Emails and SEO: A Marriage Made in Marketing

The rise of online marketing means companies have more channels than ever to reach their customers. So much of our everyday lives in the modern world takes place online. Therefore, it makes sense that marketers follow armed with a range of tools to try and gain the attention of potential consumers.  

Examples of online marketing techniques include: 

• Social media marketing 
• Content marketing 
• Mobile marketing 
• Display advertising 
• Email Marketing 
• And Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). 

Getting traffic to your company’s website is the first battle in online marketing, and it is the focus of many of these approaches. 

Although SEO has been around since the early days of the internet, it has received more and more attention in recent years. As a result, any company looking to increase site traffic and generate online leads in 2021 must consider their SEO.  

However, many don’t realise that SEO can be combined with other online marketing strategies such as email marketing. The data produced by both email marketing and SEO help better inform decisions made in each. Plus, there are cross overs in terms of best practices and approaches that work great for both. 

Before discussing how to best integrate email and SEO into a successful online marketing strategy, let’s explain each technique.

What is SEO?

Put simply, SEO is the process of improving your website such that it ranks higher on search engines, most notably Google, increasing its visibility.  

A staggering 93% of all online interactions begin with a search engine, with Google accounting for 95% of web searches in Australia alone. 

They truly are the gatekeepers of the online world.  

Therefore, the higher your website appears on Google’s search result page, the more traffic you can expect to see.  

It makes sense, though. Think about all the Google searches you have done over the years. How often did you get to the 2nd page of results? Unless you’re going deep into the weeds on a subject, you trust Google and stick with the top results returned to you. 

The value of those top Google spots for searchable terms in a given field is immense. Companies can drive vast amounts of organic traffic from search engines straight to their website leading to greater revenue. 

SEO is all about getting higher up search engine rankings and in front of people who search for terms related to your business.  

However, SEO is a complex and dynamic field. It requires the careful study of information provided by Google and reverse engineering Google searches to understand key ranking factors. 

Google’s algorithm takes into account hundreds of ranking factors when producing search results. Some of the most critical factors to consider include: 

• Content quality 
• Backlinks 
• Date published 
• Mobile-friendliness 
• Page speed 
• Core web vitals 
• Domain power 

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is sending email communications directly to your subscriber or mailing list contacts. Typically, these contacts sign up to your email list, giving explicit permission to receive emails from you. 

Email marketing has the highest ROI ($38 for every $1 spent) compared to other online marketing strategies. It makes sense, given you are directly contacting an interested audience rather than sending your advertising out in the vast aether of the internet. 

Modern email marketing has moved away from the scattergun spam approach that clogged up inboxes, mainly producing frustrated recipients. Nowadays, email marketers focus on consent and segmenting their mailing list to send personalised content that finds the right person at the right time to close a sale. 

There are many great applications for email marketing. These include: 

• Promotional Emails – letting customers know about special offers on your products or services. 
• Informational Emails – providing subscribers with helpful knowledge related to your products or services. This could be letting them know about a new product or sharing tips and insights about your product’s use. 
• Recommendation Emails – giving personalised recommendations specific to a customer based on past interaction. 
• Feedback Emails – asking customers to tell you about their experience with your services. This provides you with actionable data to improve customer experience in the future and continues the customer interaction, helping turn them into repeat clients. 

Email marketing offers a range of benefits for businesses and remains an integral part of modern online marketing. From generating site traffic to driving sales, email marketing is simple to get off the ground and can provide an immediate impact.

READ: Will Email Marketing Remain Relevant in 2022?

Can Email Marketing help with SEO?

Email marketing does not directly affect SEO and where your website ranks on Google searches.  

However, it does work towards generating leads and driving site traffic, just using a different medium. 

Improving your email marketing means higher click-through rates and, therefore, more people on your site.  

We all know that one of the most significant challenges in online marketing is getting people onto your website. From there, you have to back your site design, web copy, landing pages, and products to convert visitors into customers. 

Whether they click due to a special offer or their curiosity is piqued from an informative email, email marketing is a great tool to drive site traffic. But more than just helping achieve the same goal, email marketing and SEO are complementary tools that can enhance each other.  

So how can you successfully combine SEO and email marketing to make a real difference and drive new sales?

How to Integrate a Successful SEO + Email Marketing Strategy

Keywords for email marketing and SEO

In SEO, you have to research and understand the keywords your target audience is searching for.  

Including these keywords on your site is vital to get ranked in related searches. However, keyword research can take you further than just SEO. 

Understanding what your target audience is searching for online can significantly improve your email marketing. Important, searchable keywords are also precisely what you should be using in your email communications, especially in subject lines.

SEO keywords allow you to learn what your audience is looking for. This information is vital for email marketing. Using the same SEO keywords in subject lines helps improve email opening rates. And this relationship is reciprocal. An email subject line that performs well can inform future keyword research.

Successful email marketing informs SEO content

An email marketing campaign with great results proves there is an audience for that type of content. Data on email marketing campaigns isn’t just crucial for future email campaigns; it also gives insight on pages with the potential for high search ranking. 

If a specific type of content works for your mailing list, it will likely work on a broader audience. 

You can also convert email campaigns into web pages for better SEO. It could be a subject that resonates with your mailing list that’s covered in your company blog or specific formatting and design choices that achieved excellent click-through rates and translated to your website.

Ensure email marketing content can also be found on your website

On a similar theme, make sure your email marketing content is also available on your website. When someone wants to find something they half-remember from an email, there is a good chance they turn to a search engine before combing through their inbox.

Improve on-site engagement

Email marketing doesn’t just drive traffic to your website, but the audience it brings are also more likely to engage with your website. These people signed up to receive your emails from you and are more likely to spend time with specific content or resources on your site. 

Now, extended visits and increased engagements are more likely to result in a conversion. And it also helps with conversion.  

While Google hasn’t confirmed interaction, time spent on a site, or bounce rate are direct ranking factors; they correlate with higher rankings.

Increase Shares

Before social media, emails were one of the original ways to share content online. And many still forward emails to friends and family when they find something interesting or a great deal. Likewise, you can use CTAs in your emails to get your mailing list to share content on their social channels. Increased visibility from social media shares can boost your SEO and produce link opportunities.

Email Marketing vs. SEO: Why not Both?

With the ability for email marketing to help SEO on top of its standalone benefits, there is no excuse for your business not to make email marketing a cornerstone of your online presence. 

Crazy Domains offers software to cover every aspect of your company’s email marketing strategy. From stylish templates and comprehensive mailing list management to delivery tracking, scheduling and personalised content. Get in touch today and learn how email marketing can drive traffic to your site and boost sales.