Planning a large event is no small feat. It requires countless phone calls, emails, vendor comparisons, and logistical planning. And once the event is organised, you face the equally daunting task of promoting it. This is where having an agency like ours can make all the difference, especially when it comes to SEO for events.
Event SEO is a specific branch of traditional SEO that focuses on increasing visibility for upcoming events. By implementing effective SEO strategies, we can:
- Expand your event’s online reach
- Introduce your event to new audiences
- Enhance your website’s authority, helping event landing pages rank higher
- Increase ticket sales
But how do we know that SEO can deliver these impressive results for event planners? We’ve seen it happen time and again, including in the case study we’ll explore today.
The Client: A Major Annual Event in London
Our client runs a website for a significant annual event in London. This event provides industry professionals with the opportunity to enhance brand awareness, forge partnerships, and market their products and services. The goal of the website is not only to sell more tickets but also to build credibility with potential attendees.
Despite the event’s prestige and respected reputation, the client’s website was struggling to attract organic traffic. The event planning industry is highly competitive, and our client was being overshadowed by their main competitors.
SEO is a complex field that takes time to master. It involves numerous factors, such as:
- The strength and relevance of a domain’s backlinks
- Technical elements like indexing errors and loading speed
- Keyword placement and frequency
- Researching keywords
- The quality of your content
- Content length and formatting
- URL structure and site architecture
Realising they needed expert assistance, the client approached our team to help them simplify their path to SEO success.
The Initial Consultation
During our first consultation, we discussed the client’s primary SEO needs to determine the best approach. The client wanted to:
- Build authority for their homepage and improve its ranking
- Generate more organic traffic to their website
- Establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry
- Start ranking for keywords related to their event
Given the diversity of their goals, we proposed a Clout X campaign.
What is Clout X? It’s our fully managed SEO service that combines all our products to meet the client’s objectives. Each Clout X client is assigned a dedicated campaign manager who develops a long-term, cohesive SEO strategy tailored to their website. Clients benefit from monthly strategy calls, advanced analytics, and a well-maintained backlink profile. If any of the backlinks we create go down, we replace them immediately to maintain the client’s ranking power.
Products Used in the Campaign
We collaborated with the client for a total of 28 months. The campaign was so successful that the client saw no reason to stop. Even now, our efforts continue to generate traffic, leads, and ticket sales for their website.
To address the client’s varied SEO goals, we employed a range of our products, including:
- Clout Blogger for consistently producing high-quality content that attracts audiences
- Link Outreach to target valuable backlink opportunities, such as guest posts
- Link Insertions for securing high-value link placements and brand mentions on relevant external sites
- Content Syndication to build additional backlinks and generate extra traffic from top-performing blog posts
Each month’s order varied depending on the campaign stage and the client’s needs and budget. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach; our campaign managers work closely with clients to determine the most suitable products each month.
The client was eager to produce a lot of blog content, so most months included four orders for 1,500-word articles.
Why Focus on Content Creation?
We believed that consistently producing insightful blog posts would attract many potential attendees. Each blog included internal links to the client’s homepage and event sign-up forms, along with clear calls to action (CTAs) encouraging users to register or leave their contact details for future updates.
We also syndicated some of the client’s top-performing posts on related websites and media outlets. This helped the client’s content reach new audiences and potential event attendees.
The SEO Audit: Laying the Groundwork
Every Clout X campaign begins with an essential SEO audit. This involves a thorough analysis of the client’s website to assess its current SEO performance. We use various tools, including the client’s Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts, to identify and resolve critical indexing errors, evaluate keyword rankings, and understand website demographics.
Ahrefs is also a valuable tool for identifying broken links and analysing the site’s backlink profile.
Why Are SEO Audits Important?
SEO audits are a crucial first step for any SEO campaign because they help establish a solid foundation. They identify significant errors that could hinder future optimisations. For example, if an indexing error prevents a website from appearing in Google’s index, creating high-quality content would be a waste of effort.
During an audit, we examine:
- On-page SEO factors, such as keywords in metadata and title tags
- Technical SEO elements, including page loading speed and broken links
- Site architecture and URL structure
- The health of the backlink profile and any gaps compared to competitors
- Current keyword rankings
Although audits are time-consuming, they are an essential step we never overlook.
Targeting Easy-Win Keyword Opportunities
SEO is not an overnight process. It can take several months to see results, which can be frustrating for those new to SEO. To alleviate this, we focus on easy-win keywords during the audit phase.
An easy-win keyword is a search term for which the client’s website is already ranking on Google, just not in the top three positions. Keywords ranking between positions 4 and 30 are prime candidates for optimisation.
These keywords are advantageous because they can quickly move up the rankings, providing speedy results for clients. Since these pages are already indexed by Google, any changes we make will have a quicker impact.
Our event planning client had numerous easy-win keyword opportunities that we seized immediately. These keywords were all relevant to the event planning industry.
Campaign Strategy 1: Consistent Blog Publishing
As mentioned earlier, each month of the campaign included four orders for 1,500-word Clout Blogger articles. These articles featured:
- Trending industry keywords
- Valuable insights for the target audience
- Readable formatting with subheadings, short paragraphs, and bullet points
- High-resolution images (blogs with images receive 94% more views)
- Clear CTAs at the end of every post
Creating blog content was crucial for establishing the client as a thought leader in their field, which would help attract more industry professionals to their annual event.
To ensure comprehensive coverage, we took a two-pronged approach to topic selection:
- Half the blogs focused on the client’s niche and annual conference.
- The other half covered broader topics relevant to their target audience.
This strategy allowed the client to promote their event while positioning their brand as a credible source of information in the event planning sector.
Campaign Strategy 2: Building Authority Through Backlinks
To enhance the client’s homepage authority, we needed to build numerous valuable backlinks. Search engines, especially Google, view backlinks as votes of credibility. Therefore, it’s essential to secure links from relevant, trusted websites.
Throughout the 28-month campaign, the client consistently ordered Link Outreach and Link Insertions. Our objective was to acquire as many high-quality backlinks as possible.
Through our Link Outreach service, we secured guest posts on other event planning websites, generating high-authority backlinks. Link Insertions involve requesting site owners to add client backlinks to existing content, further enhancing credibility.
Our primary focus was on building backlinks to the client’s homepage, as this is where they housed the most CTAs for event attendance. We also built backlinks for the new blogs to ensure they ranked well, always including links back to the homepage.
Additionally, we syndicated some of the client’s blogs to relevant news sites and media outlets to boost brand awareness and create even more backlinks.
The Results: A 734% Increase in Organic Traffic and Over 1,000 Keywords in the Top 10
The campaign gained momentum once the client began posting their blogs on their main domain instead of a subdomain. Their organic traffic soared, resulting in a 5.1k increase over six months.
At the start of the campaign, the client’s traffic and keyword rankings looked like this:
After implementing our strategies, the results were staggering:
Their traffic skyrocketed from 863 to 7,199, marking a 734.183% increase! They also climbed from 218 keywords to 1,176, with 236 keywords ranking in the top three positions.
Their website is now thriving, and this year’s annual conference is set to be the largest yet.
Leveraging SEO for Event Success
The event planning industry is fiercely competitive, but effective SEO can set you apart. This case study illustrates how our team can significantly enhance an event website’s online visibility. If you’re looking to replicate these results for your own event, we’re here to help!
