SEO and email marketing support each other in ways that are easy to overlook. When you sync up your email marketing and SEO strategies, you’ll find unique opportunities to repurpose content across the two channels, use email to promote new content, and even grow your email list through SEO.
First: How Do SEO and Email Marketing Work?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy that helps your business stand out online by fine-tuning the content on your website to make it easier for search engines to find, understand, and rank in search results.
This process is complex and varies from business to business, but it often includes posting clear, informative content that includes strategic keywords, making sure your site is free of any technical errors, and optimizing for answer engines and generative AI, among many other things.
Email marketing campaigns promote your products and services to a list of opted-in subscribers. These promotional emails usually serve the purpose of reminding people who have previously shown interest in your business to come back to your site and browse your products or services again.
Here’s how these two marketing channels can work together.
Combining Email Marketing and SEO To Repurpose Content
Instead of creating one content strategy for email and one for search, combine the two to give yourself opportunities to repurpose content. This might look like turning high-performing blog posts into email newsletters or using high-engagement email topics as inspiration for new blogs.
The best way to determine which emails will translate well into SEO content (and vice versa) is carefully tracking your data. Using tools like Google Search Console to look at the click and impression numbers for posts can tell you whether they might make solid topics for emails.
Using Email To Promote Search Content
Every time you publish a new page or blog post, the best thing you can do is send it to your email list. This drives direct traffic to that new page, which gives search engines early signals that your content is engaging. This strategy also keeps your new website content in front of people who are already engaged with your business.
Building Your Email List Through SEO Traffic
When you add clear, well-placed signup forms and calls to action to the highest traffic pages on your site, you may see your email list grow. This can partly happen as visitors who reach your site organically by searching on Google show interest and sign up for emails.
One of the best ways to make this strategy work is by offering a discount in exchange for a site visitor’s email. This is a tactic that many ecommerce companies use, but it’s also viable for small businesses.
Track Email and SEO Performance Together
For the best results from your SEO and email marketing work, do as much data analysis and A/B testing as possible. Experiment with different email copy, design styles, and headings to see what performs best. On the SEO side, try linking your email list on different types of pages to get a feel for where the most engagement comes from.
For tracking email campaign performance, your CRM is your best friend. The software that you use for email marketing will give you a detailed overview of how many recipients opened each message you send as part of a campaign. You should also be able to see how often those recipients clicked within your emails.
If you don’t have this tracking feature built into your CRM by default, you can add UTM parameters to your email links to make them trackable. These parameters are visible in Google Analytics, so you’ll be able to clearly see how many users reached different pages on your site after clicking on an email link.
A digital marketing agency that specializes in small business growth can help you set up Google Analytics and interpret the data to better optimize your campaigns.
Bringing Your Marketing Full Circle
Email Marketing and SEO don’t have to be separate. They can work together to build your email list’s subscriber base and turn organic traffic into potential leads.
The Padula Media email marketing team knows how to integrate your website, content, and promotional materials into one cohesive strategy built to grow your business. If you’re ready to see how these marketing channels can work together, we’d love to help you get started.
Schedule a call with our team today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Email Marketing Directly Affect Search Rankings?
Not exactly. Email marketing isn’t a direct ranking factor in search engines. This is because search engine crawlers can’t see how many people are opening the emails you send. However, email marketing can influence the amount of traffic, engagement, and even backlinks that flow back to your website. Those are all factors that search engines always take into consideration.
How Often Should I Send Emails for My Business?
Consistency matters here more than frequency. If you send a monthly newsletter like clockwork, this may lead to better performance than scores of emails sent out on an irregular basis. For the best results, match your email campaign cadence to how often you’re publishing new, shareworthy content on your website. This is one way SEO and email marketing can go hand-in-hand.
Can I Use the Same Content for Both Emails and My Website?
You can, but you’ll want to reformat and condense content before turning it into email copy. For example, you don’t want to paste an entire blog post into the body of a weekly email newsletter. Instead, use the newsletter as a teaser with some of the blog’s core points included, pointing email readers to the full blog for more information.
What Is the Best Way To Grow My Email List Through SEO?
If you want to get more organic site visitors added to your email list, start by adding discount offers or subscriber-only content to the best-performing pages on your site. This will incentivize searchers to join your email list for access to the exclusive content or low prices that you’re willing to offer in exchange for their information.