Why? To get more people to visit your website!

Here’s an easy, step-by-step way to build (or have someone build) a house concert page on your website. It’s simply a very effective tool to communicate with your fans and to increase your chances of turning up in a google or yahoo search. These instructions will work for house concert presenters as well, but you’ll want to change the sample text below to fit your needs.

1. Create a special page on your website with “house_concert” in the URL. For example, http://fransnyder.com/house_concert.html. If you can’t add “house concerts” to your menu bar, remember to link to it from somewhere in your website - like your shows/tour/news pages.

2. Add content about house concerts on the page. For example:

“House, or home concerts are one of the most interesting trends in live music today. Music fans contact artists directly to schedule “up-close-and-personal” performances, usually in the fan’s living room or basement. A host doesn’t make any profit from the event, but suggests a $10-20 donation be made by each guest who attends. These concerts in the home can have audiences of 20-60 people, often snuggled in with cushions, extra chairs, and a few extra barstools borrowed from the neighbors. A cozy, fun, and unique way to get your friends together.”

3. Personalize it. Write about why house concerts are special to you. For example:

“I discovered house concerts a few years ago and absolutely love the atmosphere - you get to meet the audience, hang out, and usually create an one-of-a-kind event that everyone remembers for a long time.”

4. Add a few pictures or a video link if you have one.

5. At the end, add this:”Here’s a great house concert resource if you are interested in hosting a concert in your home.” [Link to http://concertsinyourhome.com, or add one of our banners to make the link]. “If you already know about house concerts, just email me and we’ll start planning one!”

6. Add “Meta Tags” in the header section of the page. Do this for Title, Keywords, and Description. For example:

  • Title: House Concerts with Fran Snyder
  • Keywords: house concerts home fran snyder acoustic music living room concertsinyourhome.com
  • Description: Information to schedule a house concert with Fran Snyder.

7. Save and upload the new page you’ve just created to your website. Then link to it! From your Myspace page, from your tour schedule page, from your news page, wherever! All roads should lead to house concerts…

8. Send me the link to the new page you’ve created, and you’ll be entered in a drawing for a free T-shirt on Christmas Day.

Adding a page to your website with a few paragraphs about house concerts really ups the value in the eyes of google and yahoo - the two major search engines. It makes the link to CIYH more “relevant” and actually serves to improve search result rankings for both CIYH and your site when someone searches the internet for “house concerts.”