7 Simple Tips to Optimise Your Emails for Search Engines

Did you know Google receives searches up to a whopping +100,000 per second every day? This is because of changing buying behaviours. Now, instead of relying on what a business says, buyers prefer to do their own research and take decisions. As a result, it is imperative for a business to rank well on Google. Remember, customers are actively searching for what you have to offer. So, if your Google ranking is good, customers will find you.

In case you are wondering how you can improve your Google ranking, search engine optimisation (SEO) is the answer. Moreover, with 52% of millennials reporting that they’ve been using emails more and more for the past few years, even your email marketing strategy needs to be optimised for search engines (besides all the other online marketing channels).

Though there is no direct connection between the two, you have the ability to transfer content from your emails to your website and vice versa. So, giving your emails an SEO friendly touch is definitely going to help you have an edge over competitors. Here's how:

• Your email subscriber list will improve with every customer who finds you through your search engine optimised blogs and newsletters.

• Customer engagement will increase, thereby driving more traffic and conversions to your website.

Therefore, it is high time you think about optimising your emails for search engines. Here are a few tips to get you started with it. Take a look.

1. Include keyword rich texts

Keyword rich texts can help you optimise your emails greatly. In fact, it serves as a good strategy for repurposing your emails for the web. Here are few of the best ways to include keywords in your emails for SEO:

• Make sure the subject line has the targeted keywords.

• The keywords should also find its place in the body of your email.

• Include H1 and H2 tags while using keywords.

• The anchor text for your links should be optimised.

• Optimise all the images of your email by including alt tags and keywords.

• Include the related keywords in the newsletter archives on your websites

2. Incorporate links

You might already be including links in your promotional emails to enhance subscriber conversion rates. However, you should put efforts into expanding your linking strategy as it is a great way of optimising your emails. In this context, you can include links to relevant website content in your emails. It would let the subscribers access the topics of their interest as well as help them get detailed insights into your business. This, in turn, will drive more traffic to your website and give you better SEO results.

3. Optimising subject lines and meta descriptions works

Source: Shutterstock/13_Phunkod

You have included relevant keywords in your subject line, but is that enough for optimisation? No. It is also important for you to know how your subject line and initial sentences appear in search results as headlines and meta descriptions. It lets you analyse whether your subject line is providing value to your content or not and take corrective optimisation measures if needed. In addition, you can also optimise your preview texts for better search engine results. It can work wonders for accelerating your open and click-through rates if done right.

4. Go for mobile optimisation

81% of marketers feel that optimising their website for mobile counts as an effective marketing strategy. And, why wouldn’t it? After all, there has been a six fold increase in mobile internet use between the year 2011 and 2018. This is one of the reasons 59% of email opens happen through mobile. Hence, you should also leverage it and optimise your emails for mobile.

Start by optimising the images in your emails for mobile. It makes sure the images load well when seen through a mobile device. Also, promoting single column viewing in your email is another effective mobile optimisation trick. This can help you generate more click-through rates and bring more visitors to your websites, which in turn boosts the search engine ranking in the long run.

5. Keep a check on your CTAs

A well-optimised CTA can significantly enhance your click-through rates. In order to create a CTA that resonates with your subscribers and drives maximum traffic, you must A/B test your email features like font, colour, positioning, text etc.

6. Go for unique landing pages

When you send your special promotional emails, make sure you don’t link it back to generic product pages. Instead go a step ahead and create unique landing pages for each of your promotional email. Remember, the higher the rank of your landing pages, the better your chances for inbound links. Ultimately, it would greatly boost your search engine results.

7. Get hold of Google analytics

It is important to assess your email campaign’s performance to know how well your customers are engaging with it. For this, you need to monitor your email traffic back to your website. You can do this by setting up a URL tracking in Google analytics. Begin by including UTM measures like Utm_medium, Utm_campaign, Utm_source etc. to the links you include in your email. It is a great way to evaluate how your email campaign is responding to SEO and what can be done to enhance its impact.

Final thoughts

A good email marketing strategy is all you need to strike a personal connection with your subscribers and drive conversions. And what better way to scale up your email marketing strategy than optimising it for search engines? So, start right away and make use of the above-mentioned tips to optimise your digital reach like never before.

Author Bio:

Chris is the Director of InboxArmy, a result driven email marketing agency that specialises in providing best email marketing solutions from production to deployment. He has worked directly with Fortune 500 companies, retail giants, nonprofits, SMBs and government bodies in all facets of their email marketing services and marketing automation programs for almost 2 decades. Chris loves sharing email marketing tips & best practices on InboxArmy's Blog.