It’s easy to think that there’s a disconnect between trade show exhibit marketing and SEO, which pertains to your website, but the truth is that the two cannot be separated. With any trade show exhibit comes an online marketing campaign, which includes a landing page and other pages that must also include SEO elements.
But, there are some SEO tactics people are still doing that are relatively useless according to one of the industry’s biggest SEO authorities, SEOMoz. Moz recently listed some tactics that people still use that are somewhat useless now, so if your SEO expert is telling you to do any of these things, you may want to ask why or find someone else.
Some Outdated SEO Tricks
- More links means a better ranking. Sure, links are important, but links alone are not going to put your site at the top. There are so many other vital factors including relevancy of your content, how often your site or blog is updated, and things like whether or not your content is useful and helpful. So, hiring someone just to build links might not be the way to go – it’s a complete package.
- Simply copying the keywords and information that your competitors use. Your competitors already have everything worked out, so why not just copy it? There are a few reasons why this is a bad idea, but the one major reason is that you might be punished for duplicate content if you take it too far. Instead, listen to your clients, and do the things that make sense to them – not the search engine.
- Words behind photos. You should have some words behind each photo on the backend explaining what the photo is, but you also need to have the content on the page. Why? Because humans want to read about the photo that you’re showing, and search engines want to read the words behind the photo. So, yes, you need both.
- Content that you wrote yourself. Here’s one tactic that I see all the time, though it’s also one that’s never a good thing. Some people think that not hiring a content writer will save money – you can just get the intern to do it, right? The problem with this is that there’s a lot more to content than just some words. Content specialists add keywords, make sure that those words are added in the right places, and know how often to add the right words. None of this can be done unless you have the skill that goes along with it.
Hiring a SEO Expert
So, should you hire a SEO expert to help you with your tradeshow marketing? That’s up to you, but it’s not a bad idea at all. It’s kind of like hiring a professional team like Blazer to give you a hand with your exhibition design – it just makes good sense unless you are already skilled when it comes to SEO. The only thing to watch out for are those tactics that are outdated. It’s hard to keep you with SEO trends, but try your best. In the end, the search engines will determine whether or not your site deserves to be ranked!