Local SEO Link Building - Event Links
Want to diversify your link profile through a scalable campaign that your competitors don’t know of or are struggling to implement? Then, you should try link building by hosting local events.
So, you are probably thinking I’m just about to tell you to go and spam Meetup.com and related sites. Wrong.
In this guide, I’ll take you step by step on how you can create a robust local events link building campaign that will help you garner high-quality links without breaking the bank. By the end of the guide, you’ll be able to secure locally relevant event links with ease.
However, you need to prepare well. So, strap on and prepare for the ride.
Why Build Links By Hosting Local Events
Why should you invest your time in building links by hosting local events?
Local event link building can be a powerful way of generating online traffic to your website, foot traffic to your store, and calls to your business. When implemented correctly, the link building technique will help to improve your brand awareness and result in long term SEO benefits for your website.
Get High-Quality Links Easily
Local event links are some of the most authoritative links you can get for free to your website.
So, why don’t most SEO’s build event links?
Because they assume they need to hold a real event, which you can and obviously works great, but you don’t have to.
You can easily create a fictional event requiring little more than an idea for the “event” and a simple landing page to list the “event” detail and receive the backlinks.
If you decide that an actual event is in order, you’ll need a few prerequisites.
You’ll need an excellent presentation, find a venue, and get people to attend your event. However, this trouble will be handsomely compensated with tons of high-quality links that your competition will be itching to get.
Moreover, the links will generate a ton of value for your local business in terms of sales or leads.
Get Geo-Targeted Links
Geo-targeted links work great for local businesses. Imagine a New England flower delivery company being linked to from the Boston Globe website. This link will not only be highly-relevant because it is coming from a trusted website, but also because the site primarily caters to New England news.
Geo-relevant links help to drive traffic and have a considerable impact on local SEO results.
Boost Your Local Citation Footprint
The majority of event listings websites allow you to add your name, address, and phone number (NAP) to your listing. This tactic helps to boost your local citation footprint.
You can use event link building to diversify your citation links. Since the links are typically on domains with high authority, they get picked up faster. Moreover, some event listings websites will link to your site multiple times.
Diversify Your Link Profile
Diversifying your link profile is critical in today’s era of real-time Penguin updates. You want your business to have various types of links to give it a solid foundation, and also avoid the risk of penalties. Building local event links is one way of doing this.
Of course, you should also be using other types of links, such as pillow links, guest posts, niche edits, and more in your overall link building campaign.
Get Value From Event Listings Links
One thing I should stress here is the value you’ll want to derive from building links on events sites. First off, this strategy works well for local companies that will be hosting real events. Hosting a local event can give your brand massive exposure and give you an edge over competitors that rely purely on SEO.
Close Customers At The Event
During the event, you can meet with your prospects and establish your authority through the presentation. The function can also present an excellent opportunity to close leads. Here, you’ll want to get your offline marketing pack from the dusty shelves and get to work. Make sure you bring your business cards, banners, and fliers to the event.
Get Massive SEO Benefits
The SEO benefits of local event link building cannot also be ignored. The majority of the websites where you’ll be building links from is local newspapers, TVs, and radio station websites. These websites have high trust and generate tons of traffic. Therefore, you can expect a lot of relevant eyeballs on your listings.
Moreover, you typically can’t get links from these high authority local sites through traditional guest posting. This is why you may need to implement a local event link building campaign.
What if you cannot host an event in the city? I’ve heard some of you SEOs asking this.
Well, you have to be creative. Perhaps you can partner with a local company in the city your website targets to run your event? What about sponsoring an event for a local company in the area and having your brand recognized as a partner? This is a topic for another day. You have to be creative in your approach.
For What Types Of Events Should You Build Links?
You can build links for any events. Of course, you want the event to be related to your niche, for maximum impact.
For example, you can hold events related to:
● Sports (hockey, basketball, softball, etc.)
● Professions (accounting, dentistry, nursing, etc.)
● Hobbies (knitting, singing, painting, etc.)
● Charity (any business can host a charity event)
You have to think of the end goal for hosting a local event. If you’d like to generate traffic and leads to your business, the event should be super relevant to your audience. For instance, if you are a pest extermination company, you can tailor your event to be about how your prospects to avoid common pests at home. At the end of the presentation, you may want to give a unique link on your website where the attendees can save some amount off when they order your services.
