From small towns to big cities, tourism is vital for creating jobs, increasing revenue, and even supporting infrastructure improvements. But getting your city on the map—nationally or globally—isn’t easy. You need a way to increase your visibility and show travelers why your little corner of the world is the ideal place to visit. Whether this means adding new events to your city’s event calendar or accurately spreading the word about existing local events, local event SEO will play a vital role.
When 60% of global travelers plan to book a trip around entertainment events in 2025, high rankings for “things to do in {City}” could be the deciding factor in visitors coming to your town or going someplace else. However, the intricacies of effective local SEO for events are nothing to sneeze at. All of your content, including blogs, event calendar software, event pages, and even ticket sales, must be optimized to match travelers’ search intent.
We’re here to get you ready for the tourism season. Learn everything you need to know about local event SEO, including why it’s important, how to boost local event SEO, and targeted tips for optimizing your listings on your website, event calendar, social media, and anywhere else you share information digitally.
The Importance of Utilizing Local Event SEO for Event Promotion
Most people wouldn’t dream of planning a trip to someplace they’ve never been without searching online for crucial details. In fact, 44% of U.S. travelers book the entirety of their travel plans in advance online (including activities at their destination). Without digital promotion and effective SEO practices, you could lose access to nearly half of your potential audience.
Local city SEO efforts can display information, including events and interactive maps, based on a listing’s location. When travelers search for things to do in your city, optimized local event SEO improves your chances of being at the top of their search results. As towns optimize for local SEO, they not only become more visible to potential tourists searching for events, but they also attract visitors to local businesses and accommodations like hotels and restaurants. These businesses can enhance the benefits of local event SEO by also applying best practices for local event SEO and spreading hype about upcoming local events.
How to Boost Your Local Event SEO
Just like your digital event calendar, your local event SEO strategy should always be growing and changing. Effective local SEO requires insight into your audience’s search habits, vacation and event trends, and tourism SEO best practices to make your event landing pages and calendar easier to find. Follow these steps to make your local events rise to the top of the SERPs for your location and attract visitors to your town.
Conduct Proper Keyword Research
Keywords are like instructions for search engines, helping algorithms understand what your calendar and event pages are all about. They’re also the terms potential tourists are using to find activities in your area. Begin by brainstorming a list of terms that would-be attendees might type into a search engine. Popular keywords align with the event’s topic or theme, the location, and the target audience (if applicable). For example, a food festival may include keywords about local cuisine, dining, appetite, and specific food types. Secondary keywords may be related to other aspects of the gathering, like live entertainment or shopping. Your location and even nearby locations can also be included as keywords, and you can sprinkle in keywords that identify the audience, like “foodies” or “culinary connoisseur.”
Once you have a healthy list of potential keywords, research tools can help you choose keywords with good volume that will most likely attract your audience. These keywords will be used in event titles, meta descriptions, headers, and even alt-text on images. When applying keywords to event pages and calendar entries, remember that keywords should improve clarity. They should let your audience know what the event is about.
Improve Optimization With Event Schema
Event schema is a type of structured data markup. It helps search engines understand the structure and content of your event pages. Correctly applying schema tags can improve event SEO through “rich snippets” in SERPs, which can enhance search visibility. Completing your event page details as thoroughly as possible with the following key elements can help trigger event-rich snippets:
- Clear keyword-optimized event titles
- Complete time and date information
- Well-written event descriptions
- Ticketing and registration links, when applicable
- Specific venue or online location information
Don’t Overlook Off-Page Optimization
Whether your event landing page is on your website or generated from your event calendar, it is your primary content source. But this doesn’t mean you should overlook other vital sources of traffic. Off-page optimization helps you build authority around your event with links from other websites and platforms. You also benefit from mentions in online directories. Key aspects of off-page SEO include:
- Social Media Marketing: 57% of travelers utilize social media for their trips. They might use it to find ideas, get general travel information, and make a booking. 62% of social users made a specific trip decision as a result of viewing social media content. Extending your local event SEO practices to your related social media posts can improve traffic to your city website and event landing pages.
- Link Building: When other reputable websites and sources link back to your event website, you can drive organic traffic. You can also improve search rankings. Search engine algorithms view backlinks as an endorsement that basically suggests the linked website is credible and recommended.
- Community Calendar SEO: A digital calendar for cities provides tourism boards and marketing teams with a specific location for promoting all upcoming and recurring events. The best options provide automated SEO to optimize your content for search.
- Google My Business: Creating and maintaining an updated Google My Business (GMB) listing increases visibility in Google Maps and Search for event recommendations in a specific area. Setting up the profile requires accurate business information (you can use your town’s city hall) and updated contact details. Reviews left by visitors can further influence search rankings. This makes it easier for future visitors to find and trust your town.
Get More From Your Event Calendar Software
A modern centralized event calendar can help local digital marketing managers make local events organized, accessible, and searchable. The right digital calendar can also help your team improve SEO.
For example, Localist Events from Concept3D is a powerful city event promotion tool that allows visitors to easily search for events classified by date, interest, geography, and more. The platform’s SEO-friendly features include automated social media scheduling and automated SEO. Localist also creates new landing pages for each event. This can help you increase advertising without effort and take the guesswork out of event SEO.
Wondering how event calendar software works for city tourism SEO in the real world?
The City of Plano, Texas, needed sophisticated and flexible event calendar software to attract tourists, drive hotel stays, and encourage restaurant visits. So, the marketing team chose Localist for its in-depth cloud-based architecture and tourism-ready functionality. A year later, Visit Plano is a highly functional platform that fuels economic impact by amplifying events and driving more traffic and attention to the things that make Plano worth visiting. The event calendar continues to be one of the highest-trafficked pages on the city’s website.
Tips for Optimizing Event Listings
Taking every opportunity to use keywords and geographical information will help you optimize your event landing pages to increase website traffic and boost event attendance. While some tools optimize SEO, there are steps you can take to improve overall results.
These tips can help you maximize event SEO for landing pages on your website and those generated by event calendar software:
- Use a mobile-friendly theme on mobile devices.
- Craft event landing pages with a clear and organized structure. Include a meta description, title tag, headers, detailed content, and relevant images.
- Use keyword-rich descriptions for image alt text.
- Write a clear, detailed description of your event.
- Utilize internal linking with tags, categories, and organizers to automatically group similar events and improve navigation.
- Only link to trustworthy, relevant sources when adding outbound links.
- Ensure links open in a new tab to keep users on your site.
- Make calendar listings searchable so calendars embedded on websites and hosted calendars can be indexed by search engines.
- Give your digital calendar a compelling name and a useful description.
Stand Out With Excellent Community Calendar SEO—Choose Concept3D
If you’ve been wondering how the rank for “things to do in [city],” strategic local event SEO is the answer. Your event calendar software can be a vital tool for improving event SEO and increasing website traffic. Choosing Localist Events for your city’s digital calendar can help you take the guesswork out of local SEO and automatically improve your SERP rankings.
Localist is packed with features that allow you to centralize your city’s events. Ready to get the word out to potential visitors to increase tourism in your city? Contact us today to request a demo. Learn how we can help you improve your event SEO and show potential visitors what to love about your city.