Halloween Australia

Introduction

Halloween Australia has had many incarnations over the years. Originally built with custom PHP, it was rebuilt in Drupal, and then in WordPress, for maximum flexibility. Having a custom online search was the primary goal.

It was built to meet a need – the desire to find which streets were taking part in Halloween. A lovely mum in my street organised our inaugural trick-or-treating using pamphlets in letterboxes, and it grew into a website servicing the whole of Australia.

Marketing

The site is very old, using ancient SEO techniques from the last decade. There are dashes in the domain name and page URLs – because that’s what Google needed way back then. However it was all white-hat SEO, and usually still ranks on page one at Google for Halloween Australia and Halloween Events Australia.

At its peak, it was published in the Coles magazine, had multiple interview requests from radio, and in 2018 even had a TV station roll up to my house – the decorations on my house were really pretty awesome. These days it chugs along, with new trick-or-treat streets and public halloween events being added each year.

Pinterest boards for key categories (costumes, decorations) make for easy social integration, and there’s a Facebook page as the main social engagement.

Key Features

It has some pretty cool custom search functionality, allowing you to search for trick-or-treat streets and halloween events, by suburb and state.

Always fun to play with.