Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is the best way to handle annual events on a website?
-
Every year our company has a user conference with between 300 - 400 attendees. I've just begun giving the event more of a presence on our website. I'm wondering, what is the best way to handle highlights from previous years? Would it be to create an archive (e.g. www.companyname.com/eventname/2015) while constantly updating the main landing page to promote the current event? We also use an event website (cvent) to handle our registrations. So once we have an agenda for the current years event I do a temporary redirect from the main landing page to the registration website. I don't really like this practice and I feel like it might be better to keep all of the info on the main domain. Wondering if anybody has any opinions or feedback on that process as well.
Just looking for best practices or what others have done and have had success with.
-
Thank you Paul,
This is exactly what I needed. I've been trying to push us in this direction but it's sometimes hard to break old habits. We might even be able to save a bit of money going this route.
Thank again for the input!
-Brandon
-
Yup, there are many ways to do it, but it's vastly superior (I'd say critical) in terms of ongoing ranking and traffic generation to keep the primary content on a consistent URL the main domain. It's also vastly better for user experience as well.
Ad EGOL recommends, definitely keep the URL on your own site consistent from year to year. Create the archives of each year's highlights as children of the primary page, and make sure you are linking to the current year's page from each of the year-archive pages. This give Search Engines a clear understanding of the relative hierarchy and currency of the pages.
Do NOT 302 this page to the registration page. Simply add a call-to-action on the primary page to the registration page. You must have lots of good conference-related content on the primary page, not just a thin paragraph and a link to the reg page. You'll then want - if at all possible - to have the reg page (especially after successful registration) to redirect the visitor back to the primary page to give the followup info after registration.
Ideally, you'll want to be able to insert your Analytics tracking code on the reg site as well, and then configure cross-domain tracking for it. That way you can easily track conversions. At the very least, if you can't set up your own Analytics on the reg page, add a referral exclusion for it so the visitor coming back from the reg page doesn't show as a new visit on the primary page. You can then add conversion tracking to that return page.
These recommendations come from a background managing sites running up to 425 events per year, often with ticketing handled on a third-party site.
Hope that all makes sense?
Paul
-
So it sounds like you create an archive for the previous years event? Moving the previous years highlights to another page so it can still be accessed?
The url on our registration site changes but we redirect the main landing page to that url temporary. I think ideally the content for the event should be on the main domain and just utilize the third part event site to manage the registrations.
Seems like there are so many ways to do this.
-
We have a website with a page that links to events in our industry.
Most of the events have a single homepage that is updated every year. These homepages have a description of the upcoming event and links to agendas, registration, lodging, sponsors, speakers, exhibitors, past year highlights, etc. If you do this your search engine visibility will develop over time because almost everyone that links to your event will link to this single page year after year, for all of their websites, and every time they mention the event over time. Also, repeat visitors will be familiar and getting information, registering and finding lodging is "just like they did last year".
However, other events change the URL and everything else every year. This is a really bad idea because employees at businesses like mine, who link to events, will be snarling when they see that you have changed the URL again and must go on a treasure hunt to find it. Potential attendees will have trouble finding your event too. We have stopped linking to some of these events because finding the new pages, updating the links, and editing information is too demanding of employee time. We have not deleted a lot of events. Just the ones that are pain in the butt. When they get in touch with us to complain we tell them, let us know when you are done playing musical URLs.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is The HREF Link "Title" Tag Needed on Mobile Websites?
Hello To Those Who Are Wiser Than I, I am wondering if the href link "title" tag is needed, or serves any purpose, on mobile websites? Also, does it effect SEO in any way? I ask because generally the href link title tag provides more information to the user when they scroll their mouse over the link - but this action does not happen on mobile! Users have no mouse and thus no extra information would be displayed. I'm really wondering if it still matters for SEO purposes on mobile though. -The UnEnlightened
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Mergers & Acquisitions - Website Transition Good practice
Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone has come across good practice for maintaining websites after a merger or acquisition where there needs to be an association between two websites of the two companies involved. For an acquisition, I'm considering moving the acquired company to a sub domain of the parent company e.g. aquiredcompany.parentcompany.com. On both websites there wmay be a prominant popup so visitors can switch between the websites if they have visited the incorrect one. One worry I have is the acquired company has some good rankings, which I want to keep. I will of course manage the process through 301 redirects. But I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this approach or can suggest any better solutions. Thanks in advance, Stuart
Web Design | | Stuart260 -
Spanish website indexed in English, redirect to spanish or english version if i do a new website design?
Hi MOZ users, i have this problem. We have a website in Spanish Language but Google crawls it on English (it is not important the reasons). We re made the entire website and now we are planning the move. The new website will have different language versions, english, spanish and portuguese. Somebody tells me that we have to redirect the old urls (crawled on english) to the new english versions, not to the spanish (the real language of the firsts). Example: URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language English version. the other option will be redirect to the spanish new version, which the visitor is waiting to find. URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language Spanish version. What do you think? Which is the better option?
Web Design | | NachoRetta0 -
Is there a way to redirect URLs with a hash-bang (#!) format?
Hi Moz, I'm trying to redirect www.site.com/locations/#!city to www.site.com/locations/city. This seems difficult because anything after the hash character in the URL does not make it to the server thus cannot be parsed for rewriting. Is there an SEO friendly way to implement these redirects? Thanks for reading!
Web Design | | DA20130 -
Website title next to a post title-how to remove it?
I just have checked on some of the keyword I am ranking for and found in the serp that next to the post I have also the site name. But I thought that I have remove it. Does somebody know how to remove it? perhaps I did not do it correctly. I am also using yoast seo plugin but I do not have it set there to show the site name after posts name. Can somebody help me to fix this please? I have also attached an image from the serp where is behind the post title also Villas Diani-the site name Thank you very much! Iris O1oj4W0.jpg
Web Design | | Rebeca10 -
Website Redesign - Will it hurt SERP?
Hi - I am planning to redesign my blog and I was wondering if this will affect my rankings? The new website template (custom designed) is much more user and seo friendly. The content, url structure, internal linking structure, meta tags, and site structure will remain exactly the same, but the visual design will be different (new sidebar widgets, and slightly different layout on inner pages). The current website is ranking very well (mostly top 5), has a healthy backlink profile, strong social media presence, and great traffic. I have heard that switching to a new template will dramatically hurt the rankings. Is this true? Are there any exceptions? Any ways I can prevent the rankings from dropping? Would really appreciate your input. Thanks in advance. Howard
Web Design | | howardd0 -
Best Webhosting Suggestions??
Good morning my fellow Mozzers! I am currently looking at adding some diversity to my current web hosting and I was hoping I could get some suggestions. I dont currently need a VPS or Dedicated Server, I just need some shared hosting, you know, packeges that are sub $20 a month...i mean i will pay more than that, but so far everything i look at that meets my needs(basic hosting, email, ect...). This is for client sites and they are growing in number somewhat rapidly. I currently host with GoDaddy and they are amazing in the support department, but I do question whether their servers are causing slow page loads ect...but all in all I am happy with them. I have used Netword Solutions in the past, but left them because i was not a big fan of talking to support people in india and malasia. I do think that their servers might have performed better than GoDaddy so i am not ruling them out at this point i am looking for a provider that has excellent support and who has servers that are not so overloaded the can render pages and content slowly. Performance is very important to me. I am not looking for the cheapest, I am looking for the overall best. Thanks in advance SEOmoz family!!!
Web Design | | WebbyNabler0 -
Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?
I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?
Web Design | | eseyo0