No matter the industry sector you are in, SEO is a key cornerstone of a successful event website.

For ASP clients, setting up your SEO on Show Off couldn't be easier. All you need to do is follow the six simple steps below:

Step One
Set up your robots.txt

Find this here: Settings > SEO Settings > Site Robots.txt

This is the gatekeeper to your website for the search engines, and it is very important that this is set up. For details see our knowledge base article on setting up your robots.txt.

Step Two
Add Google Settings

Find this here: Settings > SEO Settings

Google

• Google (Webmaster) Site Verification Code

This setting allows you to verify your website in Google Search Console, which is a very important service to set up (see further details below). However, there are many options for verifying your website in Google Search Console:

See Here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9008080?hl=en

And Here:  our knowledge base article on Adding Google Search Console Verification meta-tag to your site.

• Global Open Graph Image

This defines the default image that will be shown if your web pages are shared via social media. Event marketers with their finger on the pulse will also add their logo too. 

Step Three
Check meta tag settings

Find this here: Settings > SEO Settings

• Site 'Index & Follow' meta tags

If your website is live, this must be set to index, follow, or you will block the search engines from visiting your website. 

DO NOT set it to ‘no index’, follow if your website is live. This will have your website removed from Google's index!

For more information see our knowledge base article on no index no follow tags.

• Apply Canonical Tags to Pages

This should normally be set to ‘Yes’.

Canonical tags are an advanced item, see our knowledge base article on canonical tags.

 

Step Four

Add event schema details

Event schema is the code behind the scenes that generates the following listings in the search results:

This is therefore important information to add, as it can greatly increase your exposure within a search.

Find this here: Settings > SEO Settings

Fill out all the fields available:

• Event description

• Event Type

• Business Sector

• Organiser Name

• Organiser URL

• The event host domain URL

• Event Status

• Event Attendance Mode

• Venue

• Country

• Estimated Visitors

• Estimated Exhibitors

 

Step Five
Add relevant redirects

Redirects take your visitor and the search engines from an old URL to your new one.

For example, if you had a page yourdomain.com/old-page and needed it to be replaced by a new page such as yourdomain.com/new-page, you can set a redirect to automatically forward visitors and the search engines from the old page to the new.

Setting up 301 redirects is a more advanced SEO task - if you need more advanced SEO help to find website errors / search console errors and fix 301 redirects, please contact ASP or your provider directly. 

Setting up redirects is important for your visitors and search engines because:

• Potential visitors will automatically be forwarded to the new page - if a page is deleted or URL changed, then you will automatically be taken to the new page (and not end up at a 404-error page,)

• Redirects stop errors within Google’s Search Console.  

• Stop the loss of link value - if you have a link to one of your web pages from another website, then this could be adding to the authority (and SEO) of your website. If you delete this page on your website and do not redirect to a new page, you will lose the value of this link.

Find redirect settings here: Settings > SEO Settings > Redirects

A redirect is set up in ShowOff as follows (should be 301/permanent):

Here is how to find if you have any ‘page not found 404 error’ pages that need 301 redirects set up to solve:

• Login to Google Search Console and review your index coverage report – for more information see here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203?hl=en 

• Use an SEO website audit tool like SE Ranking to crawl your website to find errors that can be fixed using redirects.

 

Step Six
Add an HTML sitemap page

An HTML sitemap is simply a web page that lists all your websites pages and is linked to from the footer of your site.

This page is useful to both the visitor (as it is another way to find a page they may be looking for), and the search engines for the same reason.

To add an HTML sitemap, see our knowledge base article on sitemaps here.

Illustration from Freepik