June 21, 2012

The Complete Guide to Link Building with Local Events

Link Building

The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Whether you’re a small local business or an international company, hosting local events is a great way to build your brand, both offline and online.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise to us internet marketers that there are plenty of non-internet-savvy organizations that are hosting workshops, speaking at events, and getting their brand out there using offline methods to promote their events. If that sounds like your business or one of your clients, there’s a good chance you’re missing out on a number of link opportunities every time you host an event.

Why You Need to Do This

Why You Should Be Building Links By Hosting Events:

Here are the primary reasons that this is such a great strategy:

Lots of Easily Obtainable Links: These are easy links that fit Danny's Sullivan's recent description of hard links. They're hard because you have to develop a good presentation, find a venue, and get people to attend. But, they're links made for real people, and they add value to your business regardless of their SEO value by getting people interested in your event and your brand.

Why are they easy? So long as you have an interesting event that is put on by a legitimate organization, you’re very likely to get accepted by most event listing sites. Many of the event sites require a simple form consisting of an event title, description, when and where the event takes place, and of course, a URL for more information. And as long as your event is valuable to the people that will attend, the outreach portion can be much easier than other link outreach methods.
Links On Otherwise Difficult Domains: It can be pretty hard to get a link from a major newspaper, TV station, or other prominent local website. Getting an event into their events section is like the secret entrance into getting a link from that domain.
“Geo-Relevant” Links: Let me ask you two questions:

First, do you think that search engines think a website like the Seattle Times is relevant to the city of Seattle?

If so, do you think that getting a followed link from a website like the Seattle Times would in turn make you appear more relevant for the city of Seattle - or people searching from the city of Seattle for that matter?
Local Citations: Whether or not you’re hosting the event at your place of business, event listings are an easy way to sneak in your Name / Address / Phone Number to get a local search citation, too. Since many of you will be using these strategy on a local business, this is just some extra value (quantity of citations are a big local SEO ranking factor).
Diverse Links: Julie Joyce wrote a great article a few months ago discussing why it's important to have a diverse link profile. I personally place a lot of emphasis on Linking Root Domains as a link metric because I think it’s fairly critical to a strong link profile.

Getting listed on these event websites is a quick and easy way to get lots of new linking root domains for your backlink profile, and many of them are domains you can only get links from by hosting events. It's also great for getting links to internal event pages on your site, with easy long-tail anchor text such as the title of your event.

The takeaway? There's a ton of value here. There's also a good chance that your competitors aren't doing this type of link building, so it's an excellent way to set yourself apart from the crowd.

I need to point out one other thing before we really dive in:

The overwhelming majority of the value from hosting events comes from the event itself, so don't get lost in the link building aspects of the strategy. You should be hosting events because that's the type of sh*t real businesses do.

This guide is really meant to make sure you're getting the most online marketing value from your events. That doesn't mean link building can or should be your entire focus when hosting an event. Just like the internet, you have to create good content for your real-world events in order for it to be worth your time.

Types of Events This Guide Will Apply To:

My personal experience in building links to local events is primarily for business workshops, but these methods can be applied any event you’re hosting:

local concerts
business workshops
art shows
knitting clubs
academic lectures
international conferences

You’ll definitely want to go above and beyond these tips for a large conference, but when combined with sponsorships and similar conference partnerships, this guide can form a large part of your strategy).

Outline of This Guide:

I’ve tried to make this a pretty comprehensive guide. Here’s what we’re going to cover:

How to Structure Your Event Pages
Search Queries You Can Use to Find Event Listing Opportunities
9 Examples of Event Websites To Get You Started
Competitive Analysis - No Need to Reinvent the Wheel
Outreach - How to Move Beyond Link Submissions
Advanced Tactics to Consider
Making the Most of the Event & Wrap Up

How to Structure Your Event Pages

Before you get started with link building, there are a handful of things you need to consider when getting started with marketing your events:

Events Page(s) on Your Website:

If you host a large number of events every year, you’ll probably want to have a dedicated events page (e.g distilled.com/events/) that lists upcoming and past events with a short description, and then links to unique pages for each event that you host (e.g. distilled.net/events/linklove-boston/) that feature a long description.

