What is SEO and Why is it Important for Your Events Website?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is the process of improving your website ranking on search engines which then builds its organic traffic, a common digital marketing technique.
SEO is important to digital marketing because it essentially helps promote it by helping the page rank higher on the SERP (search engine results page). If you are doing the correct steps to increase your SEO your page will be in the view of more search results. Below is a quick information video explaining SEO.
There are many different steps you can take to improve your SEO.
1. A simple well-known way to do this is using keywords.
Single-word keywords and key phrases are words that are most looked up in search engines. For example, if you are wanting to promote your charity golf outing event you would want to use keywords and phrases that go with it such as charity golf tournament, fundraising golf tournament, and charity tournament. Having a couple of these on your event website will increase your SEO.
Adding keywords that relate to your event should not be a challenging task. Do not overthink it, you are already writing about that topic just add a couple more words that relate to your topic and add them in.
To help you find related keywords you can Google keyword finder and many different free and paid websites will come up. Semrush is a well know useful sight for keyword research and SEO strategies.
2. Writing, the way you write also affects your SEO.
When writing keep it simple. If your writing is too professional or uses words that are typically not in everyone’s everyday vocabulary your page will be ranked lower. They promote pages that flow well and are easy to read.
This does not mean making your text too simple, making it too simple will then lead people to become bored with it and not fully finish reading before they leave your page.
It is the sweet spot between being simple yet engaging enough so your audience stays engaged.
3. Title, when creating a title keep in mind your keyword and phrases.
Having one of your keywords in the title will increase your SEO. Make sure it still flows well and you are not just adding keywords so it will be high on the SERP.
A title should be long but not too long, around 50 to 60 characters. Anything longer would where it would get cut off when displaying the SERP. The title is very important because this is why people are going to click on your page.
Once you have your keyword in the title think about what else you need to add to make it “clickable” you want to add enough so people know what your page contains without making it too specific.
4. Meta description, this is the description that the search engine shows of your page.
This helps give people searching more of an idea of what your page contains.
Include keywords in your description as well. Having keywords in it will help because if someone is not convinced to click on your page after reading the title this is where you can make that up with your short description to rope them in.
5. Keep your events page simple.
When creating your events page you don’t need fancy gifs and videos that will 1. Slow down your page and 2. Clutter it. You can have a well-written page with all the information and photos you need for your event without overdoing it.
A tip to make your page flow better is keeping paragraphs short. Don’t cluster everything in one big chunk, this overwhelms people and makes it more difficult to read. Having shorter to the point paragraphs make the user’s experience more enjoyable.
Think about it this way, the hardest part of getting them to the page is over with, they have clicked on it. From here now all they want is to get the information you advertised so don’t clutter it with unimportant things, keep it simple and well-formatted.
6. Photos, if you would like to add photos and videos to your page, which is highly encouraged.
Make sure all photos and videos you use are high quality and related to your page. Adding relevant pictures just like formatting correctly makes your text more appealing, it is not just a page full of words now.
Add meta tags so google knows what is in the photo and video because they cannot understand it without the meta tags. This will help you in your SEO process as well.
If you do not have your own personal photos to put on your page sites like Getty Images are useful to get royalty-free photos.
7. Links, adding links to your page will increase SEO as well.
Some ideas for links you can add to your page are, a link to last year’s events page with photos on it, a social media page of your organization, a social media post that correlates to your event, or a post that has information about your organization.
You do not need to overdo the links on your event page either, it does help SEO but if adding a link doesn’t make sense for you and your page keep it out.
When it comes to digital marketing SEO is definitely going to be a topic of discussion. These are important ranking factors of SEO to keep in mind to ensure your events page will be a useful asset for your organization and upcoming event!
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