It is a known fact that digital marketing strategies like content marketing and search engine optimization go hand in hand. But have you ever considered optimizing your emails for search engines? Though there is no direct connection between the two, using search engine optimization for your email marketing strategy can work a great deal in enhancing your customer base.
93% of online experience begins through a search engine. Also, with 59% of B2B marketers considering email as the most effective revenue generation channel, wouldn’t optimizing it for search engines further double up the revenue? Well, this is the reason 61% of marketers consider improving SEO as one of their priorities amidst their various inbound marketing strategies.
In fact, the statistics say that in 2018 search engine optimization will have the largest share in the marketing budget of any firm. Your competitors might be among them too. So, it’s high time you leverage search engine optimization for your email marketing campaign and get a competitive edge over others. Want to know how can you use SEO for your emails? Here are a few great ways to do it.
Make your text keyword rich
You can optimize your emails by including keyword-rich text within it. You can start by putting keywords in the subject line and the body content of your email. Using H1 and H2 tags can also be a good way of optimizing. Further, if you are adding images, make sure you use alt tags with keywords in order to make the images SEO-friendly.
Incorporate a linking strategy
Use links in your emails to convert the subscribers into customers and increase your visibility. You can even expand your linking strategy by including links that would be relevant for your customers. Incorporating links of your newsletters and social media links of your various online portals are sure-shot ways of driving more traffic and optimizing your email campaign.
Go for unique landing pages
Marketers send a lot of promotional emails regarding their various products and services. Sure, it is a good way of attracting subscribers, but it would become great only when you create unique landing pages for each of your promotional emails. Generic landing pages don’t have that kind of effect. With every unique landing page, you get the opportunity to include inbound links, optimized keywords, etc. This can work wonders for improving your search engine results.
Related: Essential Components of a Lead-generating Website
Make way for blog promotion
Every business these days invest in blogs to improve its search engine rankings. So make way for promoting your blog content. You can do it by including the blog link in your emails. Analyze the most popular content pieces in your blog and send it to your subscribers. In fact, it would be better if you segment your customer base and send them personalized content resources based on their interests, preferences, and pages they have visited. It wouldn’t only drive the traffic on your blog but also increase the relevancy of your emails.
Related: How to Convert Abandoning Visitors Into Subscribers
Optimize your emails for mobile
Do you know out of every 10 email users, 8 of them access their email account through mobile? So if you don’t optimize your emails for mobile, chances are people won’t click on them. Therefore, in order to increase your click-through rates, design your emails in a mobile-friendly way. From images to the content, everything should load well and be visible in a single-column viewing format. Doing so would increase the visits on your website and in turn improve your visibility on the Web.
Related: 10 Undeniable Ways Mobile is Reshaping B2B Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]
Offers always work
Everyone loves offers and discounts. And your email audience is no different. So, extract its benefits and give them special offers and discounts based on their specific interests. This would motivate them to visit your website and they might even convert. With search engines paying attention to metrics like click-through rates, time on a page, etc., enhancing your site engagement through offers can improve your ranking considerably.
Consider optimizing your CTAs
Keep optimizing your CTAs to enhance the click-through rates. You can do it through A/B testing. From analyzing the text and font to positioning and color, everything can be tested and modified according to the subscriber’s taste. Remember, even a minor change in the CTA can have a big impact on your email campaign. In fact, it can help in attracting traffic back to your website. This, in turn, can improve your search engine optimization in a great way.
Related: 5 Strong CTA Examples (with Solid CTRs and Conversions) to Learn From
Target your loyal customers
There are plenty of subscribers who are highly engaged with your brand. So, leverage their loyalty to improve your search engine optimization. Since they are genuinely interested in your products and services, their chances of paying attention to your CTAs, surveys, etc. become higher. You can target them with interesting content and even reward them for their continuous support.
Ask for reviews
When a customer reviews your product or service, Google may display it with your business profile. Therefore, it is always good to ask for reviews from your satisfied customers. Send them an email and request to put a review for your business on Google, Yelp, or any other third-party website. Positive and good reviews help in improving your local search engine ranking and work a great deal in facilitating search engine optimization.
Keep a check on your email performance
It is important to know how your email campaign is performing. You can do it through Google Analytics. All you need to do is set up a tracking URL to keep a check on your email traffic. It would give you an insight into the effects of your emails on search engine optimization and help you find ways to take corrective measures.
Related: The Only Guide to Email Marketing Analytics You’ll Ever Need
Include canonical tags
It is a good practice to include email archives on your website with their respective canonical tags so that Google knows the destination links.
Your HTML code will look something like this:
<head>area<link rel=“canonicallink” href=“https://www.callboxinc.com/blog/email-marketing”/>
In case you have related content on your blog and emails both, Google crawlers may not be able to interpret the pages right. By putting canonical tags, you help Google to fetch the correct URL and display it in the search results.
Final thoughts
Optimizing your emails for a search engine can help you stand out from your competitors. All you need to do is incorporate it in the right way. To put it in other words, your marketing efforts will start paying off if you make your email campaign SEO-friendly. So, include the above-mentioned strategies and see how it helps you enhance your digital presence in no time and of course, increase your conversion rates.