However, if you don’t host very many events, or only plan on doing this once in a while, you might consider having a single dedicated events page (e.g. hoodwebmanagement.com/events/) that lists all upcoming and past events together with full descriptions. This has the benefit of accumulating a large number of ongoing links to the same page over time. This is the format that I use on Hood Web Management's events page - the top of the page has upcoming events, and the bottom half of the page is a growing list of past events and their descriptions.

Choosing a Ticket Sales Provider for Paid Events:

If you plan to sell tickets to your event, you might decide to use a ticket service to do so. This offers a great link opportunity if you plan it correctly.

Note: I would not make the ticket sales page the main event page that you use when link building. You should have the main event page on your website, and a “register” or “buy” button that sends visitors to the ticket sales page. This way we’re focusing most of the links to your website, not the ticket website.

You need to pick your ticket sales website carefully. One good choice would be Eventbrite, a ticket-selling website that allows followed links from your event description. A sampling of old Eventbrite listings that I glanced at had Page Authorities ranging from 30 to 40, and they’re on a Domain Authority 97 domain. Not a bad link to add to your collection, huh? This example on the right is from MozCon 2011's Eventbrite Listing. The green highlighting is the SEOmoz toolbar highlighting Followed Links.

Eventbrite is free if the event you’re hosting is free and you want to collect RSVPs, so there’s no reason not to use it for those events. If your event is paid, you don’t necessarily need to use Eventbrite for your ticket sales, but be conscious that if you’re going to pay a commission to your ticket seller, you might as well get a few good followed links from them in the process. Another good option for followed links from a high-quality domain is Brown Paper Tickets (DA 88).

Search Queries You Can Use to Find Event Listing Opportunities:

Once you get your content pages set up, it’s time to prospect for event listing websites that are relevant to you. Since many of the local event websites that you’ll be looking for are unique to your region and your event type, your best strategy will be to use search queries like the ones below to prospect for links:

city inurl:event inurl:submit

keyword inurl:event inurl:submit

city keyword inurl:event inurl:submit

city inurl:event inurl:add

keyword inurl:event inurl:add

city keyword inurl:event inurl:add

city keyword "suggest a meetup" site:www.meetup.com

keyword city "submit event"

keyword city "submit an event"

keyword city "submit your event"

keyword city "add event"

keyword city "add an event"

keyword city "add your event"

keyword city "submit your workshop"

keyword city "submit your course"

keyword city "submit your class"

keyword city "submit your conference"

You’ll naturally want to change citykeyword to whatever is most relevant to your event, and add or remove those terms to get more or less results.

There's plenty more possible search queries you can use - if you have more suggestions leave them in the comments!

Example of Sites Found for Seattle Business Events:

Here’s an example of the types of websites that I find when looking for business-focused events in Seattle:

Seattle Times Newspaper (followed links): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/SubmitEvent.pl
King5 TV Station (nofollow links): http://events.king5.com/
KOMO TV Station (followed links): http://westseattle.komonews.com/h/events/edp?p=createevent
ILoveSeattle.org (followed links): http://www.iloveseattle.org/networking-guide/group-tools-resources/event-submit.asp
Seattle Business Mag (followed links): http://www.seattlebusinessmag.com/node/add/event
EventSetter (nofollow links): http://www.eventsetter.com/post-event/
Patch.com (multiple followed links): http://mercerisland.patch.com/events/category/classes-lectures

That’s just a sampling of sites that showed up in two or three quick searches. To answer the inevitable question, yes, you should absolutely fill out the listings that have nofollow links. They contribute value and still get your event in front of people, which is the ultimate goal of hosting the event in the first place.

