Thoughts on archiving content on an event site?

[accessintel]

I have a few sites that are used exclusively to promote live events (ex. tradeshows, conference, etc). In most cases these sites content fewer than 100 pages and include information for the upcoming event with links to register. Some time after the event has ended, we would redesign the site and start promoting next years event...essentially starting over with a new site (same domain).

We understand the value that many of these past event pages have for users who are looking for info from the past event and we're looking for advice on how best to archive this content to preserve for SEO.

We tend to use concise urls for pages on these sites. Ex. www.event.com/agenda or www.event.com/speakers. What are your thoughts on archiving the content from these pages so we can reuse the url with content for the new event? My first thought is to put these pages into an archive, like www.event.com/2015/speakers. Is there a better way to do this to preserve the SEO value of this content?

[ClaytonJ]

I think Egol covers it very well.

I would not be changing pages if at all possible. What I would be considering is how to get the benefit/value of traction of 2015 pages for 2016 events. There are several options.

But it could be a revamped page, a CTA which you can click on to go to 2016 page etc.  Also if no page up yet after every 2015 event, you could put on the page "the 2016 events details are not known yet, however leave your email and we will contact you with details of the new event etc" - that gives an opportunity to collate details. You know your business better than anyone, so likely better strategies but the underlying principles enunciated by Egol is the way to go.

[EGOL]

I have a few pages that link to content on other websites that are annual events.  For many of these events, our website refers more visitors to them than they get from any other source.  Sometimes more than from all of their other sources combined.

Some of the people who put on these events maintain the same URL year after year.  We really appreciate that because we don't have to edit our page.  Others change the year in the URL which is slightly annoying but easy.  Others make up a new URL that places the event somewhere on the rump of their website where we have difficulty finding it.  Others do insane redirects that often don't work properly.

My message here is really to say that if you value traffic from other websites then it is not a good idea to move your event page to a new URL every year.  Doing that will orphan links, annoy the people who link to you, and might be inconsiderate to the people who help you promote the event on their own websites. Moving the URL around is also a really bad idea from an SEO perspective because you divide your link equity.

What to do with the speakers list and other information that represents a single year?  If you think this information will be consumed by visitors, linked to by other websites, or pull in traffic from search then archive it as you proposed.  My choice of the URL would be www.event.com/speakers/2015/ instead of www.event.com/2015/speakers/    Why? that keeps all of the speakers information in the same folder.  When you have the 2016 info you simply change the URL of the index page and republish the new information overtop of the old.