What are the best musician and band domains?
A domain name is like a business card for bands and musicians. It’s more than just an opportunity to highlight your band’s name though. By including relevant keywords, it can also boost your group’s recognition and visibility in search engine results. So, which domains work best for the music business? Find out below.
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Choosing the right domain offers numerous advantages. It helps your site visitors easily remember your band’s name, and if you’re part of a local band, it can boost your visibility in the region where you’re based. That’s why it’s crucial to carefully select a domain that allows your band or musical act to maximize the benefits of having a website.
While relevance and clarity are important when choosing a domain name, optimizing your domain for search engines is key to building a lasting online presence. The domain extension, also referred to as the top-level domain (TLD), is another element of the domain name that you can use to set your band or musical act apart.
How to craft an SEO-friendly band domain
In addition to the usability and content of your site, the domain name you select for your band plays a significant role in search engine optimization (SEO). The relevance of your domain name to the search terms people use, as well as its connection to related keywords, can influence how your site ranks in search results. That’s why it’s essential for bands and musicians to understand the basics of SEO when picking a domain.
Here are some SEO tips to keep in mind when choosing your band’s domain:
- Include your name in the domain: Putting your band’s name in the domain isn’t just about branding and name recognition. With the name directly in the domain, it lets visitors know what to expect before they even click, which can increase the amount of time they spend on your site and reduce the bounce rate, both of which can boost your search engine ranking.
- Use relevant keywords: While having keywords integrated directly doesn’t have the SEO impact it used to have, they still play an important role in how the website is evaluated. Clear, descriptive keywords that hint at what your site offers or that specify your music style can positively impact your click-through rate (CTR).
- Choose the right domain extension for your band: Domain extensions can be important for SEO when they’re specific to a country or city, like .ca for Canada or .nyc for New York City. Geographic extensions tend to rank better for local searches. While extensions like .band and .music aren’t necessarily better than .com or .org, they do immediately communicate to visitors what they can expect from your site.
Google rewards websites that offer valuable and relevant content. With unique content that is helpful and aligns with the domain name, bands can increase the trustworthiness of their website. Domain trust, a value that indicates the trustworthiness and relevance of a site, can further enhance your search engine ranking.
What creative top-level domains can bands use?
For a long time, standard domain extensions, such as .com and .org were the go-to for websites. However, with the growing popularity of new domain extensions, a wider range of top-level domains are now available, which allow website owners to better showcase the content on their site. For those in creative fields like crafts, painting and music, there are now many more domain extension choices that are creative and also provide insight into the nature of a site.
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Bands and musicians tend to use the part of the domain following www. for the name of their band or their act. By creatively using a range of top-level domains, you can implement a multiple domain strategy for different aspects of your band’s online presence. By doing so, search engines will consider all content under the domains as related and rank it accordingly.
Below, we’re going to use the example of a swing band from New York City to show you how this works:
bandname.nyc: This is the band’s main domain, which quickly communicates where they are from and serves as the primary point of contact for all visitors.bandname.events: This domain lists all upcoming concerts.bandname.fans: This is a separate forum for fan interactions and discussions.bandname.management: This domain can be used to book the band for festivals, corporate events, weddings and other occasions. Fans can also request autographs using this domain.bandname.news: This is a place where fans can find information about new albums, see the band members’ social media activity and obtain other updates.bandname.tube: This domain features official music videos and recordings of live performances.
When using a multiple-domain strategy, it’s crucial to focus on value, ensuring that each domain provides information that is relevant to visitors and accurately reflects the intent of the domain. It’s important to consider whether assigning a TLD to a specific section of your site will be more advantageous for users and how it can enhance your search engine ranking in the long run.
With so many different domain extensions available, choosing one can seem overwhelming. However, many extensions correspond to specific use cases. To help you navigate the most important top-level domains, you can use this overview of domain extensions on the IONOS website.
What are other ways that domains can be used?
Domains can be used for much more than a website. They can also be used to direct users to various social media channels as well as to blogs, forums or an online store.
A domain can also point to an FTP server, making file sharing easier, or it can be linked to other web applications. Domains are also often used for custom email addresses. It’s even possible to set up a domain to point to an email server, enabling you to send and receive emails.
With most providers, it’s possible to set up your domain to work with an email service. The following articles provide more detailed information about how to do this with popular email service providers:
You can also use domains for special events or temporary campaigns. Such domains can be used, for example, when promoting an album or a tour. Domains can also be set up to redirect to other websites or subpages.