Pro Tip: Keep Your Eye Out For Curated Lists of Event Websites:

Occasionally while link prospecting you’ll run across an awesome resource like this list of Seattle business networking websites, many of which will be happy to list your event for their audience:

There’s two opportunities here: the first is to get your events page listed if it’s the right fit. The second is to visit each page on the list and submit your specific event. Lists like this will save you tons of work, so be certain to bookmark them when you find them.

10 Examples of Event Websites to Get You Started:

As mentioned already, most of the sites you submit to will be specific to your region and your niche. That said, there are some national event listing websites that will apply to almost every event.

Note: As an added bonus, some of these sites, especially Eventful, will get scraped and used as a data source for other websites, so be sure to factor Scrape Rate into your event link building.

Eventful.com - Eventful listings often get used as a data source by newspapers and other large websites, so it’s highly recommended that you create a listing there.
Meetup.com - You don’t want to spam Meetup.com groups, so it’s a good idea to ask the group leader if it’s OK to post your event, but Meetup.com is an excellent link source and an excellent place to get real exposure for your event.
Patch.com - Patch is a network of neighborhood websites and provide a great followed link if there’s a Patch
Upcoming.Yahoo.com - Nothing like a free link from a Yahoo! subdomain - get one while you still can...
Events.org - The name says it all. Here’s their “Add An Event” page.
Lanyrd.com - Focused on conferences and larger events, there’s plenty of other conference-specific sites like this to look for.
Seattle.gov - Yup, that’s right, you too can get a .gov link from a hugely valuable city website. Here’s their submit events page. In addition to your local city, check out your local visitor’s bureau and travel guide websites for your area.
Earth911.com - This website is a good example of thinking outside of your primary keywords. Let’s say you’re a sustainable landscaping company, and you’re hosting a class talking about ways to integrate native plants into the lawn. While you might be looking for gardening event sites at first, there’s a wider audience interested in that topic that you could reach through a site like Earth911, which simply lists “eco-friendly events.”
ConnecticutBloggers.com - This is another good example of thinking outside normal keywords. They list events for just about anything happening in Connecticut. Easy as pie to find these for your own state. Find similar sites for your neighborhood or even county.
CultureMob.com - CultureMob applies to a small set of cities, but their “Add Your Event” page is a good example of the types of pages we want to find while doing search queries.

Pro Tip: Look Out For Link Building Footprints

Think you’re a real link building master? If you are, you might have noticed a footprint on the Seattle.gov/calendar page. Scroll down to the bottom where it says “Events calendar powered by Trumba”:

Trumba is an event and calendar software package that is apparently used by high profile websites like Seattle.gov. Now head over to Google and do a search for the following:

keyword city "Powered by Trumba" -site:trumba.com

Or if you’re feeling really ambitious, add inurl:.edu or inurl:.gov to the end of the search. That should yield some solid websites for you to choose from. Keep an eye out for other calendar footprints like that, since they are definitely plenty of similar services just like Trumba that do the same style of footprint.

Another footprint to test out is this one for Eventful.com’s partners:

keyword city "Event Data Provided By Eventful"

Competitive Analysis (aka Don’t Reinvent the Wheel)

Guess what? You’re probably not the first person to host an event in your niche. Which means you don’t have to do quite as much link building bushwhacking, because there’s a chance that similar event hosts have done some of it for you.

Find similar events, and type the title of their event into Google. You should get a few results back related to that event. Even better, take a snippet from the event description and paste it with quotes into Google. Assuming they used the same description on all of their event listings it should return most of the places where they listed the event.

Also, take a look at where those event pages have received links from using Open Site Explorer, Blekko, etc.

Example: Let's say I'm hosting a knitting event in Seattle. I can do a search for "seattle knitting workshop." I don't get a ton of event listings for that, but if I add a year at the end and make it "seattle knitting workshop 2012," I suddenly get some relevant listings of knitting events. One of which is MadronaFiberArts.com, which sponsors the Winter Fiber Retreat. If I enter http://madronafiberarts.com/ into Open Site Explorer I get 56 Linking Root Domains from websites like BlueMoonFiberArts.com and KnitCircus.libsyn.com, talking about this event:

If they linked to something similar in the past, there's a good chance they'll link to you, too, if you ask them nicely.

