Tomorrow I will participate in a new edition of the National Assembly of the AEDEM, the Spanish Association of Music Publishers.
The purpose of this organisation is to defend and promote the economic, social, cultural and professional interests of music publishers. Every year it organises a members' meeting in which specialists in music-related topics are invited to participate as speakers, with the aim of keeping its members up to date and making them aware of the latest developments in the music industry.
This is the fourth year I've participated as a digital marketing specialist and I've prepared a talk with the latest developments that the Internet has brought us for music promotion in 2016. While I was preparing the slides I thought it was worth writing this article about the influence of Google's deployment of the semantic web on the promotion of music on the Internet. So here goes the article. I hope you find it interesting.
How the deployment of the semantic web affects the music industry
Let's go step by step: first, what is the semantic web? Second, how does it work? And third, how does it affect musical results?
What is the semantic web?
The semantic web is what we call the internet that aims to allow machines to have a high level of understanding of the content created on the internet. In other words, in simple words... it is the internet in which machines understand humans.
It is a confluence of Artificial Intelligence and web technologies that focuses on introducing explicit descriptions about the meaning of resources, to allow machines to understand the meaning of things and be able to offer concrete answers to questions asked naturally. For example, if we go to Google and ask “how old is Messi?” it will answer “28 years old”. It has understood what we asked and has answered with a clear, simple and precise answer… instead of with a list of websites that contain the words “what”, “age”, “has”, “Messi” which is how it would have answered a few months ago.
To understand this type of results a little better, please perform these searches and see the results:
- «How old is Madonna?»
- «How much does Gerard Piqué earn?»
- «Upcoming events at the Hospitalet Youth Theatre»
- «Sabadell cinema listings»
All the websites that appear in these results use semantic markup so that machines can understand the content.
How does the semantic web work?
Since 2012, Google and other search engines have been working to standardize databases so that when someone types “how old is Messi?” Google can understand that Messi=person's last name and that age=numeric field in a database, so when we perform this search, Google checks its index and discovers that Messi is a person's last name and then searches for websites that have semantic tagging for a person's file whose last name is Messi and displays the “age” field in the results.
This type of data on a website is called structured data.
What should I do to become a semantic content provider for Google? Well, it's easy: use semantic markers on your website.
- Here you will find more information about semantic markers: Schema.org
- Here you will find the list of semantic markers according to the type of information: Schema items
- Here is the list of semantic markers related to music: Schema Music
- Here you will find more information on how to mark up your website: Google Search Console
- Here is the link to the WordPress plugin that installs semantic markers: All in one Schema for WP
- Here is a test to see if you have implemented semantic markers correctly: Test structured data
SEO 2016 (Search Engine Optimization) is all about semantic web and structured data. It is also about link building…but we will leave that for another article.
How does it affect music?
If you have clicked on the links above you will have discovered the list of semantic entities that refer to music and events. If you use these markers on your website, your data is structured in a way that can be better read and understood by Google and this has the following consequences:
- Your website is better positioned: Google can use it as a general reference and place your page outside the natural results, in the prominent position that you have seen if you have carried out the searches that I have proposed in the first section of this article (among what Google calls the "Knowledge Graph results«)
- He rich snipped of your results has more visibility: The summary sheet that appears on a Google results page contains more information and is more visible.
- The Google My Business listing on the right side of the results page includes more information (such as album names, upcoming concerts, etc. [see Google My Business listing] Shakira to give you an idea]).
So you know... if you are dedicated to the world of music, you are interested in knowing more about Google and the semantic webI hope that this article has been useful to you, if nothing else, so that you can look for more information on this subject. If I find time this week, I will publish the slides presented at the AEDEM assembly, so that you can also discover the rest of the news.
We talk to each other.
Post note:
Here is the presentation I used during my presentation at the AEDEM Assembly. I hope you find it useful.
