The challenge you’re facing is common: people express interest in an event, like clicking “Attending” on Facebook, but then don’t appear. To address this, we need to enhance your event’s online presence and make it more enticing for potential attendees.
Firstly, social media and announcements are excellent for creating buzz, but integrating Event SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial. This strategy targets people who are actively searching for events like yours. It’s not just about being loud; it’s about being relevant and visible to the right audience.
In 2024, with the world gradually opening up again post-COVID, it’s the perfect time to leverage organic search traffic for your event with an SEO strategy.
Learn from this guide because it outlines practical steps for implementing SEO strategies in event promotion, enhancing reach and relevance.
Creating a dedicated event website is a crucial step.
This site should be a central hub for information, updates, ticket sales, and more. Keeping your website content fresh and updated is vital for SEO. Outdated information turns visitors away and negatively impacts your search engine rankings.
Let’s consider music festivals in Australia as an example. Organizers create fantastic websites with details about artists, venues, and attractions.
They also build a comprehensive list of relevant keywords related to these aspects to rank higher in search results and attract relevant traffic to your compelling event.
Common Mistakes That Impact SEO for Events
However, post-event, many organizers leave a static page saying, “Stay Tuned for Next Year,” which is a missed opportunity.
All the valuable content that boosted their SEO pre-event is no longer contributing. Instead, they should continue to update the website with relevant content, even during the off-season. This approach maintains SEO momentum and excites potential attendees for the next event.
Keywords will start burning off because of the monumental shift in how the website looks and the removed content that was allowing them to rank for keywords.
You can see from the below chart the volatility in search results that happens before, during, and after an event.
There is a much more innovative way to leverage these organic search rankings for a longer and more consistent set of gains to get you more traffic and sales.
Events may lead up to the day, but the play could be so much longer.
Play harder with event SEO as the backbone of your next event, and you will win more success.
It always starts with keyword research.
Create search-intent-targeted pages through keyword research.
Establishing a target audience does more than focus your efforts; it opens up opportunities to tailor messages and open pathways to communicate.
You get a massive advantage over your competition when you have a clear vision of your audience, a set of social media interactions, and a good idea of what they search for to find events like yours.
Music Festival Case Study
Keyword Optimziation for Artists & Locations Pages
As a keen fan of music festivals, I often think, “Damn, when is this artist coming to my town?” and thus, you’ll find many artists have these variations of keywords “artists + locations,” with some combinations reaching substantial volume numbers.
Seeing this, we implemented specific landing pages based on this keyword research, not only for Melbourne but for all cities that the artist was touring:
/brisbane/lineup-lizzo/
/sydney/lineup-lizzo/
You get the idea.
Through this strategy, we hit 1st position right at the peak of her tour and leading up to the event day itself.
This method doesn’t just work for artists. Any person of interest will have a significant search around them.
“Person of interest + location”
Why?
Search intent: we satisfy a more direct user intent by landing a user on a page targeted toward their favorite artist and their location of choice. We can create a more decisive conversion point because people want to see their favourite artists!
You can use keyword research to find new trending artists
A festival is only as good as its artists involved, to generate hype by having the hottest artists on stage.
We can see global artists ‘ trends using keyword research tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Keywords Everywhere. Looking at Lizzo, which we were doing above, she was riding a big wave of hype from late 2019 into 2020. Now Tate McRae, while less searched overall, is surging in user interest.
Analyzing your competitors is an intelligent strategy for keyword research. You can gain insights into the market by understanding what they’re doing right and what keywords are associated with their success.
Check what artists they have had at their last event and the search volume behind them to see if they’re worth adding to your following lineup.
However, if competitors are far ahead, finding a niche they’ve overlooked might be more strategic. This approach can provide a more accessible entry point for your SEO efforts.
Link Outreach
Backlinks, or inbound links, are links from other websites to your event page. They play a crucial role in SEO for several reasons:
- Establishing Authority and Knowledge: When reputable sites link to your event page, it signals to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy. This is because backlinks are seen as a “vote of confidence” from one site to another—the more authoritative the site links to you, the more significant the impact on your SEO.
- Social Media Profiles: Set up foundational social media platform profiles with the event location and description. Facebook Events share in-direct signals that will help Google understand and connect with relevant search results – this social proof is critical.
- Click-through Signals via Email Marketing: Emails directly to your attendees with event details early on will get more clicks to the website quickly than waiting for potential keyword rankings, which take time. Google does use click-through rates and user signals to reward websites.
