6 Proven Ways to Integrate SEO and Email Marketing
Sometimes, the connection between certain aspects of digital marketing isn’t always obvious - like with SEO and email marketing. However, this doesn’t mean the link doesn’t exist.
Want to learn how to integrate email marketing and SEO and keep them unified?
In today’s hyperconnected era, none of the digital marketing channels should be isolated. They’re all intertwined. For example, SEO wouldn’t exist without content marketing and vice versa. Social media marketing gives your branding a boost, while the design of your site directly impacts user experiences.
Sometimes, the connection between certain aspects of digital marketing isn’t always obvious - like with SEO and email marketing. However, this doesn’t mean the link doesn’t exist.
Want to learn how to integrate email marketing and SEO and keep them unified?
Let’s dive in!
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Use your Keywords Strategically
Keywords are still the backbone of any solid SEO strategy. When researched properly, they give you insights into what your target audience is searching for, as well as what kind of search results they expect to see. By understanding search intent, you will be able to create better-targeted keywords and appear higher in Google’s SERPs.
However, just spamming your content with a bunch of keywords won’t increase your visibility. Instead, your aim is to integrate your keywords into your content in a natural way, making it both user and search engine-friendly.
Similarly to your content optimization, this golden SEO rule applies to your email SEO strategy. The keywords you integrate to your subject line or the main body of the email need to be placed strategically, helping you create a digestible and easy-to-follow layout.
One of the most common mistakes marketers make when optimizing their content or emails for search engines is not using long-tail keywords. Yes, these keywords may have a lower search volume and use, but they’re more descriptive and targeted. I’ll give an example to explain this phenomenon. When someone searches for, example, “Sci-Fi books”, they’re still in the research phase. However, a searcher googling “Sci-Fi books for teens in New York,” they’ve already done the research phase and know what kind of product they want to buy.
The choice of the right, high-intent keywords will grab people’s attention, get them to open your email, and guide them towards the buying funnel, towards making a purchase.
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Provide Personalized User Experiences
We’re living in the era of personalization, where customers expect brands to tailor their content and offers to them. They’re eager to give brands their personal data in order to get relevant offers and deals.
The same goes for email users. The HubSpot study asked respondents what they expected from branded emails they get and almost 40% of them emphasized the importance of relevance.
Given these facts, it’s not surprising that 2019 will be the year of personalized user experiences. Segmenting your email list and providing your customers with the content that makes sense for them will not only increase your open rates and CTR, but also give your SEO efforts a boost.
Many famous brands already use segmentation in their email marketing tactics. For example, Adidas segments audiences by gender, while Uber does so by their subscribers’ location. This way, they will maximize user engagement, boost website traffic and, ultimately, drive more sales.
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Improve User Engagement
Even though the goal of your email marketing campaign is to get people to click on your link and visit your site, you also need to think about how to boost their experiences and engage them in the future.
This is where email can help. Even though your emails cannot help you rank higher in the SERPs, you can use them to create strong calls to action and increase user engagement.
For starters, you could implement social media buttons and encourage people on your email list to follow you on these platforms and share your content online. Even though they’re not ranking factors, social networks can increase your brand visibility, help you find new link building opportunities, earn positive brand mentions, and establish valuable partnerships. The recent report by Hootsuite backs me up on that, proving that posts that were promoted on social media (both via organic and paid ads) performed much better than those that weren’t shared on these sites.
Your emails also help you boost your on-site engagement. For instance, when promoting your latest blog posts, you could ask subscribers to leave a comment on your blog pages and give their opinions on a given topic.
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Create Jaw-Dropping Content to Earn Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are still one of Google’s most significant ranking factors. Apart from boosting your search rankings, links from reputable websites can also improve your online exposure and help you position yourself as a credible online resource.
However, earning a link from an authoritative site is not easy. Remember that they receive a bunch of similar email pitches every day. So, to stand out in the crowd and get them to choose you over your competitors, your content needs to impress them.
This is where tactics like skyscraper content shine. There are three critical steps you need to take:
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Finding engaging, link-worthy content on the web.
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Finding a better, more comprehensive, more insightful piece of content.
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Reaching out to the right people to promote your masterpiece.
The next step is, of course, identifying websites that may be interested in your content and reaching out to them. Finding such sites manually may be a real nightmare, as you need to pay attention to a bunch of factors like the site’s Domain Authority, industry relevance, rankings, engagement metrics, and so on. To save time and make your SEO endeavors more effective, you can always opt for utilizing digital marketing tools that will nudge you in the right direction, help you cover the technical aspects of the process, and make sure your efforts are indeed fruitful.
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Repurpose your Newsletters
Crafting an email that speaks to your target audience takes time. It requires researching your customers’ demands and keeping track of industry trends. Based on the data you collect, you will create insightful and valuable email body that solves your customers’ problems and provides them with actionable tips.
Given that each email you create this way is already valuable and informative, why not repurpose it? Similarly to turning whitepapers into infographics, guides into videos, or articles into slideshows, you can simply make a unique piece of content out of your email. For example, you could convert a lengthy and informative newsletter into a blog post, add relevant external links, and promote them on social networks. On the other hand, you can collect several shorter newsletters on a similar topic and group them all together into a single, comprehensive blog post.
By repurposing your emails, you will bring value to those people that haven’t subscribed yet and show them what they’re missing out. Most importantly, you will make your exceptional content visible on Google and give it the opportunity to be indexed and rank high.
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Canonicalize your Emails to Make them Searchable
Those marketers that run email marketing campaigns consistently usually archive old issues to their website. Simply put, by archiving your emails, you’re making sure that Google is able to crawl them. Now, you need to tell Google that this content represents the copy of a page. This is where canonical tags (rel canonical) step in.
By canonicalizing URLs, you’re telling Google’s crawlers which URLs they should index when they come across several pages with similar content. For you, this means avoiding getting penalized because of duplicated content. Most importantly, you will ensure that your blog and newsletter archive page are never mixed up.
Over to You
The abovementioned examples teach us an important lesson. Even though SEO and email marketing are not directly related, they simply go hand in hand. SEO helps you generate highly qualified leads, segment your audiences, and optimize your email campaigns for the right keywords. Email marketing, on the other hand, helps you build a stronger brand reputation, create exceptional content that engages, gain greater exposure, and earn links from reputable resources.
How do you integrate your email marketing campaigns into SEO?