Event Promotion and SEO

Event Promotion & SEO How to attract record crowds through search.

George Freitag SEO Strategist for Portent, Inc.

@number1george

bit.ly/bpt-seo

Event Promotion & SEO 101 How to Attract Record Crowds

About me.

(Illustration by @flashmurphy)

2.5 Years at Portent 6 Years Web Consulting 1000+ Businesses Various internal and external trainings

About me.

About Portent. We are a leading integrated internet marketing agency set in Seattle, serving world-wide clients We are 55+ strong Founded in 1996 (pre-Google) We rally around the definition of “Portent”: the forecast of something big on the horizon

With 18 years in the industry you can trust our expertise.

Gree$ngs from the #smithtower

What is SEO?

SEO is getting more relevant traffic to your website from search engines.

•  Showing up higher in search results

•  Showing up more often in search results

•  Showing up better in search results

Ways to get more traffic from search engines.

Event Promotion & SEO 101 Be Online.

1. Be Online. �

•  If you have a website, it should be there

•  If you don’t, it should be somewhere

•  Just be online; anywhere

Have a webpage for your Event.

z Have a page online.

z Or have a whole site online.

z Just have a permanent spot.

z Make a page devoted to your event.

z If you don’t have your own site, make one somewhere else.

•  Make sure that search engines can get to your page.

Be Findable.

z Search engines can’t use this.

You need to be able to get to the page with the mouse.

Event Page

Category Page (click!)

Homepage (click!)

(Like this.)

z Copy/paste text to test.

z Use Categories on Ticket and Event Submission Sites

Event Promotion & SEO 101 Be Useful.

2. Be Useful.�

At least these:

•  Event name

•  Event Date

•  Event Location

•  Description

•  Links to outside sources

Include Important Information.

z Useful information like this.

Event name

Date & Time

z Describe your event.

Search engines see duplicated content as useless and spammy. The description on your page needs to be different than descriptions on other sites.

Be Unique.

z Including other event sites.

z Have a call to action.

Like this.

Brown Paper Tickets already has these set up for you!

Call to Action.

z Link to Brown Paper Tickets.

z Image link to Brown Paper Tickets.

z How to link to Brown Paper Tickets.

Click “Linking”

z Links to Brown Paper Tickets.

Linking Code

Image Code

z Embed ticket widget.

Event Promotion & SEO 101 Be Relevant.

3. Be Relevant.�

What I mean by “relevant”

•  Know what topics people are looking for related to your event

•  Know what terms people use when looking for events like yours

•  Know what terms people use to get to your site

Be Relevant.

z Best research tool ever.

z Autosuggest (Don’t Hit Enter)

z Google Suggestions.

z Ubersuggest (ubersuggest.com)

z tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

•  Use this term 10,000 times

•  Create 10,000 pages with this term

•  Rename your event

What NOT to do.

Twice as many people search for “cooking class” than “cooking course”, so maybe I

should use that.

Think keyTOPICSnot keyWORDS

z (You’re gonna need this.)

z Google Webmaster Tools.

Log in to Google Account

Verify Account

If you have Google Analytics installed you can just use that.

See if you’re in trouble

Submit

Sitemap Search Queries

See terms people use to get to your site.

See the pages they’re getting to.

Event Promotion & SEO 101 Be Popular.

4. Be Popular.�

•  Search engines want to show results they know people like

Be Popular?

•  Links to your page

•  Links to your site

•  Mentions online

•  Shares

Be Popular?

z Obvs.

z Newspapers.

z Magazines.

z City Calendars.

z Tourism sites.

z Networking sites.

z Get as niche as you can.

z Or as regional as you can.

z Find your community.

z Make sharing as easy as you can.

Share icons

z Make sharing as easy as you can.

(or like

Promote it on your own site.

z Write your own blog post.

Write lots of blog posts.

Get others to talk about you.

•  Talk to local bloggers

•  Write about specific parts of your event

•  Highlight presenters and performers so they’ll share your posts

Event Promotion & SEO 101 Be Pretty. 5. Be

Pretty.�

z Pretty search results.

z Pretty social shares.

z Title tag & Meta description

Title tag:

•  50-65 characters

•  Direct impact on ranking

Pretty Title Tags.