Which brings us to our next section: Email Outreach.

Outreach - How to Move Beyond Link Submissions:

While all of the above websites will take you a while to complete, and offer relatively good value links for the amount of effort they take, they’re still relatively easy for a competitor to copy. That makes them only moderately valuable to us in the long run. It would be downright lazy of us to ignore higher value links that can’t be obtained through a submit form.

Link outreach has been discussed at length here on SEOmoz and elsewhere, so I’m not going to rehash the topic by telling you how to craft the perfect outreach email - check out the links below for help with that.

The basic website and blogger outreach process is to do the following:

Identify the type of websites that would care about the event. If you’re hosting a Knitting 101 Workshop, then you’ll want to find local knitting blogs, local knitting groups, local mommy blogs, local DIY blog, local craft blogs, etc.
Get the contact information and simply email the blogger or website owner with a nice, polite request to see if your event is something their readers would be interested in.

That’s the short version. This ain't rocket science, but if you're too aggressive you can blow your chances of getting a link. A good practice is to reach out to the person for another reason, and let the topic come up more naturally in subsequent emails.

Great Resources for Developing and Improving Your Email Outreach Methods:

Here’s some excellent resources on link building outreach and how to approach bloggers with a request. I recommend starting with the email examples used in these posts and customizing them to your needs:

Advanced Tactics

Advanced Tactics to Consider:

Once you've got the basics down, here are some other specialized tactics to help you get more value from your process:

2nd Tier Link Building - Second tier link building is the practice of building backlinks to your backlinks. The purpose is to give the backlink pointing to your site higher page authority, making it a more valuable link.

Initially you should be using the overall events strategy to build links to your own domain. But let’s say you host quite a few events, and you’ve got a process in place with a developed list of websites where you post your events.

Next, time, rather than linking to the primary event page on your website when you relist the event on the list of sites, consider creating the primary event page on another domain (e.g. http://biznik.com/events/seo-search-engine-meetup--24). Make sure this 3rd party site has a followed link to your own domain, like this example:

Then, when you’re filling out all of your event listing submissions, use the 3rd party URL instead of your own site. By doing so, you’re creating a higher Page Authority on that 3rd party URL, which means a more valuable link back to your site.
Citation Building - If the event is being held at your business, then your business’s name, address, and phone (NAP) should be listed on there. But, even if the event isn’t being held at your business’s address, you can still stick your NAP at the end of the listing like this:

For more information, please contact Hood Web Management at (206) 905-4053, by email at info@hoodwebmanagement.com, or find us at 10007 35th Ave SW, Seattle, WA 98146.

It’s quick and easy and it helps to build trust and legitimacy for your local business, and helps your business in local search rankings. If you’re not a local business trying to rank for local search results, then this tactic won’t be very relevant to you.
Double-Dipping on Links - Most event websites will have a place for at least one link, which you’ll want to use for the primary event page on your website. But, there are many event listing sites that will allow a second link to a “ticket purchase” page. Use this as an opportunity to grab a second link to another page on your site if applicable, or to another event listing of yours on a third party site.

You can also use it as an opportunity to link to a purchase page on another domain. The example at the beginning of this article about using Eventbrite is a good example, since adding links to that ticket page will in turn build its page authority, which then passes to our own domain.

