How to Integrate Email Marketing with SEO

In the context of search engines and social media, email seems like ancient tech, having arisen as early as the 1970s. But email is still very relevant to businesses for communication. Confirmation messages, newsletters, and deals are all still disseminated via email to current customers. The distinct nature of every message extricates it from the noise in social media. Thus long and well-designed emails can engage your customers more than social media posts.

However, email is not the public platform that social media is, and, for that reason, email has less impact on SEO. When a search engine ranks pages, it does not use email as a factor because email is a process outside the public-facing web. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all have public-facing, searchable content, but email does not. So how can email help your SEO?

Engage the Customers

Email is an excellent way to engage your customers off social media platforms. Social media platforms offer a way to standardize your message to all of your customers. Email offers a way to customize your message to your customers, ideally in different groups. For example, age groups or geographic region can be easily separated in an email, while national or any aged customers can be serviced through a broad social media appeal.

Having links to the customized material will bring more visitors to your page. It is easier to navigate directly to something needed than to navigate to a base page and then find what is needed. Customers will be happier (and more likely to visit) if the topic they’re interested in is easily accessible rather than buried somewhere on a large website. Use email to bring those customers directly to the content they want.

If your business closely tracks customer behavior, personalized email is also a great way to engage the customer and increase click through. An email requesting a customer’s opinion or help is more likely to capture attention than an email simply promoting a product or website.

The whole point of increasing customer visits is to increase traffic, thereby eventually increasing visibility and search result rankings.

Encourage Consistent Visits

Sending periodic emails on website updates will encourage more users. If customers can expect an email with all the latest posts, especially an email that concisely summarizes those posts and draws them to the page, they will be more likely to regularly visit your website. Encourage that regularity, because it will cement patterns of behavior and reduce customer retention efforts.

Remind them of Social Media Presence

This can be as simple as a few tags at the end of the email. It is a subtle reminder to current and new customers to become followers or members of your social media circle. Thereby increasing the number of customers engaged on social media. It can also be implemented for specific email sections. For example, during a new product launch, an email should discuss the product and link to a demonstration video on YouTube. Once the customer engages the YouTube content, you can encourage them to subscribe there.

On the other hand, use social media to promote your email newsletters or offers. If a customer is already a follower on social media, s/he can still become an email recipient. Then customized deals or information can more easily be shared with that particular customer.

Ensure emails are mobile friendly

There is a lot of conversation around mobile-first indexing, and companies need to ensure they have mobile-friendly versions of websites. But that is not the only concern. Americans are embracing mobile telecommunications wholeheartedly, and even the workplace is seeing more mobile-friendly practices. By neglecting to create mobile-friendly emails, you are ignoring a potentially large set of customers. Some people don’t even read email on a desktop/laptop screen anymore. Email seamlessly integrates with mobile devices.

Make sure emails link to mobile websites, or that your website can detect a mobile versus desktop visitor. Ensure the layout is friendly for those with small screens. As well assure your layout is comfortable when viewing on larger screens, too.