‍

Truth be told, there are a whole bunch of things musicians and artists would rather do than learn how to do SEO on SoundCloud. Dealing with all this “big stuff” can’t hold a candle to playing and recording music.

At the same time, though, if you want to be sure that you’re reaching as many people with your music you need to learn how to dial in your profile, SEO optimize individual tracks, generate more plays, and tackle off page SEO, too.

That’s why we’ve put together this detailed guide.

Below we share a number of specific strategies you can use to improve your SEO on SoundCloud without having to spend a ton of time, energy, or effort on it.

Let’s get right into it.

Does SoundCloud SEO Make a Difference?

Most artists think of SoundCloud as a distribution platform first and foremost, ignoring it completely as a traffic generation and “fan cultivation” platform – for obvious reasons, too.

SoundCloud looks and feels like a distribution platform, after all.

Because it’s built online, though, savvy and strategic artists are learning to tap into the power of search engine optimization and combine it with all the tools and promotional leverage that SoundCloud offers.

It turns out that using SEO to boost your SoundCloud can dramatically increase the amount of plays you get organically, but can also help build your audience (not just on SoundCloud but everywhere else) at the same time.

SEO on SoundCloud makes a world of difference!

How to Do SEO on SoundCloud

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dig a little bit deeper into the ins and outs of how to do SEO on SoundCloud effectively.

We’ve broken this up into two distinct categories – on page optimization and off page optimization.

Both of these approaches are important if you want to be successful with SEO on SoundCloud, but both of them require different approaches.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

On-Page Optimization

You are going to have the most control over your SoundCloud SEO when it comes on page optimization.

Everything that gets published to your SoundCloud page is going to be created by you first and foremost, and that means there’s a lot of leverage you can exert over on page optimization efforts.

It’s not enough to just write your band or artist name, publish your albums or song tracks, and then call it a day.

No, you’re going to want to do a couple of extra things to get yourself a little more “link juice” and boost your relevancy in the major search engines today.

Dial in Your Profile

First things first, you want to be sure that your entire SoundCloud profile is fleshed out and optimized with SEO in mind.

Have an eye-catching profile image, share an interesting banner, include all kinds of social media and main website links, and make sure that you are generally taking advantage of any profile options SoundCloud offers.

At the same time, don’t be shy about finding ways to squeeze keywords into these profile options as well.

You don’t need to go crazy (fact, it’s a bad idea to be too heavy-handed here) but a little bit can go a long way.

SEO Optimize Individual Tracks

You also want to make sure that you have fully optimized each and every one of your individual tracks and track pages.

‍

At this point you need to know How to Choose the Best Keywords for SEO. Click the link to read more about that.

Fully fleshed out track descriptions, using clear titles that “grab” your audience right out of the gate. Add imagery (with alternative text whenever possible) and then make sure that you really lean on any of the tagging options available from SoundCloud, too.

This is where a lot of your SEO results are going to come from with SoundCloud on page optimization.

Wrack Up the Plays!

The more plays you get the more attention you’re going to get, not just from your audience or from SoundCloud itself, but from the folks at Google – and the other major search engines as well.

Do whatever it takes to rack up as many plays as possible (even going so far as to purchase plays if you need to “seed” a little bit of action on your account before things take off).

You won’t regret it!

Off-Page Optimization

Off page optimization is just as important as on page – but it can be a little bit more challenging to pull off.

Here are a couple of things you’ll want to keep in mind to hit the ground running with SEO for SoundCloud off page efforts.

Network for Backlinks

Back links are a major foundational piece of off page search engine optimization, whether you’re talking about SoundCloud or anything else.

The more people you have talking about you on different platforms in different websites – and then linking back to your SoundCloud platform – the more recognition you’re going to get from search engines.

That recognition is also going to work in your favor as a “vote of confidence” for the content that your producing, telling search engines that it’s more valuable, more engaging, and more interesting. This incentivizes Google to bump your content in the ranks compared to content that just isn’t getting as much buzz.

Blast Social Media

Social media should be a big piece of your marketing puzzle no matter what, but it’s also a linchpin for off page SoundCloud SEO.

Every few social media blasts should include a link that sends people back to your SoundCloud profile (so long as that link is relevant to the content in your social media posts).

You don’t want to go too heavy-handed here but you definitely don’t want a super light touch either. Play around with promotional social media blasts versus pure engagement to find a sweet spot that works for you.

Closing Thoughts

Soundcloud SEO is a great solution for Toronto musicians looking to get noticed. If you keep the tips and tricks highlighted above in mind you should be able to hit your SoundCloud SEO efforts right out of the park without a lot of extra energy or a lot of extra effort. I should also mention, if you ever launch a store to sell your bands merchandise, you're going to want to know How to Improve SEO in Shopify.

‍

At the end of the day, you can always lean on search engine optimization professionals to help get you over the finish line, too – or to give you a little bit of a head start if you’re just getting cracking.

Don’t be shy about leaning on the expertise of these professionals to do search engine optimization for you. That’ll free you up to focus more on generating content or playing music rather than having to fiddle around with search engine optimization and other marketing efforts.

‍