On the other hand, if you want to generate brand awareness, you can hold a general event that can appeal to as many people as possible (charity events would work best here). An excellent approach to organizing events for branding purposes would be to partner with a reputable local organization, ideally, a charity to cover something for which the community is passionate.
Now that you have a solid foundation of what event links are and why you need them, let’s get to the work.
Step By Step Guide To Building Local Event Links For SEO
Follow the steps below to build your local events link building campaign:
Find Event Listing Opportunities
First off, you’ll want to find event listing opportunities. If you are implementing this link building tactic for a local business, you’ll want to find local websites that list upcoming events. You can do this is a couple of ways.
Traditional Google Search
The easiest way to find event link building opportunities to type “upcoming events in city” on Google. Make sure you replace “city” with the name of your city.
Write down all the websites that list upcoming events in your city on an Excel sheet. Later, you’ll need to visit the websites and check their requirements for having an event included on their portal.
Use Event Submission Search Strings
To get even more targeted lists, you can use various Google search strings. Here is a couple to get you started:
city/keyword/city keyword inurl:event inurl:submit
city/keyword/city keyword inurl:event inurl:add
city/keyword/city keyword “submit your conference”
city/keyword/city keyword “submit your course”
city/keyword/city keyword “submit your class”
city/keyword/city keyword “submit your workshop”
city/keyword/city keyword “add your event”
You can get creative with the search strings and uncover tons of event listing opportunities.
Build Your Event Page
Submit Your Event
With your event page set up, you should not have a problem submitting it to your initial target list. Remember the Excel sheet that the VA made with the event submission requirements? This is the time to use it.
Go through the sheet and submit the events, following their requirements. Some of the typical conditions include:
● The event should be held in a particular city
● You should indicate the event name
● Time and city where it will be held
● How to make reservations
● Other information that attendees should have
You may have to go back to your event page to tweak it with the information required by the event listing sites.
TIP: Set up a different email to use for your event submissions, especially if you have an extensive target list.
Expand Your Linking Opportunities
For maximum impact, you want to go beyond the list that you’ve uncovered on Step 1 above. Luckily, there is an easy way of doing this: check for footprints left by your competitors or websites in your space that are doing local event link building.
Use Ahrefs To Find Linking Opportunities
Here is how to do this:
a) Find a competitor in your space that has implemented a local event link building campaign
b) Plug the competitor’s event page on Ahrefs to see which sites are linking to it
c) Make a list of the sites and reach out to those that you may not have on your prospecting sheet
d) Reach out to the websites, requesting them to list your event
Use Google To Find Event Links
Most businesses submit write the same copy for their events distributed across multiple sites. If you have uncovered a competitor that is doing event link building, find out on which sites their event is listed.
To do this, copy about 20 words of the competitor’s event description and search it on Google using quotation marks.
The results should list all the websites where the event has been recorded. You can then check whether the sites are not on your target list and, if not, approach them with your event listing.
Event Submission Footprint
Another tip is to get websites that use event submission software and contact them with your listing. To do this, you’ll need to know the footprint left by the software.
Many large companies use Trumba for their event listings. Fortunately, Trumba leaves a footprint, “powered by Trumba”, which we can exploit to our advantage.
Search for keyword/city “powered by Trumba” on Google to find sites in your region that list events. Contact any websites that are not on your target list to get them to list your event.
Boost Your Local Event Link Building Campaign For Maximum Impact
Hosting a local event is an excellent way of not only garnering event links but also other types of links that are hugely beneficial.
However, you need to put in some work for this to happen.
Here are a couple of ways in which you can boost your local event link building campaign.
Involve Local Bloggers
Reach out to local bloggers in your niche and ask them to help you in promoting the event. You’ll want to contact the bloggers through their email addresses, rather than the website contact form. You can use Hunter.io or related tools to find the bloggers’ email addresses.
TIP: Reduce their workload by providing customized, pre-written content that they can publish on their sites.
Promote The Event On Social Media
Use Facebook and Twitter to generate buzz about the event. Spend a few dollars on Facebook PPC to get more eyeballs on the event page. The result can be shares and retweets, which will help to amplify your brand and garner more links.
Make sure you start promoting your event well in advance. It may take some time for your prospects to respond to your queries. Therefore, you want to start promoting the event a few months before the due date.
Press Release Submission
Press release distribution should be done when some of the event websites have started listing your event. If you are buying bulk press release submissions, you want to distribute the links across the live listings. This will help to boost their page authority, which will be beneficial for your local business in the long run.