethoven's 5th, By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Best of Times, Fandango, Nights In White Satin, Phantom Of The Opera, Rave On, Skyfall, That'll Be The Day, The Loner, Walk Don't Run, You Raise Me Up

but it adds up to 235 characters with the spaces

[mciccone]

Unfortunately there is no magic bullet to automatically get your site ranked high on Google.  They rank your site on a number of different factors (most of which they won't tell you about), including how popular your site is, visits, and mostly, unique content.  Meta descriptions are typically only really used in what users see in the search results, not in the actual indexing and ranking that Google uses.  It just helps a user know what that particular page is about when they see the result in the search results. So it is a good idea to have a unique meta description for every page of content.

First and foremost and probably the best thing you can do to help Google see your site is that  you need to get Google Analytics on your page and get it registered with Google Webmaster tools so that the site can be indexed.  I don't see any analytics code on your site?  I'm not familiar with Joomla backend at all, but there is probably a place in the backend to enter analytics code or ids.  Analytics and registering your sitemap with Webmaster tools are automatic ways to get Google to see your site and index it.  This is a must if you want any presence on Google.  It doesn't hurt to add Bing code as well, but that just gives you exposure on their search engine as well.

One of the best ways to get results is to have unique content on each page.  So on every page have an intro paragraph of unique content that Google can read and know how to index your page.  It has to be unique for every page or you will just get lost in the heap of similar sites.  Inside this content is where you would use any keywords.  Don't overdo it, make the content relevant to what the page is about, but make sure to include the keywords about the content of that page/your site a few times.  Your individual pages are lacking in written content describing the page.

 A social media presence does help these days as well.  So setting up a facebook page or twitter account that links back to your site can be helpful as Google now ranks/indexes social media pages as well.  Also what are called "backlinks" help.  Get other sites (preferably well visited sites) to post a link to your site that Google's crawlers can follow to find your site.  

Good luck.

[Baldur2630]

I thank you guya for all the advice, in spite of not having your software. It was very kind of you all and much appreciated. I have Got Google, Bing and Yandex webmaster tools on the site. I have created a Sitemap for the site. I changed the robots to index, follow. I tried to setup meaningful header titles. I created a meta description for each page, but I still haven't solved the problem of song titles. Each volume has it's own page there are 64 pages. Each Page Title is Volume x of Backing Tracks and Sheet Music. The only unique thing is the Volume Number. Each Volume has 14 or 15 Backing Tracks and 14 or 15 corresponding Scores, so yes every page is unique for content, but there's just no way of showing it.

I see people doing searches for song names 'Cosy Backing Track' for example, but they will never get to my site. I also see people looking for sheet music, 'When You Believe Sheet music'. Again, they will never find MY site even though I have it!!! Very frustrating. Anyhow, it's certainly better than it was, thanks to your help, It is being indexed by all three robots so we'll have to wait for a few weeks and see what turns up

[AndZyk]

On 25.8.2017 at 5:01 PM, DaveP said:

hink maybe there may be some mileage in http://schema.org/MusicRecording as well.

Adding to this, have a look at https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/music.