If you're like most email marketers, you
probably see your emails and newsletters
short-lived documents. By the time your
next campaign comes around, your last
one is out of sight, out of mind. But
if you’re ditching your old copy
and layouts without archiving them on
your site, you’re missing out on
a valuable engine optimization (SEO) tool.
And even a single archived email or newsletter
can boost your site's online visibility.
The
key to online archiving is getting your
emails and newsletters to function as
regular content pages on your site. For
instance, if you archive an email newsletter
with the subject "top ten tips for
refinishing furniture", there’s
a very good chance that with enough traffic,
that page will not only rank in search
engines, but will bring in total outsiders
using search to find the very same information.
Follow these steps and individual techniques
to increase your site’s visibility
via newsletter archives:
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This "master hub" will serve
as the main portal for all your emails
or newsletters. Think of your archive
as a tree: The main page is the trunk,
the links/newsletters are the branches.
On this main page, put individual links
to each newsletter, as well as a brief
text description of what’s inside
each one.
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Go through every email or HTML newsletter
you’ve created. If you’ve
been in this business awhile, you probably
have at least 12 for every single year
you’ve sent them out. Even if you
only sent out a print version, gather
the old text version from your computer,
and, if possible, flow that text into
a simple newsletter template. Once you’ve
done that, add that document to your archive.
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Every time you send out a new campaign,
send customers back to your site to view
your archived version of your email or
newsletter. Start by creating your email
campaign template and archiving it online.
Then, put a link in your email version
that sends customers back to the archived
version on your site. If you’d like
to see what your email will look like
archived, click on the "+" sign
next to your email layouts in the BROWSE
LISTS section of our site.
Remember:
your goal is always to drive customers
from your email marketing newsletter back
to your online archive. You can do this
by dangling a carrot - a free video or
extra content - that customers can only
see in the archived version. You can also
funnel customers back to the archived
version by shortening the content in the
email version of your campaign. You can
always include a link to the archived
version that says "to read more,
click here".
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Just because
you sent out an email campaign two years ago
on how to reupholster a couch doesn't mean that
content can'’t be freshened up and used
again. Take your old content, dress it up a
bit to reflect modern times, reword it, and
send it out as a new campaign. Make sure your
new content is different enough that it stands
on its own as a new document. Without a good
rewrite and update, search engine "spiders"
will see both documents as one single document.
You want to double your traffic by convincing
search engines that you have two totally different
documents covering the same topic, not one.
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Go through
your old archived newsletters. Are your missing
linking opportunities? For instance, if you
sent out an email or newsletter advertising
a certain skin crème two years ago, can
you put a hyperlink in your archived version
that links back to the page where you sell the
same product? If you no longer sell that very
same product, insert a hyperlink that sends
customers to a page showcasing similar products.
Be creative. If you create a solid web of links
sending customers to various pages on your site,
you boost your presence and create a sort of
momentum that can easily raise your search engine
rank.
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