SEO or search engine optimization means improving the visibility of your website in search engines. Given that many potential customers use search engines to find the product or service they are interested in, this is one of the most noteworthy keywords in modern marketing.
SEO metrics go far beyond the traditional concept of keywords and rankings. If you look at the behind-the-scenes, many factors come into play – factors that we might not directly connect with SEO on the first go. Email marketing is one of those factors.
What business doesn’t use email these days? They’re part of the primary communication stack. But emails playing a decisive role in SEO may come as news for many. Because even though search engines do not crawl or index the emails we send, email marketing has the ability to boost website traffic and rankings.
Email marketing and SEO are two of the most powerful forces in digital marketing. Connect both these factors, and the results will be positive. That said, here are the ways email marketing helps your SEO.
1. Increases Quality Traffic
Probably the first thing you learn in SEO is how organic rankings can increase your website traffic. However, the goal is to get qualified traffic to your site, not random visitors. Effective SEO can not only place the company at the top of search engine results, but it is also a powerful way to segment and target customers. You can use keywords or phrases typed into a search engine to locate a particular subject or answer a query, tools like Google Analytics and Google Trends API help to create a list of relevant keywords.
Email marketing can help you drive quality traffic to your site since most email marketing campaigns are highly personalized. Marketers segment subscribers based on their buying journeys and tailor the content according to their interests. They also give out options to subscribers for choosing what emails they want to get. For example, a SaaS company provides email options such as:
- Product updates
- Tutorials
- Webinar invites
- Product launches
- Blog promotional emails, etc
Subscribers that read relevant content and enjoy surfing through your engaging newsletters have a higher chance of visiting your website and showing genuine interest in what you do. They are not bombarded with emails they have no interest in and receive personalized content that suits their needs.
Naturally, qualified traffic gives you a good conversion rate and reduces bounce rate, thereby improving your search ranks.
2. Promotes Social Media Shares
Social media is not an option these days; it is an obligation for a marketer. You need to build a presence on social platforms to be closer to customers and interact with them regularly.
To encourage that, you need to include social sharing icons in all your content – emails included. Most email automation software provide the option of embedding CTAs to urge readers to share what they like. But the most pressing question you might have is, where does SEO fit in all this?
Just like email marketing, social media engagement doesn’t directly amplify your SEO efforts. But when many people share your content across social platforms, it increases your brand exposure.
Besides, social shares generate signals which indicate that your content is helpful to users. Combined with brand mentions, these signals can increase your SEO performance and rankings.
3. Increases On-Site Engagement Through CTAs
No matter what your motive for sending the email is, the ultimate goal is to uplift your marketing efforts and generate traffic to the site. To fulfill this goal, the email is accompanied by a compelling call-to-action (CTA), encouraging the readers to take a particular action. Since it is the subscribers that choose to click the CTA, it shows a bigger commitment from their end and higher purchase intent.
However, you need to pay attention to how to entice users to click on it. Some tips you can keep in mind are:
- Place the CTA strategically. If multiple topics lead to different pieces of content, the secondary CTAs also need to align with each topic. For social media, it is advisable to include CTAs in the footer section of the mail.
- Use contrasting colors to highlight the CTA button
- There are many landing page generators that support CTA-focused landing page templates.
- Use power words to make the CTA interactive
- Write the CTA in as few words as possible
You can add a CTA that allows subscribers to forward the email to their acquaintances and close friends. They can be a better judge of the people who want to read your blog posts. It’s a great way to generate traffic to your website and boost your SEO rankings.
4. Opportunities for Collecting Reviews
Reviews hold immense credibility as a result of which it impacts the search engine result pages. Around 90% of consumers read online reviews before buying a product or a service. Online reviews are the invisible force that drives the brand’s reputation and its spots on Google.
And since modern digital marketing techniques revolve around data and one of the best ways to source this data is by asking for customer feedback. A lot of businesses send emails where they ask users to share their experiences to know where businesses can make improvements. Asking for subscribers’ reviews via email also indicates that you have a bigger commitment to improving for the betterment of your customers.
