In the past 20-30 years, some of the biggest selling artists have been people such as Bing Crosby, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Bee Gees and Queen.  Some of them you can understand, but some, well, how have they made it on to the list when they havent released new records.  Has the sale of older records simply been enough?

Yes and no.  Sales of talismanic albums have helped a few artists and groups, but one of the major reasons for their continued success is the use of their songs on compilation albums.  Generally, leading songs of the aforementioned artists are of high quality, but are rarely THE favourite song of many people.

BUT (the SEO bit is coming, folks, trust me) a song from The Rolling Stones, let’s say ‘Black Sugar’ will appear on an awful lot of people’s top 10 songs of all time, even if its in position 9.  The same will be for a Beatles song – let’s say ‘Hey Jude’, which may come in at 6th place.

So, in many cases, someone’s favourite song could be something that resonates with them, but could be a song from an artist such as Lady GaGa, who has not been around all that long, but with the rest of the top 10 made up from songs from the Bee Gees, Elton John, Rod Stewart and so on.

Now, because of the popularity across the board of certain songs, they are then selected for thousands of compilation albums that are released each year, as well as numerous greatest hits records (yes, i say records because I’m 34), of which millions are sold per artist.

So, think about it, ‘Maggie May’, could be in 4 million people’s top 10 songs of all time, so when a record appears with that song on it, or a greatest hits record of Rod’s (yet another one) is released, it will get bought by many people. Whereas the chance of a Kelly Clarkson song being used 6 years down the line is remote.

OK, I have waffled about music for long enough now, here comes the SEO part.

Your content should appear in as many top 10 lists as is possible for your site subject matter.  Lets take the exciting world of Televisions.  Many SEO’s and site owners will look to be top for ‘cheap televisions’ or ‘televisions with hd’ and compete for those terms ferociously.

However, they will, naturally, forget about searches for mundane things such as ‘hd televisions with grey finish’ or ‘tv with hd and freeview built in’.  Now, there are literally thousands of similar terms being searched for every day with many SEOs choosing to ignore them.

Heres where the music thing kicks in kids…

Each Google search result (the top 10) is like a compilation album containing tracks of various artists.  In the music world, the good content (songs) of Elton john for example, would see him appear on loads of these albums over time, bringing him in a few thousand quid here and there, but combined, provides a LOT of money indeed.

The same should be true for your site and its content (SEO).  When your Television site goes in to detail about several aspects of a particular TV’s attributes and features, to greater detail than competition, then generally, you are going to appear in the ‘album’ for that particular search.

And the same is true for each and every available search.  You need to appear.  You need to be Elton John (how many times have you heard that in an SEO blog?).

Yes, you may want to be Lady GaGa, but she will make a great entrance, do well for a short while, but long term, she will fade away and be forgotten to be only remembered on TV shows in the future called ‘Weirdos of the 2000′s’ whereas our boy Elton will be selling records way into his 130′s should he live that long.

Being a Lady Gaga will cost you a pretty penny, but will get you some success in the meantime and will then see your profits dwindle when you do not continue the SEO, link building, match competition or whatever it was that got you there.

In at least one competitive industry that I can think of, this is most beautifully true, with several sites all competing for the same few searches (albums) with compilation albums (lesser searched terms) aplenty being easy to get listed on.

So, who really is cool?  Lady GaGa – here today, gone tomorrow (OK, 3 years or so) or Nana Mouskouri, listed on every folk album ever made, ever?

SEOs – Be an Elton, Be a Mouskouri. Be cool!

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