music teachersLessonMaestro

Hints and Tips

Unlock your profile page's full potential

Here at Lesson Maestro, we are constantly working to increase our members' exposure on the internet. However, there are several aspects to your profile page that a member needs to optimize in order to get the best performance.

First you need to understand how the potential student will reach your profile page. There are two ways a student can discover your profile pageā€¦

  1. A student will hear about or discover on their own, LessonMaestro.com, and will use the built in search function to find you. To improve your profile page's visibility within the site, it is recommended that you upload an image and include some type of text.
  2. A student will discover your profile page directly via the results of an external search engine query. A music student may search for "guitar lessons in San Francisco" or "Chicago violin teacher" and find a direct link to your profile page.


Following the suggestions outlined below will help to maximize your profile page's visibility with search engines and help attract more students.

1. Develop your profile page

Include media on your profile page

The more information a potential student can glean from your profile page at first glance, the more likely the student is to inquire about lessons with you. Images and dynamic content like video and audio clips can greatly enhance your page's impact.


Use large text fields to your advantage

It is a very good idea to utilize at least one of the three large text fields available to you. When writing in these fields it is important to consider keyword density to some degree. For example, if you are a piano teacher living in Minneapolis you may want to make sure the keywords piano, lessons, teacher and Minneapolis appear in your text at least occasionally. The higher the percentage of keywords in your text, the better...

      ...better to a point, that is.

Obviously, you want your text to make sense and to not feel contrived. As well as decreasing readability, too high a keyword density can be detrimental to your page's search engine ranking. Also keep in mind that the more text you have, the more diluted your keywords might become so consider keeping your text somewhat concise.


Customize text headings

Customize the headings for your large text fields. The words you use in these headings carry more weight with search engines than the words in the body of your text. Including a few choice keywords in these headings can enhance your profile page's ranking with the major search engines.

2. Location customization

Set your location to where your students are

This may seem obvious, but make sure your location is set to where you actually teach lessons. If you teach most of your students in their homes, you may want to consider using a centrally located position among your students as your lesson location.

Use "metro-area" field to target a specific region

If you happen to live in a smaller town outside a major metropolitan area you may want to consider using the "metro-area" field. For example, if you live in a smaller town outside of New York City but you get most of your students from the city, you may want to set the metro-area field to "New York City" or "Tri-State Region." Using the metro-area field will not affect internal searches done on the website but will enable you to more specifically target students in a particular region via search engines.

Set your inhome lessons travel radius

If you travel to students' homes to teach lessons, adjust your travel radius setting. By adjusting this setting, you can reach out to students who may not know you're willing to travel to them. For example, if a potential student is only willing to travel 10 miles for a music lesson and you live 20 miles away, your card-listing will appear in their search results if you set your travel distance to 25 miles or more.

All of the location settings mentioned above can be found in the locations section of your Control Panel. Click on the button marked "edit location" for the location you would like to edit settings for.

3. Custom URL

Choose a descriptive custom URL

When you first signed up for a membership you were assigned an automatically generated URL suffix that links to your profile page. In many cases you can choose one that is more descriptive as well as providing better keywords for search engines. You may want to set it to the name of your school or just the instrument(s) you teach or your name.

If you teach multiple instruments, you may want to choose the one or two that you want to target most. Adding too many words can make your URL look "spammy" and may negatively affect how search engines rank your page.

Adjust your custom URL by visiting the "profile info" section of your Control Panel then clicking on the link marked "custom URL." The only characters allowed in your URL are letters and hyphens (-).

4. Other considerations

Don't duplicate text from another website

If you have your own website or subscribe to other online music teacher directories, it is very important that you do not exactly duplicate text that appears on these sites. Search engines look for duplicate text and will penalize sites that contain word-for-word matches of text. Make sure to alter your text in some way.

Use instrument groups wisely

The ability to use groups of instruments in your lesson-types list is one of the features that sets Lesson Maestro apart from the pack. Although the use of groups can be very effective at drawing students to your profile page from within the site, it can adversely affect the way search engines see your profile page.

If you happen to teach all brass instruments and set one of your lesson-types to "all brass," you may want to consider also adding the names of some specific instruments to your lesson-type list. All search engines may not be smart enough to know that the "trumpet" is a "brass" instrument.

Finding the right balance of specific instruments and instrument groups can play a key part in the success of your subscription.

5. Link to Lesson Maestro

If you have your own website, one of the most helpful and easiest things you can do for a budding website like Lesson Maestro is to place a link to us on your site. The more links there are online to this site, the more credibility Lesson Maestro will have in the eyes of major search engines, helping to draw more potential students to the site overall.