However, one of the biggest challenges of feedback is receiving getting it in the first place. With email marketing, you get to try unique techniques that encourage people to share their reviews. People are more likely to help out with something when they see a direct benefit.
In emails, you can provide discounts or coupons on their subsequent purchases or a free sample if they can put up a review. As per consumer market insight for France, 60% of French online consumers look for promotional codes in emails when making purchases. You can simply add a section that asks the users how likely they will suggest the product/service to their friends. Reviews are a great incentive for consumers to visit the sites, and positive reviews can increase your business’s local rankings in search engines.
5. Helps You Develop a Targeted Content Strategy
If it weren’t for content relevancy, email marketing would’ve long become an outdated marketing technique. Out of the hundreds of emails a subscriber receives in a day, the only shot you have of your email getting opened is relevancy. The idea is simple – if you’re segmenting your audience, you also need to have a separate set of content that better targets them.
As we mentioned, email marketing automation also enables you to send hyper-personalized emails that keep in mind other demographics, such as age, location, buying journey, etc. Sending a loyalty email to a subscriber at the top of the funnel stage or sending a festive offer email to a subscriber located in a different country won’t do anything for your website traffic or conversion rates. The content will only work its magic if the reader is the right person for it.
And when we say content, it doesn’t just mean the subject matter of the email. It also includes a captivating subject line. While the content has nothing to do with SEO, if you consider the keywords in the subject line and within the email, they reflect on what words the subscribers click on. It allows you to monetize those keywords in the overall SEO strategy.
Techniques like A/B testing allow you to test and analyze what content or subject lines have the highest number of clicks and personalize the email marketing campaign based on the results. Since developing a targeted content strategy may be a collaborative effort, you can also leverage a WordPress collaboration plugin to rope in writers and marketers under one roof to create targeted content.
6. Provides Opportunities for Repurposing High-Performing Content
High-performing email newsletters can have a lasting impact if you repurpose them. Suppose you know that a particular piece of content has worked wonders for your email marketing strategy. In that case, marketers usually repurpose this kind of content into a blog or a website article that has the ability to direct SEO benefits.
This may require additional work as you have to tweak the content to make it SEO-friendly. For example, by adding relevant keywords and infographics, adding content to meet the appropriate word length, and encouraging collaborative editing, the end result will be worth it.
By redoing your highly engaging newsletters, you’ll ultimately be creating interesting blogs that your search engine searchers and email subscribers can see. You can reach out to a larger audience and enhance your SEO efforts with minimum work.
7. Sharing Video Content in Your Email
A slightly less conventional but effective way is to include a video link in your marketing email. However, this requires a few more steps on your part: finding the right visuals, writing the script to tell a story, and putting the footage together in a video editor.
SEO is impacted by video material much more than many people realize, and it actually does wonders for search engine optimization. If your websites contain not only text and images but also high-quality visuals such as videos, your page content will be as diverse as possible. This will give your SEO efforts a boost.
Once you’ve created engaging videos, be sure to share them through your marketing emails as well as your social media pages. Your email list is your most targeted audience. Also, video content is one of the most attractive content because it is interesting and compact in content. Google looks at the amount of traffic coming to your page when determining search rankings, so we definitely recommend that you start writing the script and get your camera ready.
Finishing Thoughts
Since SEO and email marketing form an integral part of the content marketing strategy, it becomes imperative to link both these activities in a manner that strategically aligns with the overall marketing vision. As you may have noticed, none of these activities directly influence SEO. But that’s what modern SEO is all about. You have to go above and beyond the regular keyword research and find unique tactics in email marketing that focus on conversions and give a significant boost to SEO.
About the Author
Ashley Kemper is an Assistant Editor at Commerce Mentors. She has 5+ years of experience in writing about Marketing, SEO, and Technology. She also helps with the end-to-end execution of content strategy. When not writing, Ashley spends most of her time reading and cooking. As a sports enthusiast, she spends her weekends running and watching badminton tournaments.