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How To Boost Organic Traffic With Your Emails
Contrary to popular belief, effective email marketing can make a major contribution to an SEO strategy. The two are often seen as two totally unrelated concepts, but there’s a direct correlation between a successful email campaign and a more prominent SERP placement.
As for why, it’s all about organic traffic. For Google (and the other major search engines), high-quality organic traffic is one of the most important SEO ranking factors. The more people you can convince to check out your website, the bigger the potential SEO benefits.
But what can you do with your emails to encourage their recipients to pay you a visit? How can an email marketing campaign be optimised with organic traffic in mind?
- Effective Segmentation
First up, accurate targeting is essential. This means avoiding the temptation to send the same generic emails and offers to everyone in your list of contacts. Each email you send should be of genuine relevance and value to the recipient. Not only will this increase the likelihood of people clicking through to your website, but will also result in a longer visit when they do.
If there’s nothing in your email of relevance to any given recipient, it’s better to send them nothing at all.
- Understand User Intent
This means taking into account the three primary user intent types – i.e. why a user opens and reads an email in the first place:
- Transactional – when the user is looking to make a purchase or convert in some way.
- Informational – when the user is looking for information.
- Navigational – when the user is looking to visit a specific website.
Your job is to figure out which of these categories your email recipients fit into, and to craft their content accordingly. If they’re purely in it for educational purposes, the hard sell (or even with all the exclusive discounts in the world) isn’t going to work.
- Exclusive Content
That said, the occasional exclusive here and there can be quite convincing. This is where you make the recipient feel as if they’re getting something special – something reserved exclusively to those with established relationships with your business.
Exclusive content can be anything, but it needs to be generous enough to be seen as legit. For obvious reasons, a periodic 5% discount isn’t going to drive nearly as much interest as a regular 25% discount.
- Reward Referrals
One of the oldest tricks in the book, rewarding those who recommend you to others works wonders. Incentive-based referrals should form a part of your broader digital strategy wherein those who send new customers (and/or subscribers) your way get something in return.
Of course, this isn’t something that needs to be limited strictly to your emails. It’s a promotional tactic that can work particularly well on social media, where it’s even easier to send recommendations and referrals to hundreds (or even thousands) of people in seconds.
- Ask for Feedback, Reviews and Recommendations
Last up, 98% of consumers read reviews, so you need to stack up as many as you can. Asking for feedback, reviews and recommendations can support your SEO strategy in two ways.
Firstly, it can be great for encouraging people to head back to your website for an organic traffic boost. Secondly, the major search engines are increasingly focusing on social proof as a major ranking signal.
With each email you send, take the opportunity to invite the recipient to head your way and share their thoughts with the world. Most people love a good excuse to get on their soapbox, so it’s a strategy that never fails.