Instrumental Music

The new level of traffic on the site has been sustained to the year end. The extra volume make it much more interesting and challenging. We now know that the twitter campaign needs to be sustained daily to maintain these traffic levels and that it seems to prompt Google searches as well as direct click through from the links in the tweets. The emphasis of the campaign has broadened out from the YouTube video links to include links to some of our new MP3s supported by pictures of the composers and this has proved effective in drawing visitors in to hear some of the new compositions. The huge interest in Beethoven continues and much of it stems from India and Indonesia. Who knew that use of the gamelan would cause so much interest in it's home land? The challenge for the coming year is to build on this success and convert interest and appreciation into donations

The Google Panda impact is slowing down but we have now had 350 keywords on the first page during the month. In the last week at the margin things are falling back a little but the proportion of direct access it now much higher. Concurrently with these Google developemnts we have been running a Twitter campaign using our You Tube videos and direct links to download and play (subject to browser settings) selected MP3s. I  have been going up a steep learning curve in the music related hash tag landscape with opportunites to be overlooked on a never seen hash tag or to drowing in an overwhelming stream. So it is a bit hard to disentangle what is causing what and the volume of direct accesses is a bit confusing. It is gratifying to see that more of the content of the site is being seen and even more so heard. The download volume this month is almost 90 Gigabits spread over more than 300 of our 500 tracks.This is probably 10 times the previous long run rate so I'm getting some val...

We now have 250 first page search phrase positions - more than double our previous best. And it is still going on - we're on a roll. Let's hope it is not a roller coaster this time. Click throughs from 150 search phrases including some that look like arabic. Weeks worth of download in one day yesterday.

This year has seen mixed results until recently - the iTunes help page fell from prominence and we lost a significant source of traffic as Apple finally provided their own. Traffic was not really impacted by the release of another 150 tracks and the addition of several new composers, nor by the addition of feature recordings like the Ride of the Valkerie and the 1812 Overture. Most recently we have added my Rotary Club's My Donate button to the Donate page and put links into the how donationware works panel and that has brought the Donate page into the top ten pages in recent weeks. But the really big change has been caused by Google's latest algorithm update, Penguin, which has had a massive impact on our rankings across the piece but particularly with Beethoven related searches.  Evidently some less ethical sites have been demoted and we have bubbled up on to many more first pages. This has coincided with a decision to have a go at promoting the site on Twitter. I hav...

So far the new site seems to be working OK. I used a bad link checker to eliminate those and eventually submitted a sitemap.xml which Google were prepared to accept. There are still lots more pages to remove from Google even though I have dealt the main directories that have been deleted  I'm not sure how effective that will be.  I also have a bit more work to do to customise the 404 missing page message system. The site is much smaller now - only 53 pages - so it will be interesting to see what effect that has. The Beethoven Symphony movements still seem to be the most popular downloads.

With the wide spread of broadband internet connections - the big decision this time was to abandon the LoFi clips. That meant that the individual pages for each piece could go too, The removal of Google Ads and the simple links to the MP3 files meant it was time for a total visual overhaul but we have kept most of the main page structure. Our previous authoring programme is past it's sell by date too so we have gone for the latest Zara Web Design package.  It took a little while to get used to it but they provided excellent support when I got stuck. The pages are all published now but take a while to propagate and there is still some snagging to do. The video clips need to be updated and they will be restored once that has been tackled. Even more important there are lots more recordings on the stocks and this update will clear the way for them to be added easily and quickly. Hope you like the new set up - any feedback welcome.