Event discoverability on search engines

When you create your events on Corsizio, you are publishing them online so that you can have public links to share with your audience, whether through your website, social media, email, or some other means. This also means that your events can be found on Google and any other search engines that index web pages.

Whether you would like your events to be found or not found, it is helpful to keep in mind that individual event pages are not that easy to find on search engines given the billions of web pages that are indexed, unless someone is using the exact keywords of the event they are interested in because they already know what to search for or if the event is tremendously popular.

How to Increase or Improve Your Event Searchability Online

If you would like to increase the likelihood of potential attendees finding your event page in order to register, then consider taking the following actions: 

• Create a really good descriptive title of your event that captures keywords that are integral to your event. For example, if you are hosting a particular art class, don't use a generic title, such as "Art Class for Beginners." Instead, define the class as best as you can to narrow things down and have a higher chance of reaching your target audience, such as "Watercolor Art Class for Adult Beginners in Montreal." 
• Write a thorough event description with as many keywords and SEO terms that apply to your event. Be sure to include who is the intended audience or ideal attendee, what students can expect to learn, what is the breakdown or schedule for the class, what to bring to the event, where it will be located, who is teaching it, etc.
• Share your event info and page links on all of your social media. You gain more exposure and searchability by sharing your events on social media. Still, you must consider that social media is inundated today with all kinds of posts that compete for each person's attention. This means that you need to be sure that your posts stand out, are visually appealing, and easily searchable. Be sure to use relevant hashtags and create images that attractively reflect your event and use them when posting, especially on social media like Twitter and Facebook. Don't just post links without any explanations, instead create an inviting description that is further enhanced by your image and hashtags. 
• Consider marketing your events through online ads. While this can be a financially costly action, as opposed to the previous ones, which don't cost any money, the return may be worth your investment. Using ads to promote event links and increase their discoverability can significantly increase the chances of the right audience finding your events and registering for them. However, to be effective, you have to know how to use such ads correctly and in a way that will benefit your business; otherwise, you may end up wasting money. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and others each have their own configurations and pros and cons. So, as always, using the right tool at the right time and in the right way is integral to your success.

How to Decrease or Remove Your Event Searchability Online

If you would like to decrease the likelihood of people finding your event page for any number of reasons, then apply the opposite actions of those listed above. 

• Make your event title very generic or vague. In such a case, as per the example above, you would want your event title to be only something like "Art Class for Beginners," which, if anyone searching for, would bring up thousands of searches before the likelihood that anyone would find your event.
• Write a short and generic event page description or do not write one at all. Write as little as you need to tell your audience about your event or avoid filling in the event description altogether. The fewer keywords there are, the more buried and unsearchable your content becomes on search engines. If you already have a pre-determined audience that is going to register for your event(s), and only need to send them the link to the event registration form, then you may even wish to omit writing an event description altogether.
• Don't share links to your event page anywhere online. In such a case, you would communicate about your event with your specific audience in person or via a closed group or an internal company platform. Keep in mind that if you share any links via email or elsewhere, those whom you share them with may still leak the links out publicly somewhere unless otherwise instructed and trusted.  
• Unpublish or archive old events that have passed. This will remove their event pages from search engines the next time the search engines try to crawl and index the page, as it will no longer be there.

Regarding Full Removal of Event Pages From Search Engines

Ultimately, it is not possible to guarantee that your Corsizio event pages will not be searchable or discoverable if they are published. Anytime that something is published online, it is indexed by search engines. The first thing you should do to stop access to an event page is to unpublish or archive it, which will automatically unpublish it.

The only way to secure something completely outside of the public domain is to use a password-protected approach where you and your users log into a specific portal where you can create and manage everything related to your events and registrations, and they can find these events and manage their registrations to them. Such secure and often custom-built solutions are common in large corporations and post-secondary education institutions. 

Corsizio was not built to contain events within a closed system or require your customers to have their own accounts with Corsizio that provide password-protected access. Therefore, there is no functionality that would prevent search engines from indexing your event pages if they have been published. If this is a critical feature that your business requires to run events, then Corsizio will not be the right service for your needs. However, in order to prevent unsolicited registrations to your events, we do provide you with the ability to restrict who can register to your events, and this is explained in the following help doc: Events with restricted or private registrations.