Everything you need to know about SEO for Event Websites

When you search your event name on search engines like Google or Bing, what do you get? Is your event website at the top position, or are other websites outranking you? Studies show that nearly 50% of online users will click the first three results, and less than 1% will bother to visit page two (positions 11+). With that in mind, it’s understandable how important it is to have your website ranking well in search engines. You don’t want to lose any traffic and have possible attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, or speakers end up at a competitor’s event.

While doing this test, also check how you rank for other keywords that are not necessarily your event name but that might bring qualified traffic to your website. For example, if you run a marketing trade show in San Diego, you can search for keywords like “marketing + trade shows + San Diego + 2024”. Here is what I got for this example: a mix of events and site aggregators listing a number of events held by different organizations.

Don’t see your website on the first few positions? Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the art of optimizing your website to rank well on search engines. The basic premise is that search engines will show the results they consider most relevant to users based on specific factors checked by algorithms. In this article, you will learn some of the most important ranking factors to consider when building your event website so it ranks well on search engines.

Before we start, let’s consider some important details that you must include on your event page. While these provide essential information to people browsing your website, they also provide information to search engines to showcase your website on the search engine results page (SERP).

The B2B Marketing Forum clearly shows the basic information about the event as soon as you enter the website. A hero image can help to communicate about the event. 

EventCamp did a fantastic job regarding imagery. Throughout the site, you can see photos of the event and attendees while having a clear picture of the conference’s atmosphere. 

Although this is a good starting point, successful event pages will typically contain much more information, including:

Now that you have the website content covered, let’s go back to search engine optimization. There are many ways to optimize your website to improve organic rankings. Below is a list of essential optimization techniques that will help boost your rankings in search engines.

On-page optimization refers to optimization done directly on your website (rather than on other websites or offline). This includes keyword-rich content, optimized metadata, and more. These small tasks are easy to manage and will take you a long way. Here are the essential SEO factors to improve your event website:

When you do a Google search, the results show a list with titles and descriptions with different options. This is usually pulled from the meta title and meta description that you set for each web page (each page should have a unique tile and description). When you don’t set this information, Google will get content from your page to display here. (On rare occasions, Google might display content from your website, even if you set the meta title and description that you would like to show. Google selects what copy to show based on what they consider more relevant to the user search). 

These meta tags are crucial when considering organic rankings for a few reasons:

Now that you know why meta tags are important and how they work, here are some best practices for writing optimized copy:

Lastly, remember that each page should have a unique title and description.

How do you add meta tags to your website? For WordPress sites, you can use plugins, such as Yoast, which is free and very user-friendly. For event sites like the Attendease platform, you can edit your meta tags under the tab “meta” on-site settings.

Headings are an excellent way to visually show copy hierarchy and help readers skim through your text. It is also an indicator to search engines, communicating what your page is about. You can use large, bold text for your page title, slightly smaller text for subtitles, and even smaller text for other subheadings. The important thing to note is that there is the right way and the wrong way to do this if you have search engines in mind.

Avoid manually bolding or increasing the font size. Although this will visually have the same impact, it won’t do the same for search engines. Search engines can read headings using “h tags” (or heading tags). Heading options are available on text editors on your CMS, like WordPress or HubSpot, or you can manually add a simple code to apply a heading style. Although you can have multiple h tags on a page, you should have only one h1 tag per page, and every page should have an h1 tag (usually, the title is automatically set as h1). Heading rank the content in order of importance from H1 to H6. H1 is the title of the page, H2 would then be an opening line about the content of the page, H3, and so forth, work down the importance of each section of content. 

There are a couple of things you must consider when planning your URLs. First, you need to decide on your general event URL. You may be hosting your event under your company’s website (e.g., www.mycompany.com/event), or you may create a new website exclusively for your event (e.g., www.myevent.com).

If the event will happen every year, consider how to host the website. For example, you may have www.myevent.com/2024 instead of www.myevent2024.com to avoid needing a new domain every year for the years to come.