If the listing site allows links in the description of the event, well then that’s just icing on the cake. Resist the urge to stick 25 links in there and limit yourself to a handful of highly relevant pages on your site. Overdo it in a tacky way and you’ll risk getting flagged as spam or they may not approve your event listing. There's no set number I can recommend, but if it feels like you're overdoing it, you're probably overdoing it. On top of my own links I'll freely link to other presenters, the venue, or any organization sponsoring my event. Giver's gain, so be sure to promote your event partners, too.
Implement Schema.org for Events on Your Website - In a nutshell, implementing schema.org formatting for events will help your website show up with rich snippets with event dates and titles. Take a look at http://schema.org/Event to get started and this rich snippets implementation for Eventful.com:
Host An Event With Someone Else Speaking - Not all of us are great public speakers. That doesn’t have to stop you from utilizing this technique. Invite a guest speaker that is relevant to your business to present at an event you host. For example, a nutritionist might team up with a restaurant chef, or an accountant might team up with a lawyer. There’s plenty of ways to spin this and add even more value to your event and potential attendees.
Speak at Someone Else’s Event - Not only can you invite someone else to your event, you can use this strategy for other people’s events that you speak at. If you want, you can even get them involved in some of this marketing and link building process, and they can build links to their website and yours in the process. Pulling them in as a sponsor is also a great way to engage their entire audience, who will likely be interested in your event.

Making the Most of the Event & Wrap Up:

Now that you’ve gone through all of this work to build links and promote the event, your job’s not over yet. In fact, some of the best link opportunities can come after the event is over. Here’s a list of steps I take during and after an event to get the most value:

Build Your List: Have a clipboard and signup sheet for your mailing list handy. If there are slides for your presentation, offer to email a PDF or Powerpoint file of the presentation to anyone who adds their email to your mailing list signup. Usually that’s enough to get most attendees to add their email - just in case they want to refer back to the slides. If you're not building an email list, ask them to follow you on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn or whatever other presence you maintain, and give them a way to stay connected with you. Here's a photo of the mailing list form that I pass around at my speaking events:
Event Wrapup Page: Often it’s good to have a wrapup page for the event. Here's an example from a recent link building presentation I gave: Why Links Matter to Small Businesses and How to Get Them. This is a dedicated page on your website that has references from the event (such as a Slideshare embed of presentations or perhaps links to other resources you mentioned) and other pertinent information. It’s also a great place for event attendees to link after the event.

When I send out the copy of my slides to event attendees, I email them the link to this page and encourage them to share it freely and link to it.

Speaking of links after the event...
Ask for the Link: You know how in sales they tell you to “Ask for the Sale?” Well link building is no different, and just like sales, many times your audience will be happy to do it - if you just ask them. Ask your audience (nicely) that if they liked the event and found it useful, to link or Tweet or Facebook share or LinkedIn share the event wrapup page. Many will do it, and you’ll get some good social traction and maybe some real links, too.

I reached out to Jonathon Colman, the lead SEO for REI, and asked him for additional suggestions on getting the most value out of your presentations and speaking engagements. Jonathon speaks at many conferences and events and publishes his presentations at slideshare.net/jcolman/. Here’s what he had to say:

Market your Slideshare.net presence and individual slide decks the same way you would your event page or blog posts. Obtain Likes, Tweets, +1s, links, etc. based on the power and usefulness of your content. Slide decks that gain enough velocity in views and social activity on Slideshare become featured on their homepage, which is a great way to get links, coverage, and build more relationships.
Also promote the presentations of other people who spoke at or attended your event. You look your best when you make other people look good.
Market your events and event artifacts (slides, photos, blog coverage, etc.) on Lanyrd.com. Also list all of your events so that you build up a history and a positive, professional, speaking profile.
Search Google, Twitter, Quora, and StackExchange for people asking questions about the specific topics that your slide deck or event addresses and engage them with answers. Never bomb them with a link unless they ask for one.

Other Strategies

This guide may seem like a lot of information, but I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg for link building methods with local events.

What other search queries, event listing websites, and event outreach strategies can you think of to share in the comments?

Speaking of local events, come say hello to me if you see me at MozCon. I'll be one of the 37 bearded guys wearing plaid shirts - just keep tapping them on the shoulder and commenting on their awesome event link building post on SEOmoz - eventually you'll get to me.

You should do it because Roger says so:

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