Why you won’t hear us talking about keywords these days 

If you’ve ever invested in SEO for your venue, chances are it started with keywords. 

“Conference venue London.” 
“Wedding venue near me.” 
“Sustainable event venues London” 

For a long time, success was measured by how well you ranked for a small set of those phrases. That made sense because, for a while, search results were fairly static and representative of where your venue appeared for most search users. 

This isn’t the case anymore. 

Search results are now different for almost everyone 

Two people can search for the same thing and see completely different results. Whereas before we could point out the subtle difference that geography would have on this based your location, the tailoring of search results today goes beyond that. 

Search engines now tailor what they show based on factors like location but also your past behaviour, device, time of day, and inferred intent. 

That means there’s no longer a single, universal ranking for “London event venue” or “conference space near Euston”. What appears depends on who is searching, why they’re searching, and what they need in that moment. 

Search is no longer just a list of links 

Search engines increasingly summarise answers instead of simply displaying pages. 

At the same time, more users are utilising AI tools and large language models to research venues, asking more conversational, comparative, and exploratory questions like: 

“What’s a good venue for a 200-person conference in central London?” 
“What should I look for in a sustainable event venue?” 
“What types of London venues work well for a 120-person leadership offsite without feeling corporate?” 

These tools don’t look for keyword-optimised pages. They look for clear, well-structured content that demonstrates understanding and topical authority.  

So where do keywords fit for venues now? 

Keywords haven’t disappeared, though, and we still use them. 

In fact, they help us understand how planners describe their needs, to spot patterns in demand, and identify where venue websites may be falling short.  

What they don’t do anymore is define success. 

A well-explained venue page can surface across hundreds of relevant searches and be referenced by AI tools without being built around one exact phrase. Pages created purely to chase a keyword often struggle to convert or even be surfaced across AI-powered searches (including Google, which uses AI to power its ‘standard’ search) consistently. 

That’s why keywords are no longer a meaningful KPI on their own. 

Why keyword rankings stopped telling the full story 

Reporting on keyword rankings assume search results are the same for everyone, that visibility equals enquiries, and that discovery happens in one place. 

This is no longer the case. Now, discovery now happens across personalised search results, AI summaries, map listings and conversational tools often without a clear ‘rank’ at all. 

Keyword data still informs decisions. While it can still be used as an indicative measurement it no longer reflects real performance on its own. 

What we focus on instead 

For event venues, optimisation today is about clearly explaining what types of events you’re right for, showing you understand planners’ priorities, answering real questions early, and helping search engines and AI tools understand your relevance. 

When your content does that well, visibility becomes a by-product of clarity not repetition or keyword prevalence. 

What this means for your venue 

This shift away from keywords as a KPI is a positive one. 

It means fewer pages written for algorithms and more content written for planners. It rewards that writing for people, for ensuring that your website provides your audience the information they need gets rewarded. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it should have been at the heart of your SEO strategy from day one.  

Such a strategy means your website supports real decision-making.  It also means performance is measured by relevance, engagement and enquiries and not ranking screenshots. 

We still look at keywords. We just don’t treat them as the goal anymore. 

The short version

You won’t hear us talking about keywords the way we used to because search and venue discovery has fundamentally changed.

Results are personalised. AI is shaping how people research decision-making information. Proving understanding matters more than key word phrasing.

If you’re thinking about how your venue shows up across modern search and AI-driven discovery, this is exactly the kind of shift we’ve been helping venues navigate practically, calmly, and with long-term results in mind.