For many businesses, the opportunity to grow in the modern marketplace comes exclusively online.
Indeed, those companies that are looking for enduring success in virtually any industry have had to embrace their digital marketplace and put a huge business focus on gaining organic traffic and improving their search engine optimization (SEO) to rank higher on Google.
Yes, paid advertising has its place - but finding a way to build your organic visibility on search engines has become essential.
Table of Contents
- Driving organic traffic with value-adding content
- Promoting your new content
- Leveraging outreach emails
- Using email lists for keyword research
"We've seen a huge increase in businesses wanting to focus on the ways to improve their organic traffic," says Aaron Thomas, Managing Director at digital PR agency Hive19. "Companies seem to have recognized that while PPC and other paid advertising can be powerful, it's very much a short-term gain. It's in increasing organic traffic where they can find lasting success".
The benefits are clear: organic traffic is free, and it tends to convert at a better rate because searchers have come to your site in a more natural way. However, of course, the major challenge comes in doing the work to get found organically, especially in increasingly competitive search rankings.
One highly effective strategy that is often overlooked is implementing targeted email campaigns. Emails can not only build a strong connection with your audience, but they can also push awareness and branding - which are becoming more and more important to SEO campaigns overall.
In this article, we'll take a look at how targeted email campaigns can boost your site's organic traffic and accelerate your SEO strategy.
Driving organic traffic with value-adding content
One of the best and most effective ways to use email marketing to drive organic traffic is by sending your subscribers what's known as 'value-added content'.
It is designed to give your readers genuinely useful information, resources, and tools that relate to your industry. Remember that this kind of content is not necessarily sales-focused at all. The purpose of the content is to drive organic traffic as a means in itself rather than having any kind of ulterior motive - these are far too easily seen/apparent.
The kind of content you push here will definitely depend on your industry, but it could be anything from how-to guides and infographics to whitepapers or templates. It’s fine to mention your brand within this content (and ensure you link back to key sales pages), but the focus must always be on providing something to your audience that they want.
Promoting your new content
A good SEO campaign will always consist of some form of a continuous stream of new and interesting content. Therefore, it’s essential that your email marketing campaigns link up with the content strategy side of the work in order to promote new content as it is published on your site.
Getting views and generating interest on content such as blog posts, videos, and even social media posts can help them gain traction online and achieve their goals. You should always make sure that when you release a fresh piece of content - an email alert goes out to subscribers and followers.But the key here is in promotion emails that tease new content. These bespoke emails should contain a compelling call-to-action (CTA) to visit the content. You should make sure that there is a focus on these email campaigns in crafting subject lines that draw in readers and previews that catch the eye.
Leveraging outreach emails
We've mostly talked here about the power of marketing to your own email list - but there are other ways that email campaigns can be used to drive organic traffic, even if sometimes they are more tangential. For example, using targeted outreach campaigns to get in contact with influencers, industry websites, and media in your sector can be another key way to boost your SEO strategy.
It is a great idea to send out personalized emails to bloggers, journalists, industry experts and other potential strategic partners or affiliated brands. The goal with these emails is not to boost traffic directly but to build relationships with powerful figures in your industry, potentially encouraging them to share, reference, or link to your content.
It’s well known that securing backlinks to your site is still one of the most effective ways to increase your standing on Google.
Personalized one-to-one emails can be the key to unlocking great relationships with sites that might be willing to publish a backlink to your site - either through content you provide to their site or by referencing something you have previously published.
The SEO value of links from highly relevant sites can be enormous, so this is really worth pursuing. Of course, it is not always within the traditional expertise of email marketers, so you may wish to look for external providers of digital PR services.
Using email lists for keyword research
Your email subscriber list can provide tremendous insight into the topics and keywords that are most relevant to your audience. This allows you to identify promising keywords to target in your content for better on-page optimization.
Conduct email surveys and polls periodically to ask what information your subscribers need most. Look for common themes and high-interest areas that arise. You can also examine the content and offers that generate the most clicks and engagement.
Analyzing user search queries in your website analytics is another source of keyword intelligence based on actual visitor behavior. Email click tracking also reveals terms and topics that resonate with your list.
Optimizing your pages around keywords users are actively searching for online will help you align your content with demand. It improves the chances of ranking for those valuable terms. Plus, it leads to higher click-through rates from search engines when you do rank.
About the author
Tim Green is passionate about marketing and technology and enjoys writing about upcoming trends within the industries. Tim frequently contributes to leading industry publications sharing insights and advice he's picked up along the way with the wider community.
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