We are nearly halfway through 2022. As of now, we can already observe some new trends in B2B marketing that have emerged and are here to stay.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has long been a key strategy for supporting traffic and overall business growth. It remains a top priority for any business with an online presence.
Of course, SEO starts with on-page and off-page tactics. But there’s more to it than the tried and true actions.
We are seeing some fresh new trends for SEO strategies in 2022. One of the biggest changes is that website performance needs not just SEO to succeed, but also needs to see it combined with other marketing strategies for optimal results.
In particular, email marketing and SEO work very well together.
In this post, we will review the best ways to combine SEO and email marketing strategies. Together, you stand to improve your Google ranking, and ultimately, increase conversions.
Start With a Strong SEO Strategy
A strong SEO strategy involves working on all three pillars of SEO (On-page, Off-Page, and Technical) simultaneously. This includes optimizing the performance of your website, creating engaging content, and building links from other domains.
An SEO-friendly website can boost your rankings on Google and attract a volume of organic traffic. But the website itself is only part of the story.
High quality content is and will always be the most important piece of a powerful website presentation. Strategic SEO is highly dependent on keeping the visitors engaged with your website, and not just making them click your links.
Google tracks how many visits and visitors your domain receives, which you can find in both of their free metrics services: Google Analytics (GA) and Google Search Console.
Both platforms include various engagement and user experience metrics that Google also keeps tabs on, such as bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit, core web vitals, and more.
Thus, content marketing is the pillar of any strong marketing department. It is the foundation for any level of success with SEO.
In order to optimize the content on your blog, for example, you need to offer value to the readers.
At the same time, you’ll need backlinks to boost your content on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). To earn those valuable links, you need to ensure that other website owners see your content as a useful asset to link to in their own content.
And while valuable content is at the heart of any good SEO strategy, it’s also important to incorporate best technical SEO practices.
What exactly is technical SEO? It includes a range of optimizations such as page load times, image optimization, and mobile-friendliness.
Finally, make sure you manage your SEO efforts with a tool that provides both efficiency and insight so you can stay on track with your goals.
You can pick from free solutions (Google Search Console) or premium platforms like SEMrush, ahrefs, and RavenTools to manage SEO end-to-end.
Build Email Marketing Strategy That Supports Your SEO
Email marketing for B2B is significantly different from, let’s say, emails supporting an eCommerce marketing strategy.
When looking for potential new clients, email can really help boost conversion rates. This in turn can contribute to building your brand trust and reputation.
If you have a strong SEO campaign, with great content and high value to the readers, your email campaigns must be on the same level.
Newsletters and outreach emails should, first and foremost, be designed to help your readers solve a problem. Or, in more creative campaigns, get them to ask questions about their business.
When targeting businesses you wish to convert into clients, think about what problem they might have that your offering can solve.
Once you have them asking questions, you’ll want to put your amazing blog content and/or landing pages in front of them. This is a great way to have them visit and explore your domain further.
With more traffic visiting your website, Google will see the increase in volume, which can help you rank higher.
You’ll also find that traffic coming from your own branded newsletter or email outreach is more likely to stay longer and remain engaged. This shows Google that you are dedicated to your audience needs, and it will result in happy visitors to your domain.
Combine SEO and Email Marketing
There are various practical ways of integrating SEO and email marketing. Let’s focus on the most efficient options for a B2B business model.
Create an Email Digest
An email digest will provide you a way to communicate with your target audience on a regular basis.
It doesn’t matter if you choose to email them daily, weekly, or intermittently. This format will illustrate that you’re consistent in communicating, and it will help you retain loyal customers longer.
With email marketing automation tools, you can easily schedule a digest campaign using time intervals or even personalized triggers.
These emails can be daily reports on the breaking news in your industry.
Or maybe a case study format suits your messaging better. In this format, you can highlight good and bad examples for addressing whatever problem your offering solves.
If you want to get more creative, you can even use B2B email marketing to share educational materials in segments, perhaps 10 or more lessons in a row.
