Yeah Daniel, you can actually become a google expert just by taking note of that stuff.

This is something I still struggle with because I'm a bit wordy at times, but I've learned to take the "Homer Simpson" approach to just about everything marketing related.

What I do is right before I do a ton of work that I have to undo later, I stop and think, "would this make sense to Homer Simpson?"  or "How would Homer Simpson search for this?"

What it does is put you right there in the ring with the common man.  The big distinction is that everyone in this forum will be equipped with marketing Ninjitsu to cash in on Homer.

-Steve

The first part is a simple, cut & dry SEO approach.  I'm talking about on page factors as well as off page.

It may be tough to secure a top ranking because the 1st result is a pretty comprehensive (though uncited) account of the "new yardbirds" brief existence which eventually became Led Zep.  The 2nd is wikipedia for the actual Yardbirds (which does have citations)

You may not get a top ranking, but you could make top 3 or 4.

Here's a wild idea (and an untested one), but you may be able to take a shortcut here…

It looks like these rankings were achieved (at least in the 3rd result's case) simply by what is known as LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) which is google's way of giving authority to words and phrases that seemed to be linked contextually (ie.  Jimmy Page… obviously a member of both bands and therefore semantically linked).

What you could do is simply reverse engineer the ranking strategy.  This would mean, comparisons to not only the sound of your band to both Led Zep and The Yardbirds, but also each individual member's channeling of the actual members of the Yardbirds ("so so and so's guitar work is cut from a Jimmy Page ala the Yardbirds styling")

Basically, use all of the semantic referencing to construct an article that is relevant to things that seems like they would naturally rank for Yardbirds related shit.

For on page factors that should use keywords…

1. The title of the article
2. The meta title of the webpage itself
3. meta keywords
4. all img alt tags for your images
5. the url (if you're not using a blog format it should be something like lovelysavages.com/the_new_yardbirds.html
6. headings (h1 h2 tags and whatnot)
   For the off page factors
   1. Create a video to direct traffic back to the web page
   2. syndicate the article through EZA and link back to the original web page in the author's box
   3. submit the original to Digg.com in the music category
   4. Submit the url to pingler.com
   5. bookmark it yourself using delicious.com or any social bookmarking site

   Here's the kicker though…

   Offer something to your list for free if they will take a moment to bookmark the page in delicious under the tag "The New Yardbirds".  Make them an ethical bribe.

   Like I alluded to, you may not get a top ranking (3 million competing sites and about 1,000 competing videos), but bribing your fans/friends to bookmark the page for you may cut through some of poorly or inappropriately ranked sites.

   Keep in mind though, people searching for the New Yardbirds are looking for just that.  However you will get some sign-ups from the true music lovers assuming they can find your page.  The things I outlined above will work if you can successfully reconstruct a semantically relevant webpage.

   Good luck,

   -Steve

   EDIT:   I forgot one more thing… after you get the page up, go through your website and any reference to either the Yardbirds or even better… the New Yardbirds, should be made into a link to your new yardbirds page.

   ANOTHER EDIT:  I just thought of it (because it's shiny and *NEW)... after you achieve a ranking, make another ethical bribe to your list if they will click the google "1 up" button for you.

Hey Daniel, I know what you mean about "enjoying geeking out on this stuff". I'm absolutely obsessed with it and I can remember the power I realized I had when I first started messing with this stuff. But man, I must be boring to talk to at parties these days 🙂

There are a number of ways you could take a ranking for a search engine term like that. For the short term I would create a simple ezine article, blogger blog, squidoo, or some other free service and link the content to your squeeze page.

But for the long term you could try to create your own music authority site and then essentially advertise yourself with a big unavoidable ad in the right side bar (like my MMM blog), as well as links in the content. You would then approach it like Steve laid out. You'd write keyword rich articles and then build links back to those pages with keyword relevant anchor text. It's simple, but it's involved. What would you think about a lesson on this for next months training module? Blogging for musicians so to speak.

To show you an easy way to get some ideas for the LSI that Steve is talking about. Here is a screen shot using Google's "related searches" option. Click the icon to view.

You can find the related searches option in the left sidebar if you scroll down a bit. Then at the top you will see all kinds of terms that Google sees as relevant. By including as many of these terms as you can NATURALLY in your article you will be telling google your content is very relevant to the subject at hand, and you will also be increasing your chances of getting a lot of long tail traffic.