Search Engine Optimization: A Step-by-Step Guide

It's great to have a beautiful calendar that generates revenue, but if your site gets lost in the bottom drawer of the Internet, it can be difficult to turn a profit. Fortunately, Gather Board has all the tools available to get your site to the top of the list. In Internet parlance, the process of getting your website noticed by users is called search engine optimization, or SEO. Search engines (like Google and Bing) use complex algorithms to search the web to find the best sites to display when someone searches.

The Internet is made up of trillions of web pages (no joke), and yet a good algorithm can return a results page in a few milliseconds. So how do you pick those lucky few sites? Read on for a step-by-step guide to unlocking the magic of SEO for your Gather Board calendar.

 

search engine optimization

1. What Search Engines are Looking For?

Although search algorithms are incredibly complex, there are some key features that will make your website stand out from the crowd.

Rich content: The most important thing is to have relevant, updated, and quality content. If your calendar is already full of big events, this shouldn't be a problem. If you are just starting out, focus on completing your schedule.

Responsive Design – Other important elements are a website that is well designed, compatible with multiple devices, and loads quickly. Our development team has already taken care of it for you!

 

Links - Another important feature is a page that has many links, which can be to other pages on your website or other websites. This is fixed when you include a website link with each published event.

Keywords: Additionally, each page has certain components built into it that can tell search engines what the site is about, such as meta descriptions and title tags. Read on to know more about them.

Traffic – Finally, a site that already has a lot of traffic and social media engagement will rank higher. Gather Board has built-in social sharing options to make this happen.

 

2. Learn How the Team Gather Board Works For You

Design: Every Gather Board calendar is built with a modern, responsive design and is compatible with both computers and mobile devices.

Encryption: Your site is also encrypted with an SSL security certificate, which means it's even more secure against data theft. Sites with this encryption start with HTTPS instead of HTTP (the 's' stands for secure), and search engines will always support these secure sites.

Social Sharing – Another built-in feature is social sharing, so every page and event listing has social sharing options to increase reach and traffic.

Updates: Our developers work to constantly update the platform so your site is always fresh and fast to load.

 

3. Start With Title Tags

When you search, you're presented with a list of websites, each with a short, clear title. These may not be full titles, but their purpose is to grab the potential user's attention and clearly state what the site is about. These titles are conveyed to search engines through title tags or meta titles. Here's where you come in: You can create title tags for all your pages in the Gather Board admin portal.

To edit: For the 'base' or default title, you can edit the 'base meta title' section in 'settings'. Each page should also have its own title tag, which can be changed to "CMS" and then "Page Manager". Simply click on the page to edit and change the 'Meta Title Override' to reflect the page's content, such as 'Pleasantville Events - Contact Us.

Good: Be sure to keep it short and descriptive, and include keywords relevant to the content in your event calendar. You can also use hyphens (-) and pipes (|) to separate words and include numbers and abbreviations. Examples are 'Pleasantville Events - Community Events Calendar' or 'International Beekeepers Association IBA 2020 Conference Events

Bad: When creating your titles, avoid titles longer than 69 characters or with too many keywords, commas, filler words, or special characters. This will lower your page rank and make it harder for users to determine what your site is about.

 

4. Use Those Meta Descriptions

This allows the user to preview or read the description of the page before clicking on it and gives the search algorithm more keywords to work on.

To edit: To change the meta descriptions, go to the same places listed in the previous step and edit the default 'Base Meta Description' and 'Meta Description Override' for each page.

Good: Meta descriptions should be in clear, complete sentences with important keywords related to your calendar topic. They should be between 50 and 160 characters long and different enough from your meta title to give the user more context. "Pleasantville Events provides information on local events, from arts to entertainment, for the Pleasant Valley Montana area."

Bad: Don't use double quotes, because Google will cut off any characters after them.

 

5. Go Further

Meta Keywords – Another easy step to take is to edit the 'Base Meta Keywords' in 'Settings'. These are more keywords for search engines to find and can include general event categories, event locations, and page titles.

Event Titles – You should also note that Gather Board automatically generates meta titles for event listings from event titles, so make sure published events always have simple, descriptive titles.

Links – Another way to improve your SEO is to link to your calendar from other sites (preferably the most popular ones). Search algorithms will boost your ranking if many other sites refer to you as a good resource. To achieve this, you can work with local newspapers, organizations, municipal governments, libraries, schools, and tourism offices to post links to your calendar.

Social Media – You can also share popular events on social media and create accounts for your calendar to further promote your site.

Advertising - A final option is to pay to promote your event calendar through an advertising agency, social media platform, or Google AdWords, which will show your site at the top of the search results page. If a user enters a key that matches the words.

 

We hope these tips have been helpful and your calendar is now top of the list!