SEO Basics for Conference and Event Planners

Nov 11, 2022 | 8 min read

SEO for Events

SEO is a frequently used term; even so - it is not always understood and is somewhat ambiguous. Often, event planners hire an SEO expert just because they believe it's "important" without knowing what to ask for and what to expect.

This blog aims to give conference organizers a basic understanding of SEO. Understanding SEO can help you decide whether to invest in hiring an SEO expert or optimize the event website yourself. In addition, it will enable you to describe the SEO needs clearly, optimize your event marketing budget, and benefit from the SEO experts you work with.

What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, a process that aims to increase unpaid traffic and the quality of unpaid traffic from search engines to a website.

Why SEO Is Important

Search engines are the number one source of traffic for websites. For example, it is estimated that 9 billion searches are done every day using Google and Google is the most visited website in the world.

Appearing in Google results when potential attendees use Google can have a dramatic positive effect on the event. Since almost every event has a website ranking high on Google and other search engines may require attention and effort. This is what SEO is about.

What is Organic SEO?

Like Tomato and Tomahto, SEO and Organic SEO are the same. However, "Organic SEO" underlines that the SEO efforts do not include paying the search engine for exposure (i.e., Organic SEO does not involve buying ads and PPC - pay-per-click).

Think Like a Search Engine

Search engines aim to provide users with the best possible experience. From a search engine's point of view, this means presenting the users with the most appropriate page for their search.

Search engines want satisfied users, so they constantly look for improved ways to display results that will satisfy their customers/users. The customer/user wants a list of the most relevant, quality websites with the information they searched for. This is similar to navigation apps that seek to show users the best way to reach a destination without traffic jams - just like a search engine. In both cases, search engines and map apps are exposed to "bad" users who try to manipulate the results, and the apps/search engines try to cancel the influence of those "bad" users.

Page and Website Scores for Search Engines

To rank websites, search engines give each web page a match score to the phrase the user searched. The search engine results (SERP) show the webpages and websites in order, starting with the highest score.

Search engines do not publish the exact parameters or algorithms they use to calculate the score and frequently change them. However, the basic algorithm and parameters are known, and most changes have little effect on quality websites.

The following parameters influence the score of a page:

A base score of the site.

This score is affected by the website's overall quality as viewed by the search engine. This includes the website's reputation and different technical parameters, including implemented security protocols.

Page match to query.

Match between the page and the information the user is pursuing as the search engine understands the search.

Geographic Match.

This score indicates the web page's relevance to the searcher's location or interest area.

Match to the searcher.

This parameter indicates the match between the searcher's profile known to the search engine (for example, his country, location, search history, languages, type of computer used, etc.).

Historical score.

When the search engine previously displayed the page in a similar search and searcher - what was the level of satisfaction? It's less complicated than it sounds and a significant measure in determining search relevance.

Search Engine Reasoning Examples:

1. When a person uses the search engine on a small screen, the search engine seeks to display a readable and usable page on a small screen.
2. If a person in Madrid and a different person in New York are looking for a "train station," they will get different results. The search engine uses their location to show the most relevant results. There are queries when the geographic component is more critical, and some are less so.
3. A search engine will not display a site that it considers dangerous, of poor quality, or does not load fast enough.

SEO in Practice

What can a website builder or event planner do to promote their website? The goal is to convince the search engine to include pages from the event's website in search results as much as possible, specifically in queries made by potential event attendees.

A search engine is most convinced if it estimates the users (the search engine's customers) will be satisfied with the result page containing the event website.

SEO - The Work Itself

SEO professionals divide the work into two parts.

The first is commonly referred to as "On-Site SEO" or "On-Page SEO." It is where work is done on the conference website itself.

The second is commonly referred to as "Off-Site SEO" or "Off-Page SEO." It means organic website promotion activity outside the website ("Off-Site"); any work done outside the site (for example, on other websites). This part of the SEO work does not require website content or infrastructure access.

On-Site SEO

On-site SEO includes work on the site itself - content and infrastructure - so search engines will see it as a good site to have high up in its results. Therefore, the website will gain more relevant visitors from search engines.

On-Site SEO Part 1 - The Base Score of the Website

The score search engines give to a website and page depends on technical parameters and tests carried out by the search engine.

Those parameters and tests include:

Broken Links

Testing the links on the site. Are they working? Too many broken links can hurt the site's base score.

Responsive Design

The website pages should display well and work on mobiles and devices with smaller screens.

Speed

The site should load fast enough not to annoy users on a variety of devices. For example, Google sees a page that loads in 2.5 seconds as good.

The Site Is Accessible and Usable

There is no issue reading the text, and the page's buttons are big enough so users can recognize and easily click them.

