SEO for Wedding Venues: Get Your Venue to the Top of Google Search Results

Did you know that more than 90% of Google searchers never get to the second page of results? Or that more than half of all clicks go to the top three spots? Chances are, companies that get those valuable positions practice search engine optimization, also known as SEO. And with a little bit of effort, you can get your brand’s venue search results closer to those top spots, too.

What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a method used on articles or web pages to get more traffic to your website. When it comes to SEO for wedding venues, it’s important to prepare your content to perform well and be featured in the top search results. For example, if your venue is a hotel in Texas and a consumer types in specific keywords, like “ballroom wedding venue in Texas,” you want your venue SEO to help you reach the first slot on Google. In this guide, we’ll go through everything you need to know about Google’s search results, finding relevant keywords, and more to improve your venue and event SEO strategy. 

How Google decides what to show first

Believe it or not, Google is reading your website and analyzing your venue and event SEO strategy.

Automated programs, called crawlers, seek out fresh content on the internet, analyze what they find, and load it into a massive database called the Google Index. When people use it as a venue search engine, Google’s algorithm ranks indexed pages and gives searchers what it believes they want. How high a web page ranks in these venue search results depends on how relevant and important Google considers the page.

So how do you get Google to consider your web pages more relevant and important? It starts with keywords that improve SEO for wedding venues.

Step 1: Find relevant keywords and keyword phrases for your venue SEO

Keywords and keyword phrases are the terms people type into a search bar when they use Google as a venue search engine. 

To better understand SEO for wedding venues, let’s consider an example: Say a couple types in “New York City rooftop wedding.” The results will be different than if they typed “New York City museum wedding,” or “New York City mansion wedding,” and that’s because Google is analyzing the SEO for wedding venues. And if you look at the websites of the three venues that top the rooftop wedding venue search results, they will likely have content that reflects the keyword phrase “New York City rooftop wedding.”

Your keywords and keyword phrases should reflect your differentiators and how couples would look for them in this venue search engine. Some of the more popular keywords may be very competitive, and that’s especially true with SEO for wedding venues. If many of your competitors are using these keywords, it’s even more difficult to rank and compete in that area. 

Your best bet in tackling SEO for wedding venues is to find what are called long-tail keywords. That is, words and phrases that get enough usage to drive people to your site but are not so popular that every one of your competitors is using them. By prioritizing less-competitive keywords and featuring them a number of times in your content, you’ll see major improvements in your venue and event SEO.

Many companies track Google searches and offer tools to find keywords. Most require a subscription but offer feature-lite versions for free. Here are our favorite free keyword tools for your venue and event SEO:

• Ahrefs free keyword generator: Enter a keyword or phrase you’re considering for your venue or event SEO, and it will pull the top 100 ideas from its database. The results include search volume and a difficulty score. This can help you find long-tail keywords that give you more visibility with better prospects.
• Keywordsheeter: This amazing little tool shows you what people are typing into Google’s search engine in real-time. It can generate 1,000 keywords per minute, creating a super-efficient method to map out your venue and event SEO plan. However, you’ll need to subscribe or purchase a report for search volume or competitiveness.
• Google Autocomplete: Start typing terms related to your venue into a Google search bar and the autocomplete function will make suggestions. Everything Google shows you appeared in actual searches, and you can see the less competitive keyword phrases that people use for SEO for venues.

Ideally, you want 20-50 long-tail keywords. Don’t get too caught up in variations of every phrase. If you choose “New York City rooftop wedding” for your event SEO-related content, Google’s algorithms will know that you also mean “rooftop weddings in New York City.”

Step 2: See how your website ranks in comparison to your competitors

Earlier, we talked about the terms people type into a search bar to find venues like yours. Try it and see the venues that come up. From there, you’ll know who your competitors are, and who might be outperforming in SEO for wedding venues. And if they’re ahead of you in the search results, it pays to know how they got there and learn more about their event SEO strategy. Here are two tools that let you analyze websites from a venue SEO perspective.

• Checkpagerank.net: Type a URL into the search box, and you get several scores that are very useful. 
  • Domain Authority (DA): This is a venue search engine ranking score that determines how likely you are to appear in the top search results pages. It’s a number from one to 100, and the number correlates to your venue SEO success. So, if your DA score is 90, you’ll have a solid chance to perform well in the Google search results. 
  • Referring Domains Count: This is the number of sites that have outlinks to your page. For example, if you list your venue on Carats & Cake, that’s an automatic addition to your referring domains count. SEO for wedding venues involves several parts, but this is one way to get your name and information out there.
• jaaxy.com: This tool tells you how a competitor’s site ranks and how they got their rankings. You’ll see the site structure, meta tags (snippets of text hidden in a page’s source code), and other data you can use to see how they achieve their Google Page Rank—that’s a simple score of 1-10 that Google uses to assign a level of importance to a web page based on the quantity and quality of inbound links.

Note, if you have a larger brand with multiple venues and lots of dates to fill, it may pay to invest in paid keyword, competitive analysis, and tracking (see below) tools. They can help you outflank the competition and SEO your way to the top of many more searches.

