The Role Of SEO In Event Management

As an event management professional, you might consider search engine optimization to be outside the scope of what you do. You might believe it’s something you need not concern yourself with. You’d be wrong.

Search Engine Optimization actually plays a fairly vital role in event visibility, something which is directly correlated to both registration and ticket sales. If people can’t find your event website or portfolio through Google, you’re going to get less traffic. Less traffic in turn means fewer attendees and potential clients. See where I’m going with this?

The problem, of course, is that SEO isn’t exactly a simple concept to grasp. Many SEO experts don’t even have a full handle on it, capable of making only vague guesses based on what Google’s algorithms seem to be doing. It also doesn’t help, of course, that Google’s search engine is getting smarter and smarter every day, invalidating many of the old methods of optimization and forcing marketers to search frantically for newer ones.

What I’m basically saying here is that Search Engine Optimization can be incredibly complex if you don’t know what you’re doing. Unfortunately, it also tends to be just as important to you as social media. So what’s an event planner to do? 

Well, to put it simply…learn. The first thing you’re going to want to do is give yourself a crash course in search engine optimization. Before we go any further, you absolutely need to understand the basics. If you don’t, you’re very likely to make a blunder or two that’ll lead to penalization by Google’s algorithms.

Once you’ve got a grasp of the basic concepts underlying search engine optimization, you’ll need to ensure your website is optimized. Implement best practices such as cross-linking, keyword research, and proper anchor text. Promote your event content through third-party sites (but make sure you avoid low-grade directories and poorly-optimized pages). While you’re doing this, be sure you don’t lose sight of the fact that you’re running an event.

SEO shouldn’t interfere with your actual job, but it is an important to properly market yourself and your events.

You might also consider optimizing the event itself, and planning content for said event based on keyword research. Integrating an online component into an event and ensuring it’s rife with highly shareable materials (such as high-quality media assets or video keynotes) could do wonders for your brand, and social integration could bring in potential customers who might otherwise never have known about the event. If you’re running a regional event, reach out to local publications and organizations to see if they might consider sharing a link to your event website. After all, the more visible your event becomes; the better.

One would think that, although they’re marketing masterminds and natural storytellers, event management professionals wouldn’t need to pay a whole lot of attention to search engine optimization. With the key role the Internet plays in our day-to-day lives coupled with the increasing importance of social media, however, it’s become vital that event managers know how to market an event on Google and Facebook as astutely as they do in person. Knowledge of proper SEO is just one individual aspect of this skill set – but an incredibly important one, all the same.