Your Event Page Isn't a Digital Flyer. It's a Piece of Real Estate You Keep Demolishing.

Let me paint the picture I see constantly: A company hosts 'TechSummit 2023.' They earn press mentions from TechCrunch. Speakers link from their personal sites. Thousands of social shares. The domain authority climbs. Marketing pops champagne.

Then 2026 arrives. Someone creates `/techsummit-2026/`. They 301 redirect the old page — or worse, just delete it.

I call this SEO suicide, and I'm not being dramatic.

Every redirect bleeds link equity. Industry consensus says you lose 10-15% through a 301. Do this annually, and by year three you've hemorrhaged nearly half your authority. You're not building on a foundation — you're building on quicksand.

The Solution: The Rolling Home Base

Your event landing page should live permanently at `domain.com/summit`. No years. No dates in the URL. Ever.

When the 2026 event ends, the page stays. You update the H1 to 'Pre-register for TechSummit 2025.' Same URL. Same backlinks. Same authority.

Past event content moves to `domain.com/summit/2026-archive`. The archive pages can exist for nostalgia and long-tail traffic. But the money page — the one that accumulated three years of links — stays put and keeps compounding.

I implemented this for a fintech conference client who previously saw 87% traffic drops post-event. By year three, their main URL ranked for 'fintech conference' generically — without a single new link-building campaign. The authority had simply accumulated.

This single structural decision is worth more than every tactical tip in every other guide you'll read.

I've built a network of 4,000+ writers and journalists since 2017. I didn't do it by sending polite requests. I did it by understanding what they actually want.

The same psychology applies to your event speakers — except most event marketers get this catastrophically wrong.

Conventional approach: Send speakers a 'swipe file' of social graphics. Hope they post. Maybe 30% do. Almost none link.

This is weak because it relies entirely on goodwill. Goodwill doesn't scale.

The Speaker Arbitrage Method flips the dynamic. You treat speakers like affiliates — not by paying commission, but by understanding their currency: *personal authority*.

Here's my exact process:

Before I send any outreach, I audit the speaker's website. I find a keyword they're struggling to rank for — usually closely related to their speaking topic. Then I send this:

*'I noticed you're targeting [keyword] but ranking on page 2. If you link to your speaker profile on our event site using [keyword] as anchor text, our DA-65 domain will help you consolidate authority for that term. You're essentially borrowing our domain strength to boost your own rankings.'*

You're not asking for a favor. You're offering an SEO asset.

When 20 speakers link to your domain using semantic keywords, you create a topical relevance signal so strong Google can't ignore it. This is how you rank for 'Fintech Conference' generically — not just 'TechSummit 2025 tickets.'

On AuthoritySpecialist.com, I maintain 800+ pages of content. But I didn't build them for traffic vanity metrics. I built them as proof of competence.

When I pitch a client, I don't need a slide deck. The site *is* the deck. Every page says: 'This is what I know. This is how deep I go.'

For event marketing, this concept is existential.

Attendees are risk-averse. They need to justify a $2,000 ticket plus $1,500 in travel to their CFO. If your site is a schedule, a speaker grid, and a 'Buy Tickets' button, you're failing the justification test.

The Strategy: Pre-Event Proof Content

Don't just post session abstracts. That's a menu, not a meal.

Interview each speaker before the event. Transcribe their insights. Publish a 2,000-word guide on the problem they're solving — hosted on your event domain.

This serves two purposes:

1. Lead Generation: You rank for problem-aware keywords like 'how to reduce supply chain costs' that your target attendees are actively searching. They find value, then discover your event.

2. Conversion Ammunition: When an attendee emails their boss for budget approval, they can attach a link to 'The Future of Supply Chain Logistics' instead of a generic registration page. One reads like thought leadership. The other reads like a sales pitch.

I call this the 'Rolling Thunder' content deployment. You release these guides in waves — one per week for six weeks before the event. Each wave builds anticipation and proves depth.

Physical swag bags are environmental guilt wrapped in branded tote bags. They end up in closets, then landfills.

'Digital Swag Bags' are SEO goldmines — if you understand why most link-building for events fails.

Here's the problem: Getting high-authority sites to link to an event page is brutal because it looks nakedly commercial. TechCrunch doesn't link to sales pages. Neither does anyone else worth getting a link from.

The Fix: Build Something Linkable First

Create a resource that only exists during the event cycle — something so useful that linking to it looks like editorial judgment, not a favor.

Examples that actually work: - A proprietary industry report using data from your registration survey (you have hundreds of professionals sharing their challenges — that's original research) - A free calculator or tool solving a specific problem ('Event ROI Calculator,' 'Conference Networking Efficiency Score') - A comprehensive directory of industry resources, curated and maintained

This is 'Free Tool Arbitrage.' You build a simple asset, host it on the event domain, and pitch *that* to press. Writers are happy to link to useful tools and original data. They'd never link to your ticket page.

Once links are secured, authority flows to your domain. Internal linking distributes that authority to your sales pages.

I watched a client execute this perfectly: They released a 'State of Fintech Hiring' report two weeks before their conference, using anonymized salary data from attendee registrations. The press coverage generated more backlinks in 10 days than their PR team had managed in the previous 10 months.

The report lived on the event domain. The registration page inherited the authority.

Here's a contrarian position I'll die on: The most important day for your event SEO is the day *after* the final session ends.

Most marketing teams go dark. Maybe they post a thank-you tweet. Traffic drops. The site goes dormant. They call it 'recovery.'

I call it abandonment.

Retention Math is simple: Retaining attention you've already earned costs roughly 20% of acquiring it fresh. You have thousands of people actively looking for photos, slides, session recaps, and 'what did I miss' content. They're warm. They're engaged. And you're sending them to a dormant website.

Don't dump a Google Drive link and disappear.

Here's the post-event playbook:

1. Transcript Optimization: Turn every recorded session into a blog post. Google can't watch videos, but it can read 4,000 words of expert insight.

2. The Highlight Reel Page: Create a 'Best Of' compilation targeting 'Event Name Reviews' queries. Control the narrative before attendees start blogging their own takes.

3. User-Generated Proof: Curate social media highlights onto a 'Wall of Proof' page. Screenshots of tweets, LinkedIn posts, photos. Social proof that ranks.

This is also when you deploy the 'Anti-Niche Strategy.' If your event covered Marketing, Sales, and Dev tracks, create three distinct hub pages for post-event content. You can now rank for broader terms in all three verticals simultaneously — instead of being pigeonholed as a 'general conference.'

Keep the site updated weekly for at least 30 days post-event. This signals to Google that you're a living publication, not a corpse.