In the first part of our SEO series, we focused on keywords. Once those are set and the initial optimizations are complete, it’s time to move on to the next steps.
6. Don't create a new website for every new conference
Does your conference take place annually or at least more than once? From an SEO perspective, setting up a separate website for every new edition of an event can become a problem. You end up with multiple websites competing for the same keywords. It is much better to consolidate everything onto a single conference website that focuses primarily on the current event, while reports and photos from previous years are archived under their own menu item.
A similar approach is advisable for the conference website's URL. Do not register a new domain for every subsequent conference. Instead, use a simple address without a year reference, such as geografietagung.de instead of geografietagung-2019.de. Many of the conferences we manage have quite long names, such as the SPP 1879 International Symposium on Nucleotide Second Messenger Signaling in Bacteria at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Including the full name in the URL makes little sense here. An abbreviation is sufficient, which is why the page with all information about the symposium can be found at https://www.spp1879.de/, which brings together several events under the umbrella of the DFG Priority Program SPP 1879. Past events are categorized under "Past Events".
In any case, the URL should contain fewer than 2,000 characters. Google prefers shorter addresses. An ideal length is around 100 characters. Omit special characters, articles, and filler words, and stick to the essential keywords. This helps both users and search engines navigate, looks more professional, and is rewarded with a better ranking.
7. Quality content leads to better rankings
There is one more thing that must not be forgotten during all your website optimization efforts: content. Ultimately, the purpose of the website is to provide information to interested parties and future attendees. If the content is poor, the best SEO strategy in the world won't help, because both search engines and users can recognize low-quality text. If users don't find what they are looking for on your site, they will leave very quickly. This results in high bounce rates and low dwell time, which leads search engines to classify the site as less relevant and display it further down in the search results.
To prevent this, the conference website should contain as much helpful information as possible, with the most important details immediately visible rather than buried after endless scrolling. Prepare interesting material or reuse content from previous years. A conference trailer, information on the program, speakers, venue, hotels, and, of course, online registration and abstract submission should answer the basic questions for anyone interested in the event.
Always structure your text by using subheadings. Use heading tags from the largest subheading H1 (very important) down to H6 (less important) to help search engines identify your headers. This is similar to the heading formatting styles you might know from word processing programs. If your subheadings also contain keywords, the search engine will reward you with a better ranking accordingly.
Be careful with duplicate content: If the same text appears multiple times online, it can lead to severe ranking penalties. This happens, for example, if you carry over some texts from the previous year to the new conference website while the old one remains online. This confuses search engines: which of the websites should be displayed higher in the search results? Because many site operators have tried to generate more clicks using duplicate content in the past, Google has become much stricter here. Under certain circumstances, this can cause both websites to rank poorly. If the duplicate content issue only occurs once, it is usually less problematic.
Besides text, images are arguably the most important content on a conference website. Therefore, every image should have a descriptive text. Search engine crawlers, which index website content, are not yet able to accurately identify what is shown in an image. However, you don't need to add explanatory text under every image. This is simply about a description as an ALT attribute (ALT = alternative to the image), which benefits search engines and visually impaired users. If all images are correctly labeled, it increases the relevance and thus the visibility of the conference website.
8. Pay attention to HTTPS, speed, and design
Encryption is doubly beneficial: Operators of conference websites that have implemented an SSL certificate are rewarded with a better ranking. You can recognize the encryption in the browser's address bar by the https prefix and the green padlock. This makes it harder for unauthorized parties to intercept data. For conference websites that handle attendee registration, the transmission of personal or banking data should be encrypted anyway. Furthermore, Google prefers fast-loading websites and offers a free tool that evaluates speed and provides optimization suggestions. If content doesn't load fast enough, the browser tab gets closed. This also applies to mobile internet. In places where only an EDGE connection is available—with data rates comparable to an analog modem—users suffer particularly from multi-megabyte photos. Therefore, always pay attention to the file size of your images. You can save space with tools like TinyPNG, which compress images without changing their dimensions or sacrificing quality.
The look of the website also has an indirect impact on its position in search results. If the design is so poor that users cannot find their way around, they will likely close the site after a short time. For Google, this is a clear signal that the page does not provide good information for the entered search term, which is why it will likely not appear in such a prominent position next time.
Is your conference website responsive? If it cannot adapt to different display sizes, it will also rank lower, especially when users are searching on mobile devices, because Google prefers websites that are compatible with all devices.
9. Be patient!
Changes you make to your conference website today will not affect your search engine ranking by tomorrow. It always takes a little time for the effects to become apparent. Brand-new websites are completely unknown to search engines at first and therefore do not appear in search results immediately. The search engine must first send out its crawlers to take a closer look at the content and structure of the conference website. If you want to know how often Google crawlers visit your site, it is worth taking a look at the Search Console. This free tool lists when a crawler last visited and how many pages it analyzed on average during that time. Crawlers are particularly interested in new content. If you update your content frequently, the number of visits will increase.
Search Console is also important for another reason: you can immediately see if something is not working as it should. Sometimes connection issues or errors occur that hinder crawlers in their work. As soon as crawlers encounter problems, they visit less frequently or stop visiting altogether. This is also reflected in your ranking, as the website slips further into obscurity and SEO measures no longer take effect. Search Console shows you if and what is going wrong, giving you the opportunity to take corrective action.
If your measures are successful, you can soon look forward to more visitors (and registrations) on your conference website. When used correctly, SEO can really make a difference for the visibility of your events.
