There is no big secret to improving your search rankings on the Meetup site or in search engines like Google. The best way to make your way to the top is by ensure your Meetup group's pages have interesting, relevant, and useful information about your group. Search algorithms base their results on things they think will be be the best and most useful match to someone searching a specific keyword.
Using your group’s Topics section will help both the search engines and people searching know just what you’re about. Tagging topics that are relevant to your group will increase the chances of interested members finding you.
You’ll find your topics on your group’s homepage, under the What we’re about section. Topics don’t have to be permanent. You can change the topics for your group at any time. Give your group some leverage by editing your Meetup group's topics.
The more specific information you provide in your topics, the easier it will be for people and search engines to find you.
We’ve thought of a few things you can do to make sure you're showing off what your Meetup group is most passionate about.
Include your location and create your group’s name based off of your main topic
We all like to be creative, but for search engine purposes, the ideal group name is super simple and reflects exactly what your group is about. We’ve come up with an easy formula to help get you started on ideas.
Create a short summary in the beginning of your group description
Think of it like telling a friend about something your really passionate about. Only summarize the most exciting and important parts.
When we say short, we mean around 100 characters: "We are romance novel enthusiasts who meet at a local coffee shop to discuss books and authors we love." That's it.
Keeping it short and sweet will help grab the attention of the user who finds you in a search, and they’ll understand what clicking on the link to your group will take them to. You don’t want anyone confused on their first impression of you.
Flesh out your group description with good and thoughtful details
The rest of your group description should include details about who should join the group, what members can expect, and what sorts of activities you do. Head on over for more inspiration of what makes a good group description.
You don’t have to tell your group’s whole life story to the world. Make sure you've got relevant information in there, but there's no need to go overboard. This can cause potential members who come across your group to feel overwhelmed. You’re group description is not carved in stone, and you can edit it at any time.
Bonus points: link to your group from other places around the web
One way search engines decide whether any particular site is useful is by checking to see if other sites on the internet are linking to it. Post a link to your group from your blog, or get other folks to post a link to your group from their sites.
Don't lose sleep over this step -- it's useful, but try not to go overboard. You don’t want people thinking the group to your link is spam.
Don’t try to cheat
There are people who try to game the system with things like lists of invisible keywords or repeating content. Don't be one of those people. Lists of keywords or garbled text are not helpful for potential members trying to figure out whether they'd like to join the group or not. Search engines want users to be happy when they click on the link to read more. They don’t want to see a user clicking, then hitting the back button because the link wasn’t relevant to what they were looking for.
Repetitive content, 'non-human language', and other things designed just to trick the search engines can get your group de-listed and removed from the search results entirely. That goes for search engines, as well as the search functions on the Meetup site. We want everyone in our community to play fair and by the rules.