Now that you have your main domain URL, consider the other pages. Here are some best practices to apply when writing URLs:

The primary use for alt tags is to inform what the image is about to those who are visually impaired and cannot see the image. However, search engines can’t “see” images either, and they use the alt tag information to identify the image. Adding alt tags to your images will not only comply with accessibility best practices, but it will also aid in the optimization of your website for search engines. This can also help to show your image as an image search result. Try to include keywords that make sense in the context of the image.

Anchor text is the text that is highlighted in a link. Instead of linking to text like “click here,” use descriptive words. For example, “a downloadable checklist is available with everything you learned in this article”. Users will understand that, by clicking the link, they will gain access to it. No need to say, “Click here to download the checklist.”

Rich snippets allow you to mark up your event information so that users can discover that information directly from the search results page. There are many advantages to this, including increased real estate on the SERP and more chances to get people clicking on your listing, which can then help bump your rankings due to higher click-through-rate (it all connects!). Information that you can mark up includes event name, location, date, price, performers, and more.

You can easily mark up data using the Google Data Highlighter tool, which lets you select pieces of information and communicate what they refer to.

Most of the off-page optimization tips are related to building links. When you have links from third-party sites linking to yours, you gain more authority, which can help bring your website to the top of the rankings. The more authority the site linking to you has, the more “juice” you will gain from it. For example, if you have a link from a national paper, you will gain more authority than a link in a neighborhood business directory. Nonetheless, having various links is important as long as they are not spammy. Avoid fishy sites and buying links and focus on organic and relevant links instead.

Make sure to have your event name, location, date, and information consistent across the web. For example, choose whether you would like to promote your event as “ABC Expo” or “ABC Expo Atlanta,” and stick to the option you chose across all platforms.

There are three easy strategies you can use to gain more links and increase online exposure.

You are probably familiar with press releases, but online directories are not as popular unless you are familiar with SEO. Online directories are the modern version of Yellow Pages and can be segregated into a number of ways: directories for general businesses, businesses in specific industries, events, geographic locations, and more.

Here are ten examples that you can use if you are based in North America:

There are also a number of local directories that you can use to promote your event, depending on your event location. Try searching in Google using search strings like keyword + city +  “submit an event” / “submit an event”/ “add event”/ “add an event”/  “submit your workshop”/ “submit your course”/ “submit your class”/ “submit your conference.”

There are a few technical improvements that can also help boost your website rankings. You might need to work with your developer to implement these:

Search engines are moving towards providing better user experience, and site speed is a huge factor in usability. A Kissmetrics study shows that 40% of users will drop a site that takes over three seconds to load. But users are not the only thing that will drop; your rankings will, too. You can use the free Google PageSpeed Insights tool to check your site speed and gain recommendations to improve it.

With over 50% of overall online traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s no surprise that providing a mobile experience will help your rankings. Having a mobile-ready site is a must!

In 2017, Google released a report indicating that websites that were not secure would display a “nonsecure” message when opened in Chrome. On the other hand, secure sites would see a slight ranking boost. As of this date, having a security certificate is also expected, especially if you collect personal information, including name, email, or payment – which most event websites are. This means you would see HTTPS instead of HTTP on the browser. If you are currently not on HTTPS, contact your developer to get your certificate ready!

You are likely familiar with an HTML sitemap, which is a web page with the entire structure of a website. This page is meant for site visitors to read. For search engines, you should provide an XML sitemap, which will tell search engines how to navigate the site. You can usually find it if you currently have an XML sitemap setup by checking your website and adding the string: /sitemap.xml. If you see an error message (e.g., page not found), you might not have the XML sitemap setup. Sometimes, the sitemap is located at a  different location, such as /sitemap_index.xml, so check with your developer if you are still looking for it. For WordPress sites, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to generate the sitemap for you (this is the same plugin recommended for meta tags at the beginning of this article).

If you want to go the extra mile, consider some SEO software to help you manage SEO for your event website. There are a number of options available, from rank tracking to keyword research, competitive analysis, and more. Many have free versions and will help you gauge the results of your efforts, as well as point out areas that need improvements. To find the best SEO software for you, try comparison websites like G2Crowd, which showcase real testimonials and ratings, as well as the pros and cons of each option.