A large part of SEO for event planners is simply about writing effective website copy. Here’s what you need to know to keep both clients and web-crawlers happy.
See, when you write web copy, you’re creatively expressing yourself and your event business brand. You’re also selling your services. And you’re helping search engines understand your website better so they can rank you for relevant queries.
If you’re an SEO for event planners newbie, you should probably start with The Basics of SEO For Event Planners. In that article, you’ll get a high-level crash course of what SEO is and where to start on your search engine optimization journey.
In this article here, we’ll focus on how keywords and search engine optimization can, and should, influence your web copy.
Read the other articles in this series:
- Part 1: The Basics of SEO For Event Planners
- Part 3: SEO For Event Planners: The Basics Of Technical SEO
Who Are You Writing For?
You’re writing for two different audiences, and they couldn’t be more different. The first audience is humans, and the second is robots.
Website Copy For Humans
This audience is the most important, and you’re doing most of your writing for them. Really, people are the priority. If your web copy is compelling, engaging, and enjoyable for people to read, then you’re 70% of the way there.
When writing for people, you still need to consider the search. In other words, what is your potential client looking for? What are they typing into Google? Your web copy needs to make it clear that you’re the answer to their search. We’ll dive deeper into this shortly.
Website Copy For Robots
Google indexes the web with crawlers, spiders, or robots – different names for the same thing. Constantly, Google uses robots to load your website and crawl the pages, jumping from page to page, link to link, indexing and categorizing your content.
Effective SEO for event planners requires that you write with clarity, so a non-sentient robot will still grasp that you’re an event pro with an event planning business.
In this article, we’ll touch on this in our page hierarchy section. Still, I’ll also delve deeper into this in other articles.
Related: 4 Steps To Great On-Page SEO for Event Planners
Always Write For People First
SEO for event planners isn’t about “hacking” Google’s systems. Google looks at hundreds of data points when deciding how to rank your website. As people get good at gaming the system, Google adjusts their criteria.
The safest way to ensure good SEO is to write for your potential clients. If your website’s copy is well written and clear to your clients, you’ll do just fine. The technical aspects of SEO simply help robots understand who you are and what you do. That’s why SEO includes the word “optimization.” SEO is all about minor tweaks to incrementally improve your ranking in the search results.
Related: A Practical Guide To An Effective Website For Your Event Business
Understanding Your Audience
When it comes to SEO-friendly website copy for your event planners, the first place to start is the search. What do potential clients type into Google when they’re looking for your services?
Of course, some will type “event planner” while others will look for “event planner near me” or “event planner Chicago.” So, at the most basic, your website copy should make it clear that you’re an event planner.
But what if clients are seeking specialized services? They might be looking for a “festival director,” “digital conference planner,” “Indian wedding planner,” or “bar mitzvah planner.” Understanding the search terms your potential clients will be using allows you to write the best website copy to position yourself as the answer.
Practically speaking, this means you should make it clear in your website copy that you specialize or at least offer specialized services. From a website design point of view, I recommend doing the following:
- Including a list of your services on your homepage
- Have a “services” page where you describe each service in a paragraph.
- Create a standalone page for each key niche service you offer.
That way, if you’re primarily a conference planner, but you also can act as a race director, you can make sure to rank for both search terms.
Read Setting Up Your First Website For Your Event Business to quickly create simple but effective web pages.
Keywords
So, let’s stick with the examples above. “Bar mitzvah planner” is a keyword. So is “race director” and “Indian wedding planner.” These are keywords. Keywords can be a single word or an entire phrase like “Indian wedding planner Chicago.”
So if your clients are looking for a conference planner, you’ll insert the keyword “conference planner” in your website copy. It’s almost that simple. Keywords are phrases that are commonly searched and relevant to your business.
Each page should focus on only one keyword. You can use synonyms, variations, and related concepts. Still, there should be one single primary keyword you’d like to rank for on each page.
We’ll get into where to place keywords in the next section, but I want to make something crystal clear.
Don’t overuse keywords at the expense of good writing.
Your website copy should be enjoyable and engaging to read. Don’t shove in keywords because you want to trick Google’s bots. It won’t work. The art of SEO comes in understanding where to subtly place keywords, so you can wow clients while simultaneously help Google understand your business.
Understanding Page Hierarchy
An essential element of SEO for event planners, and writing website copy, is simply where the keywords go. So let’s look at page hierarchy. We’ll discuss:
- Headings
- Paragraphs
- Links
- Italics
Headings
HTML, the code that the web is built with, actually offers 6 headings, ranging from Heading 1 to Heading 6. Google assumes that text in Heading 1 is more important to readers than text in Headings 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. And similarly, Google considers Headings to be more meaningful than paragraph text.
We’ll consider H1 to H6 as a heading (H1) and sub-headings (H2 to H6).
So, use your headings and sub-headings to powerfully convey who you are and what you do to readers and Google. Use paragraphs for artful writing.
Here are tips for working with headings:
- Use H1 only once per page, and it should contain the most important keyword.
- Use H2 for section headings
- Use H3 as paragraph headings within a section
Paragraphs
If you’ve added keywords into your headings, then you can relax when writing paragraphs. You should describe your work and services in paragraphs, but use keyword synonyms, flowery language and enjoy yourself creatively.
Links
Links are important to Google because they indicate that the linked page is authoritative on a specific subject. If you link from your homepage to a services page, don’t use the words “click here.” Rather link the words “see my full list of services.” Or, if you’re linking to a page about your offering as an on-site event coordinator, then hyperlink the words “on-site event coordinator.”
This helps Google understand the words that matter.
Italics & Bold
Italicized and bolded text also indicates to Google (and readers) that those words are important. In fact, modern HTML uses “strong” for bold and “emphasized” for italics.
So if you’d like to teach Google that specific keywords are important, you can sparingly use bold and italics. But don’t overuse this. If it doesn’t look normal to you as a reader, it’ll count against you from an SEO perspective too.
Split Content Into Pages
Sure, you can have a detailed homepage with tons of content about everything you do, but it isn’t always practical. Sometimes you want space to flex your creative writing about a niche topic.
For example, let’s say you’re a conference planner and a wedding planner. Putting the details for both disparate services will feel disjointed in one single web page.
So split your content into two pages. You can then leverage the headings, links, and italics appropriately for each service without pitting them against each other.
Then, Google can serve up your conference planner page to people searching for a local conference planner. And show the wedding page to couples looking for a wedding planner.
I also recommend the following pages on every event business website:
- Homepage
- Services
- About us
- Contact
- Blog
- Gallery
Each page serves to teach Google more and more about you, your event business, and for which search terms you’re a relevant answer.
The Top Third Of Your Website Copy
Similar to headings and sub-headings, where content is placed can send signals to Google. The first 100 words send stronger signals about who you are than the 700th word.
Try to include your page’s primary keyword in the first third of each page and a couple of synonyms too. Google probably crawls the entire page, but the first 100 words act as a summary of sorts when efficiently indexing content.
Where To Start?
So, where should you start to make quick gains on your SEO-friendly website copy? Here are the steps I recommend:
- Decide on the top keyword for each page.
- Add that keyword in a heading (or at least sub-heading)
- Change any links from “click here” to the subject of the page they’re linking to.
- Pepper in a few synonyms into your paragraphs to drive the message home.
And while ThymeBase’s event professional software can’t do much for your SEO, we can make event planning more manageable for you and your whole team.