Client project · Music & recording studio
Recording Studio Website & Local SEO
Gave a Philadelphia recording studio a page for every service it sells, where artists can hear its work and book and pay online, on a static site kept current since 2020.
- Client
- Sounds Like Soma
- Industry
- Music & recording studio
- Timeline
- 2020 to present
- Year
- 2020
- Platforms
- Web
Results at a glance
The challenge
- The studio sells many separate services, and each one competes for its own local searches. The starting point was a free Jekyll theme with placeholder content and no page for any of them.
- Artists want to hear the studio's work and check prices before they commit, and then book without having to call first.
- Search engines had little to go on: pages were missing meta descriptions, there was no structured data describing the business, and several internal links redirected or broke.
- The pages are photo-heavy and embed music and video players, which slows a phone down.
- The site ran on free GitHub Pages hosting with no control over security headers, and by 2026 its build still used Ruby 2.6.5, which reached end of life in 2022.
About the project
Sounds Like Soma is a recording, mixing and mastering studio in South Philadelphia. Starting in 2020 from a free Jekyll theme, the site grew into 10 service pages written for Philadelphia searches, 7 of them with FAQ sections, plus 12 work samples with embedded players, 8 reviews from the studio's Google Maps listing and a blog. Artists can book and pay online through Square. A 2022 SEO overhaul added meta descriptions, a sitemap and LocalBusiness structured data; in 2023 the site moved from GitHub Pages to Netlify with security headers; and in 2026 it was upgraded from an end-of-life Ruby to Ruby 3.3.6.
What we delivered
Scope
- Local SEO
- Service landing pages
- Structured data (JSON-LD)
- Online booking & payments
- Performance optimization
- Hosting migration
- Ongoing maintenance
What it does
A page for every service
10 service pages, each with its own title, meta description and wording aimed at Philadelphia searches. 7 of them end with an FAQ section.
Work samples
12 releases recorded at the studio, each with an embedded YouTube or Spotify player.
Reviews
8 endorsements taken from the studio's Google Maps reviews.
A blog
4 posts on recording, mixing and podcasting.
Online booking and payment
8 Square booking and checkout links, one for each room or service.
Structured data
The home page carries LocalBusiness data and 6 service offers with prices, so search engines can show the studio's details.
Built for speed and safety
WebP images, below-the-fold images and embeds loaded lazily, and security headers (Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options and HSTS) on Netlify.
Our approach
Built 10 service pages, each with its own title, meta description and Philadelphia-focused wording, 7 of them with an FAQ section, and wrote 4 blog posts around the same topics.
Added a samples page with 12 releases recorded at the studio, a reviews page with 8 endorsements from Google Maps, and 8 Square booking and checkout links so artists can book and pay online.
Ran an SEO overhaul in late 2022: meta titles and descriptions matched to page content, a sitemap without utility pages, fixes from a Seobility audit, and LocalBusiness plus 6 service-offer structured data on the home page.
Converted the image library to WebP and lazy-loaded images and social embeds below the fold, while keeping above-the-fold images eager.
Moved hosting to Netlify in February 2023 and added Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options and X-Content-Type-Options headers. In 2026, upgraded Ruby 2.6.5 to 3.3.6 and Jekyll 4.3.1 to 4.4.1, and fixed the template errors the upgrade exposed.
Inside the project
Select a screenshot to view it full size.
Each service has its own page, written for the searches clients use
Reviews taken from the studio's Google Maps listing
Work samples with embedded YouTube and Spotify releases
The outcome
- 20 pages in the live sitemap: 10 service pages, 4 blog posts, and pages for samples, reviews, contact and services.
- 100 Lighthouse scores for accessibility and SEO on the home page and the recording studio page (mobile, Oct 2026).
- LocalBusiness and 6 service-offer structured data on the home page, and Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options and HSTS headers served on every page.
- The build moved off Ruby 2.6.5, end-of-life since 2022, to Ruby 3.3.6 and Jekyll 4.4.1.
- 413 updates since 2020, 58 of them for SEO, on static hosting with no server to run.
Built with
Jekyll
Ruby
Sass
Netlify- JSON-LD
Google Analytics 4
Square
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