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If you are marketing your event online, SEO is a big deal. Google, and the other major search engines, constantly refine their algorithm for scoring, and returning links to, content on the web. Your job is to make sure YOUR content scores well. They do this using an algorithm named Penguin.

evvnt customers often ask about the impact of the content distribution we provide on their search rankings, and it is important for us to ensure we continue to make a positive impact on their behalf. So, whether you use evvnt or not (you totally should) I thought I would share an abridged analysis of consensus (from various trusted sources) around the latest update to the Google search scoring system.

Key Note: Diversify Your Link Portfolio.

Whilst Google is still strongly against “spamdexing” (putting your links on low quality, low authority sites created purely to provide backlinks) backlinks are still a large portion of how Google determines how you rank.

The trick is to ensure you list your event everywhere that is RELEVANT, and to ensure your content is published on a range of site “types”. Use the guide below – and make sure any one category accounts for no more than 40% of your total strategy.

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pintrest, Google+ (kinda) etc will always be an important part of any online strategy and provides benefits much beyond the ability to signpost potential customers. Regular content with a mix of sales, brand and industry insight will undoubtedly help build brand portfolio, customer interaction and a healthy amount of links pointing to your ticketing and registration pages.

Community / Forum

Forums (yes, really) are still a great way of establishing your domain knowledge and becoming a trusted source. As with all categories, ensure that you are not constantly posting the same, possibly irrelevant, link to your homepage. Make sure you become part of the various communities, posting links not only to your own content, but to relevant content of others. If you do post to your own site, make sure you signpost to different areas and ensure that your link text is varied.

Targeted / Specific

The Internet is a weird and wonderful place, an audience exists for every piece of content from dedicated listing sites for Pharmaceutical conferences in Singapore, events for ex-pats, or sites like Chortle that list events specific to comedy. Google knows the sites that act as an authority for specific industries or categories of events; they know that there are certain sites that are “go to” for distinct communities or professionals. You need to know what they are. You need to be on them.

Authority Sites

If you want to look for something on the internet you go to Google. If you want to buy a car? Probably Autotrader. If you want a recommendation for a conference, if you want to attend an EDM event, a festival, a Lean Startup tutorial for former CTOs? Then you go to Lanyrd, Eventbrite, Skiddle, Meetup, etc. Whatever the category of event you run, there will be a site (or sites) that act as an authority, a site with an active customer base that returns time and time again because they know they will discover events they will be interested in.

Local

The local discovery market is powerful. There are a large number of consumers that still want to know “what to do in London”, “what is happening in Newcastle this weekend”. There are many individual sites serving this requirement, there are also huge networks of sites such as newspaper groups (such as Johnston Press / WOW247) having representation on these platforms will serve you well.

Resource Directories

Not always a first thought of the event organiser but, one of the jobs of the Google search algorithm is to establish source credibility of the author/source. One (of the many) ways this can be done is by looking at the company organising the events. Having coverage on directories such as About.com, Wikipedia, Industry Membership organisations etc, help diversify your link profile and provides a means to establish company presence.

Notes On Implementing

  • Don’t just put your homepage link on every listing site you find. Make sure your content is relevant, and that your link text, and link location, vary.
  • Make sure the sites you choose are ‘trusted’ or provide value based on the content they carry to the end user.
  • Don’t bunch all of your online content into one category. Make sure you push no more than 40% into one area.

Blatant Plug

Let us do this for you. Our technology is designed from the ground up to provide this service. When you give us your event detail we match it for relevancy against our database of almost 5000 listing sites across social, local, targeted, industry specific, global and national publishers creating a curated distribution profile of up to 130 locations. Not only have we indexed thousands of sites we actively monitor (and provide back to you via reporting) the value provided by those publishers. We use a bag full of analytics to continuously score the publishers to ensure we continue to provide a rich, diverse, valuable distribution service. Best of all, you can grab an account and try us out of free.

“Image source – Flickr, usage under Creative Commons license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)”

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