Search engine marketing for conferences and events

This is the only course on Search Engine Marketing designed specifically for the conference and events industry. It shows you how to grow profitable conference websites through optimising your event web pages for search engines, building links that really do generate delegates, understanding how to write on the web to make it more attractive to delegates and sponsors and using the latest in web 2.0 to maximise the value of your event.

Search engines will be the main method of discovery for your event site from an online audience. They will try to match your content with users search terms. Get it right and an interested audience will visit your pages giving you the opportunity to engage, collect data and all importantly get sales.

This course includes tools that can be practically applied to existing sites and pages in the training session and used back in the office later. Utilising some pre-course research on (delegates own) events, the course will provide a robust structure for reviewing existing SEO for those events and the strategy/tactics, tools and techniques needed to improve and maintain SEO.

Outline

How it works

• You need to know what the rules are to play in the game. keywords, page rank, trust & authority, linking. Review the most important factors that you can control.

Rules update

• Google, your biggest source of traffic, makes regular changes. Penguin (links from ‘bad neighbourhoods’ and anchor text) and Panda (quality not ‘thin’ or duplicate content).

Who is my audience

• Identify specific target groups and segments for a specific site identify and their interests. What do you want them to do – set goals and targets.

Key words

• Make sure that the content on your site matches the interests of your target audience using branded and non-branded terms. Relevance will equal success.

Keyword discovery

• Where to look and how to choose. Google Keyword tool/your own site/Google Analytics. Have a master list to use whenever you create any content for the site

Segment the list

• Organise the keywords into specific themes.

Focus

• General terms = high search volume but low specificity and higher bounce rate. Long tail = low search volume higher degree of intent and better visitor retention.

Deployment site wide

• Create a hierarchy or pyramid to fit your site. Broad and branded terms at the top (home pages) segments in the middle and the long tail keywords at the bottom in articles, blogs, tweets etc. Use the middle terms in site navigation. Allocate keyword groups to to individuals who own content or segment sections.

Deployment on the page

• Page title, meta tags and descriptions to page copy. Placement of key word in URL. What can you effect on your site? Who is in charge?

Body copy

• Be natural, don’t over stuff with keywords. Allow the keywords to inspire your text. Link to related pages in the text. Where to find your content?

Linking, trust and authority

• Inbound links are votes for your site but some votes carry more weight than others. Quality links from authoritative sites transfer their clout to your pages. Social media likes, shares and tweets are all endorsements for your page. Make it easy for your visitors to share your content or add their comments. Engage with them, have a conversation. Where to look for links.

Content

• How to match it to your objectives. It’s not about you. Why will your visitors link to it? Where to place it? Get your voice right (site persona).

Lifecycle and frequency

• Your web presence extends the life of you event from days to months. Maintain site and content year round to preserve links — grow trust and authority. Publish content on a regular basis to ensure you get frequent visits from search engines. Regular updates allow you to email or social media updates to your registered user base.