Organizing events is a great way to bring people together and generate excitement around your brand. Adding events to a calendar on your website will add new relevant content and give you a chance to be featured prominently on search engine results pages.
Get Top Position with the Event Pack
One of the biggest reasons an event calendar is a good addition to a site is the unique type of content that will show on it. Event posts use structured data to indicate a unique post_type that includes a start and end time. These posts are indexed by Google as events which makes them eligible to show in the Event Pack.
The Event Pack is a relatively new feature on SERPs that shows event content relevant to a user’s search with time, date and location info listed along with an image. It shows in “position 0” above organic search results and can give your site a prominent place on page 1 for important searches.
Events are shown in groups of 3 and will show for local searches for things like concerts, shows, festivals, etc. Clicking on an event in the Event Pack will bring users to the Google event search tool where they can find a link to your site.
Publish Event Post with Correct Schema
Structured data is info that can be added to a piece of content to make it easier for search engines to understand how it fits into the site structure. A post will need to have the correct structured data in place to show in Google’s Event Pack.
Important Info for Event Structured Data
- Venue
- Name
- Address
- Event Name
- Start Date/Time
- End Date/Time
- Performer
- Image
- Description
Structured data can be added to a post as a JSON-LD structured data snippet and can include information specified by schema.org. Adding as much information as possible to event post structured data will make it eligible for new search features.
How to Add an Event Calendar to WordPress Site
It’s easy to add events to a WordPress site using the Events Calendar plugin. The plugin enables a calendar page on the site and creates an event custom post type that will have the structured data needed to show in the Event Pack.
Events can also be used as an opportunity to add keyword-rich content to pages that will drive traffic to your site. Prioritizing the location where the event is happening or performer name in the event title and description are good ways to boost local SEO rankings and reach a wider audience.
Keep Content Fresh with Regular Events
Events, like blog posts, give you a chance to add relevant content to your site and deserve attention with any SEO content strategy. Planning different types of events focused on what you’re passionate about will get site visitors excited about what you’re doing and boost SEO. Keeping SEO best practices in mind while you create content for event posts on your site will help your site become more prominent in SERPs and boost overall traffic.