Navigation

It is easy to navigate between the pages of the website.

Annoying Features

Some features event website features organizers may see as cool are actually annoying and drive potential attendees away.

Avoid things include:

• Pip-ups
• Hard to get rid of live chat panels.
• Automatic music or video
• Distracting Animations
• Fully justified text
• Hard-to-discover buttons and links

Security

Security and use of https have been a confirmed Google ranking factor since 2014.

In addition, Search engines scan websites in their index continuously; if a security threat is detected, the search engine may add the website to a blacklist, refrain from including the website in the search results or warn users before accessing it.

Check a website on Google here: Safe Browsing site status

Reputation

Brand reputation and awareness are indicators of website significance and factors impacting a website's search ranking.

Search engines measure brand awareness and reputation by tracking singles such as:

Brand Mentions

Search engines can detect and analyze brand mentions in social media or articles.

Brand Search Volume

The number of search queries for a brand associated with the website.

Website Age and Reputation

Domain age is no longer an important ranking factor as more reliable indicators have gained ground. However, new websites may take time to index, gain trust, and build an online reputation.

Outbound Links

Outbound links are links on a website that take the user to an external website. The links on the site. If links on the website lead to harmful/problematic sites, it can hurt the site's score.

Compliance with Standards

Search engines inspect web pages in-depth. In addition to scanning the visible text, search engines check for small pieces of data embedded in the page that are invisible to users and the code that makes the page.

Browsers are very resilient to HTML errors; search engines see, count, and evaluate the impact of those errors. As a result, improper or erroneous use of web technology in a webpage can make a difference and damage the webpage's ranking.

One way to check for HTML code compliance with standards is to use the W3C HTML checker.

On-Site SEO Part 2 - Content

The second family of parameters that affects the page score is the content. In an effort to please users who click on the search result and visit the page, search engines evaluate the quality of the content on the page. The algorithms used to differentiate and score content are constantly improving. So, the best practice is producing high-quality content that will add value to users who read it, ensuring search engine bots also see the content as premium.

The following are some of the known indications of a quality website:

Spelling Mistakes

Many spelling mistakes indicate poor quality.

Original Content

Search engines check for duplicated content. When a search engine detects a page has too much plagiarism, the website and the page could be "punished."

Gibberish

Search engines developed algorithms to detect gibberish to fight spammers who generate articles with meaningless text containing relevant keywords. As a result, pages with a high gibberish score are flagged or disregarded by search engines.

For this purpose, Google filed a patent on gibberish detection in 2008.

Microsoft Bing is also detecting and removing pages with high gibberish and spam score. According to this blog post by Bing Index Quality, Principal Development Manager Bing has removed from its index over 5M pages due to a high spam score.

Fresh Content

Is there new material on the site? Is the site updated from time to time? Search engines give additional priority to new and fresh content. Therefore, regularly updating and adding content to a website can improve the site's search engine score.

The content matches what the user is looking for.

The content on the site should match the keywords people are looking for in search engines. Search engines try to understand the site's topic, summarizing them and deciphering which are more important and which are just general texts. For example, if a word appears in the title or larger size, this is an indication that the word is more important. Also, if a word is linked to another page (when you click on it, you go to the other page), it indicates that the other page deals with this word.

Off-Site SEO

Off-Site SEO, or off-page SEO, refers to any work done off the website to promote it in search engine result pages.

Off-site SEO is mostly about creating links to a website on other websites and includes:

• Writing and publishing articles that contain links to the event website.
• Posting about the website on social networks.
• Getting social media influencers to post about the website.
• Paying other sites to link to the promoted website.
• Adding the website to directories and public lists of sites.

The Effect of Off-Site SEO

A known method search engines use to estimate the importance of a webpage is checking inbound links, also known as backlinks. They are links the search engine has found on other websites to the event website. Backlinks are like a vote of trust by websites. A link from a relevant and high-reputable website can boost the event website's score and rank.

Another indication for a helpful website is social media. When people post about a website and share the page's URL, it signals search engines that the page is interesting and relevant to the issue discussed in the post.

A few years back, creating external links was considered a critical SEO activity because it was a search engine's number one ranking factor. A market for selling links developed, and websites that sold links became popular; consequently, search engines improved their algorithms in detecting and punishing websites for buying links.

It is significant for a website to have backlinks from a highly reputable external site.

Summary

Hiring an SEO expert can help you gain more traffic for an event website. Developing relevant, engaging content and publishing it on the event website can increase this traffic from search engines. SEO techniques can ensure and increase the return on the investment in content. Practicing basic SEO skills can provide search engines with the necessary index and include the event website in relevant search results pages.