Step 3: Write and post a page of content for each of your major keywords

When Google’s crawlers read your website, they’re looking at keywords. With SEO for wedding venues in mind, it pays to help these bots find and index your keywords. Using the previously mentioned “New York City rooftop wedding” keyword phrase as an example, these are the three steps you need to take:

1. Write a 500-1000-word (minimum) webpage that uses the phrase “New York City rooftop wedding” in the page headline (H1) as well as at least one subhead (H2). There should also be multiple uses of the phrase in the body of the article (typically 5-20 times).

2. Use “New York City Rooftop Wedding” in the page title meta tag. This may or may not be the same as the H1 title. Page title refers to the metadata title that appears in Google’s search results. Your content management systems (CMS) should have an input field that you can use to add this when you create a page.

3. Write a supporting description meta tag. This is the brief page overview that appears with the title on the Google Search Page. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind for this part of SEO for wedding venues:

• The description should confirm the user’s intent. In the case of “New York City rooftop wedding,” you might want to write something like, “You’ll love this rooftop wedding venue 20 stories over downtown New York City.”
• Google won’t show more than 130 characters in the search results. We recommend using 80 characters to reinforce the user’s intent, followed by a call-to-action and a phone number.

This description tag is also known as the “meta description.” Like the page title, your content management system should include the appropriate input field.

Start with 5-10 pages of content with all of the necessary must-haves related to SEO for wedding venues. Then add a new, well SEO-ed page each month. Google’s crawlers assign more relevance to more recent content, so you want to add fresh content at regular intervals for consistent venue SEO success.

Step 4: Set up a “Google My Business” profile

Google gives an advantage to local businesses, making it an important factor in SEO for wedding venues. You have a better chance of ranking high for local searches if you have a local profile. It’s easy to create, and the listing is free.

Once your local profile is in place, encourage couples and their guests to write reviews as a way to boost your SEO for venues. Google’s algorithm gives a lot of weight to the ratings and language in user reviews. A five-star review that includes your keyword phrase (or some variations) can push a wedding right into the top spot in the venue search results.

Take your SEO for wedding venues to the next level with more advanced tools

The above steps constitute the basics in terms of knowing about SEO for wedding venues. These methods and resources let Google know that your venue is there and what your key differentiators are. If couples are looking for what you have to offer, and you have the right keywords, there’s a good chance couples will see your venue in a top-three spot.

Once you’ve got your basics covered, you may want to turn up the volume on venue SEO. You can take these steps to drive more of your venue to the top of more search results. Here’s how to make the most of your venue and event SEO strategy:

Add tracking tools to your site: Two tools can give you greater insight into who’s visiting your site, where they come from, and what brought them to you. Both are free:

• Google Analytics tracks traffic
• Google Search Console tracks keywords and venue SEO

If you’re serious about keyword and SEO tracking, there are better, fee-based tools from Rank Ranger and SEM Rush. 

Add more and better content: Add 10-30 pages of well SEO-ed content for your main keywords every year. About one page every 2-5 weeks. Make these pages longer—1,000 to 5,000 words. The more competitive the keyword is, the longer your article should be. Make sure you use your keywords enough to stand out in the content without sounding spammy. This can help drive you to the top of the more competitive search terms.

Get links to your website from other domains: Google considers links to your website the best indicator of its importance and popularity. News articles can link to your venue’s website. Plus, you could even get links from photographers, florists, or planners. Many will link to your site if you link to theirs, but a significant success marker of SEO for venues is to get links only to your site. Wedding directories and showcases like your Carats & Cake profile are links. If you haven’t already created or claimed a profile, claim or create it now.

Make sure your website is technically up to snuff: A key part of understanding SEO for wedding venues is knowing that Google penalizes sites for technical glitches. Pages need to load in less than three seconds, and TTFB (time to first byte) should be under 0.3 seconds. Use secure HTTPS and not HTTP for your domain. Also, remove all broken links; Google frowns on 404 errors.

Optimize for mobile: Most website development tools and content management systems use responsive design. That means the layout adjusts to the size of the screen for mobile. If you build your website on a responsive template, you only have to design it once. The CMS will automatically adjust the layout of your site for desktop and mobile, and in turn, will improve your overall SEO for venues and events. 

Include a prominent phone number or chat feature: Make your customer service numbers and chat functions easy to find is an easy way to further perfect your venue and event SEO strategy. When working on the SEO for wedding venues, putting this information at the top of the page makes the most sense. It also helps convince Google’s crawlers that you’re a relevant website worthy of a higher position in their venue search engine results.

Getting to the top of Google search result pages isn’t something you do once and forget about. Strategizing your SEO for wedding venues is an ongoing process of competition and keyword research, adding content, and keeping your website up-to-date. Figuring out your ultimate strategy in terms of SEO for venues may not be easy, but it’s not difficult either. And the return on investment is one of the highest in online marketing. 

More about Carats & Cake

Carats & Cake delivers the revenue optimization platform for property groups, transforming the $100 billion annual events industry. As a rapidly evolving proptech platform, Carats & Cakes drives greater value for properties across events, small group sales, and other areas of business that have lacked purpose-built digital solutions. Built by industry leaders, Carats & Cake has cultivated nearly a decade of trust with best-in-class businesses. Founded in 2013 and backed by 1Sharpe Ventures, Founders Fund, Acrew Capital, Moore Specialty Credit, Correlation Ventures, SilverCircle, GMO VenturePartners, and others, Carats & Cake enables forward-thinking businesses in the hospitality industry to provide a modern customer experience while optimizing sales operations and increasing revenue.