Event Promotion & SEO 101 Be Pretty.

Meta Description:

•  155ish characters

•  NO direct impact on ranking

•  Ad copy to get people to click on your result

Pretty Meta Descriptions.

z portent.com/serp-preview-tool

z Use Images.

z Really Pretty Search Results.

•  Events Markup

•  Lists event info right in search results

•  (Only works in Google)

•  20-30% increase in CTR

Really Pretty Search Results.

http://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-a-30-increase-in-ctr-with-structured-markup-105830

Get ready for some coding stuff.

z Event Markup in Google.

<h3 itemprop="name">Event Planning and SEO with Brown Paper Tickets</h3>!<img itemprop="image" class="image float left" src="http://professionalgeorge.org/images/bpt-pic.png" alt="Event Planning and SEO with Brown Paper Tickets"/>!Where: !Brown Paper Tickets Community Events Space !!309 N 36th St (2nd Floor) !Seattle!

z Event Markup.

z Option 1: Tag in Webmaster Tools.

Data Highlighter

Start Highlighting

Tagging in Google Webmaster Tools.

z Tagging in Google Webmaster Tools.

Enter URL and add

Highlight

See tagged data

Check all pages you want to tag

Publishes

immediately!

z Option 2: Mark it up yourself.

z Data Markup Helper.

Tag it up just like before

z Data Markup Helper.

Hit “Generate HTML” and copy/paste code

Event Tag in GWT Pros

•  Easy to use •  No coding •  Immediate

Event Tag in GWT Cons

•  Manual •  Only goes to Google •  Easily breaks

Event Tagging in GWT.

Event Markup Pros

•  Scales well •  Supported by all search

engines

Event Markup Cons

•  Slower to publish •  Requires coding

resources

Event Markup in HTML.

Musicians Markup: Google might be doing this for all events in the future.

Twittercard Markup

•  Gives you a bigger tweet

•  Let’s you highlight image

•  Links to your Twitter handle regardless of who tweets

•  Lets you customize title, image, description

Pretty Tweets.

!<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">!<meta name="twitter:site" content="@number1george">!<meta name="twitter:title" content="Page Title">!<meta name="twitter:description" content="Page description less than 200 characters">!<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@Portent">!<-- Twitter Summary card images must be at least 120x120px -->!<meta name="twitter:image" content="http://www.example.com/image.jpg">!

z Twittercard Markup.

This…

… vs. this

2nd Link

z You need to be approved in Card Validator.

Twittercard Markup •  36% increase in clicks •  41% increase in retweets

•  48% increase in favorites

•  31% increase in visits •  33% increase in visitor-

to-lead conversion rate

•  55% increase in leads

Pretty Tweets.

http://www.shopify.com/blog/12915741-everything-you-need-to-know-about-twitter-cards-for-ecommerce

Open Graph Markup •  Lets you customize title,

image, description

•  Gives you control over display

Pretty Social Shares.

Facebook without Markup.

Facebook with Markup.

180% increase in Interactions.

http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/2149-photos-are-still-king-on-facebook

Open Graph works in LinkedIn.

Open Graph works in Google+.

Open Graph works in Pinterest.

!<meta property="og:title" content="Title Here" />!<meta property="og:type" content="article" />!<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.example.com/" />!<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg" />!<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here" /> !<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name" />!<meta property="fb:admins" content="Facebook numeric ID" />!

z Open Graph markup.

z Markup helper – webcodetools.com

z WordPress plugins

Check your work! •  cards-dev.twitter.com/

validator •  developers.facebook.com/

tools/debug •  google.com/webmasters/

tools/richsnippets •  developers.pinterest.com/

rich_pins/validator/

(bit.ly/bpt-seo)

Event Promotion SEO

5 Steps for Event Promotion SEO: 1. Be online. 2. Be useful. 3. Be relevant. 4. Be popular. 5. Be pretty.

Event Promotion SEO

5 Steps for Event Promotion SEO: 1. Have a dedicated page 2. Display useful information 3. Use relevant language 4. Share and be sharable 5. Use markup for better display

Step 6:�Celebrate!

George Freitag SEO Strategist portent.com @number1george bit.ly/bpt-seo

Thank �You ��

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