- Dominance in Keyword Rankings: Your page needs to be seen as an authority to lead in search engine rankings for specific target keywords. Backlinks from important sites contribute significantly to this. They help in asserting dominance for particular keywords, allowing your page to rank higher in search results.
- Providing Essential Information: Your event page, being the target of all these backlinks, serves as the central hub for information about your event. It should contain all the details necessary for attendees, like dates, locations, registration details, etc.
- Converting Visitors to Attendees: The ultimate goal of your event page, enhanced by backlinks, is to convert visitors into attendees. With increased visibility and authority, more users are likely to visit your page as organic traffic. Once there, if they find the information helpful and trustworthy, they are more likely to register or buy tickets.
Digital PR is a fantastic option for events as an alternative to link-building
With digital PR, you can create content like press releases, articles, blog posts, and social media posts to promote your event.
This content can be distributed widely and quickly across multiple platforms, increasing visibility.
On-Page Optimization for Event Content
Content is indeed the backbone of SEO. It provides the necessary information for search engines to analyze, index, and rank your website.
Quality content is crucial for feeding search engines with valuable data. Without it, there’s nothing to optimize or rank.
Here are a few tactics when it comes to on-page optimisation for your upcoming events:
- Have a relevant title tag and meta description for your event experience. This will assist with the click-through rate.
- Have fresh content with unique descriptions of your event and the artists attending.
- Have long-tail keywords sprinkled throughout your content marketing.
- Avoid keyword stuffing. Events need high-quality content, especially on event landing pages, to engage with the audience; this will increase user interaction and conversion rate.
It’s vital to create engaging, informative, and written content for human readers, not just search engines. Google’s algorithms are sophisticated enough to distinguish between valuable content and keyword-stuffed, low-quality text.
Your content should establish authority, be easily accessible, and be shareable organically. The more reliable and consistent your content, the more value search engines will assign to it.
Many event websites opt for minimal content to improve UX, making the site easy to navigate and interact with.
However, this can limit the site’s organic SEO potential. A balance is needed where the content is substantial enough for SEO purposes while still ensuring a great user experience.
Event Pack via Schema
The Event Pack is a feature on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) highlighting events related to a user’s search query.
It’s a powerful tool for event organizers because it places event information at the top of Google’s search results, making it highly visible to potential attendees.
This feature is powered by “Google Events,” which uses structured data markup. This markup allows you to structure your website’s event pages with relevant information in a way that Google can easily understand and display.
When someone clicks on an event in the Event Pack, they’re taken to Google’s Events Calendar, which shows more details like location, directions, ticket prices, and venue information.
To ensure your event appears in the Event Pack, using the correct Event Schema markup on your website is essential.
This involves providing comprehensive details such as the event title, description, start and end times, and links to ticket sales or venue information.
The more complete and accurate your information, the better your chances of appearing in the Event Pack and improving your event’s visibility on search engines.
Post Event Technical SEO
Let’s delve into how to optimize your event website for traffic from various sources and some strategies to enhance its effectiveness.
The landing page must load quickly and be easy to navigate. Slow loading times can deter visitors and negatively impact your SEO.
Ensure the page is streamlined and free from unnecessary elements that could slow down loading times.
It’s important to regularly audit and optimize the landing page for performance across various devices and bandwidths.
This includes checking how the page displays on mobile devices, tablets, and desktops and ensuring it loads efficiently even on slower internet connections.
The landing page should prominently feature essential information about the event, such as date, location, lineup, and ticketing details, all presented in an SEO-friendly manner.
Proper use of headings, meta tags, and keyword-rich content can help improve the page’s ranking on search engines.
These should have internal links to relevant pages and external links to resources like the event venue website.
For pages on your site that are no longer relevant but might have backlinks or historical SEO value, use 301 redirects to point them back to your homepage or relevant event pages.
This helps preserve link equity and directs visitors to current, relevant content.
Creating detailed profiles for artists who have previously participated in your event can be a great strategy.
If those artists return for future events, you can update and re-energize these pages, which can attract fans of the artists and boost SEO through relevant and updated content.
These strategies not only improve the user experience but also bolster the page’s SEO, helping to ensure the success of your event marketing strategy.
Final Word: Event SEO Marketing
Increasing attendance for your event through SEO is a nuanced task, calling for a targeted approach rather than a one-size-fits-all strategy.
It’s about crafting content that resonates with your audience, using precise keywords that align with your event’s unique flavor.
You can fine-tune your website to cater specifically to potential attendees’ interests and search behaviors.