Any of these approaches will be great for keeping your audience interested and engaged over a longer period of time.
Cross-publish Your Newsletter as Blog Content
Newsletters and blogs can work really well in supporting each other. After you send each newsletter, post it to your blog as well.
By checking out the newsletter content on your blog, new prospects may be driven to subscribe and learn more about your business.
On the other hand, quality newsletter content can be used for both on-page SEO and content marketing.
Think about it, if you are already investing in good quality email, why not use this material to pursue additional opportunities for ranking content on your domain?
Great newsletters are more than text. They combine the written word with images, graphics, GIFs, and links.
Visual content such as charts, infographics, and videos are very powerful assets in strengthening your on-page SEO. And with visual content so popular these days, they serve as fantastic link magnets for natural link acquisition!
Do you want to make these more complex visuals quickly and easily? Try out things such as online graphic design sites, infographic templates, and video clips available by stock image houses.
Not only is all this visual content juicy for Google spiders, but it is also far more engaging for your audience and can improve your conversions as well.
Segment Your Email List
Particularly if you have a larger list, you’ll find that subscribers have signed up for a wide range of reasons.
Email lists can be considered a form of big data. A good list include information such as contact information, interests, the date they subscribed, prior interaction behavior, and much more.
Start by organizing your email list. Once you segment and structure the data in a more actionable way, you can send more relevant messages to each key audience group.
For example, let’s say you are launching an email course. You’ll want to segment people who have a login to the course from prospects.
Later, they’ll eventually finish the course. You’ll then need to move them to yet another segment with similar profiles, e.g. “people who have completed a training course.”
Or in some cases, you may want to just move them back in to the general pool of names for other offers. You know what will work best for your business and your customers, so follow your gut.
At some point, you’ll need to put in effort to build out the list if you haven’t already done so. No problem — marketers often use email finder tools to expand the list of potential new clients. Perhaps this type of tool can help you.
Whatever you do, avoid buying email lists from any source! This can have you blacklisted as a spammer.
Your brand reputation not only affects your image in the marketplace. It can also impact rankings.
This is something you want to avoid at all costs. It can be very difficult to recover from this sort of negative branding impact in the future.
Optimize Email Content
Email content should be as optimized the same as though you are preparing it to be published on your blog.
Whether you decide to publish it on your website or not, email content should offer the same quality standards as any other important content.
What do we mean by this statement? We are referring specifically to readability, grammar, branded colors, and the use of different content types, including optimal text and images, or video ratio.
Every email should be easy to navigate, so readers can find specific topics in which they have more interest.
Designing a good email looks a lot like adding structured data to your website content. If the email is long, include a short overview in the beginning that explains what they can find inside.
This is a great way to increase open rates and get your content consumed by the recipients.
Use headings as well as tags for images. Try to create long-tail titles that clearly and succinctly describe the topic of the email.
Integrate With Your Social Media Efforts
While good email marketing and SEO work well together, other assets such as social media can be beneficial to both.
Every digest or newsletter should include some of your social links. These links are important for big clients when they are considering working with you.
You won’t have to dedicate too much time or resources to make this happen. Social and email should integrate pretty easily on their own.
But there’s an easier way to manage the integration, of course. With dozens of popular social media marketing tools available, you can set up automation for each channel you use and keep the content flowing cross-channel with minimal hassle.
Final Thoughts on SEO and Email Marketing for B2B
Email marketing can be a good supplement to SEO, helping your website rank much higher on Google.
An effective SEO campaign can help feed your funnel, enabling you to convert new followers and subscribers to your feed.
In B2B, anyone who subscribes to your email list is interested. Otherwise, they would never hand over their precious contact information. If you work it right, you’ll be well along your way to closing new clients!
So, roll up your sleeves, set your focus on getting the most out of your Google search console, and start converting new B2B clients with a tandem of SEO and email.
Feature Image Credit: Photo by mohamed hassan from PxHere; Free for Commercial Use License
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Nina Petrov
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