When you think about promoting your association’s biggest events, what comes to mind? 

You might think of designing a visually stunning event web page or microsite, creating an engaging email stream that teases exciting event details, partnering with an influencer to give away a pair of event tickets, or sharing videos and photos from your last event on social media. 

All of these are excellent techniques for spreading the word about your upcoming event. But why not add search engine optimization (SEO) to the mix? 

With SEO supporting your digital marketing strategy, your event and your organization’s website can get more visibility online. 

In this beginner’s guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about SEO for large association events and how you can get started. Let’s begin! 

Search engines like Google use bots to crawl the web and determine which pages should rank the highest on their results pages using a variety of factors. 

SEO is the process of optimizing your website’s content so that your web pages have a higher chance of ranking well for relevant keywords on these results pages, thus providing your content (and your organization and its activities) with better visibility online. 

There’s a lot that goes into SEO. As explained by NXUnite by Nexus Marketing’s primer on SEO, some of the factors that are used to determine ranking are withheld from the public, but we do know that the following matter: 

Things like your geographic location, competitor websites, and the technical aspects of your website can also affect your SEO performance. However, you can get great results by focusing on creating high-quality, comprehensive content that is both useful for internet users and incorporates relevant keywords. 

Here’s an example of what this might look like: Say your organization is an association for dental hygienists and is planning a hybrid-style conference. Part of your promotion strategy includes optimizing your event web page for SEO. 

You create the event page, making sure that it includes all the necessary information about the conference, offers an intuitive and engaging user experience, and encourages visitors to register for the event. You also include keywords related to the event in the page copy, like “dental hygiene conferences” and “dental hygiene continuing education,” so that when users Google similar terms, your page has a higher chance of popping up at the top of the search results. This will encourage more people to click through and register for the conference. 

It’s worth noting that SEO takes time to produce results. According to Semrush, it will typically take four months to a year to see positive changes in your website’s rankings when you launch an SEO strategy. This is because of the numerous factors search engines take into account when ranking websites and the fact that sometimes many websites are competing for the same search engine real estate that you are. 

Consequently, when it comes to using SEO for your association’s events, it will be best to do so well ahead of your largest and recurring events, like an annual gala or regularly scheduled conference, since you’re already playing the long game in planning and promoting them.

Now that you know how SEO works, it’s time to determine if it would be a worthwhile addition to your marketing strategy for your next event. Here are a few questions to ask yourself: 

If you answered yes to most of these questions, SEO would likely be a boon to your event planning and promotion work. 

Now that you know you’re interested in using SEO to help your association’s event stand out online, it’s time to get started. Follow these tips and best practices to ensure that you’re creating quality content that search engines will have a high chance of ranking: 

In your SEO toolbox, you’ll need: 

Remember, SEO isn’t just about keywords and solid content. You also need to offer a great user experience for everyone who lands on your website. Ensure your website is easy to navigate, appears correctly on mobile devices, and is optimized for accessibility. Check any relevant registration pages and donation forms to ensure you’re offering simple, quick, and convenient forms. 

Begin by brainstorming terms related to your event, like “annual gala” or “fundraising dinner.” Then, make your keywords stronger by making them more specific to your field, organization, or location. This will set you up to use keywords that have less competition. Plus, you’ll be more likely to rank and attract website visitors who are specifically interested in your expertise or organization. 

For example, you might adjust “annual gala” to “fundraising dinner for computer science professionals” or “Computer Science United annual gala.” (You can use a tool like Moz, Google Keyword Planner, or Semrush to get data-backed ideas.) 

Once you’ve chosen a primary keyword and a few variations of it, optimize your event’s landing page and related content (such as blog posts about the event) for that keyword. 

There are different rules of thumb for how many times a keyword should be used on a web page, like once for every 100 hundred words. However, focusing on using your keywords in natural and useful ways will be most important. 

You should also include your chosen keywords in your web page’s metadata. Metadata is back-end information you provide on a web page that helps search engines better understand your content. This includes elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, and alternative text for images. 

By including your keywords in your metadata, you can further help search engines understand what terms you’re trying to rank for. Just remember to use your keywords in your metadata only when natural opportunities to do so arise—you don’t want anything to feel shoehorned in. 

Links built back to your SEO-optimized content (known as backlinks) from other authoritative websites can boost your rankings by signaling to search engines that a high-quality website is “vouching” for your content and thought leadership. 

To secure backlinks, use your relationships within your industry or field. For instance, you might ask a partner organization to share about your event on their website and link to your page. Or, you might ask an influencer in your space to let you publish a guest post on their blog where you include a link to your optimized page. 

Strive to secure natural backlinks in ethical ways. Linking schemes like buying or spamming links will only backfire.  

As you begin weaving SEO into your promotion strategy for your association’s big events, remember that there are two keys to achieving great SEO results: 

After your event takes place, use your SEO tools to note your search engine rankings alongside other event metrics. By regularly monitoring your content’s rankings in this way, you can continue to improve your SEO strategy for large, recurring events year after year!  

SEO can take the marketing efforts for your association’s big events to the next level. Use this guide as a resource for getting started, and remember that you’ll need expert assistance and some patience to get the best results possible for your event. You’ve got this!