Free Event Listing Sites – Why They Are Important

Online free event listing sites are an overlooked and important tool for anyone involved with internet marketing.  Whether you work for a company which puts on a series of live events open to the public, you run a small business and have an annual event which you use to give your business exposure, or are a SEO consultant the event listing sites are helpful in a number of ways.

Before you going right into simply listing your event on one of these sites, there are some “big picture” things to consider:

• In Google’s Keyword Tool, entertainment-based terms like “things to do” have HUGE amounts of demand.  Whether local residents use the search engines to find unique things to do, or tourists use the search engines to find things to do in the local area, there is demand in all types of local markets.  For example, the term “Dallas things to do” – according to Google – gets over 40,000 searches per month.  This represents nearly half a million searches per year!
• Many people need to be broken out of their “hypnotic trances”, as they risk forgetting the event due to their everyday lives.  You need a way to reach them multiple times in order to increase the likelihood that they will attend

With that said, here are some of the benefits of the free event listing sites:

• Many of the free event listing sites have several ways in which others can help you spread the word by allowing them to share your event on Twitter, Facebook, and their e-mail lists
• Some of the sites allow you to create, and embed on any web property, a “countdown widget” in order to help generate the emotion of anticipation
• Should you have recurring events, such as a weekly event, then some of the sites will allow you to create repeat listings
• You can promote the event listing like you would promote a normal web page (e.g. social bookmarking and pinging)
• In most cases you will have a profile page which lists your upcoming events.  You can drive traffic from third-party sites and leverage the search engine ranking power of the site to help your profile page for SEO purposes

Hopefully you will accept the value of what the free event listing sites can offer you and any organization which you are helping.  If you need help with these sites, or want advanced techniques to give your events more exposure to those who are inclined to attend, then feel free to contact us for assistance.