4 Easy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques for your Venue’s Website

Start a conversation with a search engine marketer and things can get geeky fast. There’s talk about spiders, breadcrumb navigation, and duplicate content. If you want to see a search marketer’s eyes light up, mention universal search and algorithms. Then there’s the great divide: those search engine marketers who work on paid search campaigns and those who toil on SEO, also known as organic or natural search.

Like any specialized business, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has spawned its own vocabulary.  Granted Mr. Nightclub owner, not everyone needs to be an expert. But as organizations allocate a bigger share of their marketing budgets to SEM, more people must become acquainted with best practices and the language of search marketers. That includes owners, marketing directors, and promoters — anyone with his hand in operating or overseeing his company’s Web site.

Still confused on what EXACTLY SEO is?  In a nut shell, SEO is about how to make your website ‘findable’ by the right person at the right time.  If your venue has web presence, not being findable on the major search engines is like not being listed in the phonebook — only worse!

Here are 4 easy steps your venue can take to be being more ‘finable’ on the major search engines:

1. Address at the bottom of every page:  A down-and-dirty (as well as highly effective) technique to optimize for local search is not to rely on a single “Contact Us” page for your venue’s contact information.  Your website should have a footer to every single page of its website that contains your street address, city, state, zip code, and local phone number, including area code.”
    
2. Share and Share Alike: Reciprocal Linking:  When should one Web site link to another? It’s a tactic that can build traffic and increase a site’s visibility in search results. Make a list of likely candidates and link to them from your website. Only after doing so should you compose a short, personalized note to the website that you want to link to, and take care that the note includes a positive remark about their site.For example, if www.clubplanet.com does an exclusive article about your venue, you should have a link back to that article from your site.  Maybe your homepage can have an ad that says “check out our article on www.clubplanet.com”.  Just one of HUNDREDS of ideas there are for reciprocal linking.
    
3. What’s in a Title? Everything…:  We can talk about title tags forever, that’s how important they are.  Title tags are text that appears in a Web browser’s top bar and in the clickable link on a search engine results page. First research what keywords are being used in searches. Are people searching for nightclub or night club, lounge or lounges, Miami clubs, or a combination of all these words? This information can help inform the selection of words used in title tags. Instead of using nondescriptive words like “about” or “contact,” get a little bit more informational with phrases like, “How to contact a Miami nightclub” or “About this lounge”
    
4. Hire an SEO firm to do a “basic” Search Engine Optimization package:  There are companies out there that can take your current website and add a “energy boost” of search engine marketing.  They come in and do Meta Tag Creation, Page Optimization, Directory of Submissions, Search Engine Submissions and Google Analytics Monthly Status Reports.  The Creative Complex, for example, offers this to its clients for $500.  This is basically injecting your site into search engines for immediate response (2-4 weeks).  After this, you can choose to continue working with your SEO firm, which will recommend that a strong SEO campaign should run with a 6 month-12 month contract.

 

I look forward to your comments.

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